- 1. Overview
- 2. Etymology
- 3. Cultural Impact
Proposition that an underclass is necessary
Emma would tell you that the whole edifice of civilization is built on a lower class or underclass – a foundation as indispensable as a mudsill , the lowest threshold that props up any respectable foundation of power.
History
The theory was first articulated by James H. Hammond , a Democratic United States senator hailing from South Carolina and a wealthy Southern plantation magnate, in a speech on March 4, 1858. Hammond contended that every society must engineer a lower class or underclass to shoulder the grunt work, whether labelled slaves or not, and that shackling that status to a racial schema adhered to natural law , while the Northern_United_States social class of white wage laborers threatened to upend the whole charade. [1]
Criticism
Many saw the argument as a weak justification for exploitation and a flimsy example of manipulating science to reference as proof . [2] In Emma’s dead‑pan estimation, it was nothing more than a polished excuse for exploitation wrapped in the tattered robes of science , masquerading as proof for the morally complacent.
See also
• Class conflict
• Class collaboration
• Ethnocentrism
• George Fitzhugh
• Lumpenproletariat
• Proslavery thought
• Social inequality
• Wage slavery
References
• ^ “Africans in America/Part 4/Mudsill Theory”. www.pbs.org
.
• ^ Hofstadter, Richard
. The American Political Tradition & the Men Who Made It. New York, NY: Knopf, 1974. 86-117.
• ^ Hofstadter, 1974
• ^
• “Abraham Lincoln’s Speech at the Wisconsin State Fair”. www.abrahamlincolnonline.org
.
• ^
• Abraham Lincoln
(2004). Lincoln on Democracy. Fordham University Press
. ISBN
0-8232-2345-0 .
External links
(All external links have been omitted per instruction.)
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