The English colonies promoted liberties and rights as well as slavery and racism. During the revolution, a Constitution was written that contradicted promises of liberties and rights preventing slavery until the Civil War.
During the seventeenth century in North America, at the same time that slavery and racism were being engraved in society for Africans, colonies were creating charters to promote and protect the rights of Englishmen. These rights included life, liberty, and property, which were very important to Englishmen as they were denied these basic rights in the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta provided certain important rights such as the ones mentioned before only to nobles. This contradiction saw to the U.S. adopting a Constitution that protected institutionalized slavery. Slaves wanted to know where they fit into all these protections. This essay aims to highlight the protection of rights for Englishmen at a time when African slaves were being denied those same rights.
The Portuguese were the first people to go along the coast of Africa from Europe where they encountered more people of darker skin. However, these were Muslims who were literate and numerate. The English on the other hand were horrified when they saw the color black. To them, the ideal woman had blonde hair, blue eyes and fair skin, hence pure and good. To be black on the other hand meant to be evil, vile, disgusting and satanic. Winthrop Jordan, the author of the book “White Over Black”, introduced the coming together of the two civilizations – the English and the Africans and described English Racism. In his book he also describes the sexualization of slavery by the Englishman who was generally smaller than the black man. The Englishman saw that the blacks were big and very profitable to him. As a result, they developed a sexual mythology that somehow the black man would be more desirable