So, I learned a lot today.
Strangely, it was about stuff that I thought I knew a fair amount about. I have in my stack of stuff somewhere a photocopy of a page from an old history textbook that had a graphic on the trans-Atlantic slave trade which clearly showed that by far the US received the fewest slaves... the Caribbean and S America being the biggest recipients of human lives. I know that the primary reason this is true is because slaveholders in the US were poorer and couldn't afford to treat their slaves as disposable, the way the non-US ones did: "oh, 300 died today from the heat? Increase the order for the next shipment!" as though they were chickens, not humans. Now, don't get me wrong, being a slave in America sucked, because being a slave sucks, but like today, it's better to be poor in the US than to be poor in pretty much anywhere else in the world. The famous economist and writer Walter Williams took a lot of flack for his assertion that the horrible evil of slavery meant that generations of black people escaped an early death in Africa, which is a good thing, if you are alive now in this country. If not for slavery, your bloodline wouldn't exist, your ancestors would have died poor in Africa. You understand his point, right?
So, a guy I follow on Twitter, Leonydus Johnson, had a similar line of thought today:
It's a very thorough article and a well-sourced one. I learned a lot. My point after all that is to say that the old proverb that history is written by the victors isn't quite right, is it? Modern "historians" (I'm looking at you 1619) seem to have left out this very important and messy part of our history.
One, that the actual amount of slave owners was pretty small.
Two, that that number included free blacks.
Three, that no, they weren't just buying family members to protect them
Four, they did pretty well financially (despite the "systemic institutionalized racism" that supposedly plagues us to this very day).
Is any of this taught via the lens of CRT? Does Mrs White Fragility even know this, or X Kendi whatever? Indeed, does any high school US History have this in the curriculum?
Probably not, because it's messy. It obscures the depiction of white = slave owners = bad, even though it was an extreme minority of people in this country. I would challenge his assertion actually to say that any of us, white or black, are MORE likely to be descended from a slave than an owner!
Keep learning people.
On a sidenote, if a free black slave-owning business man (and his children) could become that successful in South Carolina including during the Civil War, staunchly supporting the Confederacy, even, what changed between now and then? I often think of how Harlem was during the 40s and 50s compared to the 70s thru today? What changed? I'll give you one guess....
