黄皮书，Exercise Twenty-one
The first mention of slavery in the statutes of the English colonies of North America does not occur until after 1660—some forty years after the importation of the first Black people. Lest we think that slavery existed in fact before it did in law, Oscar and Mary Handlin assure us that the status of Black people down to the 1660’s was that of servants. A critique of the Handlins’ interpretation of why legal slavery did not appear until the 1660’s suggests that assumptions about the relation between slavery and racial prejudice should be reexamined, and that explanations for the different treatment of Black slaves in North and South America should be expanded.
The Handlins explain the appearance of legal slavery by arguing that, during the 1660’s, the position of White servants was improving relative to that of Black servants. Thus, the Handlins contend, Black and White servants, heretofore treated alike, each attained a different status. There are, however, important objections to this argument. First, the Handlins cannot adequately demonstrate that the White servant’s position was improving during and after the 1660’s; several acts of the Maryland and Virginia legislatures indicate otherwise. Another flaw in the Handlins’ interpretation is their assumption that prior to the establishment of legal slavery there was no discrimination against Black people. It is true that before the 1660’s Black people were rarely called slaves. But this should not overshadow evidence from the 1630’s on that points to racial discrimination without using the term slavery. Such discrimination sometimes stopped short of lifetime servitude or inherited status—the two attributes of true slavery—yet in other cases it included both. The Handlins’ argument excludes the real possibility that Black people in the English colonies were never treated as the equals of White people.
This possibility has important ramifications. If from the outset Black people were discriminated against, then legal slavery should be viewed as a reflection and an extension of racial prejudice rather than, as many historians including the Handlins have argued, the cause of prejudice. In addition, the existence of discrimination before the advent of legal slavery offers a further explanation for the harsher treatment of Black slaves in North than in South America. Freyre and Tannenbaum have rightly argued that the lack of certain traditions in North America—such as a Roman conception of slavery and a Roman Catholic emphasis on equality—explains why the treatment of Black slaves was more severe there than in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies of South America. But this cannot be the whole explanation since it is merely negative, based only on a lack of something. A more compelling explanation is that the early and sometimes extreme racial discrimination in the English colonies helped determine the particular nature of the slavery that followed.
在北美英国殖民地的法规中，只有在1660年之后才首次对奴隶制度有所提及——亦即第一批黑人被输入到美洲后约四十年。唯恐我们认为奴隶制度事实上的存在先于其法律上的存在，奥斯卡和玛丽"汉德林（Oscar and Mary Hadlin）意欲使我们相信，直到十七世纪六十年代为止，黑人的地位是充当佣人。针对汉德林夫妇有关法律上的奴隶制度何以在十七世纪六十年代才告出现这一解释所作的一项批判表明，有关奴隶制度和种族偏见之间的关系的各种假设应重新予以剖析，并且，有关黑人奴隶在北美洲和南美洲所遭受的不同待遇的解释应予扩充。
在解释法律上的奴隶制度何以会出现时，汉德林夫妇辩解道：十七世纪六十年代期间，白人佣人的地位相对于黑人佣人的地位不断上升。这样一来，汉德林夫妇论辩说，对于在此之间待遇相当的黑人佣人和白人佣人来说，每一种人获得了一种不同的地位。然则，对于汉德林夫妇的这一论点可提出一些至为重要的异议。首先，汉德林夫妇无法充分证明白人佣人的地位在十七世纪六十年代期间和之后有任何的改善。马里兰州和弗吉尼亚州的立法机构所颁布的几项法案表明情况恰恰相反。汉德林夫妇解释中的另一缺陷是，他们认为在法律上的奴隶制度确立之前，对黑人不存在丝毫歧视。诚然，十七世纪六十代之前，黑人是绝少被称为奴隶的，但这一点不应该掩盖自十六世纪三十代年起就存在的证据，所有这些证据均可证明种族歧视的存在，虽然不曾使用“奴隶制”这一术语。这种歧视有时差一点达到终身奴役或世袭地位——奴隶制度真正存在的两大特征——然而，在其它情形中，这种歧视却二者兼而有之。汉德林夫妇的论点疏漏了这样一种真正的可能性，即英国殖民地的黑人从不曾获得过与白人平待的待遇。
这一可能性具有相当重要的附带影响。假若从一开始起黑人就遭到歧视，那么，法律上的奴隶制度应被视作种族歧视的一种反应和延伸，而不应象包括汉德林夫妇在内的许多史学家所指出的那样，被视作种族偏见的起因。此外，法律上奴隶制度出现之前业已存在的种族歧视可进一步解释黑人奴隶在北美洲的待遇何以会比南美洲黑人奴隶的待遇要来得更为严酷。弗雷耶尔（Freyre）和坦纳博姆（Tannenbaum）不无道理地指出，北美洲某些传统的缺失——诸如古罗马有关奴隶制度的观念以及罗马天主教对于平等的强调——可以说明黑人奴隶在那里的待遇何以要比在南美洲西班牙和葡萄牙殖民地的黑人奴隶的待遇更为苛刻。但这并不能构成一种完整的解释，因为它仅仅是从反面进行的，以某些事物的缺乏为其依据。一种更令人信服的解释是，英国殖民地早已存在的并且在某些情况下甚为极端的种族歧视决定了随之而来的奴隶制度的那种特殊性质。