Historian David Roediger

    Historian David Roediger has written “The world got along without race for the overwhelming majority of its history. The United States has never been without it.” How did the revolutionary ideals of liberty and equality paradoxically harden ideas of race and therefore racism in America? How could a nation proclaim that all men are created equal and also sanction slavery? Why was the idea of race needed to reconcile the two? How did the artificial construction of race privilege whiteness and exclude African Americans and Indigenous peoples from enjoying the benefits of the new nation’s ideals? Why were poor whites so central to the creation and maintenance of white supremacy? What expectations did white Americans have about Black men and women and native peoples in their new democratic republic? Sources to use in answering these questions: “American Slavery: The American Revolution” “America’s Original Sin. Slavery and the Legacy of White Supremacy” “We the People in the United States” RAP 10-1 Jefferson’s Indian Policy RAP 10-3 A Slave Demands Freedom RAP 10-4 Fears About Enslavement of Free African Americans RAP 11-3 Tocqueville on Race in the United States Image: Virginian Luxuries Image: Battle of Cowpens Image: Amalgamation Podcast: “The Origins of Racial Segregation in the United States” Podcast: “Freedom and the American Revolution” Podcast: “Whose Fourth of July” Show less