New world slavery both distinguished and explained itself through race. New world slavery, unlike other contemporaneous forms of bondage, was coterminous with skin color: a person’s enslaved status was inherited at birth, for example, because it was skin color, not any sort of personal misconduct, that qualified one for slavery. Likewise, the stigmatization of skin color — the notion that a particular skin color signaled one’s status as a human being — reconciled chattel slavery with progressive Enlightenment values. Racial stigma, moreover, informed that adverse treatment was both appropriate and usually necessary for the stigmatized. According to the United States Supreme Court, black folk were so deficient that they “might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for [their] benefit.”
