Historical Analysis of Racial Constructs

White people did not exist before sixteen

eighty-one.

Again, white people did not exist

on planet Earth until sixteen eighty-one.

Number two, any claim that this group called white

people, um, any claim that that group is rooted in

biology or derived, um, from genes or

biology or is innate or is from nature

is a lie.

Third

and final point,

as a matter of foundational law... Actually, let me say it this way.

White supremacy has been embedded in the

United States of America from its founding as a

matter of law. Now, I don't expect you to

buy all that, to get all that, to believe all that,

at least not now. But my job is to share with you the, um,

legal history that proves each of those three

claims that I begin with. So let's go.

Let's get started.

We have to begin this conversation in colonial North America,

specifically in the colonies, the British colonies of Maryland

and Virginia. Both were British colonies,

and both shared a number of particular characteristics.

First, their economies were rooted in tobacco farming.

If you know much about tobacco farming, it requires

tremendous human labor, lots and lots of

workers. So those who owned large plantations, um,

big landholders, constantly needed

laborers to do the work to grow the tobacco.

In addition to sharing an economic base, both

colonies had an incredible gender imbalance,

roughly ten men for every woman.

Now, let's understand a little bit about the

folks who

constitute the people in these two colonies.

Oh, and by the way, let me give you a, um, a year.

Uh, we're in the early sixteen hundreds, okay?

The early part of the seventeenth century, colonial North America.

England had-