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Chapter 5: Black Hunts
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Stamped from the Beginning, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Discrimination, Racist Ideas, and Ignorance
Segregationists and Assimilationists vs. Antiracists
Media, Institutions, and the Transmission of Knowledge
The Invention of Blackness and Whiteness
The Illogic of Racism
Summary
Analysis
In 1700, a public debate about slavery takes place after a New England businessman and judge John Saffin refuses to free a Black indentured servant, Adam, after Adam finishes his seven years’ contracted service. On hearing about this matter, Boston judge Samuel Sewall writes a text condemning slavery and systematically attacking various proslavery arguments. At the same time, he also recommends expelling Africans from New England on the basis that they cannot live properly among white people. Sewall is a powerful individual and close friend of Cotton Mather. Furious, Saffin pens a response to Sewall justifying slavery on the grounds of Black immorality and inferiority, claiming that enslaved Africans are bettered by bondage.
In this passage, Kendi underscores that many opponents of slavery did not reject the institution on the basis on antiracism. Indeed, for some individuals, like Sewell, racism is actually the reason they want slavery to end. Slavery involves white people and Black people living alongside each other (albeit in an extremely hierarchical relationship of subjugation). For some racists, this proximity is too much to bear.
Themes
Adam ends up being freed after a long trial in 1703, but it is Saffin’s position that ultimately prevails. As the population of enslaved people in America grows, new oppressive laws are introduced in order to prevent revolt. In 1705, Virginia rules that freed white servants be allocated land, a motion that noticeably increases white affluence and power. The following year, Cotton Mather publishes The Negro Christianized, in which he argues that God decided to send Africans into slavery in order to save their souls. He emphasizes that however supposedly unintelligent Africans may be, they are “Men, and not Beasts.” That year, members of Mather’s congregation give him an enslaved person, Onesimus (such “gifts” are a common practice at the time).
When Kendi emphasizes that Cotton Mather views Black people as “Men” and not “Beasts,” he is not excusing Mather or arguing that he is a less severe kind of racist than others. Indeed, one of the main points Kendi makes in Stamped from the Beginning is that there is no such thing as a less severe or “better” kind of racist. Mather may have seen enslaved Africans as people, but he was still thoroughly racist with views that produced enormous harm.
Themes
Africans resist slavery from the very beginning of their arrival in America. As a result, they are “stamped from the beginning as criminals,” their yearning for freedom coded as barbaric and brutal. But despite enslaved resistors’ and abolitionists’ efforts, the slave trade continues to thrive into the early 18th century. When Mather asks Onesimus if he’s had smallpox, Onesimus explains that he’s been inoculated against it using an early vaccination technique practiced by African physicians. At this point vaccination hasn’t been invented in the West yet and Mather, fascinated, collects stories about it from various Africans in Boston. However, he observes that those who explain it to him do so “like Idiots.”
The beginning of this passage might seem simple, but it makes an extremely important point. From the very moment Black people arrive in America, their desire to live normal, free lives—a basic human desire—is criminalized.
Themes
After hearing Mather’s stories, a physician named Zabadiel Boylston inoculates his young son along with two enslaved Africans against smallpox. This horrifies other white men in Boston, some of whom claim the whole thing is a sinister African conspiracy. In 1723, Increase Mather dies in the arms of his doting son. Cotton begins dwelling on the question of his legacy, which largely rests in his singular impact on encouraging the conversion of the enslaved. In the early 1700s, more enslavers begin embracing the idea of Christian slaves, reasoning that converting slaves would make them more docile and submissive.
This passage introduces a new and extremely influential racist idea: the association between enslaved Black people, Christianity, and docility. Before converting enslaved people to Christianity became mainstream, enslavers wanted the enslaved to be submissive but did not frame this desire in religious terms. From this point forward, submission and docility are framed as morally and spiritually desirable attributes for enslaved people to have.
Themes
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The First Great Awakening, a proslavery evangelical revival, takes place in the 1730s. Yet during this time the abolitionist movement gains momentum, too. Cotton Mather dies in 1728, a day after his 65th birthday. His lasting impact on the history of race and racism is to solidify the idea that Christianity has an ennobling and mollifying effect on the enslaved. Mather is thus “America’s first great assimilationist,” preaching the idea that Black people could and should strive to have “white” souls.
Again, this passage emphasizes that while Cotton Mather may not have been a segregationist like so many others of his era, his legacy is still harmful. Assimilationist thinking is different from segregationist thinking, but from Kendi’s perspective, it’s not necessarily any less dangerous and dehumanizing.
Themes
