The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism

by Jemar Tisby

If there is one concept that helps unlock the twisted logic of American slavery better than almost any other, it is the chattel principle. The chattel principle is the social alchemy that transformed a human being made in the image of God into a piece of property. African American minister and abolitionist James W. C. Pennington spoke of it this way: “The being of slavery, its soul and its body, lives and moves in the chattel principle, the property principle, the bill of sale principle: the cart whip, starvation, and nakedness are its inevitable consequences.”4 In the book Soul by Soul, Walter Johnson looks at the slave market, the point of sale for human beings, the place that most tangibly illustrates the chattel principle and the way human beings were reduced to the personal property of slave owners. Johnson writes, “The entire economy of the antebellum South was constructed on the idea that the bodies of enslaved people had a measurable monetary value.”5 As property, enslaved people were valued for their physical aptitude and obedient attitudes. Prices increased based on height, skin color, perceived intelligence, and a reputation for following orders. Slaves could be used as collateral for loans and were often sold as part of the estate when an enslaver died.