I believe both statements are true. The wealthy based an economic system on slave labor, and racism provided for the lowest social class to feel superior to someone.
The South felt strongly enough about slavery that they fought a war about it. By all accounts they were obsessed with it. And if they’d won independence, the “virtues” of slavery would have become part of their founding national identity. And it was already central to their religion - as I understand, people travelling north and going to church were surprised to learn that Christianity actually had positions on other subjects than the defense of slavery. I believe that they would have clung self destructively to slavery until they had no choice. The only reason I don’t think that they would have slavery to the present day ( you could still make a profit with a network of slave brothels, for example ) is that the rest of the world would economically & politically if not militarily have strangled them into submission on the subject by now.
As for the economics, as I recall it was already known pre-Civil War that slavery was bad for the economy as a whole, regardless of how it benefited a few rich people. They were simply in denial of it; slavery had long since become an ideological/religious commitment. A fanatical one.
Surely that is an overstatement.
Here’s a question: Is slavery ultimately even more of an economic failure because it resists corporatization? After all, slaves were, to my knowledge, only owned by individuals/families in the US, not by corporations. Granted, many of these families were quite wealthy, but the wealth you can gather together by forming a corporation is much greater and more flexible. The family-slave connection would likely make forming corporations and gathering workers far more complicated. Each owner would have to allocate a specific number of slaves, as well as basic operating capital, and then the corporation would have to pay out/provide room and board … to the slaves? To the slaveowners? What would be the practicalities of sending your slaves off to a distant factory and hoping that someone else keeps them in line, keeps them from running off, and treats them well enough that your “chattel” isn’t damaged?
I’ve read in the past that was true ( at least of some people; I doubt it was universal ); at this late date ascertaining the truth of the matter would be difficult. Remember that literacy and personally being able to read the Bible wasn’t as common then ( and Catholics weren’t supposed to do so at all IIRC ); if the local preacher spent all his time harping on slavery, then that’s what you’d know. But from everything I’ve read over the years, by the Civil War slavery had become an all consuming obsession in the South. The idea that the war was about state’s rights is historical revisionism by apologists for the South.
I will buy that.
I agree that Southern society was racist. But I don’t think it was racist just for the point of being racist (if you can see the distinction I’m making).
Besides racism doesn’t require slavery. White Americans hated Indians and Asians and other minorities but they didn’t see any need to enslave them. And as you pointed out, whites were able to oppress blacks by other means for decades after slavery was eliminated.
So I think it’s likely that Southern plantation owners would have put their economic self-interest above any need to maintain slavery as a matter of principle.
… who hated whites right back. And, no, the whites didn’t start it, either. The attitude that racial prejudice is somehow unique or unusual to white people is itself viciously racist.
As was Northern.
I agree that racism was unfortunately not limited to any particular region or race. But the reality is that a person in a minority is more likely to suffer from racism than a person in the majority. And most racism is directed towards the people who are around you - and prior to the 20th century, most blacks lived in the south so most anti-black racism was in the south. Northerners kept busy hating Jews and Catholics instead.
Well, damn. I was about to go off on one of my favorite rants, but you had to go and be reasonable. Ruined my whole morning, you did.
Yes, they did. They invented racism by inventing the very concept of race ( as opposed to ethnic groups ). The ancient Romans, for example, might have been bigoted and brutal against non-Romans, but that would have included white non-Romans. The idea that skin color was something more than just skin color hadn’t been invented; it’s wouldn’t have occurred to them than white non-Romans were “their people” in any way, nor would it have occurred to them to persecute someone just for skin color. And even if they bothered classifying people by skin color they likely wouldn’t have come up with the same categories as we have.
The people of the distant past cared about “Roman”, “Egyptian”, “Nubian”, “Assyrian”, and so on; not white, black, Asian, and so on.
There are definitely primary accounts of race making major differences. In Rome for example, white male slaves who were made into eunuchs usually had only their testicles cut off while black male slaves were often emasculated because they were feared more, while Indians and Jews were restricted to particular ghettoes of Rome. Germans meanwhile provided the imperial guard in some dynasties (just as Vikings and their descendants would in Byzantium). They weren’t color blind by any means.
