The White Man's Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in the United States

by Winthrop D. Jordan

The White Man's Burden is derived from Jordan's critically acclaimed, monumental work, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro 1550-1812 which received the Parkman and Bancroft Prizes as well as the National Book Award. By removing the voluminous notes and secondary examples, Professor Jordan has created a new trim, strong books whose solidly consistent scholarships is conveyed in a clear lucid style. The full impact of the narrative is maintained and carried forward by anecdotes from a multitude of sources from Thomas Jefferson to David Hume.

Genres: History, Race, Nonfiction, American History, Social Justice, School, Sociology

229 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Winthrop Donaldson Jordan was a professor of history at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Mississippi, and a renowned writer on the history of slavery and the origins of racism in the United States.

Jordan is best known for his book White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812, published in 1968, which earned the National Book Award in History and Biography, the Bancroft Prize, and other honors.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1968, Winthrop Jordan published White Over Black, a searing autopsy of the origins of racial attitudes towards black people in American thought. Praised upon its release, it went on to win a number of prominent awards, including the National Book Award – a rare honor for an academic study. Yet the very thoroughness of Jordan’s coverage of his topic was in some respects an obstacle to his goal; as he acknowledges in the preface to this book, “many people do not find themselves entirely comfortable wading through six hundred and fifty pages on a single subject.” Recognizing the need for a more digestible work if he wanted to broaden his audience, the author set about to distill his findings into a study that people were more likely to read.

The result was this book. Over the course of fifteen chapters, Jordan describes the development of racism in American thought from the early attitudes of the English towards Africans to the post-Revolutionary efforts to fit black Americans within the new republic. This he divides into five parts, which summarize in bite-sized chunks the attitude of Englishmen and their colonists to questions of racial identity, racial difference, and the perceived capacity of black people. He notes that what stood out most for Englishmen from the start was the blackness of Africans, a concept which they loaded with meaning. Associating it with savagery, it soon became justification for enslaving millions of Africans, which was convenient given the need for captive labor in the New World in order for the colonies there to prosper.

As Jordan explains, this process was not immediate, but developed over time. Yet as early as the 1640s. enslaved Africans were categorized differently from than the white indentured servants who were the main source of labor for the early English colonies. The growing distinction of these Africans and their enslaved dependents evolved over time, and persisted even as Americans after independence debated the compatibility of slavery with a nation ostensibly founded on freedom. Yet while some steps were taken to allow owners to free their enslaved populations, in the end the prospect of a large population of freed blacks proved too objectionable for states with significant populations of enslaved people to contemplate – a testament to the persistence of the attitudes fostered to justify slavery.

Jordan’s book is an effective distillation of his award-winning study. While much detailed explanation from his previous book is left out, he is remarkably successful at preserving the essence of his argument. And while the field has advanced considerably since his book was originally published in 1974, it remains an extremely useful study, one that attests to the quality of both his scholarship and the arguments he develops from it. Despite its age, it remains an excellent work for anyone interested in studying the sources of the attitudes that persist down to the present day. That they remain so is in spite of Jordan’s fine work, not because of it.

[Brian Anton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Winthrop Jordan’s The White Man’s Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in the United States is an abridged version of White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812. Published in 1974 in the shadow of the Civil Rights Movement, Jordan attempts to explain the history of prejudice in the United States by showing the racial dynamics between whites and blacks before, during, and after the American Revolution. In his own words, the thesis of the book is that, “rather than slavery causing ‘prejudice,’ or vice versa, they seem rather to have generated each other . . . slavery and ‘prejudice’ may have been equally cause and effect continuously reacting upon each other” (45). Opposed to other views of the same subject that state that slavery and racism caused one or the other, Jordan attempts to prove that they are in fact interrelated.

In order to prove his thesis, Jordan uses the theory that whites related the connotation of the color black to the skin color of African-Americans. He begins the book with an explanation of the first interaction between Europeans and Black Africans and explains the theories of the causes of complexion. Two major theories are mentioned: proximity to tropical climates, disproved by the color of natives in the Americas, and that blacks are the religious descendents of Canaan, the son of Ham, cursed by Noah as the servant of servants. He writes that the biblical notation lends to slavery but not skin color but it was widely believed that blacks were the descendents of Ham for this reason.

