Postemancipation indentureship reproduced racial exclusion against all new labor groups

Evidence

As indentureship replaced the system of slavery, supplies of new labor for plantation production had to be imported. Most important in terms of numbers were “East Indian” indentures brought from the subcontinent of India. Smaller but significant numbers of indentures were also imported from Portuguese territories and from China. Postemancipation indentureship imposed its own legitimating regime of exclusion. This rested upon the “racial” and cultural location of the new indentures outside of the European- African continuum of Creole society. But the new rationality of exclusion applied, also, to European and African postslavery indentures. Portuguese indentures, imported from Madeira, were unable to make immediate claims of racial affinity with the white Creoles in Trinidad and British Guiana (now Guyana). They were socially located for a time outside of Creole society. For postemancipation African indentures, the boundary maintaining distinction between African and Afro-Creole, typical of slave society, prevailed. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3240

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Labor’s protective campaigns doubled as exclusionary racial and gender agendas — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3196