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"The idea of biological racism, which, contrary to what is customarily alleged, is not more than two hundred years old, was used as an intellectual explanation of, and apology for, slavery in a society which subscribed to the highest and noblest ideals of the inalienable rights of all men to freedom and equality of opportunity."
EXAMPLES
1)"James Fenimore Cooper, had portrayed the black as a bestial being who is between the human and animal worlds. In _The Spy_, Cooper presented one of his black characters as an entity whose 'calves were neither before nor behind, but rather on the outside of the limb' with the leg placed near the center makingit difficult to decide whether he was walking forward or backwards. "
2)"Edgar Allen Poe, whose views were entirely condescending:
We must take into consideration the peculiar character (I may say the peculiar nature) of the Negro...(some believe that Negros) are, like ourselves the sons of Adam and must, therefore, have like passions and wants and feelings and tempers in all respects. This we deny and appeal to knowledge of all who know...a degree of loyal devotion on the part of the slave to which the white man's heart is a stranger, and of the master's reciprocal feeling of parental attachment to his humble dependent...That these sentiments in the breast of the Negro and his master are stronger thatn they would be under like circumstances between individualsof the white race, we believe."
3)"Likewise, J.P. Kennedy had described the facial efatures of one of his black characters as being 'pricipally composed of a pair of protuberant lips whose luxuriance seemed intended as an indemnity for a pair of crushed nostrils"
4) "Chancellor Harper of the university of South Caroline argued that the black man was created for subjection, asking: If there are sordid, servile and laborious offices to be performed, is i not better to perform them."
5) "There were also educators and other scholars who took recourse to the Bible and sought arguments about the inequality of the races to show that the treatment of blacks had a justifiable moral basis.
'Slavery had been the condition of all ancient culture, that Christianity approved servitude, and that the law of Moses had both assumed and positively established slavery...It is the order of nature and of God that the being of superior faculties and knowledge, and therefore of superior power should control and dispose of those who are inferior. It is as much in the order of nature that men should enslave each other as that other animals prey upon each other.'
This sort of presentationo of blacks, which brought their status closer to animals than human beings, was propagated not only by the open advocates of slaverybut even philanthropists..."
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