Oh, please. So you have a National Identity Card and then if need be you check that your name and card-ID in any other document matches your Card's name and card-ID, and that the Card's photo matches your face. It's easy, really. So no need to go filling up your race in any document at all. Unless you need that racial information for ulterior motives (and suspiciously evil motives, I may add).
The US has no national identity card. Such a card would be considered an unacceptable violation of civil liberties. Nor do we have any central repository of identification information for the same reason. And this creates unique problems and challenges which require unique solutions.
As for any evil motives, I think you'd have to provide some evidence. I've lived here all my life and I have yet to notice any. Sixty years ago down south, perhaps, when the law deprived people of their civil rights on the basis of race, but I'm not aware of any provision in American law that currently discriminates against people on the base of race or ethnicity.
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Yeah, and I guess it would be impossible to mine such data to deny bank loans to those coming from "racially different" neighborhoods, etc. I've seen documentaries about that nice practice in the USA, and I'm sure that this "racial data" can be used in many more "creative" ways.
When you walk into the bank office, or the real estate office, they can see what race you are. So yes, redlining and housing discrimination do occur -- but not because of any government requirement to collect information which is readily ascertainable with a glance. On the contrary, that information is used by the government to discourage such illegal practices, by for example noting that at a given bank black people with a certain credit risk receive are approved for mortgages less often than white people with the same risk. Or that 10% of the qualified job applicants at Company X are black, but only 3% are offered jobs. The government programs to do this have been extremely successful, although, of course, perfection can never be achieved.
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Also, what is this thing of "insuring" minorities representation in Congress. A democracy either works or else it is not a democracy. People are free to choose any party which suits them, or there is no democracy. I find highly suspicious those "racial quotas" in Congress; in other settings which are not democratic by nature I can understand (like work, alumni admittance, etc.), but in Congress??!! Is not that a tacit admission that there is no liberty to choose your representatives? I find it so.
There aren't any racial quotas, and there's no mandate that people elect someone of a certain race, or anyone at all. What these laws do is insure that districts aren't apportioned by racist state legislatures down South in such a way that minorities can't be elected to Congress.
Suppose for example that there are five contiguous neighborhoods in a racist Southern state. One neighborhood is all black, the other four all white. If you assign each neighborhood a congressional district, there's a good chance that they'll send one black person to Congress, and four white people, because the people of each neighborhood will vote for someone who represents them and their interests. But if the districts are laid out intentionally to run across neighborhood boundaries, there will be five districts each of which has 20% black voters and 80% white voters. Then the representatives in Congress will probably be five white guys, and regardless of race, will represent the interests of the white majority rather than the black minority. This isn't Democratic, and it's contrary to the purpose of the House of Representatives, which is supposed to represent as closely as practical the people of the country.
The southern states had a long and tawdry history of finding underhanded ways to deprive black people of the vote, through intimidation, poll taxes, literacy tests, and the like. Remedies such as this one have been extremely successful in restoring to black southerners the civil rights that were taken from them after the failure of Reconstruction in the 19th century.
Why do you keep blaiming the south for all the past wrongs done to blacks?
Oh, please. So you have a National Identity Card and then if need be you check that your name and card-ID in any other document matches your Card's name and card-ID, and that the Card's photo matches your face. It's easy, really. So no need to go filling up your race in any document at all. Unless you need that racial information for ulterior motives (and suspiciously evil motives, I may add).
The US has no national identity card. Such a card would be considered an unacceptable violation of civil liberties. Nor do we have any central repository of identification information for the same reason. And this creates unique problems and challenges which require unique solutions.
As for any evil motives, I think you'd have to provide some evidence. I've lived here all my life and I have yet to notice any. Sixty years ago down south, perhaps, when the law deprived people of their civil rights on the basis of race, but I'm not aware of any provision in American law that currently discriminates against people on the base of race or ethnicity.
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Yeah, and I guess it would be impossible to mine such data to deny bank loans to those coming from "racially different" neighborhoods, etc. I've seen documentaries about that nice practice in the USA, and I'm sure that this "racial data" can be used in many more "creative" ways.
