4 ms·

There are nuanced differences. Slavery (as seen then) implies that the person you are enslaving as subhuman (remember the 3/5s compromise?). Most slave owners

There are nuanced differences. Slavery (as seen then) implies that the person you are enslaving as subhuman (remember the 3/5s compromise?). Most slave owners treated their slaves as investments like a farmer would treat a tractor today. In fact, for the really terrible work many slave owners would hire Irish immigrants to do the jobs they didn't want their slaves doing out of fear of the risk of harm to the person doing the job. They were tools, not humans. Racism, which we have now (though probably to a much lesser degree than what some people would want you to believe) acknowledges that the other is human but is inferior due to skin color or ethnicity. Bigotry is more cultural. The other is human, and should have all the rights thereof, but the bigot doesn't like the culture of the other person. This is called racism by contemporary standards, which is very wrong.

jfengel 5y ago
The 3/5 compromise is even worse than mere sub-human-ness. They were already not entitled to any human rights. Their owners also wanted them counted as human solely for the purpose of adding to their power in the Congress and Electoral College. So not only were they subhuman, but the goal was to make it even harder for people to grant them rights. The opposition was to count them for 0. The "compromise" was to account them for "only" 3/5 -- not at "3/5 of a human" but "slave owners get that much thumb on the scale of all future votes". That still wasn't sufficient to mollify them, and they ended up seceding, making it quite clear that their reason was to continue to own people.