Lakota Family

Take the way we acquired the land that became this country. First we massacred the Indigenous Peoples (the “Indians”) and stole their land. Before our European invasion, there were between 9 and 18 million Indigenous People in North America. But by 1900 there were only 250,000 in the United States, and about 123,000 in Canada–less than 375,000!

From 1835 on, we targeted Mexico, our neighbor to the south, seizing, through contrived wars, half of their country, which became Texas, our Southwest and West Coast.

During the colonial period, as agriculture and industry began to grow, there was a terrific labor shortage. There weren’t enough white workers coming from Europe, and the European invaders couldn’t enslave enough Indigenous People for the work. Therefore, it was enslaved Africans–kidnapped from their homelands, exiled to the “New World” and forced into slavery–who provided the unpaid labor that made the wealth of the Europeans possible.

The entire economy, in the North as well as the South–banks, shipping companies, insurance companies, you name it–was built on the backs of non-whites for whites. Indeed, slavery, and later wage slavery, combined with the rich resources of this stolen land, is what made the wealth enjoyed by many white Americans up to and including today.

By 1760 the population in the colonies reached about two million, 400,000 of which were enslaved Africans. In the southern colonies, a wealthy gentry developed, such as in Virginia, where 50 rich white families were in control even though they were vastly outnumbered by non-whites. In the Carolinas, there were 25,000 whites, 40,000 enslaved Africans and 60,000 Indigenous People.

In the early colonial period, over half of those who came from Europe were indentured servants. Class lines solidified as the distinction between rich and poor became more pronounced. Slave owners’ well-founded fears of rebellion grew.

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From the beginning, there were revolts by enslaved Africans. But, as Martinez states, what “the elite whites feared even more was that discontented whites–servants, tenant farmers, the urban poor, the property-less, soldiers and sailors–would join them to overthrow the existing order.” As early as 1663, in Virginia, white indentured servants and enslaved Africans had united in organizing a plan to gain their freedom. Many other cross-cultural insurrections followed.

What to do? Divide and conquer. In 1691 Virginia’s legislators created a new legal category: “whatsoever English or other white man or woman, (italics mine) bond or free shall intermarry with a Negro, mulatto, or Indian man or woman, bond or free, he shall within 3 months be banished from this dominion forever.” They had created the “white race.”

Certain privileges, denied to others, were given to all whites, including indentured servants. They alone were allowed to join militias, carry guns, buy land, and enjoy other legal rights. This made them “superior” to the Indigenous People and people of African descent..

So that, my friends, is how the “white race” was born as a racist concept to keep “lower-class” whites from unifying with people of color against their common enemy.

Also by Donna Lamb