White superiority requires the inferiority of Blacks. Such was the justification for slavery. The Duke de La Rochefoucault-Liancourt presented in written form a poignant example of the seventeenth century’s logic of White superiority over Blacks. The duke’s accounts of his travel to North America documented in vivid fashion the “decided superiority to the white colour, even in the eyes of the blacks.” His words are very clear: “the abolition of the slave trade is the dream of a mistaken philanthropy. . . . The great danger a slave has to encounter after his emancipation is, that of not being
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