Yael Pineda
History M151C
Professor E. Avila
8 June 2015
Wiping Away the Scars of Centuries Human slavery is a phenomenon that has been present since the times of the Romans and the Greeks. As a common misconception, many societies, especially those in America tend to believe that slavery was always black. The question to answer here is: when did slavery become black? Throughout a period of enslavement, human beings have again and again treated slavery as an act of the “norm” embedded in human behavior, which they use in order to make a clear distinction between them and us to justify such atrocious and immortal acts. With historical examples of structural forces and cultural practices from the literary works of Harris, Painter, Roediger …show more content…
In the 1400s, Europeans recognized themselves as “modern, western and civilized” only until their encounter with the other, which they described as primitive and vulnerable to all technology (Avila 21 April). To support white racial formation, European immigrants saw themselves as “civilized” and powerful due to their access to technology and weapons, compared to the Red Indians who lived on the land to feed and clothe themselves instead of exploiting its natural resources as the Europeans did. Through a period of settlement and exploitation in America, Mexico, Brazil, Africa, Asian and India, European military conquest strengthened power relations and racial formation, which is defined as instances in “which race is identified on one hand and standardized on the other hand” (Avila 21 …show more content…
During their leisure time, the American upper white class made time to attend plays, which allowed for participation in then’s popular culture. Blackening one’s face “involved a conscious declaration of whiteness and white supremacy, even as it identified celebration and popular justice with adopting a racial disguise” (Roediger 104), a form of white riot that served as both white American male identity but also as a rejection of the self and a momentary rejection of the benefits brought about by their “whiteness.” This new form of entertainment allowed for widely accepted subtle racism and allowed for respectable rowdiness and safe rebellion, especially for the Irish Americans, who were naturally seen as “rowdy” sub-whites. “Cultural practices” such as what we know to be “popular culture” helped normalize black inferiority and white racial formation (Avila 7 May). Minstrelsy then became central to the formation and strengthening of the white working class racial identity as it “reinforces and produces white racial hierarchy” (Avila 7 May) by allowing for widely accepted ridicule of both African Americans and Red Indians. The Jacksonian Democratic era that began in the 1760s allowed for the persecution of the American natives. Cultural practices such as the negative representation of