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.
And how you are going to stop it exactly? Like, parents stubborn enough will go through anything. See: How Betsy Devos made enough moolah to buy a cabinet slot.
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.
And how you are going to stop it exactly? Like, parents stubborn enough will go through anything. See: How Betsy Devos made enough moolah to buy a cabinet slot.
Inheriting it?
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.
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).
A lot of post war car culture, which allows the more spread out land use patterns, was reliant on the urban freeway system, though. Which wouldn't exist without the ease of paving over segregated minority neighborhoods to access the central business district jobs. A chiefly rural interstate highway network connecting the fringes of cities with each other (basically imagine everything ending at the bypass/ring road) is going to promote development patterns much more like France or Germany.
Segregated development patterns also make it a lot easier to overlook particular parts of town because it doesn't have enough white people demanding a minimum level of service, which counteracts ghettoizing on its own and helps promote the investments in things like transit.
sven beckert is not much supported on the economic history side, but the nyt take doesn't rely on his most contentious arguments
the nyt limits itself to "contemporary management inherits much conceptually from Taylorism which itself inherits much from slave management", which is true; beckert and co. make a much stronger claim that the industrial revolution itself relied on surplus generated from slavery
I think it’s less that slavery is the cause of everything and more that greed is- making more money at any costs is the basis for the brutality of slavery, for fighting to maintain it, and definitely part of the motivation of the founding fathers.
Racism was created to justify chattel slavery in service of maintaining its profits despite how obviously evil it was even at the time. Also to mollify the poor folks being fucked by the landowners because at least they weren’t at the bottom.
This country was founded by the most brutal of capitalists, so consumed with getting “more” that slavery was elevated and embedded into our founding.
Ok, maybe not the best example, but still. Charter schools make a lot of money for a reason.
Many charter schools don't actually make money, but that's not their purpose in many cases - they're about extracting public funding into private hands. And they're happy to use bigotry to enable that.
Ok, maybe not the best example, but still. Charter schools make a lot of money for a reason.
Many charter schools don't actually make money, but that's not their purpose in many cases - they're about extracting public funding into private hands. And they're happy to use bigotry to enable that.
America: Using Bigotry to Enable a Few to Get More
Ok, maybe not the best example, but still. Charter schools make a lot of money for a reason.
Many charter schools don't actually make money, but that's not their purpose in many cases - they're about extracting public funding into private hands. And they're happy to use bigotry to enable that.
Also breaking the teachers unions and taking away a source of financing for the Democratic Party, at least on the right.
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.
The true enormity of the horror of what we did, and still so recently, is hard to process. I feel like there have just been a series of distinct points throughout my life where I’ve reflected back on everything I've learned in bits and pieces over time about American slavery and when you step back and look at the whole thing in concert it is completely staggering every time. Just glimpsing the beast in its entirety is harrowing. The fact that there are people who carry on acting like it never happened, who continue to benefit from acting like it never happened, like it's ancient history with no reflection on the people we are today, is deeply evil in a way that cannot possibly be overstated. We did this.
sven beckert is not much supported on the economic history side, but the nyt take doesn't rely on his most contentious arguments
the nyt limits itself to "contemporary management inherits much conceptually from Taylorism which itself inherits much from slave management", which is true; beckert and co. make a much stronger claim that the industrial revolution itself relied on surplus generated from slavery
I was worried the NYT would go with the academically controversially and mostly rejected parts instead of the not new and academically accepted parts.
I can't remember if this article is a good summary of the criticisms.
Coming back to historians, it's worth remembering the active role they played in the cover up. You had groups like the Dunning School actively pushing falsehoods which were then taught to the public, while documentation showing the truth was knowingly suppressed.
Coming back to historians, it's worth remembering the active role they played in the cover up. You had groups like the Dunning School actively pushing falsehoods which were then taught to the public, while documentation showing the truth was knowingly suppressed.
The criticism above isn't even written by an academic historian. It's an economist using a data-based argument to try to undercut a historical one, focusing chiefly on a narrow argument "the number of whippings" to undercut a larger one - modern capitalism's primary tools for management and motivation derive from slave-owner practices.
Coming back to historians, it's worth remembering the active role they played in the cover up. You had groups like the Dunning School actively pushing falsehoods which were then taught to the public, while documentation showing the truth was knowingly suppressed.
