An Island in chains: Barbados

Gianmarco Bocchini
BLST 101

Race is a social construct brilliantly created to give a certain group of people an upper hand. Europeans used this made up system of race to essentially put down others who didn’t quite look like them. The European demand for workers, the availability of human beings for sale, and the construct of race deeming darker skinned people as inferior created a caste system: as mentioned in Upon These Shores (Page 63). This system that was created put white powerful European people above darker skinned folks and it planted the seeds of racism, which is still prevalent to this day. European owned “slave” colonies benefitted the most from race, implementing the race caste system eventually fusing it with everyday life.

Barbados wasn’t the first permanent English colony in the New World, but they were the first to adopt slavery, as it’s main source of labor. Almost overnight Barbados became a capitalistic driven country controlled by rich “slave” owning planters. The most crucial difference for the English was skin color, whiteness denoted good and pure while blackness suggested sin and filth. The English even went to extremes, creating a “slave” code that specifically targeted blacks, claiming that they were: “An heathenish, brutish, and an uncertaine, dangerous kinde of people.” Not only did they believe people of darker skin were inferior, lawmakers specifically enforced it, creating a stigma and consciously drilling this ideal through the heads of the citizens.

Barbados’ racially driven caste system was the backbone of institutionalized racism. Their “slave” code set a standard for all future colonies; the code swayed the minds of black and non-black individuals. From the jump, white non-African servants were treated completely different from darker skinned enslaved Africans. Servants had their years of servitude increased if they tried to run away, theft or fighting back their master; Enslaved Africans were whipped, branded or even put to death for the same crimes. “These characteristics, including a belief that enslaving Africans was socially acceptable, were embedded in the culture of the earliest English colonists and informed the ways in which Africans were viewed when they became part of the developing colonies.” (Handler 5) Barbados’ policies and ideals as a colony paved the way for the rest of the English owned colonies. The other colonies adopted Barbados’ flaws as a colony and used these same policies and ideals to create the America we live in today.

The Original Slave Colony: Barbados and Andrea Stuart’s “Sugar in the Blood”           

   Racism in this day and age is very much still alive. America as a country is not that old, it wasn’t until 1865 that slavery was abolished and it wasn’t until 1965 that American black people were finally allowed to vote; Almost 100 years later. “The effects of slavery, racism, and the struggle for civil rights continue to shape both our law and society.” (Welsh 10) Our country was founded on racist prejudice grounds and it has affected us in such a way that everyday racism still remains a constant. Race was socially constructed to allow people in power to get the upper hand; racism now is the effect of the English’s grotesque hunger for world power. While white America is talking to their children about the birds and the bees, black Americans are talking to their kids about the injustices and corruption of everyday society, just because of the color of their skin.
Steve Harvey: Are We Racist?
Steve Harvey: Are We Racist? Continued.

Steve Sack cartoon for July 17, 2013

Work cited

Welsh, David. “Racism and The Law: Slavery, Integration and Modern Resegregation In America” Journal of Law & Family Studies. 2009 431-439 Web 10/02/16

Handler, Jerome S. “Custom and law: The status of enslaved Africans in seventeenth-century Barbados” Slavery & Abolition. 2016 1-23 Web 10/02/16