When you walk into the bank office, or the real estate office, they can see what race you are. So yes, redlining and housing discrimination do occur -- but not because of any government requirement to collect information which is readily ascertainable with a glance. On the contrary, that information is used by the government to discourage such illegal practices, by for example noting that at a given bank black people with a certain credit risk receive are approved for mortgages less often than white people with the same risk. Or that 10% of the qualified job applicants at Company X are black, but only 3% are offered jobs. The government programs to do this have been extremely successful, although, of course, perfection can never be achieved.
Quote:
Also, what is this thing of "insuring" minorities representation in Congress. A democracy either works or else it is not a democracy. People are free to choose any party which suits them, or there is no democracy. I find highly suspicious those "racial quotas" in Congress; in other settings which are not democratic by nature I can understand (like work, alumni admittance, etc.), but in Congress??!! Is not that a tacit admission that there is no liberty to choose your representatives? I find it so.
There aren't any racial quotas, and there's no mandate that people elect someone of a certain race, or anyone at all. What these laws do is insure that districts aren't apportioned by racist state legislatures down South in such a way that minorities can't be elected to Congress.
Suppose for example that there are five contiguous neighborhoods in a racist Southern state. One neighborhood is all black, the other four all white. If you assign each neighborhood a congressional district, there's a good chance that they'll send one black person to Congress, and four white people, because the people of each neighborhood will vote for someone who represents them and their interests. But if the districts are laid out intentionally to run across neighborhood boundaries, there will be five districts each of which has 20% black voters and 80% white voters. Then the representatives in Congress will probably be five white guys, and regardless of race, will represent the interests of the white majority rather than the black minority. This isn't Democratic, and it's contrary to the purpose of the House of Representatives, which is supposed to represent as closely as practical the people of the country.
The southern states had a long and tawdry history of finding underhanded ways to deprive black people of the vote, through intimidation, poll taxes, literacy tests, and the like. Remedies such as this one have been extremely successful in restoring to black southerners the civil rights that were taken from them after the failure of Reconstruction in the 19th century.
Why do you keep blaiming the south for all the past wrongs done to blacks?
As if the north was/is more tolerant
Because the north was more tolerant. That's not the same as saying that there wasn't racism up north or tolerance down south, and I didn't mean to imply that. It's rather I think that racist institutions were slower to fade down south and more deeply entrenched in everyday life and the law -- a matter of degree. This difference wasn't subtle, e.g., when I was younger, black people couldn't marry whites, attend integrated public schools, and vote down south. But neither was it night and day, and I think you're right to call attention to that, even if I don't agree that there was no difference. E.g., the first two institutions were present in the north as well, but in subtler form, social rather than legal disapproval of mixed-race couples and the de facto segregation enforced by public schools that served segregated neighborhoods rather than the de jure segregation of schools in the South.
I think you can observe the same phenomenon today with gay rights -- laws and attitudes are changing both up north and down south, but proceeding more rapidly up north and with less organized and vocal opposition.
Why do you keep blaiming the south for all the past wrongs done to blacks? As if the north was/is more tolerant
Because the north was more tolerant. ...
I think that JoshH is relating to his own personal experiences, or those told to him by his parents and grandparents. Most people have no grasp of the past. The time before living memory does not exist in their minds. To them, "the past" is a few years a go. "The distant past" is a few decades ago. "The ancient past" is everything before WW-II. JoshH apparently is unaware that public schools were fully integrated in 1873 Louisiana, and he has apparently never heard of sundown towns nor of the consequent creation of the north's urban ghettos.
He will probably be stunned to learn what Alexis de Tocqueville saw. Tocqueville was a French political scientist whose government sent him on a nine-month study of the American penal system in 1831-32. De Tocqueville took advantage of his visit to write Democracy in America, a combination travelogue and social commentary on the United States, which he published upon returning to Europe. He wrote:
Tocqueville wrote:
Race prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abol-ished slavery than in those where it still exists, and nowhere is it more intolerant than in those states where slavery was never known.
Tocqueville's opinion is substantiated by census-recorded intermarriage rates--higher in the antebellum south than in the north. (To which most academics reply "Intermarriage is the ultimate racism because it means the deliberate genocide of an entire race.")
I think that JoshH is relating to his own personal experiences, or those told to him by his parents and grandparents. Most people have no grasp of the past. The time before living memory does not exist in their minds. "The past" is a few years a go. "The distant past" is a few decades ago. "The ancient past" is everything before WW-II. JoshH apparently is unaware that public schools were fully integrated in 1873 Louisiana and he has apparently never heard sundown towns nor of the consequent creation of the north's urban ghettos.