Having never heard of this guy nor his historical school of thought, I traveled to Wikipedia for a quick look. This lead me to his biographical page, which lead further to one Howard K. Beale. Of particular note on Beale's page is this:
In 1950 Beale spoke out against the call by Conyers Read, President of the American Historical Association, for historians to be enlisted in the ideological struggle against totalitarianism.
And that, my fellow forum goes, is enough evidence for me to say that these people were soundly on the wrong side of History.
All opinions are my own and in no way reflect that of my employer.
For what it’s worth every historian mentioned in that post let their personal political beliefs taint their academic work
Meanwhile I’m now remembering that even in the early 90s this was my Social Studies/History curriculum:
•“Reconstruction” was rich white people from the North exploiting the situation in the South
•Du Bois got a picture and caption, so I learned the name but not why he was important
•No mention of the KKK
Looks like I got Texas text book’d by some Dunningers
Coming back to historians, it's worth remembering the active role they played in the cover up. You had groups like the Dunning School actively pushing falsehoods which were then taught to the public, while documentation showing the truth was knowingly suppressed.
Bonus: one of his acolytes was Woodrow Wilson. Fuuuuuuuck that guy.
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.
For what it’s worth every historian mentioned in that post let their personal political beliefs taint their academic work
Meanwhile I’m now remembering that even in the early 90s this was my Social Studies/History curriculum:
•“Reconstruction” was rich white people from the North exploiting the situation in the South
•Du Bois got a picture and caption, so I learned the name but not why he was important
•No mention of the KKK
Looks like I got Texas text book’d by some Dunningers
The war was about states rights. No further questions.
For what it’s worth every historian mentioned in that post let their personal political beliefs taint their academic work
Meanwhile I’m now remembering that even in the early 90s this was my Social Studies/History curriculum:
•“Reconstruction” was rich white people from the North exploiting the situation in the South
•Du Bois got a picture and caption, so I learned the name but not why he was important
•No mention of the KKK
Looks like I got Texas text book’d by some Dunningers
The war was about states rights. No further questions.
For anyone that was looking to order the hardcopy from nytimes. 2 day shipping doesn't mean you will receive it in 2 days because apparently processing is a multiday event. Amazon has ruined all expectations of shipping.
-There are three separate provisions protecting slavery: one stating that Slavery is legal on both the state and Federal level, one stating that noone can deny someone's right to own slaves, and one that bans any sort of law that the Dredd Scott case was based on... which is kinda redundant after the first two, but I guess this was really important to them at the time?
-The "states rights" thing is already on display, starting with the Preamble, which drops the "more perfect Union" line and makes it sound like a collective action by the states. Also, states would have had the power to impeach federal employees whose duties lie "solely within the limits" of that state. It was also going to be extremely easy to change or add to the Constitution: a convention or amendment (CSA Constitution didn't differentiate between the two) required only three states to start the process, and only 2/3rds of all states to ratify, with Congress having no part in the voting.
-That said, all the Clauses that States rights nuts complain about are still there, such as the Supremacy Clause. In fact, the Confederate government could have imposed tarriffs on interstate trade, and on the exception to amendments (i.e. Two Senators with equal suffrage) "suffrage" was changed to "representation," meaning in theory it could have been possible to make some state's senators less important than other states.
-Two famous things that would have been unconstitutional in the Confederacy: National Highway Project (Congress could only approve infrastructure projects in regards to waterways and seas) Trump's Trade war (Protectionist tarriffs are explicitly banned)
-Confederate states were aparently expecting to get rich off of the Mississipi River after the war: States would have the power to impose duties on waterway travel (though said duties were supposed to go to maintaining and improving said waterways), and they, not the confederate government, would have control over river projects, meant to he jointly shared by all the states that touched it. So possibly of inter-state trade wars? I'd put it at "likely"
-Think the President might have too much power? The Confederate President would have line-item veto power, and Congress for the most part could only approve new funding for anything the Executive branch explicitly asked for, and only to the amount they asked for. OTOH, President was limited to a single six year term. (He'd also have the power to fire pretty much anyone in the executive, but US Presidents essentially have that right already)
-Finally, we have the "stopped clock is right twice a day" change: all the unnecessary commas on the 2nd Amendment have been removed, now more clearly reads that it's for a *militia's* right to bear arms, not an individual's.
-Finally, we have the "stopped clock is right twice a day" change: all the unnecessary commas on the 2nd Amendment have been removed, now more clearly reads that it's for a *militia's* right to bear arms, not an individual's.
