Do any of the essays contextualize the form of slavery in the colonies/US vs what was happening elsewhere at the time?
Likewise, how the US economy formed vs the rest of the world?
I’m thinking another really important aspect of how “successful” the founding was (for capital/slavers) was that they had basically a blank canvas to implement this system due to the near-eradication of Native Americans due to smallpox, making the ensuing genocide very easy...
I'd prefer to get this in magazine form because after recent editorial decisions at the NYT I wouldn't want to support them, but love to get a copy of this that like supports black american charities?
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Do any of the essays contextualize the form of slavery in the colonies/US vs what was happening elsewhere at the time?
Likewise, how the US economy formed vs the rest of the world?
I’m thinking another really important aspect of how “successful” the founding was (for capital/slavers) was that they had basically a blank canvas to implement this system due to the near-eradication of Native Americans due to smallpox, making the ensuing genocide very easy...
The capitalism article mentions how even as they were washing their hands of slavery, Europe was still benefiting from slavery, whether it was American Cotton or bankers accepting slaves as the collateral for mortgages.
Dunno about any direct comparisons with other countries, and I think the focus is entirely on slavery, not Native Americans.
0
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
New Orleans must be a painful city. This (contemporary) poetry piece calls it the city of the dead, referring to how slaves were bought and sold and their lives shattered there. Given it's appearance to me (a white cis male from Central Illinois), all I've ever seen in Mardi Gras and Jazz/Blues... oversimplication, I know, but I'm having a difficult time putting things in words. And what's more, I don't know if it is still seen this way.. but if it were me, this would feel like a city built on death and destruction, and would be hard to approach. But at the same time, it's home, right?
Charleston also has that history. Richmond was the Capital of the Confederacy. Most of the South's main cities have History.
Although I have never Sought popularity by any animated Speeches or inflammatory publications against the Slavery of the Blacks, my opinion against it has always been known and my practice has been so conformable to my sentiment that I have always employed freemen both as Domisticks and Labourers, and never in my Life did I own a Slave. The Abolition of Slavery must be gradual and accomplished with much caution and Circumspection. Violent means and measures would produce greater violations of Justice and Humanity, than the continuance of the practice. Neither Mr. Mifflin nor yourselves, I presume would be willing to venture on Exertions which would probably excite Insurrections among the Blacks to rise against their Masters and imbrue their hands in innocent blood.
There are many other Evils in our Country which are growing, (whereas the practice of slavery is fast diminishing,) and threaten to bring Punishment on our Land, more immediately than the oppression of the blacks. That Sacred regard to Truth in which you and I were educated, and which is certainly taught and enjoined from on high, Seems to be vanishing from among Us. A general Relaxation of Education and Government. A general Debauchery as well as dissipation, produced by pestilential philosophical Principles of Epicurus infinitely more than by Shews and theatrical Entertainment. These are in my opinion more serious and threatening Evils, than even the slavery of the Blacks, hateful as that is.
I might even add that I have been informed, that the condition, of the common Sort of White People in some of the Southern states particularly Virginia, is more oppressed, degraded and miserable than that of the Negroes.
These Vices and these Miseries deserve the serious and compassionate Consideration of Friends as well as the Slave Trade and the degraded State of the blacks.
I know Adams never visited the southern states. I doubt he knew the real horrors of the slave trade outside of what was visible in Boston and from the final weeks of the White House construction.
HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
edited August 2019
John Adams was highly overrated and a coward. His retrospective social currency went up only because of the HBO series about him. There's a reason 1776 features a song about him, aptly named "Sit Down, John!"
warning: the shipping charges are a bit steep. Most places that sell newspapers will keep the sunday edition around all week, if it doesn't sell out, so worth checking out your local supermarkets/newsagents/starbucks over the next few days. But if I can't get my hands on one in person, will definitely be ordering.
John Adams was highly overrated and a coward. His retrospective social currency went up only because of the HBO series about him. There's a reason 1776 features a song about him, aptly named "Sit Down, John!"
He was not a good politician. He was infamous for arguing as VP in the Senate for what title and address the President should have.
warning: the shipping charges are a bit steep. Most places that sell newspapers will keep the sunday edition around all week, if it doesn't sell out, so worth checking out your local supermarkets/newsagents/starbucks over the next few days. But if I can't get my hands on one in person, will definitely be ordering.
