How different would America have been if there wasn’t a sizable black community living in it? Culturally, economically etc.
For clarification: does this imply there had never been a significant black community, or that the black community left at some point in time?
No rock ‘n’ roll.
A cross between Texas and Canada?
There are lots of Black people in Texas.
That’s why we have to bring Canada in.
And no Soul Music.
Fear of an Irish Planet
Or jazz.
No jazz, r&b, rock-n-roll means that Latin music may have filled that gap, as it has made numerous essays into popular American music since the start of the 20th Century.
OP, do you mean North America or the United States? B/c there have been Black Africans in Canada almost as long as the U.S.; Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson’s lineage goes back to the Africans who emigrated to Nova Scotia.
Well I was thinking something along the lines of no Africans imported for slavery, so there never being a significant black community. That’s also why I asked for the economic differences.
The US specifically.
Got it!
Where all the white wimmin at?
I think hip hop would take a definite hit.
And without all those black slaves in the USA, would the Civil War fires get started? That would change a whole lot of things.
No slaves: different economy for Southern states, no Civil War so no reparations, no razing and rebuilding of the South…
The United States might be a significantly smaller country.
No large black population implies there was no mass slavery. Politicians of the slave states were one of the main proponents of western expansion - they wanted the belt of land from Texas to California as new territory for slavery. This map shows what Mexico looked like before we started taking land from them.
What about race relations? Without a large local ethnic group like African-Americans would things like segregation have lasted longer for other ethnic minorities and newly arrived immigrants?
There would be some Americans of African descent who immigrated to America but they would be a small minority in a predominantly European-American population. I think the best comparison would be with Asian-Americans - another non-white group that immigrated here from someplace other than Europe. There would be some individual prejudices but too small a population to lead to widespread institutionalized racism.
Chinese in particular lived through a considerable period of institutionalized racism.
I think you’re right in that there would be nothing but a shadow of Jim Crow type oppression.
Oh… almost certainly no Civil War. Probably some other conflict based on two or more factions of states getting their ya-yas out.
There would be other social and cultural divisions that would rise to take the same place. The overall amount of bigotry would remain just about the same.
If everyone had the same skin color, we’d discriminate on the basis of hair color, or height, or handedness.