MY HYPOTHESIS
The notions of race are socially constructed, and unfortunately racism continues to thrive even in the carefully defined intellect, that has governed the study of its history. From the author of “Racism: A Short History,” George M. Fredrickson describes it as “The marks or identifiers usually associated with ethnicity are language, religion, customs, and physical characteristics (inborn or acquired). One or more (sometimes all) may serve as sources of ethnic divisiveness; any one of them can provoke disdain, discrimination, or violence on the part of another group that does not share the trait or traits that have come to define ethnic otherness.” From this observation, it becomes noticeable that racism implies a social cogitation that restrains certain ethnicities from achieving certain positions throughout society. Though in the same perspective, it’s interesting how society has used racism as a social construct and has been able to transform it into a biological or even a scientific concept. Making reference to the poem, “NIGGA", from the blackness in your eyes, to the blackness in your stride;” in this situation the word stride represents the act of striding: a single coordinated movement of the four legs of a horse or other animal. This reference to the poem demonstrates a societal construct, in which blacks were considered as chattel (i.e. chattel slavery), though the biological perspective is comparable to slavery.
On the other hand, the author of “Capitalism and Slavery” and former Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Eric Williams signifies that the cultural and social repercussions of slavery originated from its economic ancestry, in which, “It was a survival of the fittest. Both Indian slavery and white servitude were to go down before the black man’s superior endurance, docility, and labor capacity.” Despite the best efforts of nineteenth-century race scientists to prove the innate inferiority of Africans, and hence their suitability as slaves, it was undoubtedly an economic, political and social choice to enslave these people. Thus, over time, this choice gave rise to a deep-seated belief that blackness, slavery, and inferiority naturally went together.