For NC it cost $6 for the magazine. 2 day shipping is $8.50 and there are no cheaper options. So weird, I can wait a week guys it'll be ok!
psn: PhasenWeeple
+1
MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
John Adams was highly overrated and a coward. His retrospective social currency went up only because of the HBO series about him. There's a reason 1776 features a song about him, aptly named "Sit Down, John!"
John Adams was such an asshole that he tried to make a law to stop people from calling him an asshole
John Adams was highly overrated and a coward. His retrospective social currency went up only because of the HBO series about him. There's a reason 1776 features a song about him, aptly named "Sit Down, John!"
I mean, having seen that HBO series about him, it doesn't exactly paint him in a particularly good light (and yet still probably a better light than reality).
0
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
I mean, everything I've heard about Adams indicates that if there is a personification of Arrogant Prig in history, it's him.
John Adams was highly overrated and a coward. His retrospective social currency went up only because of the HBO series about him. There's a reason 1776 features a song about him, aptly named "Sit Down, John!"
I mean, having seen that HBO series about him, it doesn't exactly paint him in a particularly good light (and yet still probably a better light than reality).
He was also criticized for his close ties to Great Britain, and I swear my college history teacher mentioned a utterly nuts tariff law that had disastrous effects on the economy (which was raised to utterly nuts because a poison pill was added, but it passed anyway), but that might have been a late Washington or Jefferson thing I'm remembering.
Seeing a mod post what looked like a spam thread got me quite intrigued, as I had literally 0 knowledge of the importance of this date... Or that it was the 400th anniversary.
I find it interesting that a thread on the NYT series dedicated to the impact slavery has had on America is full of shitting on John Adams. He and his son are the only two Presidents out of the first dozen to not own slaves.
The founding fathers don't get dunked on enough imo. Adams is a side show to the thrust of the thread though. I'm up to Calhoun so I'm sure this shit show will only get worse.
John Adams was highly overrated and a coward. His retrospective social currency went up only because of the HBO series about him. There's a reason 1776 features a song about him, aptly named "Sit Down, John!"
I mean, having seen that HBO series about him, it doesn't exactly paint him in a particularly good light (and yet still probably a better light than reality).
He was also criticized for his close ties to Great Britain, and I swear my college history teacher mentioned a utterly nuts tariff law that had disastrous effects on the economy (which was raised to utterly nuts because a poison pill was added, but it passed anyway), but that might have been a late Washington or Jefferson thing I'm remembering.
So yeah, not exactly the best Presidental run.
actually I'm going to go ahead and say that blaming Adams for the Quasi War is bullshit, as he was the only reason Hamilton et al (the party and the men Hamilton put into the cabinet) didn't get their way and declare war on France.
I find it interesting that a thread on the NYT series dedicated to the impact slavery has had on America is full of shitting on John Adams. He and his son are the only two Presidents out of the first dozen to not own slaves.
I've only just started, but it is captivating.
Yeah that’s kind of the thrust of the project- slavery is so entwined in how we came to be, and not only are we dealing with the direct effects of that, we are having a real shit go of it trying to pretend like it’s just in the past or something that only slaveowners/the South are responsible for.
And the John Adams stuff is way less interesting and profound than so much else in this project, but the quote posted is actually a really relevant text both for understanding that time and as a mirror of many people’s attitudes today.
John Adams was highly overrated and a coward. His retrospective social currency went up only because of the HBO series about him. There's a reason 1776 features a song about him, aptly named "Sit Down, John!"
I mean, having seen that HBO series about him, it doesn't exactly paint him in a particularly good light (and yet still probably a better light than reality).
He was also criticized for his close ties to Great Britain, and I swear my college history teacher mentioned a utterly nuts tariff law that had disastrous effects on the economy (which was raised to utterly nuts because a poison pill was added, but it passed anyway), but that might have been a late Washington or Jefferson thing I'm remembering.
So yeah, not exactly the best Presidental run.
actually I'm going to go ahead and say that blaming Adams for the Quasi War is bullshit, as he was the only reason Hamilton et al (the party and the men Hamilton put into the cabinet) didn't get their way and declare war on France.
