- [Voiceover] Hey, Becca.
- [Voiceover] Hey, Kim.
So, in this video we're gonna continue talking
about how this arbitrary racial hierarchy
was established in America, specifically about
the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade
and how our society became so stratified
by race so early on.
- [Voiceover] Okay, interesting.
- [Voiceover] The Portuguese had started to buy slaves
and bring them to Europe as early as 1526,
but it wasn't until the 1600s when slaves were transported
across the Atlantic and sold
into servitude in the new colonies.
- [Voiceover] All right,
so I'm gonna draw us a little Atlantic world here
and please forgive my terrible maps womanship.
- [Voiceover] This was directly connected
to this competition
between European powers for a stronghold in the new world,
so this began with the Spanish
in 1492 with Christopher Columbus,
but slowly also the English, the Dutch, the Portuguese,
everyone is trying to establish their own colony
that they could hopefully gain a lot of new resources from
and just establish glory, really, in this new world
and having slaves was a really big part
of being able to do that.
- [Voiceover] Yeah, I mean, if you think about,
just imagine, kind of, living in, I don't know, England,
and hearing about how well Spain is doing
getting all this gold and silver from the new world,
so Spain is definitely improving
it's national standing in Europe
and the rest of Europe is thinking, "Mm, sounds to me
like we need to get in on this game."
- [Voiceover] And so, to get in on the game,
really what the European powers needed
were laborers to work in these new plantations.
As you may know, when the Europeans came over
they brought a ton of disease
which decimated these Native American populations
which they had previously used to labor
through the encomienda system
so the African slaves actually had immunities
to these diseases that the European powers
really wanted to capitalize upon.
- [Voiceover] Yeah, I think what's interesting here
and the reason that I drew this map
is because I think it really helps us understand
why it was that people who lived over here
had no immunity to European disease
and why the people who lived over here did
because if you think about sailing,
so here's Europe, and people had been trading
with Europe and West Africa and into the Middle East
to here for hundreds of years.
- [Voiceover] Exactly.
- [Voiceover] So that gave them plenty of time
to kind of build up immunities to each other
so not only do people in Africa
have the immunity to disease,
they're also kind of a readily available labor source
because the practice of taking prisoners of war
and selling them as slaves on the west coast of Africa
was already established so Europeans
are looking for a labor force that
isn't gonna die of disease
and there are people being sold as slaves
on the west coast of Africa already.
- [Voiceover] So, at this point,
there are kind of two competing labor forces
between the Native Americans and the African slaves.
Colonists start realizing that the African slaves
are actually a more economical labor force
than the Native Americans since they had this immunity.
- [Voiceover] Right, and they're also easier
to keep as slaves for Europeans
because they're not on their home territory.
You know, if someone showed up to your town
and said, "You're my slave now,"
you're gonna run away to the hills
and they don't know anything about where your town is
so you're fine, right?
It's hard to enslave people on their home territory,
but if you are buying someone
who has been wrestled away from
their home in Central Africa,
brought to the coast, they're with people
who don't even speak the same language as them,
they're put on a ship to the new world
which is incredibly deadly,
say probably about 30% of enslaved Africans
who were put in what was called the middle passage
died during the voyage.
- [Voiceover] I think that's a really good point
and the reason that some colonists
actually preferred Native American slaves
is because of their knowledge of the land and agriculture.
So, the subordination of both the Native Americans
and the African slaves led to lots of intermarriage
between the two groups and so, in the colonies,
there became a sense of racial mixing
that we had never seen before.
- [Voiceover] Interesting, and I can see how this might
pose a problem if you're trying to figure out
who should be a slave and who should not
because if you have someone who belongs to both groups,
where do you categorize them?
- [Voiceover] So, a lot of the Spanish that were coming over
had trouble distinguishing who was supposed to be a slave
and who was a Native American
as these two groups intermarried?
So let's check out this painting to learn a little bit more
about how the different groups were mixing at the time
and how racial hierarchy really solidified
at this time period.
- [Voiceover] You can definitely see that
they've put things in multiple layers here.
Here's Virgin Mary, her, sort of representation of God
or the higher power and then here you see
the Spanish, whites, and below that Native Americans
who might be the offspring of white Spanish settlers
and Native Americans.
- [Voiceover] A Spanish and a Native American,
that was called mestizos, right?
- [Voiceover] Right.
Or they might be the offspring
of a Native American and an African
and those people were referred to as creoles.
So there's a very complex system
of racial hierarchy in this Spanish society basically,
organized around how much white blood a person had,
the more privileges and rights you had in their society.
- [Voiceover] And you see the inverse in early America,
right, in the early 1800s,
when even one drop of African blood would
make a person a slave.
- [Voiceover] Right, and that's one thing
that is always very confusing even to
the people of the time period
because it would be possible for someone
who looked quite light skinned to still be enslaved
by virtue of their parentage.
- [Voiceover] Exactly and so this was the system
by which society, in the early colonial time period,
was organized around a completely
arbitrary factor like race.
It was simply the easiest way to identify people
and create a working class.
- [Voiceover] And, as we move forward,
as the English begin to settle North America
and shortly after their settlement import African slaves,
the United States will become heir
to a version of this system.