I think it’s less that slavery is the cause of everything and more that greed is- making more money at any costs is the basis for the brutality of slavery, for fighting to maintain it, and definitely part of the motivation of the founding fathers.
Racism was created to justify chattel slavery in service of maintaining its profits despite how obviously evil it was even at the time. Also to mollify the poor folks being fucked by the landowners because at least they weren’t at the bottom.
This country was founded by the most brutal of capitalists, so consumed with getting “more” that slavery was elevated and embedded into our founding.
Not even that, most of the money that those guys were making wasn't staying the States at the height of the slave trade, it was done to fuel the insane demand for raw materials that the Industrial Revolution in Britain required and the new classes of the hyper-rich that spawned. Whilst involuntary labour was a factor with the workhouses of London for the poor and destitute, black slavery was never adopted in the UK and thus it just never became such a cornerstone of the economy even when the market conditions would have been ideal. You could even argue that something vaguely akin to it existed during the times of serfdom, when a worker would be tied to a Lord's land and be his property - but thing never devolved back to that kind of system despite people having the means to make it so.
Certainly an amount of racism was the reason for that, but certainly not for lack of greed.
Greed is a contributing factor, but existing slavery was the limiting one. Greed alone was not enough to create the same systems that you had in the southern states. It's hardly rare in other societies.
I think it’s less that slavery is the cause of everything and more that greed is- making more money at any costs is the basis for the brutality of slavery, for fighting to maintain it, and definitely part of the motivation of the founding fathers.
Racism was created to justify chattel slavery in service of maintaining its profits despite how obviously evil it was even at the time. Also to mollify the poor folks being fucked by the landowners because at least they weren’t at the bottom.
This country was founded by the most brutal of capitalists, so consumed with getting “more” that slavery was elevated and embedded into our founding.
Not even that, most of the money that those guys were making wasn't staying the States at the height of the slave trade, it was done to fuel the insane demand for raw materials that the Industrial Revolution in Britain required and the new classes of the hyper-rich that spawned. Whilst involuntary labour was a factor with the workhouses of London for the poor and destitute, black slavery was never adopted in the UK and thus it just never became such a cornerstone of the economy even when the market conditions would have been ideal. You could even argue that something vaguely akin to it existed during the times of serfdom, when a worker would be tied to a Lord's land and be his property - but thing never devolved back to that kind of system despite people having the means to make it so.
Certainly an amount of racism was the reason for that, but certainly not for lack of greed.
Greed is a contributing factor, but existing slavery was the limiting one. Greed alone was not enough to create the same systems that you had in the southern states. It's hardly rare in other societies.
Slavery was made illegal in the UK proper in 1772, but it wouldn't be made illegal in all it's Imperial holding until 1843. Worth noting that the original empire-wide ban was in 1833, but Sri Lanka and the Honorable East India Company were given an exception for another decade. The later at the time was running India as the Early Modern take on a Megacorp.
So one could argue that the UK was willing to directly benefit from slavery for almost as long as it was legal in the US, so long as it didn't happen where their voting constituencies could see it.
Yeah, greed isn't enough. It'll seek to mitigate slavery when that's available but isn't enough to sustain it on it's own or make it appear when it wasn't there before.
I'm not going argue that the upper classes in the UK didn't fuck over, pretty much the world, but the American situation is pretty specific and that is because of slavery.
The South wasn't uniquely profit motivated, and that's not why this whole thing happened.
Yeah, greed isn't enough. It'll seek to mitigate slavery when that's available but isn't enough to sustain it on it's own or make it appear when it wasn't there before.
I'm not going argue that the upper classes in the UK didn't fuck over, pretty much the world, but the American situation is pretty specific and that is because of slavery.
The South wasn't uniquely profit motivated, and that's not why this whole thing happened.
How does it compare to Brazil then? Slavery was legal there for more than 30 years after the US Civil War.
It's not a perfect match from what little I could gather from Wikipedia (On one hand, second and third-generation slaves were much more likely to be freed, but on the other African slave trading was still done openly until 1845-50 when the UK forced them to stop so there wasn't a technically finite amount/trickle of new slaves that couldn't replace them. Also there's the whole "Brazil was a monarchy until 1889, then it was a military dictatorship" thing) but it's the closest analog to the US in terms of slavery as a national institution.
