Who Is De Tocqueville?

Rachel Kelly
Professor Hebert
Race in America 002
28 September 2014 De Tocqueville focuses on three different groups of people in his writing, African American, Native Americans and how the Europeans had effected them. In 1607 the first Europeans decided to come to America in search of creating a “city upon a hill” (Takaki 26). So many Europeans had started to make the journey to America that there were not enough resources to go around. This was known as “the starving time”, so many people were dying and were going to the extreme by eating rats, dogs and even corpses (Takaki 35). The Powhatan Indians decided to bring food and other resources and saved the settlers. The settlers then in 1608 decided to attack the Indians to take their food
supplies and in doing so they destroyed the whole village (Takaki 35).
This act of violence would soon set the pavement for more violence between the settlers and Indians. As we know the population of the whites began to expand and Native Americans were being pushed out west. De Tocqueville states that because of this “…they have no longer a country, and soon they will not be a people; their very families are obliterated; their common name is forgotten; their language perishes; and all traces of their origin disappear. Their nation has ceased to exist except in the recollection of the antiquaries of America and a few of the learned of Europe” (de Tocqueville 5). He also predicts the Native Americans future as “doomed to perish” (de Tocqueville 6). According to de Tocqueville the only way the Native Americans have a chance is if they “…either destroy the Europeans or become their equals” (de Tocqueville 6). In class we discussed how because of these reservations that were set up by the government the Native Americans have had long term negative affects because of it. They have a higher risk of depression, alcoholism and drug abuse. In a way de Tocqueville was correct in his prediction because a large majority of Native
Americans did not assimilate they are “doomed to perish” (de Tocqueville 6). The story of slavery and the Africans is very different from the story of the Native Americans yet equally as daunting.
Some of the first Africans to come to the New World had either been captured in wars or by raids done by enemy tribes, and then sold to English settlers (Takaki 51). The Puritans had used the Africans and other whites as indentured slaves but over time it slowly morphed into slavery (Takaki). When both white and black indentured servants would run away, the blacks would more likely receive a punishment of “servitude of life” while a white run away would receive more time added to their service (Takaki 55-56). This “servitude of life” soon became a dejure in 1661 and slavery was born (Takaki). Due to slavery de Tocqueville states that “the Negro has no family: woman is merely the temporary com- panion of his pleasures, and his children are on an equality with himself from the moment of their birth (de Tocqueville 2). De Tocqueville is implying that the Europeans turned the Africans into savages which is exactly what they did to the Native Americans by pushing them away and forcing them to lose their identity. He predicts that in the future “…the Negroes and the whites must either wholly part or wholly mingle. I do not believe that the white and black races will ever live in any country upon an equal footing” (de Tocqueville 23). Even though we had the civil war and the civil rights movement, racism, prejudice and stereotypes still occur to this day. De
Tocqueville makes another prediction “…that the colored population perpetually accumulate in the extreme South and increase more rapidly than the whites…” (de Tocqueville 24). Takaki makes a similar statement that from The New York Times , “Americas Changing Colors”, that “someday soon, white Americans will become a minority group” (Takaki, Chapter 1).
Works Cited
Takaki, Ronald. Takaki Chapter 1. N.p.: n.p., n.d. PDF.