Fergus goes on to say, that in order to enslave African peoples, it was necessary to dehumanize them and demonize them. .
Howard Zinn (2009) argued that racism towards the African people began before the slave trade's beginning in 1600. Before Africans were associated with the slave trade, the color black was literally and symbolically distasteful to Europeans. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, before 1600, it was defined as: "Deeply stained with dirt; soiled, dirty, foul. Having dark or deadly purposes, malignant. Foul, iniquitous, atrocious, horribly wicked, etc. And in Elizabethan poetry, the color white was often used to symbolize beauty and peace. Fergus agreed with Zinn in that racism towards the Africans began before the slave trade. Fergus conveys the story of the destruction of the island Philae and the shrine of Isis, a black goddess venerated around the Mediterranean world, by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in 540 CE. Fergus (2008) stated, "the destruction of Philae climaxed the growing trend in the early Christian era to dehumanize, denigrate, and demote black Africans to a servile category. "Christianity and the Catholic Church played an ample role in the Atlantic Slave Trade because it promoted and preached racism. David Meager (2007) suggested that the .
Christians thought they had the right as God's chosen people to enslave 'inferior' nations. Robert Dabney (1853) stated, "while we believe that God made of one blood all nations of men to dwell under the whole heavens, we know that the African has become, according to a well-known law of unnatural history, by the manifold influences of the ages, a different, fixed species of the race, separated from the white man by traits bodily, mental and moral, almost rigid and permanent as those of genus." According to Dabney, it was God's natural order that 'superior' races should enslave 'inferior' races for their own spiritual, moral and material good; and for the social stability of everybody else.