![]() ![]() To counter arguments that Black people ought to be enslaved because they are more like nonhuman animals or more closely related to them in the Great Chain of Being, antislavery activists formed clear arguments for Black humanity and kinship: Am I not a Man and a Brother? Am I not a Woman and a Sister? Distancing Black people from association with animals has been a longtime humanist strategy toward racial equality. But we, (coloured people) and our children are brutes! ! and of course are, and ought to be SLAVES to the American people and their children forever!!” ![]() Denying Black humanity was a common justification for chattel slavery, as David Walker explains in his 1829 political pamphlet, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, writing: “All the inhabitants of the earth, (except however, the sons of Africa) are called men, and of course are, and ought to be free. ![]()
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