Read on Twitter
#watchwithTwitty hi all!
So we are about 25 minutes out from the #UnitedShades episode on slavery and reparations. I just wanted to put out a thread with some base concepts and facts so we can have a richer conversation. I want to thank @wkamaubell for this episode and conversation.
Remember our # tonight is #watchwithTwitty
Its really critical to note that nobody was "born a slave" but rather "born into slavery," and that people were enslaved not "a slave." Slavery was a social institution. Enslaved is a condition. Slave is an identity. Nobody was born 3/5 a person. #watchwithTwitty
Before 1820, more enslaved Africans crossed the Atlantic to N &S America than Europeans #watchwithTwitty
Before 1500-1700 Europeans largely did not view Africans as naturally belonging to the condition of enslavement. They saw them as exotic and different but not inferior. It took two centuries to formulate such beliefs in the West. #watchwithTwitty
Racial chattel slavery was not a social program or a means of "salvation," it was a business. Too many times people's biases about slavery being analogous to welfare or having divine provenance slip out. Both are wrong. #watchwithTwitty
Let's be clear: "race," is not the issue here but rather racism. What we think of race is really a response to four parts of identity. Race does not exist in any meaningful biological way. What we call race is
PHENOTYPE
GENOTYPE
ETHNOTYPE
SOCIOTYPE
#watchwithTwitty
PHENOTYPE
GENOTYPE
ETHNOTYPE
SOCIOTYPE
#watchwithTwitty
Phenotype= how the gamble of your genes makes you look from skin color to features based on inhertible traits. Early racial chattel slavery was largely but not always based on appearance.
Genotype---genes haven't really been visible to us for very long but this part of us obscures race as a complete biological idea the most.. slavery began to extend to the children of whites and Blacks from the start. Every baby with African blood was suspect.
#watchwithTwitty Ethnotype= learned or assumed cultural identity.
Sociotype = social caste or class aligned with our other three components. Slavery was considered hereditary by law. Its shadow thus affects us all.
#watchwithTwitty
#watchwithTwitty
#UnitedShades #watchwithTwitty in under 1 minute!
