The Message

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Josiah Nott looked out at the world and saw great land masses, and to each he assigned a race and to each race he pinned an exclusive ancestor whose descendants were fit to rule or be ruled. “The grand problem,” he wrote, “is that which involves the common origin of races; for upon [it] hang[s] not only certain religious dogmas, but the more practical question of the equality and perfectibility of races.” The problem of “common origin” was the problem of “common humanity,” and common humanity invalidated the warrant for African enslavement. For if we were all descended from the same parent, why, then, was one branch made solely for enslavement? This want of a specific warrant to plunder specific humans is as old as “race” itself. In fact, it is the whole reason race was invented. Africans had to either be excised from humanity or cast into the lower reaches to justify their exploitation. But evidence for this banishment has been generally wanting, while proof of the contrary is everywhere around us.