I’ve just discovered another excellent film series at the African Element website. This 20 minute clip, Episode 4, is about Bacon’s Rebellion and how the British ruling elite invented race to to confuse poor white’s about their working class status.
Slavery in Black and White
Darius Spearman (2012)
Film Review
Bacon’s Rebellion
The concept of whiteness and race is only about four hundred years old. It originates in preferential race laws that were passed after Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676. The latter consisted of an alliance of poor white settlers, former indentured servants and Africans who drove Governor William Berkeley out of Jamestown (the capital of colonial Virginia) and burnt it to the ground. A similar rebellion occurred in the Maryland colony around the same time.
Prior to the discovery of the New World, enslavement occurred exclusively in the context of war and military conquest. Ireland was the first plantation colony. During the fifteenth and sixteenth century, large numbers of Irish peasants were driven off their farms as the aristocracy converted them to sheep pasture. With no means of support, landless Irish peasants migrated to London, where they provided for themselves through begging, casual labor and petty crime.
Large numbers ended up in prison. They could win their release by agreeing to a seven to eleven year period of indentured servitude in the American colonies. There they commingled with African indentured servants, who enjoyed equally atrocious living and working conditions.
Classic Divide and Rule
Following Bacon’s rebellion, the Virginia colony sought to drive a wedge between poor blacks and whites by passing a series of laws awarding European indentured servants specific privileges. Among others, this included 50 acres of land (on their release) and the ability to testify in court and enter into contracts.
Simultaneously the legal status of African indentured servants also changed, with the passage of Slave Code laws in Virginia and other colonies. These laws enabled masters the right to claim Africans and their offspring as permanent chattel slaves or property. The legal justification was that Africans weren’t English and didn’t enjoy the protections of English common law.
It was a classic example of divide and rule. Convinced of their innate superiority over Africans, poor white settlers shunned any associate with them, making any cross-racial collaboration (against the British aristocracy) highly improbable.
The Most Revolutionary Act 
I guess ‘divide and rule’ still plays a part in our present political system.
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Interesting parallel to today where poor whites vote for rich Republicans, then unfortunately, because they fall for the patriotism propaganda, become morally crushed after committing atrocities in foreign lands after entering the military. Forgot all about Tim Wise, who is a powerful public speaker. He seems to have faded from the spotlight, so to speak.
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Absolutely. The film emphasizes how the elite has repeatedly tricked poor whites into fighting their race wars for them. It was mainly poor whites who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War – plantation owners with 20 or more slaves were exempted from servicing. Following the Civil War, it was mainly poor white who formed and ran the Ku Klux Klan.
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