this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2026
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Maybe it didn't make sense, to rephrase better, I wonder how many slave owners who bought black slaves would have also bought white slaves had they been sold
White slaves were sold. Irish I believe were most common white slaves, I am unsure if there were others. There were also Asian slaves as well which were commonly from China but I think also came from other Asian countries as well. I don't know if there is any race that was excluded from slavery, actually. Slavery, for a long time in history, was a common way to pay off debt, either of the individual or their relatives, though I am guessing you are specifically referring to slavery in the United States specifically in the 1700s-1865, because online slavery diacussions almost always only refer to that. Which had Asian, Black, and White slaves.
Now this is my guess, and I must admit I never really cared so much about slavery to research prices or reasons for why one race might be more common that another, but I would guess that black slaves were the most common because they were cheaper and maybe more of them were acquired from Africa (enemy tribes, capture, etc) at a cheaper rate. Again, this is only a guess.
@Flax_vert@feddit.uk
That's also speculation on my part, but I do indeed believe racism against black people in the US stems from slavery. Africans were imported in abundance and were the easiest to buy, them doing grunt work all the time made people think they are not good for anything else.
If you look at countries like Russia, where slavery existed, but was aimed at people of same ethnicity, it is somewhat apparent. In literature and folklore of that time peasants are usually depicted as not that clever people, it's just that when serfdom was abolished, populations mixed and there was no sure immediate way to tell who used to be a peasant, this practice mostly died out.
If a black person comes to Russia, they'd be met with your run of the mill xenophobia, they look different, people tend to be wary of weird, they don't speak the language, people tend to be afraid of ones they can't understand, stuff like that. But most people wouldn't outright say they are inferior or stupid.
On the other hand, there are "modern slaves" in Russia, migrants mostly from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan who are occupied with extremely low salary jobs usually involving hard physical labor. Those people are very commonly targeted with racism, even though they speak Russian better and look more like the eastern population of Russia. Current Russian government going ~~a bit~~ of the rails does not help the case at all.
Most black people were brought to the US through slavery and now you have a very distinct marker of somebody who's ancestors with a very high probability were slaves. Washing this out of the society is very hard once it's been established, sadly.
All that said, I do think it's the connection "only good for grunt work -> stupid" that fuels racism, not the other way around.
A slave owner would buy any slave, whoever is the slave would be deemed inferior. It just so happens that buying people from Africa was the path of least resistance for getting slaves in the US.
The debt paying off I believe is indentured servitude, where they were meant to be freed after a time period. Wether or not they were is a different matter
You are correct that is what that means, but my mention of that was about slavery before the US colonies existed. "Indentured Servitude" was a term that first appeared in the 1700s and was basically "non-imported people becoming laborers until their debt is paid," which then naturally altered the term slaves to be "imported captives that become permanent laborers." Before that, it was all just called slavery and had the first definition. Obviously that didn't always go like that, as you know.
In the US colonies and states, I think the safe assumption is that probably almost all of them were racist, or were at least some level of bad. I don't know if any would have cared enough to specifically not buy non-black slaves, if that is what you were asking. As I said, I never really cared enough about slavery to look for that kind of thing. My curiosity in it never really went beyond historical context.
It was possibly easier to stomach slavery if the person you are buying is black and visibly different, as it could help differentiate it from your own kin. However, some people are just cruel and wouldn't have a problem exploiting a family member if they had the chance. I think because of my former point though, racism was a factor.