While I lack anything like your historical knowledge, Frank, I *am* like everyone aware that for example the North abolished slavery years before the South, of the failure of reconstruction, and so forth. Are you suggesting that subtler historical phenomena outweigh these obvious historical differences?
Also, unless I understand wrongly, racial institutions in Louisiana were substantially different than that of non-Francophone areas of the United States.
fwsweet wrote:
He will probably be stunned to learn what Alexis de Tocqueville saw. Tocqueville was a French political scientist whose government sent him on a nine-month study of the American penal system in 1831-32. De Tocqueville took advantage of his visit to write Democracy in America, a combination travelogue and social commentary on the United States, which he published upon returning to Europe. He wrote:
Tocqueville wrote:
Race prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abol-ished slavery than in those where it still exists, and nowhere is it more intolerant than in those states where slavery was never known.
Tocqueville's opinion is substantiated by census-recorded intermarriage rates--higher in the antebellum south than in the north. (To which most academics reply "Intermarriage is the ultimate racism because it means the deliberate genocide of an entire race.")
Do those intermarriage rates take into account the differing percentage of blacks in the population?
That being said, with all due respect to de Tocqueville, I would argue that slavery was a far more deeply racist phenomenon than anything practiced in the states that had abolished it. Still, as always in the case of de Tocqueville, it's a canny observation. One might make the same observation about the Southern states after abolition, that an apparatus of terror and apartheid was developed in the wake of slavery.
I *am* like everyone aware that for example the North abolished slavery years before the South.... Are you suggesting that subtler historical phenomena outweigh these obvious historical differences?
No subtlety. You are equating slavery with racism. Slavery and racism are unrelated phenomena. If you are at all interested in learning about slavery as compared to "racial" intolerance in the antebellum era, I urge you to read Slavery and the "Race" Notion.
Frank W Sweet wrote:
A question often asked by folks interested in the history of the “race” notion is why Northern Whites fought for a “race” they considered inferior. The answer is that they did no such thing. In the Midwestern heartland of Abraham Lincoln’s new Republican party, voters opposed the spread of slavery precisely because they wanted to keep despised Blacks away. They wanted to preserve the United States a White man’s nation forever.
A mirror-image question is why Southerners fought to preserve slavery when so many were biracial. Again, the two issues are skewed. Most biracial slave traders believed slavery was good because, among other benefits, it led to genetic amalgamation (as in Iberia, Mexico, or Argentina), and so would lead to America rejecting the “race” notion.
It is hard to get your brain around these concepts because, when we were kids, we learned in school that slavery and “race” were somehow connected. And so, as adults, we are surprised to learn that whether a person supported the “race” notion is separate from whether he supported slavery. We automatically ascribe “racial” motives to slaveowners, and color-blind motives to abolitionists, because slavery and “race” go together in our minds. But slavery and “race” could be very differently related in the mind of a 19th century person. To see this, contrast the beliefs of Abraham Lincoln and Anna Kingsley. ...
....
[please read the entire essay]
For another example that slavery per se is irrelevant to the color line, consider Latin America. Slavery (1) started in Latin America over a century before it began in Anglophone North America. (2) It permeated society far more (out of the 11 million slaves carried across the Atlantic, less than half a million wound up in British North Amerca). And (3) it lasted much longer (ending in Brazil in the late 1880s). And yet only someone who sees the absence of an endogamous barrier as "racism" would suggest that that "racial" intolerance was worse in Latin America.
Consider that virtually all Latin Americans have slave ancestors from the 16th - 19th centuries. And yet they do not dwell on it. After all, they have slave-owning ancestors as well. Consider that virtually all White Americans have slave ancestors from Roman times. And yet they do not dwell on it.
You want to talk about Reconstruction? Okay. Let's finish with antebellum. Then we can talk about Reconstruction.
I *am* like everyone aware that for example the North abolished slavery years before the South.... Are you suggesting that subtler historical phenomena outweigh these obvious historical differences?
No subtlety. You are equating slavery with racism. Slavery and racism are unrelated phenomena. If you are at all interested in learning about slavery as compared to "racial" intolerance in the antebellum era, I urge you to read Slavery and the "Race" Notion.