Jordan also writes about the negative context that the color black has. He quotes the Oxford English Dictionary and its definition of black as deeply stained with dirt; soiled, dirty and foul, having dark or deadly purposes, atrocious, and wicked among others. Whites were the exact opposite and the implications of the color difference, according to Jordan, was the reason that whites took the ethnocentric views of themselves as superior to the Negro race. He also explains that the European view of African religion was heathenism and that they were full of lust, behaved like savages, and were the closest of any human race in facial pattern to apes. Hypocritical to the “libidinous desires” that blacks were said to have is the constant miscegenation that took place mostly by white men with black women, which may have been another way that whites self-proved themselves to be superior to Negroes.

Eventually, these superior ethnocentric views led to blacks becoming indentured servants and finally slaves proven by Jordan’s explanation of the price of whites compared to blacks. Negroes cost more and therefore it is implied that they were property for life instead of only a few years. Next, the importation of blacks led to an overwhelming growth in their population leading to fear of revolt. This fear led to more strict controls on slaves and the widening of the gap between the two races. Jordan also explains the contradictory thoughts that many slave-owners had. For one example, he uses Thomas Jefferson and his staunch belief that slavery was wrong but he obviously still owned slaves, freeing only a few. Jefferson saw the Negro race as inferior in mental capacity but as equals based on the fact that they were of the human race. This struggle was the same in many instances.

Finally, Jordan discusses the issue of free blacks as those who were believed to have the most potential to stir an uprising. The fear of these uprisings led to the “problem” of race and what to do to fix it. One example of a solution was to colonize free blacks and pass laws forbidding their entrance or residency in certain states. Negro inferiority was a way of life in both the white and black cultures due to the environment in Colonial America.

The White Man’s Burden is an important addition to the study of racial attitudes and the history of the south because it shows the complexity of the relationship of the races in the south. It provides historical proof of the problems that racism has caused throughout American history and that those problems eventually led to the great divide between whites and African-Americans. Each problem that presented itself needed a solution and each solution ended up creating another problem. The evolution of racism in the United States is a topic worth exploring because it allows us to see where the deep-seated hatred and racism in the south originated. Unfortunately, this topic in American history is still relevant with the commonality of racism that is still evident in the United States.

The book is well written and well organized. Its abridgement from the 600-page White Over Black makes it an easy and enjoyable read. Due to the fact that it comes from the wake of the civil rights movement makes it especially interesting to see the views of historians of the period. The book obviously covers a relevant topic in American history and is especially relevant because of the period that it was written in. The most interesting part of the book was the description of early views of blacks in the colonial period. The distinctive stereotypes that Jordan writes about are only half surprising. The fact that racism is still so dominant in the United States makes these stereotypes seem like they actually could have been. Opposite of this though is the amazement at the ignorance of people in the past. The fact that science tried to prove that blacks were the closest race to apes seems bizarre but obviously early Americans were looking for a way to justify their self-proclaimed superiority.

Reviewers of this book regard it highly opposed to the way that they view the unabridged White Over Black. They believe that with the original book, that Jordan made an attempt at explaining too much and that the abridged version is an improvement. Jordan acknowledges this in the preface of The Racial Origins of the United States. Aside from the criticism that the first book received about its length and scope, reviewers believe that this book has its place in the study of history as one of the most significant books on race relations.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely one of the best books I have ever read on the subject. Every American should be required to read this book. No study of American history is complete without having read this book. Absolutely incredible, and a seminal book in the American canon of literature.

[Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am glad to have read this seminal work on the racial attitudes of Anglos from 1550 to 1812. Winthrop Jordan opens with a discussion of Anglo contact with Africans in the 16th century and makes the point that these English voyagers viewed Africans in accordance with the connotations ascribed to the color black at the time: "deeply stained with dirt; soiled, dirty, foul." He then explains the development of racial perceptions during the first two centuries of Anglo settlement in America, as English settlers created the legal status of slavery that ran counter to English law. Scientists equated black people as only a notch above apes on the "Great Chain of Being," while citizens in general feared the consequences of emancipating slaves lest these black people have intercourse with Anglos or take part in insurrections against Anglos. The book ends on a pessimistic note, describing the push to restrict manumissions in Virginia during the first decade of the nineteenth century. Despite the ethos at the time of the Revolution that America was a nation founded on belief in equality, "there was little in his historical experience to indicate" that Anglos would succeed in stopping the cycle of racial debasement.

