Status i wizerunek Murzynów w kolonialnej Wirginii

Abstract

The main subject of the article are the characteristics of the adaptation of the slavery system in Virginia, and the analysis of the perception of the Blacks by the white inhabitants of the Old Dominion. Formation of the legal rudiments of the slavery system in Virginia took several decades, up until the beginning of the eighteenth century. Initially, a conceptual separation of the black workers from the rest of the servants took place, and the term “slave” was ascribed to them. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, a white person in principle could not be a slave any more, whereas a black person was predestined to slavery as “descendant of Ham”. As the next step, slaves were deprived of their human identity. They became “property”, an object of a subtle dilemma for the legislators of the colony as to whether they should be treated as immovable property or livestock in the light of inheritance law. In everyday life, they were an inferior species for all owners without exception; many plantation owners perceived them as tools rather than workers. That status quo obviously influenced the attitude of the Whites towards the handful of free Blacks living in the colony. In the eighteenth century, racist prohibitions regulated also their lives - they did not participate in militia exercises, they could not marry Whites, they did not have the right to vote, and, as a rule, they were denied access to any offices, including even the local ones. Those regulations attest to the fact that the image of hideous, lecherous, and dull barbarians, for whom it was necessary to create separate laws, common in the eighteenth century, although it supported the idea of slavery itself, was founded on the racist prejudices of the Whites towards the Blacks in general, and not only towards the Blacks-slaves.