Our NBA games would really suck
Why? They might have enslaved native Americans instead, or brought in Chinese workers. Or, if America hadn’t won independence, more British criminals.
Yes, but we wouldn’t know any better so we’d still think they were …good? -ish?
I don’t think the US would be nearly as wealthy as it is today; w/o the population of blacks who worked for free during slavery, then for cheaper during Jim Crow and even in the North after the Great Migration, there wouldn’t have been the basis of wealth for some of the richest families in the States to have grown from. So along w/ a previous point about smaller population overall than we have at present, I believe there’d be less money overall as well.
Likewise, fields such as technology and medicine wouldn’t be as advanced today w/o the innovations of people like George Washington Carver and Charles Drew.
Well, there’s always the Irish.
Without slavery the south wouldn’t have had to create an ideology of repression. Slavery seems like domestic violence, you mistreat someone then you have to convince yourself they deserve it and/or you become paranoid about retaliation, leading to more abuse and more attempts to justify/paranoia. So the south would probably not be the same culturally.
Plus with politics racial resentment makes up a big part of our voting habits. With that gone though, I have no idea what would happen.
I assume we would culturally be more like Canada with no black population, but more aggressive still. No people who we mistreat, then fear will retaliate against us, so we mistreat them more, wash/rinse/repeat.
Slave-free northern states outperformed the southern states economically by a fairly wide margin. People with the freedom to initiate and innovate will always progress faster than a society tied to class, land ownership and agriculture. Without slaves to depend on - and dependent upon them in return - southernors might have developed a more pronounced entrepreneurial and industrial culture which would have benefited the nation on the whole.
I gotta say the the gastronomic landscape would be bleak and without shape or form without black folk. Barbecue in particular maybe would not exist without the contribution of people operating on the necessity of making crappy, tough, disposable cuts tender and toothsome. I know how passionate most are about their barbecue, but honestly, would we even have it without black people?
No peanut butter. I’m out.
I agree with the idea that our society would be more similar to Canada: a ton of white people living with a small population of voluntary black immigrants. I also agree that the small number of black people who immigrated here would be treated and viewed similar to how Asian immigrants are viewed.
You probably would not see so much focus on race in pop culture. I’m sure that discrimination would still happen, but it wouldn’t be based on skin color. For example, you’d see more of things like how Brits have their weird hang up about “gingers”, more class-based discrimination, etc.
It would have come up from the barbacoa of Central or South America w/ those immigrating populations, I’m sure.
This assumes that, absent Blacks, there wouldn’t be another (non-racial) underclass of people needing to make do - which is clearly not the case, lots of US ethnic foods, using cheaper cuts, have little to do with Blacks - Cajun, Mexican, Appalachian…
I’d think that without Blacks, there might be a larger immigrant population form South/Central America, and they have a vibrant barbecue tradition down there, as well, as Nawth Chucka said.
Or that a different group was enslaved - Native Americans seems the most likely target.
This interests me. Why were black people shipped all the way from Africa for slavery when Americans could just enslaved captured N.A POW’s.
I’ve read that Native Americans weren’t well suited for slavery because they were susceptible to European diseases that would have wiped them out (even more so than they were) in slavery conditions. You just couldn’t get the large numbers of slaves needed.
The problem with enslaving Native Americans was there were too many of them around. If you raided nearby villages and gathered up slaves, you could expect those slaves were going to rise up, kill you and your family, and run off to join some tribe. And attacking those tribes for slaves meant that you’d have to maintain a strong well-patrolled border.
It was a lot easier with Africans. You could pay some tribes to do the raiding and collect the slaves from other tribes for you. You then bought the slaves and took them to America. These Africans were all mixed together from different tribes and completely cut off from their homeland. There was nowhere for them to run to where they wouldn’t be obvious fugitives.