Olde Europe
Diamond Member
- Dec 8, 2014
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This quote is real food for thought. I've never looked at it that way, but I have thought about why the people who do this want to enforce a caste system in order to survive in Society. Those who need a "nigXXX" or a "submissive woman" or a brown skinned person to mow their lawns and clean their houses seem unable to survive independently and justify their own existence without demanding that others sacrifice themselves in order to satisfy their "needs."
Mowing lawns or cleaning houses appears to be a second-order effect of the invention of "inferior" humans. These second-order effects cannot also be the cause of the invention of the N!gger. I am not sure as to what Baldwin meant to express, or what he suspected to necessitate of the invention, of course. The reason why there was a need to invent that, I would posit, is the need to look down upon someone, some group(s), in order to feel superior. Designated as inferior, that then also justified the (chattel) slavery of persons of color or women, the subservient position, and the lowly, back-breaking work assigned to Them.