Dabian W. answered • 09/06/20
Tutor with Ph.D. - English, Writing, ESL, Test Prep, Drawing
Since European and American scholars have always tried to downplay the horrors of Trans-Atlantic and American slavery, most history books will not drive the point home as clearly as I will right here. Europeans' demand for free labor was motivated by increasing levels of greed. More profit required more productivity, which required more labor. By the early 1700s, chattel slavery (dehumanizing and race-based, lifelong servitude) had replaced their dominant form of labor in the early 1600s: indentured servitude (poor whites trading years of labor for their passage to America).
It is debatable as to whether the first Africans brought to North America by the English were indentured servants or slaves, but it seems that they had most of the same rights as white servants early on, even sharing living quarters. However, that commonality led white servants to see themselves as having more in common with them than with the white overseers and rich white planters. Together, in the late 1600s, they began to rebel against the planters. To destroy that unity, white leaders began teaching the ideology of white supremacy in a widespread manner. Teaching poor whites to hate blacks and Indians gave many poor whites somebody to feel superior to. That way, they did not see themselves as being at the absolute bottom of the social system. Soon, slaveholding colonies had passed laws that enforced the notion that blacks had no legal rights and could be held as slaves for life. At this point, the colonies were importing Africans as slaves by the thousands, and the dehumanization worsened (deliberate separation of families, sexual abuse, and physical and psychological torture).
This topic cannot adequately be covered in a short response, but I have tried to summarize it. I hope this helps.
