Father Gregorio’s Aug. 29 column, “Separating one group from another,” has provoked a discussion about the legacy of slavery, poverty and free enterprise. Some points still need to be made, especially regarding the different experiences of white and black slaves.
The white slaves from Europe could be ransomed from their Muslim captors. African slaves in the colonies and the USA could not be ransomed. Catholic orders were founded specifically to ransom the Catholic slaves — the Mercedarians and the Trinitarians among them. No such order took on the task of ransoming the African slaves in the USA or the Americas.
Although the USA Constitution ordered the end of the slave trade in Article II section 9, it delayed implementation for almost 20 years until 1808. In the meantime, the same section allowed the federal government to collect up to $10 per slave for every slave imported during that time.
The USA Constitution also ordered the “free” states to return runaway slaves to their owners in the “slave” states (Cf. Article IV, Section 2).
One major difference between the heritage of white and black slaves was the post-slavery era. White former slaves could blend into the population. Black former slaves were confronted with the Jim Crow laws of segregation. The descendants of white slaves would be difficult to identify in today’s society. The descendants of black slaves have been identified and discriminated against for the 150 years since slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in December of 1865.
The white slaves were not removed from their language groups. They were able to retain their own names. They could, to some extent, hope for relief from their country of origin. The African slaves were purposely separated from members of their own language groups, had their birth names suppressed and had no hope of communicating with people of their homelands.
The Chinese workers on the Transcontinental Railroad were paid equally with the white workers, but the first USA immigration law, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 imposed severe restrictions on those workers. It forbade them from becoming citizens or from bringing their family members from China. In fact, it put such severe limitations on immigration from Asia that, even as late as the 1980 census in the USA, only 1.6 percent of American residents were of Asian descent!
The free enterprise system lifted many people out of poverty. As practiced in South America, it also restricted many people’s liberty and provided very cheap raw materials and labor to USA corporations by government restrictions imposed by ruthless military dictators.
The moral issues here are not only covetousness and other personal virtues. The Catholic Church’s teaching on these matters clearly indicates that moral judgments must be made about “structures, systems and institutions,” including immoral laws such as the Jim Crow laws and unequal application of the laws as in today’s incarceration rates.
Our society needs a thorough and truthful discussion about race. The full picture of the experience of slavery (such as the role of the government of England in oppressing the Catholics of Ireland and Scotland) should be told. But the difference between their post-slavery experience and that of black slaves should also be noted.
Father Kenneth P. Hallahan
Our Lady of Hope Parish, Blackwood
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Where to write
Send letters to Carl Peters, 15 North Seventh Street, Camden, NJ 08102 or email to cpeters@camdendiocese.org. Include daytime phone number. Letters should be limited to 300 words or fewer. Material subject to editing.
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