Enslaving interests generated slave codes, not the other way around

Evidence

After Turner’s rebellion, Virginians started seriously contemplating the end of slavery. It was not from the moral persuasion of nonviolent abolitionists, but from the fear of slave revolts, or the “smothered volcano” that could one day kill them all. During the winter of 1831–1832, undercover abolitionists, powerful colonizationists, and hysterical legislators in Virginia raised their voices against slavery. In the end, proslavery legislators batted away every single antislavery measure, and ended up pushing through an even more harrowing slave code than the one that had been in place. Proslavery legislators repressed the very captives they said were docile, and restricted the education of the very people they argued could not be educated. Racist ideas, clearly, did not generate these slave codes. Enslaving interests generated these slave codes. Racist ideas were produced to preserve the enslaving interests. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 463

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the chapter’s (and book’s) central causal inversion stated at full strength — the precise formulation the reader is testing: racist ideas as post-hoc justification for policy driven by self-interest.
• QUESTION: A good stress-test here: Turner’s own testimony shows liberation theology predating and motivating his violence. Does that complicate Kendi’s claim that ideas always follow interests, or is the distinction between aggrieved people’s ideas and elites’ justificatory racist ideas?
• XREF: connects to: Digital speculation obscures inequality through hidden code just as nations hid exploitation — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 138