Julian Bond, 1998

Selected and arranged by Ella Mazel, this is a collection of quotes and excerpts from real documents on slavery, emancipation, civil rights, racism and color blindness. 

I got it, interestingly enough, as a research source for a WIP. I haven't found a enough books that compare robotics/A.I. to the human legacy of slavery and addresses the ethical issues around the treatment of "artificial" life from that perspective. So I'm working on one myself.

I'm finding some jaw dropping quotes. 

"It is the duty of a society to protect all its members...The love of power, properly directed, becomes the noblest of virtues, because power alone can enable us to be safely benevolent to the weak, poor, or criminal. To protect the weak, we must first enslave them...Domestic slaves...require masters of some kind, whose will and discretion shall stand as a law to them, who shall be entitled to their labor, and bound to provide for them. This social organization begets harmony and good will instead of competition, rivalry, and war of wits.

 

Economically, slavery is necessary to bring about association of labor and division of expenses. Labor becomes far more efficient when many are associated together, and the expenses of living are greatly diminished when many families are united under a common government. The socialist are all aiming to attain these ends by an unnatural association, let them adopt the natural one, slavery, and they would show themselves wise and useful men."

George Fitzhugh, The Ideology of Slavery

 

It provides great insight on how and why people so easily accepted slavery, and how defensive arguments for prejudice/oppression (racism, sexism, etc.) sound remarkable similar. 

Great book. I highly recommend picking up a copy if you can find it.