[Abhinav Agarwal · Rating 5 out of 5]

This riveting book serves as an excellent introduction to the formative decades in the history of slavery in the United States. The material on the roots of slavery seems a bit sketchy, but otherwise this book shines throughout.

Why should an Indian read a book on slavery, or even care about slavery, at least to the extent of actually reading books on its origins? It is after all a history of enslavement half a world away, centuries ago, and India has enough problems of her own to worry about without having Indians travel half the world away to seek out more. This would however be to miss the point. Slavery in America - the history of its formative years in the seventeenth century, institutionalization, perpetuation, evolution, and most importantly - its justifications that emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in particular - should be of great interest to all, because the mechanics and logic of discrimination involved in slavery have been used in only slightly varying form and shape by people everywhere to justify the dehumanization of a race, people, religion, or nation. Perceived differences on the basis of skin color and religion were used to justify the colonization of India for instance. There is another benefit accruing to the patient reader - American attitudes to Indians (Indians, not native Americans), insofar as the question of American attitudes to Indians who are a minority in America and to the extent that Indians themselves are looked upon as a homogeneous entity goes, "I remain convinced that white American attitudes toward blacks have done a great deal to shape and condition American responses to other racial minorities."

In the words of the author, a study of history "impresses upon us those tendencies in human beings which have not changed and which accordingly are unlikely to, at least in the immediate future." To that end, "The White Man's Burden" does a tremendous service in lucidly documenting the evolution of slavery's form and rationale. While the initial material on the roots of slavery is decidedly sketchy, the book shines when taking the reader through the century and a half where slavery established roots along with the accompanying prejudices. The book's length should make this accessible to even casual readers.

Forming firm opinions on the basis of only one book can be tempting, because it is a quick way to the illusion of knowledge, but fraught with risks, least of all that of developing a blinkered, ideologically warped view of events. On the other hand, opinions formed on the basis of facts more often than not require the expenditure of effort and time sometimes not available and more usually precluded by disinclination.

Therefore, when one comes across a work considered not only authoritative but also credited with spawning a line of scholarly inquiry into hitherto less investigated topics, the opportunity to use that book to get a quick-start on a topic should not be let go. One such book is White on Black, a 600 page scholarly tome on "American attitudes toward the Negro" written by the late Winthrop Jordan (Wikipedia, Amazon), that not only won awards when it was published in 1968, but is still considered the "definitive work on the history of race in America in the colonial era." This book, "The White Man's Burden" is based on "White on Black", but has been abridged and edited down to a more manageable 250 pages, because, the author discovered, "not altogether to my astonishment, that many people do find themselves entirely comfortable wading through six hundred and fifty pages on a single subject."

To summarize, this book traces the arc formed by the cementing of slavery in the United States, the formation of opinions that reinforced the correctness and inevitability of slavery, to the rising sentiment against the slave trade and slavery itself, and finally to the change in attitudes among whites as the prospect and eventual inevitability of emancipation became clearer. The book stops before the American Civil War, because attitudes towards Negroes and the reality of segregation that continued well into the twentieth century had been formed in the early decades of the nineteenth century itself.

Full review on my blog at http://blog.abhinavagarwal.net/2013/0...

[William Guerrant · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book the author has essentially extracted the ultimate conclusions and most significant thoughts from his much larger and more thorough work White Over Black, for the benefit of those who don't want to take on the larger book. With no footnotes and a minimal bibliography, this book is best thought of as a very long (225 page) essay. But it is ambitious, wide-reaching, insightful, and thought-provoking. White Over Blackis well worth the effort, but this book is a fine substitute for those who want the benefit of the scholarship without the details of the research and reasoning behind it.

[Kenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this for my class this semester.

So glad this is the last book I have to read for school. Yay for graduation! Hawaii here I come!