It is becoming increasingly clear to me that Jamelle Bouie is either an outright Marxist or, at a minimum, is heavily influenced by Marxist ideas. That doesn’t make him automatically wrong; most of his work is based on solid research, and contains a minimum of pointless whining. However, it does mean that he can go off on weird tangents based on ideology rather than evidence.
Over the few days, I will be addressing some of his recent comments about slavery, beginning with:
PROPOSITION 1: North American slavery should be viewed primarily as a product of economic conditions, not racism. This is mostly true; the participants in the slave trade (Americans, Europeans, and Africans) did not enslave Africans out of contempt for their physical features and culture and then try to figure out what to do with them. Slavery arose in North America because large-scale agricultural operations in the South required an enormous, cheap, and stable labor force, and because the alternatives didn’t work. Indians couldn’t adapt to plantation life, died from European diseases, and could easily melt into the forest, while Europeans could not be enticed from their farms to do manual labor on plantations without the promise of land and freedom. Better technology was not an option. What else could the plantation owners do?
That said, the belief on the part of the Americans and Europeans that Africans were subhuman probably preceded slavery, and made its justification easier. It did not come after the fact. On that point, I think Bouie is wrong.