Did Brazil have racial slavery? That was more the point - that it would be wrong to say that this was just greed, as Captain Inertia suggested. A lot of places a lot more money and probably more inequality (though that's iffy when you include debt and slaves) but didn't produce the same patterns.
The US situation is down to racial slavery, is my point. Not just a wealth focused overclass.
Did Brazil have racial slavery? That was more the point - that it would be wrong to say that this was just greed, as Captain Inertia suggested. A lot of places a lot more money and probably more inequality (though that's iffy when you include debt and slaves) but didn't produce the same patterns.
The US situation is down to racial slavery, is my point. Not just a wealth focused overclass.
Yes. Brazil is a bad example because slavery and native genocide there has also contributed to violent and corrupt governance that tolerates massive amounts of crime and corruption so long as the elites stay rich.
It’s not a counter example. It’s another data point that slavery’s corrosive effects linger after emancipation.
Yeah Brazil is, if anything, the US raised to another power - it has a lot of very similar patterns, in both racial and economic inequity, played out against a slightly different backdrop. Right down to the excessive gun violence.
Did Brazil have racial slavery? That was more the point - that it would be wrong to say that this was just greed, as Captain Inertia suggested. A lot of places a lot more money and probably more inequality (though that's iffy when you include debt and slaves) but didn't produce the same patterns.
The US situation is down to racial slavery, is my point. Not just a wealth focused overclass.
Yes. Brazil is a bad example because slavery and native genocide there has also contributed to violent and corrupt governance that tolerates massive amounts of crime and corruption so long as the elites stay rich.
It’s not a counter example. It’s another data point that slavery’s corrosive effects linger after emancipation.
To be honest, I didn't think it would. I realized after I posted it that there is pretty much no possible version of Brazil that would make the US look good.
Well, other than the fact we haven't yet had any monarchies or military dictatorships.
It was really more of an excuse to bring it up. I'm kinda curious why the comparison between the two isn't made more often. Especially since, as you say, it is another example of slavery's influence on society still being felt generations later.
In truth, even during the worst periods of oppression, there were blacks who were in slavery but not of slavery. They maintained a strong moral code and a belief in self-determination and mutual support that allowed them to rise despite their enslavement. There were men and women who were born slaves yet died millionaires.
Even in the era of legislated segregation and discrimination before the civil-rights movement, blacks tapped an entrepreneurial legacy to launch thriving enterprises, including hotels, banks, hospitals, dental schools, insurance companies and even a dry dock and railroad company. In fact, the black business district of Durham, N.C., was widely known as “Black Wall Street.” This spectrum of achievement is a powerful refutation of the claim that the destiny of black Americans is determined by what whites do—or what they did in the past.
Can't cite the district in Tulsa also known as the black Wall Street because a white mob burned it down.
It's very disingenuous to state that 1619 is claiming the "destiny" of black Americans is determined by what whites do. They aren't claiming anything like that, what they are claiming is that due to the history of this nation, black Americans are severely disadvantaged. Can somebody still succeed in life despite these roadblocks? Absolutely that is possible, if they work about 10x as hard (if not more) as a white person starting from a similar financial point.
Of course that's kind of the point of an op-ed like that, to muddy the waters and give people excuses to ignore the inconvenient facts revealed. Misrepresenting your opponent's argument is a time honored tradition after all.
It's very disingenuous to state that 1619 is claiming the "destiny" of black Americans is determined by what whites do. They aren't claiming anything like that, what they are claiming is that due to the history of this nation, black Americans are severely disadvantaged. Can somebody still succeed in life despite these roadblocks? Absolutely that is possible, if they work about 10x as hard (if not more) as a white person starting from a similar financial point.
Of course that's kind of the point of an op-ed like that, to muddy the waters and give people excuses to ignore the inconvenient facts revealed. Misrepresenting your opponent's argument is a time honored tradition after all.
The project is also outlining just how many explicitly racist decisions have been normalized over the years in ways that still harm black America. It follows a lot of recent scholarship that has moved the focus and explanation for "the racism problem" from the actions of African Americans to the racism and violence of white America.
For example, the piece on the historical problem of black families does not focus on "the pathology of the black family" as was the standard and instead notes the incredible regularity that explicitly racist and "neutral" financial policies end up wiping out the generational wealth of black America.
It's very disingenuous to state that 1619 is claiming the "destiny" of black Americans is determined by what whites do. They aren't claiming anything like that, what they are claiming is that due to the history of this nation, black Americans are severely disadvantaged. Can somebody still succeed in life despite these roadblocks? Absolutely that is possible, if they work about 10x as hard (if not more) as a white person starting from a similar financial point.
