Racial Ideology Helped Shape Black and White

¶ … racial ideology helped shape black and white people's interpretation of the relationship between masters and slaves.

Dr. Cartwright was a respected doctor from the University of Louisiana when he wrote this paper in 1851. He cites two diseases specific to the African race, "Dysaesthesia Aethiopica is a disease peculiar to Negroes, affecting both mind and body in a manner as well expressed by dysaesthesia, the name I have given it, as could be by a single term." He believes it occurs mostly in free Negroes, who "have not got some white person to direct and to take care of them," and causes general "rascality."

This alone would be enough to illustrate conceptual prejudice between the whites and blacks of the time, but Cartwright goes on to say Negroes also suffer from "Drapetomania," a disease that makes them run away. Clearly, the whites see the blacks as simple children who need guidance. They do not take into account that these people were taken from their homelands under force, and are forced to work as slaves, or anything about them as people, they are just "things."