Frank W Sweet wrote:
A question often asked by folks interested in the history of the “race” notion is why Northern Whites fought for a “race” they considered inferior. The answer is that they did no such thing. In the Midwestern heartland of Abraham Lincoln’s new Republican party, voters opposed the spread of slavery precisely because they wanted to keep despised Blacks away. They wanted to preserve the United States a White man’s nation forever.
A mirror-image question is why Southerners fought to preserve slavery when so many were biracial. Again, the two issues are skewed. Most biracial slave traders believed slavery was good because, among other benefits, it led to genetic amalgamation (as in Iberia, Mexico, or Argentina), and so would lead to America rejecting the “race” notion.
It is hard to get your brain around these concepts because, when we were kids, we learned in school that slavery and “race” were somehow connected. And so, as adults, we are surprised to learn that whether a person supported the “race” notion is separate from whether he supported slavery. We automatically ascribe “racial” motives to slaveowners, and color-blind motives to abolitionists, because slavery and “race” go together in our minds. But slavery and “race” could be very differently related in the mind of a 19th century person. To see this, contrast the beliefs of Abraham Lincoln and Anna Kingsley. ...
....
[please read the entire essay]
For another example that slavery per se is irrelevant to the color line, consider Latin America. Slavery (1) started in Latin America over a century before it began in Anglophone North America. (2) It permeated society far more (out of the 11 million slaves carried across the Atlantic, less than half a million wound up in British North Amerca). And (3) it lasted much longer (ending in Brazil in the late 1880s). And yet only someone who sees the absence of an endogamous barrier as "racism" would suggest that that "racial" intolerance was worse in Latin America.
Consider that virtually all Latin Americans have slave ancestors from the 16th - 19th centuries. And yet they do not dwell on it. After all, they have slave-owning ancestors as well. Consider that virtually all White Americans have slave ancestors from Roman times. And yet they do not dwell on it.
You want to talk about Reconstruction? Okay. Let's finish with antebellum. Then we can talk about Reconstruction.
Yeah, it seems Americans are obsessed about the topics of slavery and reparations but we are not the only ones,see the 2 part Youtube video : ''Paying for the Past'' (Reparations)
Yeah, it seems Americans are obsessed about the topics of slavery and reparations but we are not the only ones,see the 2 part Youtube video : ''Paying for the Past'' (Reparations)
Excellent example! Thank you. Part One talks about Brit mistreatment of free A-As after the Rev War. Part Two talks about Canadian mistreatment of free A-As in the 1960s. Neither video contains any content at all about slavery. And yet the voice over hammers on "slavery" over and over. The word "slavery" is used again and again as nothing more than a synonym for "mistreatment of A-As".
Yeah, it seems Americans are obsessed about the topics of slavery and reparations but we are not the only ones,see the 2 part Youtube video : ''Paying for the Past'' (Reparations)
Excellent example! Thank you. Part One talks about Brit mistreatment of free A-As after the Rev War. Part Two talks about Canadian mistreatment of free A-As in the 1960s. Neither video contains any content at all about slavery. And yet the voice over hammers on "slavery" over and over. The word "slavery" is used again and again as nothing more than a synonym for "mistreatment of A-As".
I could have swore that they mentioned slaves and free blacks
I *am* like everyone aware that for example the North abolished slavery years before the South.... Are you suggesting that subtler historical phenomena outweigh these obvious historical differences?
No subtlety. You are equating slavery with racism. Slavery and racism are unrelated phenomena. If you are at all interested in learning about slavery as compared to "racial" intolerance in the antebellum era, I urge you to read Slavery and the "Race" Notion.
Frank W Sweet wrote:
A question often asked by folks interested in the history of the “race” notion is why Northern Whites fought for a “race” they considered inferior. The answer is that they did no such thing. In the Midwestern heartland of Abraham Lincoln’s new Republican party, voters opposed the spread of slavery precisely because they wanted to keep despised Blacks away. They wanted to preserve the United States a White man’s nation forever.
A mirror-image question is why Southerners fought to preserve slavery when so many were biracial. Again, the two issues are skewed. Most biracial slave traders believed slavery was good because, among other benefits, it led to genetic amalgamation (as in Iberia, Mexico, or Argentina), and so would lead to America rejecting the “race” notion.