Of course that's kind of the point of an op-ed like that, to muddy the waters and give people excuses to ignore the inconvenient facts revealed. Misrepresenting your opponent's argument is a time honored tradition after all.
The project is also outlining just how many explicitly racist decisions have been normalized over the years in ways that still harm black America. It follows a lot of recent scholarship that has moved the focus and explanation for "the racism problem" from the actions of African Americans to the racism and violence of white America.
For example, the piece on the historical problem of black families does not focus on "the pathology of the black family" as was the standard and instead notes the incredible regularity that explicitly racist and "neutral" financial policies end up wiping out the generational wealth of black America.
Who benefitted from wiping out generational wealth of black America
It's very disingenuous to state that 1619 is claiming the "destiny" of black Americans is determined by what whites do. They aren't claiming anything like that, what they are claiming is that due to the history of this nation, black Americans are severely disadvantaged. Can somebody still succeed in life despite these roadblocks? Absolutely that is possible, if they work about 10x as hard (if not more) as a white person starting from a similar financial point.
Of course that's kind of the point of an op-ed like that, to muddy the waters and give people excuses to ignore the inconvenient facts revealed. Misrepresenting your opponent's argument is a time honored tradition after all.
The project is also outlining just how many explicitly racist decisions have been normalized over the years in ways that still harm black America. It follows a lot of recent scholarship that has moved the focus and explanation for "the racism problem" from the actions of African Americans to the racism and violence of white America.
For example, the piece on the historical problem of black families does not focus on "the pathology of the black family" as was the standard and instead notes the incredible regularity that explicitly racist and "neutral" financial policies end up wiping out the generational wealth of black America.
Who benefitted from wiping out generational wealth of black America
It's very disingenuous to state that 1619 is claiming the "destiny" of black Americans is determined by what whites do. They aren't claiming anything like that, what they are claiming is that due to the history of this nation, black Americans are severely disadvantaged. Can somebody still succeed in life despite these roadblocks? Absolutely that is possible, if they work about 10x as hard (if not more) as a white person starting from a similar financial point.
Of course that's kind of the point of an op-ed like that, to muddy the waters and give people excuses to ignore the inconvenient facts revealed. Misrepresenting your opponent's argument is a time honored tradition after all.
The project is also outlining just how many explicitly racist decisions have been normalized over the years in ways that still harm black America. It follows a lot of recent scholarship that has moved the focus and explanation for "the racism problem" from the actions of African Americans to the racism and violence of white America.
For example, the piece on the historical problem of black families does not focus on "the pathology of the black family" as was the standard and instead notes the incredible regularity that explicitly racist and "neutral" financial policies end up wiping out the generational wealth of black America.
Who benefitted from wiping out generational wealth of black America
White America, pretty much.
Also, sometimes its not about benefit to yourself, it's about keeping the other down.
It's very disingenuous to state that 1619 is claiming the "destiny" of black Americans is determined by what whites do. They aren't claiming anything like that, what they are claiming is that due to the history of this nation, black Americans are severely disadvantaged. Can somebody still succeed in life despite these roadblocks? Absolutely that is possible, if they work about 10x as hard (if not more) as a white person starting from a similar financial point.
Of course that's kind of the point of an op-ed like that, to muddy the waters and give people excuses to ignore the inconvenient facts revealed. Misrepresenting your opponent's argument is a time honored tradition after all.
The project is also outlining just how many explicitly racist decisions have been normalized over the years in ways that still harm black America. It follows a lot of recent scholarship that has moved the focus and explanation for "the racism problem" from the actions of African Americans to the racism and violence of white America.
For example, the piece on the historical problem of black families does not focus on "the pathology of the black family" as was the standard and instead notes the incredible regularity that explicitly racist and "neutral" financial policies end up wiping out the generational wealth of black America.
Who benefitted from wiping out generational wealth of black America
White America, pretty much.
Also, sometimes its not about benefit to yourself, it's about keeping the other down.
Psychological wage + not bottom rung are tremendous advantages over the compounding long term, yep, and the wealthiest have been happy to “pay” white america with this in order to keep more to themselves
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Seems there was a giveaway of free copies of the 1619 Project at the NYT building earlier today. There was a bit of a line for copies (one per person).
