Racism can outlast slavery and even flourish where slavery never existed

Evidence

As sectional political tensions over slavery’s expansion heated up in the halls of Congress, some abolitionists established a new rhetorical ground: slavery and anti-Black racism were one and the same, and if slavery ended, racism would vanish as well. “Complexional caste is tolerated no where, excepting in the immediate vicinage of slavery,” Garrison declared in 1847, adding that racism’s “utter eradication is not to be expected until that hideous system be overthrown.” French scholar Alexis de Tocqueville, who traveled across the United States in the early 1830s, had a different observation. “The prejudice of the race appears stronger in the States which have abolished slavery, than in those where it still exists; and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those States where servitude has never been known,” Tocqueville wrote in his classic 1835 treatise, Democracy in America. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1264

Categorization

• XREF: Directly challenges the abolitionist premise that ending slavery eradicates racism — connects to modern debates about whether formal equality ends systemic discrimination, and to the book’s own thesis that racism was foundational and predated slavery’s formal end.
• QUESTION: Tocqueville’s observation in 1835 predates the Civil War — does this undercut or complicate the 1619 Project’s foundational claim that American racism was created specifically to justify slavery?