Stereotypes: early-middle 1800s
In general, lazy, uneducable (despite laws forbidding teaching slaves to read), happy, simple, child-like “darkies” content as slaves, but also savage and in need of discipline
Not, however, “doomed” to perish as the Natives because too necessary to the economy
Black men as silent, happy servants; black women as “mammy,” lovingly protective of white families
Enslavement “saved” “savage” Africans by “domesticating” (and Christianizing) them
Such views ignored the nature of the work performed by most Africans in America, as well as misreading the lives they lead as slaves and domestic servants