Judging from Douglass’, Jacobs’ and Stowe’s books; was the South or the North more racially prejudice?
The lines between racism, stereotyping, and racial prejudice are not easily drawn so I want, at the beginning, to establish a working definition of these terms. For purposes of my discussion here I am going to define racism as characteristics of a particular people, either real of fantasized—only people of African decent can get “Sickle Cell Anemia”: stereotype as generalizing—all Africans are athletic; and racial prejudice as the act of disliking someone because of their race.
I think, from all books that have been read, that it is clear that, while it certainly existed, racial prejudice was not a dominate belief in the South, by the white slaveholders, before The War Between the States. Davis says that the KKK did not come into existence until December 24th 1865; and disbanded in 1877 after outliving its usefulness. The Klan, at that time, was a response to the Yankee Carpetbaggers and Scalawags who were encouraging the southern blacks to loot, rape, and kill their former owners. The former slaves could do whatever they wanted to do to the Southerners without fear of the law. This was not the Klan of today and should not be confused with it (6).
What we find during the period these books write about are Southerners whose beliefs are more in line with the “class” system (the whites being the closest thing that America had to “nobles” at the time; and slaves as “peasants”). The slaves were the laborers, house-maids, errand-boys etc. Southerners believed that this is the class to which these people were born, and where they should stay; much like the cast system of Europe where nobles are born not made and children of the laboring class will continue to be laborers. This was a sign of stereotyping much more than racism or racial prejudice.
Davis goes on to explain that not one southern ship had brought over the Africans for the slave markets; they...