American slavery constructed an elaborate legal apparatus to dehumanize the enslaved

Evidence

Enslaved people were not recognized as human beings but were considered property that could be mortgaged, traded, bought, sold, used as collateral, given as a gift, and disposed of violently. Jefferson’s fellow white colonists knew that Black people were human beings, but over time the enslavers created a network of laws and customs, astounding in both their precision and their cruelty, designed to strip the enslaved of every aspect of their humanity. As the abolitionist William Goodell would write, “If any thing founded on falsehood might be called a science, we might add the system of American slavery to the list of the strict sciences.” — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 89

Categorization

• XREF: This legal apparatus of dehumanization is the mechanism the reframing argument says persists after emancipation — the laws and customs built to strip humanity outlived slavery as Jim Crow. Ties to the reading purpose’s deviation-vs-design axis. — connects to: Legal fictions once classified slaves as real estate and corporations as persons. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 95