Labeling a slave population naturally decreasing masks economic extermination as biology

Evidence

Typically of the Caribbean and South America, however, the Africans of Brazil were what Philip Curtin unfortunately described as “a naturally decreasing slave population.” “Natural” in such instances may be the historical demographers way of indicating the unfavorable ratio of births to deaths in a population, but its use here is both unfortunate and unacceptable for two reasons: first, because it appears to draw our attention too narrowly to the slave as a biological organism presuming a normal environment; and second because such a phrase as “naturally decreasing” diminishes the painful reality and the tragic experience of Brazil’s slave population. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 750

Categorization

• XREF: The reader’s interest in how language masks violence connects to the Frankfurt School treatments of social character and reification. — connects to: Biologizing mental illness conveniently depoliticizes its social causes — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 82