White Man's Burden Summary

The institution of slavery was part of a significant portion of American history, along with human history. Additionally, it is also one of the greatest human tragedies of the New World and the United States. The White Man's Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in the United States was written by Winthrop D. Jordan and tells the history of racism in the United States. The author discusses the very origins of racism and the nature of slavery within the United States through the attitudes of the white slave owners. In the book, the author addresses the problem of slavery through the negative stereotypes, racist laws, and the paradox of Thomas Jefferson.
The African slave lost their humanity from the very moment they boarded the European slave

During this time period, “no English colony remained without laws dealing specifically with the governance of Negroes.” Specific pieces of legislation would be passed within the English colonies that were ultimately based on the if one was a slave or free. However, with these slave laws enacted, the laws “told the white man, not the Negro, what he must do. It was the white man who was required to punish.” Overall, it was the slave owner who had the responsibility to punish the slave. For the white slave owner, “absolute control became a major priority, and slaves were subject to severe discipline.” Since the African slave was a living tool for the slave owner, he or she was not deemed to be human, which meant that a series of inhumane punishments could be sanctioned upon the African slave. Moreover, these laws were enacted so that the white man would remain in control at all times, hence white over black. Due to the fact that the African slave was not deemed a human being by the white man, the laws and punishments that were passed were inhuman as well. For example, in the English colonies of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Virginia, the enslaved African man could be punished by being castrated for sexual aggression. Moreover, was Sally Hemings the sexual aggressor or was Thomas Jefferson the sexual

Slavery is the idea and practice that one person is inferior to another. What made the institution of slavery in America significantly different from previous institutions was that “slavery developed as an institution based upon race.” Slavery based upon race is what made slavery an issue within the United States, in fact, it was a race issue. In addition, “to know whether certain men possessed natural rights one had only to inquire whether they were human beings.” Slaves were not even viewed as human beings; instead, they were dehumanized and were viewed as property or animals. During this era of slavery in the New World, many African slaves would prefer to die than live a life of forced servitude to the white man. Moreover, the problem of slavery was that an African born in the United States never knew what freedom was. According to Winthrop D. Jordan, “the concept of Negro slavery there was neither borrowed from foreigners, nor extracted from books, nor invented out of whole cloth, nor extrapolated from servitude, nor generated by English reaction to Negroes as such, nor necessitated by the exigencies of the New World. Not any one of these made the Negro a slave, but all.” American colonists fought a long and bloody war for independence that both white men and black men fought together, but it only seemed to serve the white man’s independence to continue their complete dominance over the African slave. The white man must carry a heavy