Read: Race and Coerced Labor Part II: Motivations and Justifications

Read: Race and Coerced Labor II – Motivations and Justifications

• Answer the following questions on Blackboard:
  • Answer questions via Blackboard – Section 002
  • Answer questions via Blackboard – Section 008
  • Answer questions via Blackboard – Section 025

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

1. What contradiction does the system of slavery in the Americas highlight, according to the author?
2. What was the principle motive for using enslaved labor?
3. How were the people in William Clark’s 1823 painting Cutting the Sugar Cane, Antigua economically related to Harewood House in Leeds?
4. In what ways did people use religion to justify slavery?
5. In what way did people mis-use science to argue in favor of slavery? Were these arguments sustained by evidence?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. What is the difference between a “motive” and a “justification”, as the author uses them in this article?
2. How is it possible that the same society could create both important ideas about individual sovereignty and the rights of citizens, and a system of perpetual, violent enslavement? What particular set of ideas made it possible in this context?