What connection does that author draw between slavery and skin color? (Paragraph 6)When the Portuguese first purchased Africans as slaves in the mid-15th century, there was no firm connection between race or skin color and slavery. Before that time, slaves could be white Christians from Europe, Muslims from North Africa or the Middle East, or darker-skinned Africans from the sub-Saharan part of the African continent. With the inauguration of the Atlantic slave trade and the growing numbers of darker-skinned Africans as slaves, European traders came to equate slavery with skin color or race. To justify the enslavement of Africans, they developed an ideology of black inferiority and white supremacy. The legacy of this thinking still affects us today.