“These demographics presented real threats to white planters, including a potential cross-racial labor movement. Plantation work was close and intimate, and it fostered a troubling solidarity between the growing Black population and white indentured servants. White planters could not afford for such a dangerous bond to form--which is why in 1705 Virginia's legislature did as much to codify white privilege as it did to establish Black subjugation.” ClassLaborSlaveryAfrican AmericansBlacksWhitesWhite PrivilegeSlavesSlave Owners Book:Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 Source: Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
“It's a truism that we see the past as far more distant than it is in reality: my parents were adults before they could share bathrooms with white people; my grandmother was middle-aged before she could confidently enter a voting booth in Alabama. Yet these images fade easily into gentle sepia tones for me today. That's because it's safety, not wisdom, we're after when we look backward. We picture ugly things at a comfortable distance. But Americans distort the past in other ways, too. We see horrible people as exceptional, and their many accomplices as mere captives of their times. We tell ourselves we would contain such wickedness if it arose today, because now we know better. We've learned. In our illusory past, progress has come in decisive and irrevocable strokes.” WisdomRealityPastEvilHistoryProgressSafetyDenialAfrican AmericansBlacks Book:Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 Source: Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019