Status i wizerunek Murzynów w kolonialnej Wirginii.

Abstrakt

The main object of the article are characteristics of the adaptation of the slavery system in Virginia, and the analysis of the perception of the Blacks by white inhabitations of the Old Dominion. Formation of the legal rudiments of the slavery system in Virginia took several decades, up until the beginning of the eighteenth century. Initialy, a conceptual seperation of the bblack workers from the rest of the servants took place, and the term "slave" was ascribed to them. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, a white person in principle could not be a slave any more, whereas a black person was predesitined to slavery as "descendant of Ham". As the next steep, slaves were deprived of their human identity. They became "property", an object of a subttle dilemna for the legislators of the colony as to wheather  theyshiuld be treated as ommovable property or livestock in the light of inheriance law. In everyday life, there were an interior species for all owners without exception, mamy plantation owners perceived them as tools rather than workers.

That status quo obviously influenced the attitude of the Whites towards the handful of free Blacks living in the colony. In the eighteenth century, racist prohibitions regulated also their lives - they did not participate in militia exercises, they could not marry Whites, they didnot have the right to vote, as a rule, they were denided access to any officers, including even the local ones. Those regulations attest to the fact that the image of hideous, lecherous, anddull barbarians, for whom it was necessary to create seperate laws, common in the eighteenth century, althrough in supported the idea of slavery itself, was founded on the racist prejudices of the Whites towards the Black in general, and not only towards the Black-slaves.