Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

by Akala

In all of the former slave colonies of the Americas where whiteness was pioneered as a tool of social control, it pretty much worked a treat. For all the centuries slavery went on – with just a few notable exceptions like the Polish in Haiti, John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry and the multi-ethnic working-class rebellion that almost took over New York in 174112 – no matter how deplorable the conditions for poor whites may have been, they rarely joined the side of the enslaved in the scores, perhaps hundreds of rebellions against slavery throughout those years. Indeed, free blacks and mulattoes, often property owners and sometimes even slave owners themselves, were far more likely to join and even lead slave rebellions out of racial nationalism alone.