Fair enough, especially since looking more in depth the origins go back to Washington's admin insisting that their debts to France were to the France with a King, not the France that executed their king.
John Adams was highly overrated and a coward. His retrospective social currency went up only because of the HBO series about him. There's a reason 1776 features a song about him, aptly named "Sit Down, John!"
I mean, having seen that HBO series about him, it doesn't exactly paint him in a particularly good light (and yet still probably a better light than reality).
It wasn't the HBO series that caused John Adams to get a boost, it was David McCullough's 2001 Pultizer-winning biography (that the series is based on).
I find it interesting that a thread on the NYT series dedicated to the impact slavery has had on America is full of shitting on John Adams. He and his son are the only two Presidents out of the first dozen to not own slaves.
I've only just started, but it is captivating.
Yeah that’s kind of the thrust of the project- slavery is so entwined in how we came to be, and not only are we dealing with the direct effects of that, we are having a real shit go of it trying to pretend like it’s just in the past or something that only slaveowners/the South are responsible for.
And the John Adams stuff is way less interesting and profound than so much else in this project, but the quote posted is actually a really relevant text both for understanding that time and as a mirror of many people’s attitudes today.
The one thing the entire series does very well is to reveal just why the U.S. is so special (i.e. brutal and exploitative) compared to other modern democracies. We're still working by enslaver rules, because the systems designed to protect slavery from democracy now protect exploitative capitalists.
So, when anyone starts talking about the unique qualities that make reforms in healthcare, wage laws, pollution, etc. impossible to institute in America, the words you should be hearing are, "As a slaver, I refuse..."
Slate has a roundup of the conservative backlash to the 1619 Project. What's so telling about much of it is how it ultimately reveals the weakness of their own position:
For white conservatives, accepting that the United States wouldn’t exist without slavery would mean acknowledging that the Founders were not the creators of an infallible civic religion, which sets the limits on all modern claims for justice. It would mean that liberty was, in practice, as much a matter of exclusion as inclusion, and that success and prosperity owe more to centuries of exploitation than to God’s blessing of an exceptional people.
But their political project depends on not even considering those possibilities. And so their response was equal parts furious and vague, a barrage of arguments that discussing this country’s history is the last thing this country needs...
Slate has a roundup of the conservative backlash to the 1619 Project. What's so telling about much of it is how it ultimately reveals the weakness of their own position:
For white conservatives, accepting that the United States wouldn’t exist without slavery would mean acknowledging that the Founders were not the creators of an infallible civic religion, which sets the limits on all modern claims for justice. It would mean that liberty was, in practice, as much a matter of exclusion as inclusion, and that success and prosperity owe more to centuries of exploitation than to God’s blessing of an exceptional people.
But their political project depends on not even considering those possibilities. And so their response was equal parts furious and vague, a barrage of arguments that discussing this country’s history is the last thing this country needs...
I'm not surprised at the backlash, though. The entire tone of the project is "How would U.S. history be told if the tellers were honest and not constantly worried about the reactions of angry whites?"
The Southern economy was not developed to support that kind of thing. This was the major economic tension going on between the North and South since before the US even formed.
Well when one half of your country is developing to be one of the modern nations of the time and the other is developing into a modern feudal society there's bad times a coming for sure.
The one was reliant on the other.
The North had no problem buying cotton produced by slavery and the planter class did very well economically, but it wasn't necessary for the cotton to be produced by slavery or the South to be doing almost nothing to diversify away from cotton. Slave labor in the South was likely more expensive than non-slave labor in places like India. Slave labor was profitable but not necessarily very cheap for the South.
The South's economic model died the day the British Empire realized that cotton grew extremely well in Egypt. That it took the Civil War disrupting supplies for the Empire to fully invest in Egyptian cotton accelerated the problem, but it was always coming.
Southerners knew this, and their main strategies to prevent the inevitable were failing by the 1860s. They wanted to have slavery enshrined as a special and supported system by the Federal government, and the limitations on creating new slave states meant that they were losing the power to force the rest of the country to prop up slavery. The other avenue out of the problem - training slaves as factory workers in an effort to build a modern slave economy - were also failing in the face that industrial workers needed a level of education, autonomy, and motivation that a slave-society could never afford to provide to its slaves.
