Plantation slavery produced juridical racism, not the reverse

Evidence

Again, the common assumption that it was attitudes of racial superiority which precipitated the introduction of plantation slavery needs to be challenged. It might be better to start from the opposite end: by seeing how slavery (the product of specific problems of labor shortage and the organization of plantation agriculture, supplied, in the first instance, by non-black, indigenous labor, and then by white indentured labor) produced those forms of juridical racism which distinguish the epoch of plantation slavery. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 634

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: Echoes the materialist inversion familiar from historical materialist race theory; reverses the common-sense ‘prejudice caused slavery’ story.
• SEED: A ready-made essay angle challenging commonsense racism-as-cause explanations by showing how labor institutions generated racial ideology.

Related

• Slavery’s labor demands produced juridical racism rather than racial attitudes producing slavery. (similarity 0.92)
• Racialism preceded the slave trade and the Negro’s invention required a specific purpose (similarity 0.89)
• Racism gets reorganized by each mode of production rather than being constant (similarity 0.83)
• Colonial law deliberately manufactured racism to divide poor whites from enslaved blacks. (similarity 0.80)
• Racism is reorganized by each mode of production and never reducible to other relations (similarity 0.80)
• Racism is rooted in concrete material conditions, not ruling-class conspiracy or error (similarity 0.80)
• Skin color alone marked chattel slaves regardless of other social position (similarity 0.78)
• Plantation slavery combined capitalist and non-capitalist modes in dominance (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Ancient slavery did not necessarily deploy racial categories; plantation slavery did. #corroborates (0.85)
• Slavery does not necessarily entail racial categories #corroborates (0.80)
• The slave trade supplied the cause that turned racialism into the Negro #corroborates (0.75)
• Slave subordination in plantation society rested on productive relations more than race alone. #corroborates (0.70)
• Racism originated in internal relations among European peoples, not colonial contacts #contradicts (0.60)
• Racism against Europeans like the Irish predated color-based slavery #contradicts (0.60)