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There is a flip side to that notion: ancestral exposure to disease had more to do with the rise of the African slave trade than did any innate sense of superiority to, or disdain for, black people. This ancestral exposure led to resistance to Malaria, the bane of American coastal plantations. Possessing workers that were immune to the disease was a great boon to indigo and rice planters. This genetic mutation is also responsible for Sickle Cell disease, though.

Of course, if it weren't for the increasing difficulty of acquiring indentured servants from Great Britain in the late 1600s, the much-more-costly African trade would never have been pursued to such degree in the first place.

That's the problem with sickle-cell disease. The sickle shape of the red-blood cells of a sickle-cell sufferer does wonders in preventing the person from contracting malaria, and this can be a huge blessing when someone is in a malaria hotzone (like huge swathes of Africa are). Malaria kills more people in Africa, particularly children, than anything else, and thus sickle cell anemia was a welcome trade-off. After all it is better to not be as athletic as the person down the street if it meant surviving malaria.

The problem came when many West Africans (virtually all slaves who came to the US were from the western part of Africa, which also has the highest incidents of sickle cell) came to the US. Here sickle cell had virtually no benefit. After all, the risk of malaria went to what can be statistically called nil, but the drawbacks of sickle cell were still there 100%. Without malaria to make it 'worth it,' sickle cell just became a hindrance (and every now and then a lethal hindrance).

Sickle cell was a blessing when the malaria scourge was ubiquitous, but without the risk of malaria sickle cell became a true detriment.

It is really interesting how bad things can be good things, and what was a good thing can become a bad thing.