It is hard to get your brain around these concepts because, when we were kids, we learned in school that slavery and “race” were somehow connected. And so, as adults, we are surprised to learn that whether a person supported the “race” notion is separate from whether he supported slavery. We automatically ascribe “racial” motives to slaveowners, and color-blind motives to abolitionists, because slavery and “race” go together in our minds. But slavery and “race” could be very differently related in the mind of a 19th century person. To see this, contrast the beliefs of Abraham Lincoln and Anna Kingsley. ...
....
[please read the entire essay]
For another example that slavery per se is irrelevant to the color line, consider Latin America. Slavery (1) started in Latin America over a century before it began in Anglophone North America. (2) It permeated society far more (out of the 11 million slaves carried across the Atlantic, less than half a million wound up in British North Amerca). And (3) it lasted much longer (ending in Brazil in the late 1880s). And yet only someone who sees the absence of an endogamous barrier as "racism" would suggest that that "racial" intolerance was worse in Latin America.
Consider that virtually all Latin Americans have slave ancestors from the 16th - 19th centuries. And yet they do not dwell on it. After all, they have slave-owning ancestors as well. Consider that virtually all White Americans have slave ancestors from Roman times. And yet they do not dwell on it.
You want to talk about Reconstruction? Okay. Let's finish with antebellum. Then we can talk about Reconstruction.
You say that slavery and racism are unrelated phenomena. Yet couldn't it be said that a) theories of racial inferiority were developed or seized upon in part to provide justification for the Atlantic slave trade and b) that the racism of some white Americans was at least partly a consequence of observation of black people who had been kept ignorant by slavery?
A is I think a special case of the phenomenon whereby exploitation of a group is justified through an appeal to some supposed inferiority on its part, e.g., the inability of the native inhabitants of a European colony to govern themselves, or the damnation putatively in store for those who lack the supposed advantage of belief in Christ.
B, I believe, is a fairly common observation, in fact, I read an article about Lincoln's racism not long ago which asserted that his racism was at least in part a consequence of the fact that he had for most of his life been exposed to few educated black people, and pointed to his warm relationship with and admiration of Frederick Douglas as evidence that his attitudes might have been reshaped had he had that opportunity. I'm thinking too about a writing of Jefferson's questioning his previous beliefs about black inferiority, and even of the discussion in Plato of whether there are "natural" slaves.
So while I accept the proposition of your essay to the extent that moral opposition to slavery and belief in racial equality are incompletely correlated, I'm not convinced that they are orthogonal. Rather, I see racism as to some extent having originated as or been seized upon as a means of providing a moral defense for the exploitation of another group, and the institution of slavery, insofar as it deprived slaves of opportunities for education, as having made it less likely that whites would see blacks as their equals. Indeed, your own example of the mulatto slaveholders supports the proposition that racism was to some degree a consequence of ex post facto reasoning and confirmation bias, in that the mulatto slaveholders' advocacy of racial equality and non-race-based slavery would seem to be a consequence of their own interests as people of mixed race and slaveholders respectively; theories of racial inferiority would have held less utility overall to the mulatto slaveholder than the white one.
Your point about the absence of an endogamous barrier in Latin America is an interesting one. But I don't think anyone would suggest that slavery per se is a consequence of racism, given that it has been practiced within the same racial or ethnic group. Rather, it seems to me that, given the importance of the golden rule to social cohesion, exploitation has historically required some kind of group distinction between the exploiter and the exploited. Thus the slave might be a member of the class of criminals; a member of another tribe, nation, polis, ethnicity; a member of another race; a member of another class; a debtor; a heathen in need of salvation; a volunteer; etc. Frequently, that setting apart is complemented by a presumption of inferiority. In the case of the enslavement of Africans, race was for whites a convenient means of creating a morally acceptable separation between the exploiter and exploited, and so providing moral justification. So I see racism as having facilitated slavery, rather than created it.
I don't know why Latin American cultures, whether Spanish, Portuguese, or French, eschewed endogamy, but I can speculate that intermarriage discouraged the creation of some racist institutions. Or am I putting the chicken before the egg here? I lack the historical knowledge to know whether Latin Americans were more or less likely than Anglo Americans to use the supposition of racial inferiority as a moral justification for slavery, or to properly evaluate the relevant cultural differences between Latin colonialists and their British counterparts.
