A Different Mirror - Chapter 3

Chapter 3, The “Giddy Multitude”: The Hidden Origins of Slavery, in the book A Different Mirror focused on the social as well as racial issues that occurred during the early colonial foundations of Virginia. The author Ronald Takaki started out by explaining that America started out with a large number of the colonists came over as indentured servant, which were people who were to work for someone else for a certain amount of time to pay off their travel expenses. Most indentured servants were the outcasts of society and were going to America to get a fresh start. However, once they got over to America, they found out that they were still being discriminated against by the wealthy white people already over there. Their dreams of land and wealth were not coming true, which lead to them taking arms. During this time, Africans were being shipped over like indentured servants, but were not given the same rights as white ones. Unfortunately, laws were made that made blacks slaves. The elite white citizens were scared of the lower-class white people because they were allowed to legally hold arms. So as a result, they brought over less white indentured servants and brought over more black slaves, since they could control them. Toward the end of the chapter, Thomas Jefferson and his opinion on the issue of slavery was mentioned. He was found to have wanted to abolish slavery, but he also owned a large number of them. His idea to end slavery was to ship all the slave children/infants to St. Domingo and let the current black slaves die naturally. Also, there were two differences he saw between white and black people. The first being color of skin and the second was the level of intelligence. Jefferson did not believe or refused to believe that blacks had/could have an equal level of intelligence as white citizens. Upon reading this, it made me wonder how such a man could have helped found this country. Also, how could he consider himself a Christian if he wanted to take away slave children from their mothers? He said he wanted to end slavery, but he did not show that view through his actions. It was interesting to read that another underlying start to slavery besides profit was the fact that the wealthy white people wanted less poor white people around because they were scared of them. That confirms that throughout history, the wealthy mainly look out for their own well-being and social status. I felt that Jefferson in the reading was all talk. It seemed that the only reason he said that he wanted to abolish slavery was to appear to be a “good and Christian man”. However if he truly supported that idea, he would have started out by at least freeing his own slaves.