"Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question" Thomas Carlyle

I wish this was something other than what it seems. After the abolition of slavery in all British lands and colonies in 1837, plantation owners in the West Indies complained about their situation, and having to compete with other sugar producers where slavery was still legal. Carlyle was one among many who supported their arguments. In this rather disgusting article, Carlyle wrote on why black people need slavery in order to ensure they “do competent work, to labor honestly according to the ability given them; for that, and for no other purpose, was each one of us sent into this world; and woe is to every man who by friend or by foe, is prevented from fulfilling this, the end of his being.”  He seemed to believe unless compelled by such means that they would simply sit idly by eating pumpkin.

Carlyle believes fully in the dignity of the “European white man.” He claims that without the European colonist Jamaica would have remained a tropical wasteland filled with naught but poisoned flora and fauna and cannibals. That the presence of the white man is the only thing that made these islands profitable. “For countless ages, since they first mounted oozy on the back of earthquakes, from their dark bed in the ocean deeps, and reeking, saluted the tropical sun, and ever onward, till the European white man first saw them some three short centuries ago, those islands had produced mere jungle, savagery, poison reptiles and swamp malaria till the white European first saw them, they were, as if not yet created; their noble elements of cinnamon—sugar, coffee, pepper, black and gray, lying all asleep, waiting the white Enchanter, who should say to them awake!” His belief in white superiority is not only present, it exists to him like magic, a force that exists outside of mere reality. A truth universally known. And as such, the subjugation of lesser men is only natural.

He sees the abolishment of slavery as an abomination. It is difficult to understand such a man. His words make apparent his unchangeable belief of superiority. It is doubtful he ever saw first-hand the situation of Jamaican Sugar Plantations, or he wouldn’t be so sure of European White Superiority of Self and Moral. I wonder if he would be so supportive of Adscripti glebae if serfdom was still practiced in Britain at the time he was writing.

What’s unsettling is that his was not an uncommon view in Victorian England.  What’s really unsettling is that his is not an uncommon view for some people today. Racism is not just a disgusting fact of the past. It still exists today. The KKK has not been abolished and still produces pamphlets and has a website that anyone can access. I wish that we could say views and writings like this no longer existed, but this is sadly not truth. Hopefully one day it will be.