That's why the move to the prison system was so crucial. By casting it in that light, you can get state and federal funds to "preserve law and order" being used to subsidize housing and violent coercision while still letting local leaders and businesses benefit from free labor.
Although I have no trouble believing that there was continuity between slave labor and prison labor, I can't help but suspect this strongly overstates the centrality of prison labor to Southern economies. More than 50% of the population of the prewar South were enslaved--these were majority slave economies. By contrast, no US state currently imprisons more than 1% of its population.--and even that appears to be the product of an overall trendline that's been going up over time as far back as I can see on this graph (1925, when it was .15%). Although 1% is crazy high by international standards, and very linked to US race politics, there's no way that the relative output of 1% of the population in a low-skilled prison context in a modern economy is going to add up to be anything like relative output of 50%+ of the population enslaved in an agricultural economy.
Some random stats I found on google for exactly how much of the wealth in the South--and especially among the wealthiest--was in property in the form of slaves
The southern slave economy permitted a small number of wealthy planters to accumulate extraordinary fortunes. The 1860 census data show that the median wealth of the richest 1% of Southerners was more than three times higher than for the richest 1% of Northerners. In a largely rural and agricultural economy, slavery eliminated the labour constraints that limited the size of northern farms and allowed for a much greater concentration of wealth (Wright 1970, 1978, Ransom 1989). Of course, there were different vehicles for wealth accumulation in the two regions – in the North, real estate accounted for two-thirds or more of property ownership among the top 45% of wealth holders, but personal property (which included slaves) made up close to three-fifths of total wealth held by the top 10% of Southerners.
The Civil War and emancipation destroyed an immense amount of Southern wealth. Given the prominent role of slaves among the property of the wealthiest southerners, it is reasonable to conjecture that the effects of emancipation may have been most pronounced at the top of the wealth distribution. While northern wealth holders above the 55th percentile experienced an approximately 50% increase in property holding over the 1860s, the value of property owned by southerners fell by nearly 75%. The drop was especially pronounced for personal property; those in the top 10% of the Southern wealth distribution experienced a 90% drop in the value of their personal property, while real property wealth was cut approximately in half. As a result, after the war the relative shares of real and personal property in the South converged toward those in the North, with real property making up 60-70% of wealth, at least among the wealthier household heads.
Edit: got curious, so tried a more direct check--according to the Prison Initiative, prison labor is worth at least 2 billion a year. The economist says the federal bureau of prisoners nets 500 million in sales. By contrast, the lowest Southern State's GDP is 115 billion (Mississippi). Prison labor is certainly worth enough for people to care about exploiting it, but it is small potatoes in the overall economic scheme; facts about how best to utilize prison labor are not gonna explain how contemporary society is organized or what its wealthiest interests care about.
Yeah there is economically no comparison between the two. Even a fairly quick look at the figures shows that.
The parallel is much more about cultural and political power. When slavery was outlawed, being black, especially black and not subservient, was outlawed to keep white supreme
It talks about how republicans treated Obama and explains the shift of the southern democrats to republicans among other things, so these people are trying to protect the biggest lies they tell today about race in America.
Slate has a roundup of the conservative backlash to the 1619 Project. What's so telling about much of it is how it ultimately reveals the weakness of their own position:
For white conservatives, accepting that the United States wouldn’t exist without slavery would mean acknowledging that the Founders were not the creators of an infallible civic religion, which sets the limits on all modern claims for justice. It would mean that liberty was, in practice, as much a matter of exclusion as inclusion, and that success and prosperity owe more to centuries of exploitation than to God’s blessing of an exceptional people.
But their political project depends on not even considering those possibilities. And so their response was equal parts furious and vague, a barrage of arguments that discussing this country’s history is the last thing this country needs...
I prefer the Vox version. Just because I prefer Vox over slate. I was going to post it earlier.
Pushing back against the idea that writing about slavery through a “racial lens” is inherently bad, New York Times politics reporter Astead W. Herndon tweeted on Sunday that the conservative backlash proves that, historically, writing on slavery and race in America has suffered without such a lens. Even though “the narrative is often that black writers are somehow non-objective opinion activists for including race in political conversation,” he wrote, “deeply reported projects like 1619 are reminders that it’s the inverse — to ignore race — that is the non-journalistic, activist position.”