Posts
And how you are going to stop it exactly? Like, parents stubborn enough will go through anything. See: How Betsy Devos made enough moolah to buy a cabinet slot.
Inheriting it?
A lot of post war car culture, which allows the more spread out land use patterns, was reliant on the urban freeway system, though. Which wouldn't exist without the ease of paving over segregated minority neighborhoods to access the central business district jobs. A chiefly rural interstate highway network connecting the fringes of cities with each other (basically imagine everything ending at the bypass/ring road) is going to promote development patterns much more like France or Germany.
Segregated development patterns also make it a lot easier to overlook particular parts of town because it doesn't have enough white people demanding a minimum level of service, which counteracts ghettoizing on its own and helps promote the investments in things like transit.
the nyt limits itself to "contemporary management inherits much conceptually from Taylorism which itself inherits much from slave management", which is true; beckert and co. make a much stronger claim that the industrial revolution itself relied on surplus generated from slavery
Racism was created to justify chattel slavery in service of maintaining its profits despite how obviously evil it was even at the time. Also to mollify the poor folks being fucked by the landowners because at least they weren’t at the bottom.
This country was founded by the most brutal of capitalists, so consumed with getting “more” that slavery was elevated and embedded into our founding.
Many charter schools don't actually make money, but that's not their purpose in many cases - they're about extracting public funding into private hands. And they're happy to use bigotry to enable that.
America: Using Bigotry to Enable a Few to Get More
Also breaking the teachers unions and taking away a source of financing for the Democratic Party, at least on the right.
I was worried the NYT would go with the academically controversially and mostly rejected parts instead of the not new and academically accepted parts.
I can't remember if this article is a good summary of the criticisms.
The criticism above isn't even written by an academic historian. It's an economist using a data-based argument to try to undercut a historical one, focusing chiefly on a narrow argument "the number of whippings" to undercut a larger one - modern capitalism's primary tools for management and motivation derive from slave-owner practices.
Having never heard of this guy nor his historical school of thought, I traveled to Wikipedia for a quick look. This lead me to his biographical page, which lead further to one Howard K. Beale. Of particular note on Beale's page is this:
And that, my fellow forum goes, is enough evidence for me to say that these people were soundly on the wrong side of History.
Meanwhile I’m now remembering that even in the early 90s this was my Social Studies/History curriculum:
•“Reconstruction” was rich white people from the North exploiting the situation in the South
•Du Bois got a picture and caption, so I learned the name but not why he was important
•No mention of the KKK
Looks like I got Texas text book’d by some Dunningers
Bonus: one of his acolytes was Woodrow Wilson. Fuuuuuuuck that guy.
The war was about states rights. No further questions.
I can see further debate is a lost cause
Some highlights:
-There are three separate provisions protecting slavery: one stating that Slavery is legal on both the state and Federal level, one stating that noone can deny someone's right to own slaves, and one that bans any sort of law that the Dredd Scott case was based on... which is kinda redundant after the first two, but I guess this was really important to them at the time?
-The "states rights" thing is already on display, starting with the Preamble, which drops the "more perfect Union" line and makes it sound like a collective action by the states. Also, states would have had the power to impeach federal employees whose duties lie "solely within the limits" of that state. It was also going to be extremely easy to change or add to the Constitution: a convention or amendment (CSA Constitution didn't differentiate between the two) required only three states to start the process, and only 2/3rds of all states to ratify, with Congress having no part in the voting.
-That said, all the Clauses that States rights nuts complain about are still there, such as the Supremacy Clause. In fact, the Confederate government could have imposed tarriffs on interstate trade, and on the exception to amendments (i.e. Two Senators with equal suffrage) "suffrage" was changed to "representation," meaning in theory it could have been possible to make some state's senators less important than other states.
-Two famous things that would have been unconstitutional in the Confederacy: National Highway Project (Congress could only approve infrastructure projects in regards to waterways and seas) Trump's Trade war (Protectionist tarriffs are explicitly banned)
-Confederate states were aparently expecting to get rich off of the Mississipi River after the war: States would have the power to impose duties on waterway travel (though said duties were supposed to go to maintaining and improving said waterways), and they, not the confederate government, would have control over river projects, meant to he jointly shared by all the states that touched it. So possibly of inter-state trade wars? I'd put it at "likely"
-Think the President might have too much power? The Confederate President would have line-item veto power, and Congress for the most part could only approve new funding for anything the Executive branch explicitly asked for, and only to the amount they asked for. OTOH, President was limited to a single six year term. (He'd also have the power to fire pretty much anyone in the executive, but US Presidents essentially have that right already)
-Finally, we have the "stopped clock is right twice a day" change: all the unnecessary commas on the 2nd Amendment have been removed, now more clearly reads that it's for a *militia's* right to bear arms, not an individual's.
