The ‘lazy nigger’ myth functioned to justify plantation exploitation of Black labour

Evidence

Brereton reports: “Victorians were preoccupied with the need for ‘steady industry,’ ‘reliable labour,’ by the non-white races of the Empire—usually for a European employer. As the London Spectator said, steady industry was ‘in English opinion, the single virtue, except reverence for white faces, to be demanded of black men.’ The ‘lazy nigger’ myth performed a useful role: it justified the exploitation of black labourers by the planters, and the neglect of independent peasant cultivators by the government.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2314

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: racial slander as functional ideology — a belief does intellectual work by legitimating exploitation and state neglect, not merely by expressing prejudice.
• XREF: Echoes the ‘immodesty’ article’s method of showing moral panics and slanders as functional class/identity signaling rather than sincere belief.