In Britain, America, Portugal and in parts of Europe, opposition developed against the slave trade. Opposition to the trade was led by the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and establishment Evangelicals such as William Wilberforce. The movement was joined by many and began to protest against the trade, but they were opposed by the owners of the colonial holdings.
Walter Rodney, a student attending Queen's College in Guyana, states: "Above all, it was the institution of slavery in the Americas which ultimately conditioned racial attitudes, even when their more immediate derivation was the literature on Africa or contacts within Europe itself. It has been well attested that New World slave - plantation society was the laboratory of modern racism. The owners contempt for and fear of the black slaves was expressed in religious, scientific and philosophical terms, which became the stock attitudes of European and even Africans in subsequent generations. Although there have been contributions to racist philosophy both before and after the slave trade epoch, the historical experience of whites enslaving blacks for four centuries forged the tie between racist and color prejudice, and produced not merely individual racists but a society where racism was so all-pervasive that it not even perceived for what it was. The very concept of human racial variants was never satisfactorily established in biological terms,and the assumptions of scientists and laymen alike were rooted in the perception of a reality in which Europeans had succeeded in reducing Africans to the level of chattel." ... "The role of slavery in promoting racist prejudice and ideology has been carefully studied in certain situations, especially in the U.S.A. The simple fact is that no people can enslave another for four centuries without coming out with a notion of superiority, and when the color and other physical traits of those peoples were quite different it was inevitable that the prejudice should take a racist form."
Walter Rodney, a student attending Queen's College in Guyana, states: "Above all, it was the institution of slavery in the Americas which ultimately conditioned racial attitudes, even when their more immediate derivation was the literature on Africa or contacts within Europe itself. It has been well attested that New World slave - plantation society was the laboratory of modern racism. The owners contempt for and fear of the black slaves was expressed in religious, scientific and philosophical terms, which became the stock attitudes of European and even Africans in subsequent generations. Although there have been contributions to racist philosophy both before and after the slave trade epoch, the historical experience of whites enslaving blacks for four centuries forged the tie between racist and color prejudice, and produced not merely individual racists but a society where racism was so all-pervasive that it not even perceived for what it was. The very concept of human racial variants was never satisfactorily established in biological terms,and the assumptions of scientists and laymen alike were rooted in the perception of a reality in which Europeans had succeeded in reducing Africans to the level of chattel." ... "The role of slavery in promoting racist prejudice and ideology has been carefully studied in certain situations, especially in the U.S.A. The simple fact is that no people can enslave another for four centuries without coming out with a notion of superiority, and when the color and other physical traits of those peoples were quite different it was inevitable that the prejudice should take a racist form."
