Slave owners saw their enslavement of Black people as normal, not prejudiced

Evidence

There is some comfort, I think, in attributing the sheer brutality of slavery to dumb racism. We imagine pain being inflicted somewhat at random, doled out by a stereotypical poor white overseer, full of racist hate. But many overseers weren’t allowed to whip enslaved workers at will. Such punishments had to be authorized by the higher-ups. It was not so much the rage of the poor white Southerner as the greed of the rich white planter that drove the lash. The violence was neither arbitrary nor gratuitous. It was a rational part of the plantation’s design. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 578 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Antebellum slaveholders saw their racism as the accepted norm, not deviance; Slaveholders rationalized African enslavement through pre-existing racist ideas — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 90; Slave plantation violence was rationally calculated, not racist impulse — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 578 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Antebellum slaveholders saw their racism as the accepted norm, not deviance #corroborates (0.97)
• Plantation slavery produced juridical racism, not the reverse #complicates (0.82)
• Slave plantation violence was rationally calculated, not racist impulse #complicates (0.80) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 578