The conservative backlash proves the necessity and value of the project.
The opening essay lays out why white America has had a problem with admitting this history and how they have responded to being confronted by it and it’s pretty much the exact playbook for what we’re seeing from the conservative reaction.
Essentially, "the truth isn't the problem; telling the truth is."
+9
HedgethornAssociate Professor of Historical Hobby HorsesIn the Lions' DenRegistered Userregular
I saw one reasonably good response (I forget where) which is that the project's greatest fault is that it is too hyper-focused on slavery/racism as the cause of *everything*.
E.g., there's no question that slavery was an enormously significant factor in why our constitution looks the way it does, but is it really true that fear that Britain would abolish slavery was the core reason for declaring independence? 1619 asserts that but doesn't seem to offer much by way of evidence. (And there are significant problems for this narrative: at least some of the founders were abolitionists, Britain didn't seem all that close to abolishing the slave trade in the 1770s, etc.)
Similarly, there's no question that white flight is an key part of the story of American suburban sprawl, but so is idealization of farmland and the frontier, together with the creation of the middle-class at the same time as creation of the automobile; saying that racism is why we have awful mass transit in this country is just too simple an answer to be historically true.
Now, I think it's fair to respond that 1619 brings to the forefront exactly what was left out of the better-known hackneyed histories of previous generations of American propagandists. But the historian in me wishes we could just tell the complex story in its complexity, rather than replacing one just-so story with another one. I think several of the essays are beautifully written and deserve to be anthologized, and I hope this starts a new kind of conversation within popular American political history. But I hope people don't take these essays to be the final word on these topics, but rather take them as starting points for further research and precisification.
White flight wasn't about the car becoming widely available. Because it still happens. I forget the exact number, but it's something like the minute 25% of a school system's students are black, white families believe their children's education will be worse and run to a new district. And where the freeways were actually built is definitely about race.
The idea that your vote is a moral statement about you or who you vote for is some backwards ass libertarian nonsense. Your vote is about society. Vote to protect the vulnerable.
White flight wasn't about the car becoming widely available. Because it still happens. I forget the exact number, but it's something like the minute 25% of a school system's students are black, white families believe their children's education will be worse and run to a new district. And where the freeways were actually built is definitely about race.
As well as HELOC/FHA redlining areas impacting their ability to access capital and thereby continue to thrive so as to maintain the population and services necessary to bring political support for improved services like transit. It is certainly an issue where population density matters, and single family zoning even on city lots makes it hard to merit frequent service, but a lot of inner city neighborhoods would have that necessary density if they were able to invest in themselves like other neighborhoods did over the past 80 years. Lincoln Park was blue collar before it got gentrified and is just as far away from the Loop and the lake as Bronzeville, but only one of them looks bombed out.
The death of the streetcar is a bit overwrought, because their service levels were typically no better than busses. However, the death of the interurbans thanks to driving freeways through black neighborhoods (many of which were served by interurbans) wouldn't have happened if cities had to pave over WASP neighborhoods. And that definitely was a further catalyst for sprawl and underserving black urban areas.
moniker on
+1
HedgethornAssociate Professor of Historical Hobby HorsesIn the Lions' DenRegistered Userregular
White flight wasn't about the car becoming widely available. Because it still happens. I forget the exact number, but it's something like the minute 25% of a school system's students are black, white families believe their children's education will be worse and run to a new district. And where the freeways were actually built is definitely about race.
Oh, that's definitely true. I'm in a small overwhelmingly white city where all the public high schools are minority-majority for much this reason. But the racial sorting of schools/school districts isn't alone sufficient to explain many of the facts around suburban sprawl, such as why American houses post-1945 are built on such large lots compared to the rest of the world. You could easily have white flight from one densely-populated area to another densely-populated area where mass transit would be perfectly workable (and, though I'm no expert here, I believe that's what was the norm prior to WW2 and car culture, when streetcars, trains, and other forms of transit were still common even in the midst of redlining, Jim Crow, and the rest; whites segregated in ways that were still mass transit friendly). It's the racism + a host of other important factors that get you a country of poor mass transit, outside of a few places where the local geography prevented large frontier-inspired lots and lawns (e.g., Manhattan).
