It’s evil?
Opens door and lets slaves go free
And they’d be wrong. Because gods had nothing to do with the harvest or anything. Don’t judge people based on their own flawed criteria. We know blacks are not non-human, we know gods don’t give a damn if you sacrificed to them, and we know that there are more differences genetically within races than between races.
The point where one knows slavery is evil is when one won’t do the work, but then forces someone else to do it under penalty of pain or death. Cicero wouldn’t need to feel altruistic about being humane to his slaves if his slaves could simply walked away from harsh treatment, or treated him the same way. This kind of faultless slavery where one is a slave simply because of his birth or location has been and will always be evil, and people should have known better. It doesn’t compare to prison since prison is simply where you go when you actually do something that deserves it. We may argue about the harshness of the punishment, but all punishment in the history of the world would be meaningless if people could simply decide not to be punished. Prison is not slavery because you deserve it. It is miles away from the kind of slavery we are talking about
Unless I’ve missed it, nobody in the thread addressed the where of the question.
If you were a moderately-educated person raised in, say mid-1800s Philadelphia, you’d be quite familiar with the differing arguments about race. You saw and heard talk of racial equality in the media. Moreover, you’d have seen free blacks functioning in society, and would have at least heard of black authors and inventors.
If you were a typical rural Southern US farmer in the same period, your access to diverse viewpoints on the topic was rather limited to say the least. You would likely never have even seen a free black, let alone one that had anything like an education. Intelligent slaves unable to escape found it prudent to hide their intellect. Thus, most all of what rural white southerners saw confirmed most all of what they were told. It seems harsh to expect otherwise from them.
Thus, the idea of drawing a chronological line in history is pointless. For an educated Bostonian, the line must be placed in a far, far different place than it is for an ignorant Kentuckian.
I suspect that when North Korea finally implodes and millions of people fed lies for decades are finally exposed to reality, we will be amazed to find that many of them really did come to believe a lot of what they are told. And that some of them will continue to, in the face of reality.