Nineteenth-century racialist discourse justified African slavery as preferable to imagined savagery.

Evidence

James and al-Inklïzï continue to comment on the strange ways of the Africans, traversing the continent with examples of this or that tribe’s barbaric behavior. The worst custom, al-Inklïzï says, is slavery. Although acknowledging that the trade worsened considerably with the arrival of Europeans on the coastlines of Africa, al-Inklïzï says that abolition of the trade is impossible as long as Africans remain ignorant, uneducated, and without religion. Only when they accept true religion and learn the skills of civilized countries will they be able to give up a trade that has become second nature. Until such a time, al-Inklïzï says, it is better that they enslave each other than massacre each other. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 282

Categorization

• SHARE: For someone studying abolitionist rhetoric’s racist underpinnings, this al-Inklïzï passage shows the ‘better they enslave each other than massacre each other’ framing.