But given the English (and later American) ideals and rhetoric about human rights, equality, freedom, and democracy, slavery had to be justified by making the slaves less “human.” The ideology of white supremacy, of course, was economically motivated—slavery was enormously profitable—but it had to be philosophically and religiously tied to false ideas of white superiority and black inferiority. To put it most bluntly, racial ideologies had to be created to cover up greed. It was always a myth and an exceptionally cruel and brutal one to deny a group of people their human identity, their worth,
...more
