What Existed Before Racial Slavery?

Indentured Servitude.......  Racial slavery did not happen all at once. Slowly, involuntary servitude in America became the province of black Africans and slowly that involuntary servitude evolved into full-scale slavery. In the process, not only did slavery itself have to be justified, but racial slavery had to be justified. In order to do this, Europeans and European-Americans had to invent a new concept: Race. Perhaps more than any other event in modernity, nothing has been so formative as the onset of racial slavery in the seventeenth century and the invention of the concept of race at the same time. Both of these events have placed a monumental mortgage on modern society that society is still paying off today.  Hope that gives you some perspective on the subject.