0
HedgethornAssociate Professor of Historical Hobby HorsesIn the Lions' DenRegistered Userregular
edited August 2019
And I should say, I believe that most (and maybe all) of the authors agree that slavery/racism isn't the sole or total cause of the phenomena they're exploring, but rather just a vitally important part of the reason that America looks the way it does today. I think that's an extremely important truth that unfortunately needs to be repeated even in 2019 because some people apparently can't seem to recognize it (or don't want to recognize it). But at least a few of the essays read as more simplistic narratives than I expect their authors believe the truth to be.
Edit: And the more I write, the more I realize that my criticism here is really that these are 5- or 8-page newspaper essays rather than 15-page pieces in the Atlantic or 30-page journal articles. Maybe the medium just doesn't permit the level of care and precision that I really wish would be publicized on these issues.
Posts
Do any of the essays contextualize the form of slavery in the colonies/US vs what was happening elsewhere at the time?
Likewise, how the US economy formed vs the rest of the world?
I’m thinking another really important aspect of how “successful” the founding was (for capital/slavers) was that they had basically a blank canvas to implement this system due to the near-eradication of Native Americans due to smallpox, making the ensuing genocide very easy...
pleasepaypreacher.net
The capitalism article mentions how even as they were washing their hands of slavery, Europe was still benefiting from slavery, whether it was American Cotton or bankers accepting slaves as the collateral for mortgages.
Dunno about any direct comparisons with other countries, and I think the focus is entirely on slavery, not Native Americans.
Charleston also has that history. Richmond was the Capital of the Confederacy. Most of the South's main cities have History.
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/content/john-adams-abolition-slavery-1801 tl;dr: Look over there!
Thomas Jefferson was a brutal slaveowner and rapist, the full details of such was actively concealed by American historians.
https://store.nytimes.com/products/the-1619-project
warning: the shipping charges are a bit steep. Most places that sell newspapers will keep the sunday edition around all week, if it doesn't sell out, so worth checking out your local supermarkets/newsagents/starbucks over the next few days. But if I can't get my hands on one in person, will definitely be ordering.
$8.50 shipping for a $6 magazine?
Maybe I can find it locally?
He was not a good politician. He was infamous for arguing as VP in the Senate for what title and address the President should have.
For NC it cost $6 for the magazine. 2 day shipping is $8.50 and there are no cheaper options. So weird, I can wait a week guys it'll be ok!
John Adams was such an asshole that he tried to make a law to stop people from calling him an asshole
I mean, having seen that HBO series about him, it doesn't exactly paint him in a particularly good light (and yet still probably a better light than reality).
I mean, in just 4 years as President he managed to Get us into an undeclared war with Revolutionary France,Passed unpopular anti-immigrant and free-speech limiting legislation, and packed the courts and tried to deny Jefferson a SCOTUS pick three days before Jefferson was sworn into office.
He was also criticized for his close ties to Great Britain, and I swear my college history teacher mentioned a utterly nuts tariff law that had disastrous effects on the economy (which was raised to utterly nuts because a poison pill was added, but it passed anyway), but that might have been a late Washington or Jefferson thing I'm remembering.
So yeah, not exactly the best Presidental run.
Same, I'm about to go download that pdf
I've only just started, but it is captivating.
actually I'm going to go ahead and say that blaming Adams for the Quasi War is bullshit, as he was the only reason Hamilton et al (the party and the men Hamilton put into the cabinet) didn't get their way and declare war on France.
Yeah that’s kind of the thrust of the project- slavery is so entwined in how we came to be, and not only are we dealing with the direct effects of that, we are having a real shit go of it trying to pretend like it’s just in the past or something that only slaveowners/the South are responsible for.
And the John Adams stuff is way less interesting and profound than so much else in this project, but the quote posted is actually a really relevant text both for understanding that time and as a mirror of many people’s attitudes today.
Fair enough, especially since looking more in depth the origins go back to Washington's admin insisting that their debts to France were to the France with a King, not the France that executed their king.
