t’s not just that this history fos-tered a view of black people as presumptively criminal. It also cul-tivated a tolerance for employing any level of brutality in response.
EPT- I have learned about how mass incarceration stems from slavery and segregation but this passage, and especially this quote, expand on the idea by showing how after the abolition of slavery white people searched for ways to stay in control of Black people and how they justified brutality.
Enslaved workers felled trees by ax, burned the underbrush and lev-eled the earth for planting. ‘‘Whole forests were literally dragged out by the roots,’’ John Parker, an enslaved worker, remembered. A lush, twist-ed mass of vegetation was replaced by a single crop. An origin of Amer-ican money exerting its will on the earth, spoiling the environment for profi t, is found in the cotton plantation.
EPT & RNI - I knew previously that slaves were widely used to pick cotton fields, but I didn't know how much work they actually did to even just create those fields which they later had to pick.