Anti-Black Attitudes after Slavery

It would be great to say that once slavery was eradicated everyone became seen as
an equal, but that would be a lie. The notion that blacks were inferior to whites has been
so deeply rooted in peoples minds and every day lives that even after slavery, it sprouted
in new mediums. Across Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States, new forms
of segregation grew from the ashes of the old. With discrimination, laws like Jim Crow,
and mass incarceration, the fight for freedom had just begun.
It Latin America, Haiti had the unique position of being the first independent
Black Country. A country made up of freed slaves who fought for, and won, their
independence. Revolution in Haitis Saint Domingue began in 1791 and was over by
1804. Being a free entity, it scared the white powers of other countries. They refused to
accept the victory of the Haitians, fearing that their accomplishment would ignite black
rebellions across the globe. While Haiti threw off their white supremacists, and with them
the entire notion of slavery, they were forced to deal with crippling set backs to their
economy. The white thermidor, or counterrevolution, isolated Haiti. They embargoed its
goods and demanded reparations for the war. Although Haiti faced a lot, it withstood the
blows and kept its shores free of slavery.
Even though Africans over-came their entrapment, they were still a long ways
away from the freedom and equality they strove for. Those of African ancestry faced
many struggles and obstacles after slavery. Even after gaining Emancipation in 1834,
slaves in the British West Indies were still forced into other forms of unpaid labor.
Instead of being owned by masters, they became impoverished free citizens. Their
poverty made them desperate for work, therefore turning them into a cheap form of labor

for the white supremacists. This created a new definition of owning slaves, now being
owned by those who paid them a meager salary.
For the people of the Caribbean, it was difficult to keep the plantation system
running while not sacrificing the liberty of freedmen. These freed men found it difficult
to live a life where they were free only by word, but not by action. While labeled free
men, they were still working for the white supremacist, on plantation systems that were
no different than those before their emancipation. When British Parliament was faced
with these problems, they took a stance sympathetic to the former slave owners in an
attempt to ensure the continued dominance of the planters and dependence of the freed
slaves. Therefore, a new form of labor was created, called apprenticeship. This forced
any black over the age of six to work for their former slave owner without pay, in order
to apprentice field workers. It was said that they would be taught how to run their own
plantations some day; that they would be paid by learning the trade, but it ended up being
just another form of slavery. They once again found themselves working for the white
man without any pay. With promises to be taught what they needed and then allowed to
flourish on their own, the freed slaves worked on these plantations from birth to death.
In the United States, emancipation brought about different forms of racist
segregation in both the North and South. In the South, African Americans were subject to
Jim Crow laws; a set of laws created for the sole purpose of not letting the former slaves
gain any traction in their communities. They were kept out of public offices, forced to use
different amenities, and not allowed to vote. They were subject to many forms of
discrimination and torment. Mostly inhabiting the farms and plantations of the Deep
South, many Black Americans resided in the culturally rich black belt. Due to the

hardships they faced from their white counterparts, many African Americans fled to the
north in what is now called the great migration. Over 3 million black men and women
migrated to the north between 1940 and 1960, but soon after many of them moved back
to the south.
The movement to more accepting cities in the north allowed the society of
African Americans to manifest in many ways. Living in the more integrated north
allowed the African Americans to gain a voice, and to bring their beautiful culture to the
forefront of American advancements. Some of the more famous are their growth in
gospel, jazz, and other forms of cultural art, like the Tango and Maxixe dance forms. The
Great Migration not only allowed the freed slaves a new beginning to live un-judged and
away from racism, but it also helped them grow and expand their culture to many parts of
the US.
In the U.S, Jim Cow was only one of many forms of discrimination after slavery.
When counted, there have been four major institutions that have successfully operated to
define, confine, and control African Americans in the history of the United States. The
first was slavery and the plantation economy. After emancipation came the Jim Crow
system, a group of laws, which created legally, enforced discrimination and segregation.
A full century after emancipation, the civil rights movement managed to topple over this
form of segregation. This only paved the way for the third wave of African American
containment, known as the Ghetto. Coming about from the urbanization of African
Americans from the Great Migration of 1914, to the 1960s where the transformation of
economy found African Americans in poverty stricken environments with little to no
forms of employment due to continued caste exclusion. Climaxing with explosive urban

riots, the U.S. moved to the fourth institution of African American Control.
Starting around the late 1970s we see an influx of African Americans
incarcerated. This institutional complex was raised from the remnants of the
impoverished black ghettos and can be genealogically traced back to the slave
institutions. The glaring and growing disproportionality in the incarceration of African
Americans over the past three decades illustrates the prison system as a continuation of
black confinement and control in the wake of the crisis of the ghetto. The continuing
stigma that afflicts the descendants of slaves pushes them into un-liked, impoverished
living conditions that breed crime, and in turn makes others label the entire race as
criminals. While the explicit racism has begun to dissipate from the publics view, an
implicit form of racism and racial profiling has arisen. These ideas are so far from the
peoples conscious awareness that even those who are faced with the stigma dont realize
that its there. A person to study the relationship between past institutional racism, and
trace the rise to todays mass incarceration, in order to completely see and understand this
new form of discrimination that still has a strong hold in societies today.
Emancipation from slavery led to more segregation than freedom, and many
voices stood up and fought against discrimination. While some took a violent approach
and some a more intellectual approach, one man decided that fascism would be a better
way to fight the white supremists. Marcus Garvey used Black Nationalism as a standpoint
for his fight against for the segregation of white people from blacks in order to purify the
black race. Black nationalism is the idea that, like white supremacists, blacks are just as
capable of becoming their own master race. Marcus Garvey applauds the KKK and other
Anglo-Saxons for making their race the most influential. He believes that in order to gain

freedom, blacks need to separate themselves from other races. He stated that All race
should be pure in morals and in outlook, and went on to claim that just like white
supremacists want to keep their race pure, so do the blacks want to purify their race. His
belief was that blacks and whites should not mix and that segregation is for the best, even
going on to work with the KKK in order to push for segregation in both races. He didnt
fight for the end of segregation and discrimination, but for the blacks to start segregating
the whites as if they are lesser people.
The stigma of discrimination created a moral panic in society that even the
subjugated began to impose. Moral panic can be defined as an intense feeling expressed
in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order. When these young
black children were faced with society portraying them in a negative light, whether or not
they are a part of the problem, they begin to psychologically believe that what society is
saying is true. Kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy, the system criminalizes the youth
by perpetuating the stereotypes.