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Except that the country wasn't built on that labor. It was built on agriculture and industrialization, mostly in non-slave states. And most of cotton generate
by btilly 3y ago
Except that the country wasn't built on that labor. It was built on agriculture and industrialization, mostly in non-slave states.
And most of cotton generated by slaves went to Britain, whose textile mills also captured most of the profits off of that industry. Should the USA therefore demand reparations from Britain?
But we could go the other route, and tax the descendants of the slave owners. Unfortunately, the largest and most easily identifiable group of descendants of slave owners are blacks themselves! (You can thank a common practice of raping slaves for a lot of that.)
The best solution that we ever came up with for this mess was school busing. Since we got rid of it, the black-white income gap has been rising. But nobody wants to talk about it. Instead, let's focus on the token gesture of affirmative action, which never made a difference in the lives of most blacks. And which tainted the success of blacks whose success was not because of affirmative action.
- greedo 3y agoThere was a lot of slavery outside of the South, long before cotton became king.
- monocasa 3y agoAnd even past that, the north greatly profited off of the South's use of slavery, to the point that NYC almost seceded with the south in solidarity (and protecting profits). https://www.historynet.com/the-day-new-york-tried-to-secede/ https://www.historynet.com/the-day-new-york-tried-to-secede/