RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION OF NEGROES?

I was not sure what to make of the curious book, THE RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION OF THE NEGROES OF THE UNITED STATES (1842) by Charles Colcock Jones. The book was published one year after the State of Missouri (and certain other states) had forbidden the formal or informal educational instruction of black people and had completely outlawed black preachers in 1841. Of course the famous "Rev. Nat Turner Rebellion" had taken place in 1831, Denmark Vesey's, the AME Church class leader's plot, was betrayed in 1822, in Charleston, South Carolina, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church had been formally incorporated in 1816, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania after having been established in 1787. One of this curious religious book's purposes seems to be to convince Southern slaveholders to permit the religious proselytizing of their African slaves; but, if so, it can hardly expect to have been very successful, given this glowing assessment of the African people who are then enslaved subjects: "That the people of the United States indulge prejudices in respect to the Negroes, both in favor of and adverse to them, as a distinct variety of the human family and as a subordinate class in society, is a fact not to be disguised . On the one hand their ignorance, vulgarity, idleness, improvidence, irreligion and vice, are to be ascribed altogether to their position and circumstances; let these be changed for the better, and the African will immediately be equal, if not greatly excel , the rest of the human family in majesty of intellect , elegance of manners, purity of morals, and ardor of piety; yea, they become the very beau ideal of character , the admiration of the world." But for their enslavement these same Africans would be the "beau ideal " of the world? That glowing compliment is more likely to scare slaveholders, than to induce them to allow any salubrious influence to undercut their hegemonic control. More comfortable to slaveholders is this view of Africans expressed by the same author, Charles Jones: "At the head of the varieties of the human race, stands the fair, or Caucasian variety; 'which' to use the language of another, 'has given birth to the most civilized nations of ancient and modern times, and has exhibited the moral and intellectual powers of human nature in their highest degree of perfection .' At the foot stands the black or Ethiopian variety, 'which has ever remained in a rude and barbarous state; and has been looked upon and treated as an inferior by all the other varieties of the human race from time immemorial.'" P.72-73 What white people think about us matters less than what we know about ourselves. Get knowledge of self. Drop the white public relations campaign! The author quotes from an incited lying white supremacist to calumniate us; but is speaking directly when gawking at our power away from oppressive conditions! Were we to read black history and abandon "white" lies, myths we would discover that we are the true source of ancient civilizations and modern civilizations! "Modern," as in the recent development of global capitalism from our slave history on which capitalism is based. We are also the ones whose varieties of foods, music, dance, literature, is that of the world ; whose lawsuits for freedom have destigmatized and liberated the shame of black people, Chinese people, other people, and white people too! For they--white and other people--resort to the 14th Amendment and civil rights statutes (which were enacted for us, exclusively), after the Civil War, are now used by the other to a greater degree than we! Whatever the purpose may have been for Charles Colcock Jones' THE RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION OF THE NEGROES IN THE UNITED STATES in 1842, it has blessed me with insights of great value in 2019!