{"id":22611,"date":"2012-04-22T19:26:39","date_gmt":"2012-04-22T19:26:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=22611"},"modified":"2016-06-18T18:37:25","modified_gmt":"2016-06-18T18:37:25","slug":"the-first-africans-to-arrive-in-north-america-did-not-arrive-as-slaves-and-almost-certainly-did-not-conceive-of-themselves-as-%e2%80%9cnegros-%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=22611","title":{"rendered":"The first Africans to arrive in North America did not arrive as slaves and almost certainly did not conceive of themselves as \u201cnegros.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>The first Africans to arrive in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/North_America\" target=\"_blank\">North America<\/a> did not arrive as slaves and almost certainly did not conceive of themselves as \u201cnegros.\u201d The word, appropriated from the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Latin\" target=\"_blank\">Latin<\/a> word for \u201cblack\u201d was a descriptive device divorced from any cultural or historical context for these people. Over time, that descriptive device would become a social designation constructed in opposition to and structurally inferior to \u201cwhiteness.\u201d The first Africans to arrive in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Colony_of_Virginia\" target=\"_blank\">Virginia<\/a> may not have arrived as slaves, but legislation would ensure that black freedom would exist only as a misshapen <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/simulacrum\" target=\"_blank\">simulacrum<\/a> of white freedom. Where whiteness signified privilege, blackness had to signify subordination, a dynamic which was eventually codified in racial slavery. For those without claim to &#8220;whiteness,\u201d there was no recourse to white domination and so within this racialized caste system, \u201chalf-blackness\u201d or \u201chalf-whiteness\u201d were as problematic concepts as \u201cpartial-oppression\u201d or \u201chalf-supremacy.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Darryl G. Barth\u00e9, Jr., \u201cRacial Revisionism, Caste Revisited: Whiteness, Blackness, and Barack Obama,\u201d in <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=782\" target=\"_blank\">Obama and the Biracial Factor: The Battle for a New American Majority<\/a><\/em>, edited by Andrew J. Joliv\u00e9tte (Bristol: The Policy Press, 2012), 82.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first Africans to arrive in North America did not arrive as slaves and almost certainly did not conceive of themselves as \u201cnegros.\u201d The word, appropriated from the Latin word for \u201cblack\u201d was a descriptive device divorced from any cultural or historical context for these people. Over time, that descriptive device would become a social [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7265,10493,7263,7264],"class_list":["post-22611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-darryl-barthe","tag-darryl-barthe-jr","tag-darryl-g-barthe","tag-darryl-g-barthe-jr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22611"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47752,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22611\/revisions\/47752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}