It wasn't the HBO series that caused John Adams to get a boost, it was David McCullough's 2001 Pultizer-winning biography (that the series is based on).
Law and Order ≠ Justice
The one thing the entire series does very well is to reveal just why the U.S. is so special (i.e. brutal and exploitative) compared to other modern democracies. We're still working by enslaver rules, because the systems designed to protect slavery from democracy now protect exploitative capitalists.
So, when anyone starts talking about the unique qualities that make reforms in healthcare, wage laws, pollution, etc. impossible to institute in America, the words you should be hearing are, "As a slaver, I refuse..."
I'm not surprised at the backlash, though. The entire tone of the project is "How would U.S. history be told if the tellers were honest and not constantly worried about the reactions of angry whites?"
Yeah there is economically no comparison between the two. Even a fairly quick look at the figures shows that.
The parallel is much more about cultural and political power. When slavery was outlawed, being black, especially black and not subservient, was outlawed to keep white supreme
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
I prefer the Vox version. Just because I prefer Vox over slate. I was going to post it earlier.
https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/8/19/20812238/1619-project-slavery-conservatives
The opening essay lays out why white America has had a problem with admitting this history and how they have responded to being confronted by it and it’s pretty much the exact playbook for what we’re seeing from the conservative reaction.
E.g., there's no question that slavery was an enormously significant factor in why our constitution looks the way it does, but is it really true that fear that Britain would abolish slavery was the core reason for declaring independence? 1619 asserts that but doesn't seem to offer much by way of evidence. (And there are significant problems for this narrative: at least some of the founders were abolitionists, Britain didn't seem all that close to abolishing the slave trade in the 1770s, etc.)
Similarly, there's no question that white flight is an key part of the story of American suburban sprawl, but so is idealization of farmland and the frontier, together with the creation of the middle-class at the same time as creation of the automobile; saying that racism is why we have awful mass transit in this country is just too simple an answer to be historically true.
Now, I think it's fair to respond that 1619 brings to the forefront exactly what was left out of the better-known hackneyed histories of previous generations of American propagandists. But the historian in me wishes we could just tell the complex story in its complexity, rather than replacing one just-so story with another one. I think several of the essays are beautifully written and deserve to be anthologized, and I hope this starts a new kind of conversation within popular American political history. But I hope people don't take these essays to be the final word on these topics, but rather take them as starting points for further research and precisification.
As well as HELOC/FHA redlining areas impacting their ability to access capital and thereby continue to thrive so as to maintain the population and services necessary to bring political support for improved services like transit. It is certainly an issue where population density matters, and single family zoning even on city lots makes it hard to merit frequent service, but a lot of inner city neighborhoods would have that necessary density if they were able to invest in themselves like other neighborhoods did over the past 80 years. Lincoln Park was blue collar before it got gentrified and is just as far away from the Loop and the lake as Bronzeville, but only one of them looks bombed out.
The death of the streetcar is a bit overwrought, because their service levels were typically no better than busses. However, the death of the interurbans thanks to driving freeways through black neighborhoods (many of which were served by interurbans) wouldn't have happened if cities had to pave over WASP neighborhoods. And that definitely was a further catalyst for sprawl and underserving black urban areas.
Oh, that's definitely true. I'm in a small overwhelmingly white city where all the public high schools are minority-majority for much this reason. But the racial sorting of schools/school districts isn't alone sufficient to explain many of the facts around suburban sprawl, such as why American houses post-1945 are built on such large lots compared to the rest of the world. You could easily have white flight from one densely-populated area to another densely-populated area where mass transit would be perfectly workable (and, though I'm no expert here, I believe that's what was the norm prior to WW2 and car culture, when streetcars, trains, and other forms of transit were still common even in the midst of redlining, Jim Crow, and the rest; whites segregated in ways that were still mass transit friendly). It's the racism + a host of other important factors that get you a country of poor mass transit, outside of a few places where the local geography prevented large frontier-inspired lots and lawns (e.g., Manhattan).
Edit: And the more I write, the more I realize that my criticism here is really that these are 5- or 8-page newspaper essays rather than 15-page pieces in the Atlantic or 30-page journal articles. Maybe the medium just doesn't permit the level of care and precision that I really wish would be publicized on these issues.