This is less "stopped clock" and more lined up with the scholarship done by the amazingly named Professor Carl Bogus on the Second Amendment being created to protect the southern militias used to enforce slavery.
Not even that, most of the money that those guys were making wasn't staying the States at the height of the slave trade, it was done to fuel the insane demand for raw materials that the Industrial Revolution in Britain required and the new classes of the hyper-rich that spawned. Whilst involuntary labour was a factor with the workhouses of London for the poor and destitute, black slavery was never adopted in the UK and thus it just never became such a cornerstone of the economy even when the market conditions would have been ideal. You could even argue that something vaguely akin to it existed during the times of serfdom, when a worker would be tied to a Lord's land and be his property - but thing never devolved back to that kind of system despite people having the means to make it so.
Certainly an amount of racism was the reason for that, but certainly not for lack of greed.
Greed is a contributing factor, but existing slavery was the limiting one. Greed alone was not enough to create the same systems that you had in the southern states. It's hardly rare in other societies.
Slavery was made illegal in the UK proper in 1772, but it wouldn't be made illegal in all it's Imperial holding until 1843. Worth noting that the original empire-wide ban was in 1833, but Sri Lanka and the Honorable East India Company were given an exception for another decade. The later at the time was running India as the Early Modern take on a Megacorp.
So one could argue that the UK was willing to directly benefit from slavery for almost as long as it was legal in the US, so long as it didn't happen where their voting constituencies could see it.
I'm not going argue that the upper classes in the UK didn't fuck over, pretty much the world, but the American situation is pretty specific and that is because of slavery.
The South wasn't uniquely profit motivated, and that's not why this whole thing happened.
How does it compare to Brazil then? Slavery was legal there for more than 30 years after the US Civil War.
It's not a perfect match from what little I could gather from Wikipedia (On one hand, second and third-generation slaves were much more likely to be freed, but on the other African slave trading was still done openly until 1845-50 when the UK forced them to stop so there wasn't a technically finite amount/trickle of new slaves that couldn't replace them. Also there's the whole "Brazil was a monarchy until 1889, then it was a military dictatorship" thing) but it's the closest analog to the US in terms of slavery as a national institution.
The US situation is down to racial slavery, is my point. Not just a wealth focused overclass.
Yes. Brazil is a bad example because slavery and native genocide there has also contributed to violent and corrupt governance that tolerates massive amounts of crime and corruption so long as the elites stay rich.
It’s not a counter example. It’s another data point that slavery’s corrosive effects linger after emancipation.
To be honest, I didn't think it would. I realized after I posted it that there is pretty much no possible version of Brazil that would make the US look good.
Well, other than the fact we haven't yet had any monarchies or military dictatorships.
It was really more of an excuse to bring it up. I'm kinda curious why the comparison between the two isn't made more often. Especially since, as you say, it is another example of slavery's influence on society still being felt generations later.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-1619-project-hurts-blacks-11567033108 Can't cite the district in Tulsa also known as the black Wall Street because a white mob burned it down.
Oh he was also Paul Ryan’s mentor on poverty
And he’s black, FYI
Of course that's kind of the point of an op-ed like that, to muddy the waters and give people excuses to ignore the inconvenient facts revealed. Misrepresenting your opponent's argument is a time honored tradition after all.
The project is also outlining just how many explicitly racist decisions have been normalized over the years in ways that still harm black America. It follows a lot of recent scholarship that has moved the focus and explanation for "the racism problem" from the actions of African Americans to the racism and violence of white America.
For example, the piece on the historical problem of black families does not focus on "the pathology of the black family" as was the standard and instead notes the incredible regularity that explicitly racist and "neutral" financial policies end up wiping out the generational wealth of black America.
Who benefitted from wiping out generational wealth of black America
White America, pretty much.
Also, sometimes its not about benefit to yourself, it's about keeping the other down.
Psychological wage + not bottom rung are tremendous advantages over the compounding long term, yep, and the wealthiest have been happy to “pay” white america with this in order to keep more to themselves
Jake Silverstein is the Editor in Chief of the NYT Magazine.