Good points…in 1776, the Southern states were the richest ones. By 1830 or so, the Northern ones were. the answer was industrialization and technology. Good point about public schools-the south had a labor force that was illiterate and hence difficult to train.
Why isn't the "Cornerstone Speech" used to shut down "The Civil War was about economics" apologists?
Nope. Look up racism in a dictionary.
But as far as your example, a society could have race-based slavery with no racism at all. If society A (let’s call them Spartans) enslaves race B (let’s call them Helots) because they want agricultural workers so all the Spartans can be soldiers, there’s no racism there unless there is the BELIEF that traits inhere in races (usually coupled with the belief that one race is superior). If the Spartans all concede that Helots are their equals, but they want slaves for their economic value anyway, there’s no racism. There’s certainly RACIAL DISCRIMINATION, but that’s not racism as racism is a belief and discrimination is an action.
I realize that racial discrimination is usually correlated with racism, but it doesn’t have to be. Schools sometimes institute programs for one race that are laudable, or at least innocuous, and not racist at all.
Looked up – according to various dictionaries, racism can be beliefs, actions, assertions, etc. Enslaving black people is more racist than using racial slurs, even if both are racist. The South’s racism was worse overall than the North’s racism.
Even if we ignore the silly etymological stuff about the word “racism”, the South was a lot worse then the North for black people – and that’s what really matters when comparing them. A black person was treated better in most of the North than anywhere in the South. Less slavery, and less brutality – so less bad stuff against black people in the North.
Feel free to characterize it as racism or not racism, but the South was worse for black people than most places in the North.
And as the Cornerstone Speech itself says, the basis of African slavery in the states was that blacks were so inferior that the only possible way they could be part of a civilization was as slaves.
Southerners didn’t hate blacks- as long as they remained docile, obedient and absolutely in submission to whites. The moment any black person declared that they were a person with rights equal to white person’s, the response was vitriolic, homicidal hatred. Northerners at least believed that blacks had the same moral standing in the eyes of God, and therefore at a minimum deserved not to be robbed of their labor.
A fun exercise it to imagine how history would’ve unfolded had the Confederacy won. The Emancipation Proclamation would’ve become null and void, and well, let’s leave the rest to your imagination…
Another what-if I’ve wondered about is if the boll weevil had arrived in the south by the 1820s, decimating cotton growing and making slavery a much less profitable enterprise.
Now all we need is a Delorean, a flux capacitor and about 100,000 boll weevils!
There might have been a huge spike in the market for sausages with now-racist names. :eek:
OK, I’m whooshed…
Yeh, me too. ???
I have no idea where you found such a definition, and to maintain that you found several certainly strains credulity. They were not the Oxford English or Merriam-Webster Dictionaries. Those both make clear that racism is a belief.
I’m no apologist for slavery, as you are for Northern racism. I don’t think slavery was ennobling, or “better” than working in a Northern mine or factory. But you lose the argument when you claim the South was more racist; it was not. The Northerners’ hearts were no different from the Southerners’: they both maintained blacks were inferior and subordinate to whites.
I will certainly concede that I would prefer to be beaten in a race riot over being enslaved. I presume most black people would agree with me. That does not lessen the harm from being beaten in a race riot, nor the guilt of those responsible.
If you want to argue,“They’re grandpappies did MORE HARM than ours did because theirs owned slaves and ours just burned a few crosses.” I will happily concede the point. But if you insist on claiming that Southerners were MORE RACIST than Northerners, you’re wrong.
Dictionaries often have more than one definition because words can be used for multiple meanings.
For example, Merriam Webster includes “poor treatment of or violence against people because of their race” and “racial prejudice or discrimination”, in addition to ‘belief’ definitions. There are many others.
I’m not an apologist either – Northern racism was despicable and disgusting, and only exceeded overall by Southern racism. Northern racism was terrible, awful, evil, disgusting, etc., and Southern racism was worse.
Their hearts were different in many states on the issue of slavery – and no slavery is better and less racist than slavery.
Really, no slavery is better than slavery. Having some states with no slavery is better than having slavery in every state. Including slavery and white supremacism in one’s founding documents and reasons for existence is worse than not doing so.
Then I don’t think you know much about being enslaved, since it typically lasted a lifetime and involved beatings and much worse (including likely rape if you’re female). I’d easily pick being beaten, and so would the black people in my immediate family and neighbors whom I’ve asked.
Southerners did more harm (which is far more important than beliefs) than Northerners to black people, overall. Further, after slavery Southerners (white Southerners, anyway) continued to oppress and discriminate against black people more than Northerners (though it definitely existed everywhere, just to a greater degree in the South), including segregation, Jim Crow, voting suppression, banning interracial marriage, and other disgusting acts for up to a century after slavery ended.
So it’s not just slavery – it’s the century afterwards (and perhaps even longer). And many or most Southern white people refuse to accept how recently the South, and Southern culture and tradition, were truly an evil and oppressive.
You think cross burning is more of a northern thing? Really?
Michigan… Mississippi… kinda sound similar. If you squint.
“Lighting” (not burning) the cross came into vogue after the 1915 movie, “Birth of a Nation.” In the 1920’s, Indiana had the highest Klan participation in the nation, and the Ku Klux Klan had a nationwide, not just Southern, following. Michigan had 80,000 Klan members, 40,000 of whom lived in Detroit.
Like I said (wrote) above, we Yankees had more racism because we had more racists. But, yeah, racism was, and is, worse down South because slavery.
Here’s the link, the relevant parts are under the heading, “The Second Klan”:
Hey guys, I think he’s getting it! Though it was about far more than slavery – lynchings, segregation, Jim Crow, anti-interracial-marriage laws, voting suppression, and the like were all more prevalent in Southern states than in Northern states.
Cite? Or is it one of those things, like the Klan being a Southern thing, that doesn’t require any proof because we all know it’s true?
Here, here, here, and here; all of these were significantly more prevalent in Southern states than in non-Southern states, though they existed in many places.
So according to your own cites, there were MORE LYNCHINGS in the West, MORE ANTI-MISCEGENATION laws in the West and Plains, and MORE SEGREGATION in the North, West, and Plains (de facto), but the Southerners were MORE RACIST, right? You’re hilarious.
Well, hey, the South still wins for slavery and Jim Crow.
But really, don’t we all already know that Southerners are just a bunch of toothless, in-bred, morons with guns, Bibles (King James Versions), and Confederate Flags? Let’s not let some silly facts stop us from ridiculing them. If all else fails we can always scream, “SLAVERY!”