New Books in African American Studies cover image

Katherine Johnston, "The Nature of Slavery: Environment and Plantation Labor in the Anglo-Atlantic World" (Oxford UP, 2022)

New Books in African American Studies

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The Challenge of Writing a Book With a Llopsided Record

The book is about the development of the argument that black people are especially suited to labor and hot climates. And so they're trying to make excuses and justifications for racial slavery based on this concept that black people have greater bodily fitness for this labor. The idea that somehow my black body is better suited to Africa than it is to the Americas makes no sense whatsoever, she says. "It's not difficult to kind of come to the conclusion that it would be a real stretch for any enslaved person to sort of say, oh yeah, this is a really good reason why I should be enslaved"

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