"Curse of Ham" - Slavery - Racism

And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; Acts 17:26

 

"It is a matter of history that the so-called 'curse of Ham' was indeed used to justify racism and slavery.... However, a straightforward reading of the Biblical text clearly debunks this idea which shows

1) Ham was named at birth, long before Noah's curse. 

2) The curse was pronounced on Ham's child Canaan, not Ham himself. 

The Canaanites were a pale skinned race! 

 

.....support for slavery’s role in heightening racism comes from

comparing the different social outcomes in the U.S. and Brazil. 

In the U.S. during the era of slavery, there was an emphasis that was largely lacking in Brazil: that all people, being descended from Adam, are created in God’s image. It means they are all intrinsically equal, one human family, despite all the variety and cultural differences, as the Declaration of Independence said. 

*So in the U.S., there was a pressure to concoct schemes to make the enslaved group less human—but not in Brazil. This is one important reason why, after slavery was abolished, Brazil had far fewer social problems involving black-white racism than the U.S. 

 

It also explains why such Biblically untenable (though allegedly

Biblical) notions as ‘pre-Adamite races’, and ‘the curse of Ham led to black skin’ arose and/or were prevalent in the white culture of the USA, yet not that of Brazil. In a society with more Biblical leanings, the anti-racist and anti-slavery implications of the straightforward history of humanity in Genesis had to be neutralized. 

Like today’s theistic evolution compromises, these ideas were not driven by what the Bible said, but by the outside ideas prevalent in the society, which were then read into the Bible. 

 

.... the evidence indicates that throughout history, people enslaved

others whenever they had the means and opportunity, regardless of their ‘race’. Black people were captured by other black people for sale to non-African markets. Huge numbers of ‘white’ Europeans were enslaved by both whites and non-whites. The word ‘slave’ itself

comes from one of those heavily enslaved white races, the Slavs. In fact, the Barbary coast pirates of North Africa had such a thriving and entrenched white slave trade in the early 1800s that it caused the US to send military forces into battle there, inspiring the famous Marine Hymn line, ‘To the Shores of Tripoli’." CMI