Racial hierarchy

A racial hierarchy is a system of stratification that focuses on the belief that some racial groups are either superior or inferior to other racial groups. The groups perceived to have the most power and authority are at the top of the racial hierarchy, while the groups perceived to be inferior are at the bottom.

As it pertains to the United States, racial hierarchy refers to ranking of different races/ethnic groups, based on physical and perceived characteristics that have been perpetuated through legal and political policy, providing unfair advantages for some races and/or hindering the advancement of others.

Before the American Civil War, the racial ideology that was established throughout the United States was thought to have been established because of biological, political, or even cultural differences among people. This was one of the most important aspects of forming the racial hierarchies in the United States. Other experts and leading abolitionists like W. E. B. Du Bois began viewing race as a social construction. Their thoughts began to raise questions and challenge previous existing thoughts about race and why it was divided the way it was.

In order to maintain and defend slavery, pro-slavery writers organized a "planter liberalism" by combining paternalist and liberal views into an ideology that could be understood by both slave-holding and non-slave-holding citizens. Their ideology was based on familiar domestic relationships. These views later paved the way for white Southern planters to keep racial conditions as close to slavery as legally possible after the Civil War during the Reconstruction era.

The entire planter liberalist view was rooted in the idea of servitude and dependence which was based on defined obligations to each one another. This view forced the subordinates of these relationships to lose their freedoms under complex definitions and other legal circumstances. Slaves were defined to have no "legal personalities" which meant that they had no freedom.They were given legal rights that were similar to children or women. These ideas of slaves being considered legal things or property had significant influences on cases like the Dred Scott Case.

As some of these liberalist views began to fall apart, slave inferiority was then reinforced by ideas of blacks being savage-like beings that needed to be tamed or civilized through slavery. Other defenses of slavery were based on blacks being suited for tasks that were not meant for white people to do. After, the Civil War, some laws were based on "slave codes" that established that slaves were social dangers; therefore, their educations was to be limited so that they could not learn to read and write. Black people were not the only race subject to inferiority under the racial hierarchy. Mulatto and poor white people were also subject to being classed under the independent white people in some cases. So long as a group of people was dependent on an independent group, they, too, could be classed as a group that was inferior and incapable. Even after slavery, whites continued to exercise mastery over blacks and other dependent groups.

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