Please pinpoint the exact group of whites who invented the concept of race and present documentary evidence showing when and how it was done. While you’re at it, please explain how it is that non-Westerners such as the Chinese and the Arabs were keenly aware of race and attributed different qualities to different races.
I am highly skeptical, much amused, and somewhat disgusted by the notion that nobody noticed or attached any importance to race until the evil white people invented racism.
Perhaps the misunderstanding here has something to do with the fact, that the “evil” white people updated their racism during the scientific revolution to scientific racism, which created the racistic vocabulary today. This vocabulary and the pseudoscience surrounding it gave racism that extra kick. Somehow it was proven that the perceived superiority of white folk was actually true. This concerns the discussion of westerners inventing racism as such and not the subject.
Now, comparing slave economy’s pros and cons aside, there are two things which come to mind about this thought-experiment. First, the thing about WWI. While it is of course difficult to say, whether Germany would have collapsed or not without US participation, if we still suppose that the US participation had this effect, I think the outcome of that war could have been different. First of all, the German victory over the Russians, which they didn’t have time to exploit thoroughly on the supply side could have given the Kaiser’s economy the needed boost to survive allied embargo from the colonies. Ukraine was under German control and had vast agricultural potential and the conquered areas have other resources too which might have helped. Though perhaps not. Wouldn’t have helped with rubber at least.
The second thing would be the effect on Latin America where the influence of the United States has been very strong for at least a hundred years. And it might be argued that that influence has not always been of the most beneficial kind either. Would Latin America be more powerful and wealthier, or worse or would nothing have changed because of this. If the CSA had splintered even more after succesful secession, what would have Mexico done? What about Cuba? Would it still be part of Spain?
Almost all of the influence of the USA on Mexico and South America has been destabilizing, so any reduction in power of the USA would almost certainly increase the power and influence of Latin America, although some nations may be reduced in power as they were swallowed up by their neighbors. The only possible exception would be if the Confederacy was even more interventionist than the USA, but I don’t think they would be as effective. We’d probably see a stronger Mexico that had come out even or even ahead of a conflict or two with the Confederacy, and at least one nation in South America being as powerful or more so than the USA.
Do you have a cite for any of that? I wasn’t aware of any racial distinctions regarding the treatment Roman eunuchs, but admittedly, I don’t know much about the topic.
As for Indians and Jews being restricted to particular ghettoes in ancient Rome, I’ve never heard of that. I didn’t know there were enough Indians in ancient Rome to have a specific district, and communities of Roman Jews could be found in Trastevere (where there was a Jewish catacomb in Monteverde), in the Campus Martius (there was a synagogue there), the Subura, and the Porta Capena (there was a Jewish catacomb there, and Juvenal complained about Jewish beggars on the Appian Way). And, as far as I know, there were no laws restricting Jews to or from living in any particular areas of Rome until Pope Paul IV established the Roman Ghetto in 1555.
Well, I don’t know about a “racistic vocabulary.” It’s hardly surprising that European anthropologists would come up with some quaint notions in the infancy of that science, just as chemists had their phlogiston and astronomers had their ether. We smile at them filling skulls with bird shot to measure cranial capacity, but it seemed perfectly reasonable to them at the time. Still, it exasperates me no end when people talk as though white Westerners were the only people in the world who ever saw themselves as superior and used their perceived superiority to justify subjugating other peoples. The Arabs, the Japanese, the Aztecs and who knows how many others all went forth to build empires and believed themselves perfectly entitled to subdue and rule other tribes, kingdoms and nations. The only real difference is that Westerners tried to find scientific support for their belief in their superiority. 'Nuff said. We’re dangerously close to hijacking this thread.
Well, there was talk in the Confederacy of conquering Mexico and Cuba after the war. Clearly there were Southerners with dreams of empire. Mexico might have acquired a new potential enemy in the Confederacy; but at the same time, the Mexicans might have been able to play the Union and the Confederacy off against each other. But then, without Union support for Juarez, perhaps Maximilian I might have made a go of it, and France would have re-established a significant sphere of influence in the Americas.
Like I said, we can speculate like this all day, but nobody can really prove anything. It’s sort of interesting, but it’s like arguing about whether or not Captain Marvel can beat up Superman.*
You are a master of understatement.
*He can.