The fact that Black people in the English colonies of
North America were never treated as the equals of
White people has important ramifications. If from the
outset Black people were discriminated against, then
legal slavery in the 1660's should be viewed as a
reflection and an extension of racial prejudice rather
than, as many historians including Oscar and Mary
Handlin have argued, the cause of prejudice. In
addition, the existence of discrimination before the
advent of legal slavery offers a further explanation for
the harsher treatment of Black slaves in North than in
South America. Freyre and Tannenbaum have rightly
argued that the lack of certain traditions in North
America—such as a Roman conception of slavery and
a Roman Catholic emphasis on equality—explains why
the treatment of Black slaves was more severe there
than in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies of South
America. But this cannot be the whole explanation
since it is merely negative, based only on a lack of
something. A more compelling explanation is that the
early and sometimes extreme racial discrimination in
the English colonies helped determine the particular
nature of the slavery that followed.