Thread by @blackrepublican

The underlying assumption should be based on evidence. And, the evidence suggest you're lying.

"It is a sad truth of our history that American slavery based on race was invented in Virginia, very close to where I sit today.'

markfordelegate.com/content/newsle…

https://twitter.com/_UnityForAll_/status/1385411223014023168

Why #CriticalRaceTheoryMatters

"Race was invented by White Europeans and perfected in American courts." shsu.edu/~jll004/vabeac…

A Timeline

1607: Jamestown, the first British North American settlement, was founded in Virginia.

1640: Virginia courts sentenced a black run away servant, John Punch, to "serve his said master . . . for the time of
his natural Life."

shsu.edu/~jll004/vabeac…

1662: Virginia law

"WHEREAS there are diverse loytering runaways in this country who very often absent themselves from their masters
service and sometimes in a long time cannot be found, that losse of the time and the charge in the seeking them often

Continue reading ...

1640: Virginia courts sentenced a black run away servant, John Punch, to "serve his said master . . . for the time of
his natural Life."

shsu.edu/~jll004/vabeac…

The First Legalized (RACIAL) Slave: Mr. John Punch

"An enslaved African who lived in the colony of #Virginia. Thought to have been an indentured servant, Punch attempted to escape to Maryland and was sentenced in July 1640 by the Virginia Governor's Council to serve as a slave"

"At first, the lives of servants and slaves were similar. They were owned by their masters and they worked shoulder to shoulder in the tobacco fields—sometimes even alongside their masters and their masters’ wives. Masters often used the courts to discipline their servants. ...

" The English common law, though only sparingly enforced, was meant to protect servants and slaves from mistreatment.Still, blacks and whites sought relief from their often grueling labor and difficult work conditions by running away, sometimes together."

"In July 1640, two such cases appeared before the colony’s judges. The decision dated July 9 describes three servants belonging to Hugh Gwyn who ran away to Maryland and were captured there. Victor, “a Dutchman,” and James Gregory, “a Scotchman,” were each sentenced to be whipped

.... , and four years were added to their indentures.'

The third servant, “a negro named John Punch,” was punished differently.

#DissimilaritiesMatter

Ira Berlin explains:

"Soon after Bacon's Rebellion they increasingly distinguish between people of African descent and people of European descent. They enact laws which say that people of African descent are hereditary slaves."

And they increasingly give some power to independent white farmers and land holders . . .

Since it'll be banned: PAY. ATTENTION.

"Now what is interesting about this is that we normally say that slavery and freedom are opposite things—that they are diametrically opposed ...

.... But what we see here in Virginia in the late 17th century, around Bacon's Rebellion, is that freedom and slavery are created at The Same Moment."

Two dissimilar identities formed on the same land; one African -- one European.

"According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first appearance in print of the adjective white in reference to “a white man, a person of a race distinguished by a light complexion” was in 1671."

"The Atlantic slave trade was well under way before there even was such a thing as the “Black Race” or the “White Race,” both previously being a host of various nationalities, ethnicities, religions, cultures, languages, and phenotypical features."

alsoacarpenter.com/2019/08/20/wha…

“The American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro.”

— Baldwin vs. William F. Buckley ( founder of the @NRO) 18.02.1965

“I picked the cotton, and I carried it to the market, and I built the railroads for nothing. For nothing!

"I am Nigerian because a white man created Nigeria and gave me that identity. I am black because the white man constructed black to be as different as possible from his white.
But I was Igbo before the white man came."

- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie