HISTORY
How The Casual Killing Act of 1699 Impacts Black People Today
We must never forget how White people codified racism into law
To understand why Black lives are undervalued in American society, you must start at the root. While European colonists did not invent slavery, they did create a unique, cruel brand. Throughout the Roman Empire, enslaved people were often indistinguishable from enslavers, but in American society, the chattel slavery system was race-based. As a result, laws designed to control enslaved people targeted Black people.
For instance, the Casual Killing Act of 1699, which the Virginia General Assembly passed in October of that year, "declared that if a slave died while resisting his master, the master would be deemed not to have acted with malice. The law effectively made it legal for masters to kill their slaves at will in the process of inflicting punishment." This law also distinguished between the punishment of Black enslaved people and White indentured servants. While killing a White person as a penalty for non-compliance would be illegal, Black people could be killed casually by enslavers without fear of reprisal.
Non-compliance is still used to justify police brutality that disproportionately targets Black people. "If only they complied with their…