I might add, in regard to the statement of mine that you quoted above, that I see the abolition of slavery as essentially an economic phenomenon, a consequence of the transition from an agricultural model of labor to a capitalist one. The essential difference being that capitalism makes the laborer a participant in the market, while in slavery, only his employer is. I see capitalism in general, and its imperative to most efficiently utilize the labor force, as the primary force behind the progress of civil rights, the idea being that coarse historical groupings by race, gender, class, and so forth are being replaced by a system of increasingly ideal labor markets. The north, of course, industrialized before the south, and arguably had even before then had an agrarian system that was more akin to capitalism (free farmers rather than the plantations of the South or Latin America).
couldn't it be said that a) theories of racial inferiority were developed or seized upon in part to provide justification for the Atlantic slave trade and b) that the racism of some white Americans was at least partly a consequence of observation of black people who had been kept ignorant by slavery?
No. It could not. You persist in conceptualizing the unique form of chattel slavery practiced in the United States as definitive or typical. "Slavery" is nothing more than lifelong hereditary involuntary labor. In Latin-America (including Spanish Florida and the gulf coast):
Slaves had full citizenship rights, including the right to sue their owners or to file criminal charges against their owners.
Slave children were required to learn the three R's, and owners were legally required to make sure that this happened.
Slaves had the right to demand their freedom by presenting 5 percent of their market value and promising to pay the remainder over time. Slave owners had no choice in the matter.
Slaves were allowed to own slaves, and many did.
Once freed, former slaves continued as full members of society, with all civil rights.
If you cannot grasp that U.S. slavery was fundamentally different from slavery elsewhere, there is no point in talking about Lincoln, the color line or anything else that you want to blame on slavery per se. For more on this point (the odd U.S. propensity to blame slavery for its pathological racialism) see Slavery is Irrelevant.
In short:
Brazil had more slavery for longer than the U.S. but lacked an endogamous color line and no genetic enclave of mostly Afro ancestry ever formed.
Puerto Rico had more slavery for longer than the U.S. but lacked an endogamous color line and no genetic enclave of mostly Afro ancestry ever formed.
Cuba had more slavery for longer than the U.S. but lacked an endogamous color line and no genetic enclave of mostly Afro ancestry ever formed.
Venezuela had more slavery for longer than the U.S. but lacked an endogamous color line and no genetic enclave of mostly Afro ancestry ever formed.
The United States had less slavery for a shorter duration than Latin America but has enforced an endogamous color line since 1691. A genetic enclave of mostly Afro ancestry formed, was mistreated for three centuries, and is still maintained. From this, Americans conclude that the root of U.S. racialism is slavery, and that the color line itself was and is A Good Thing.
couldn't it be said that a) theories of racial inferiority were developed or seized upon in part to provide justification for the Atlantic slave trade and b) that the racism of some white Americans was at least partly a consequence of observation of black people who had been kept ignorant by slavery?
No. It could not. You persist in conceptualizing the unique form of chattel slavery practiced in the United States as definitive or typical. "Slavery" is nothing more than lifelong hereditary involuntary labor. In Latin-America (including Spanish Florida and the gulf coast):
Slaves had full citizenship rights, including the right to sue their owners or to file criminal charges against their owners.
Slave children were required to learn the three R's, and owners were legally required to make sure that this happened.
Slaves had the right to demand their freedom by presenting 5 percent of their market value and promising to pay the remainder over time. Slave owners had no choice in the matter.
Slaves were allowed to own slaves, and many did.
Once freed, former slaves continued as full members of society, with all civil rights.
If you cannot grasp that U.S. slavery was fundamentally different from slavery elsewhere, there is no point in talking about Lincoln, the color line or anything else that you want to blame on slavery per se. For more on this point (the odd U.S. propensity to blame slavery for its pathological racialism) see Slavery is Irrelevant.
In short:
Brazil had more slavery for longer than the U.S. but lacked an endogamous color line and no genetic enclave of mostly Afro ancestry ever formed.
Puerto Rico had more slavery for longer than the U.S. but lacked an endogamous color line and no genetic enclave of mostly Afro ancestry ever formed.
Cuba had more slavery for longer than the U.S. but lacked an endogamous color line and no genetic enclave of mostly Afro ancestry ever formed.
Venezuela had more slavery for longer than the U.S. but lacked an endogamous color line and no genetic enclave of mostly Afro ancestry ever formed.
The United States had less slavery for a shorter duration than Latin America but has enforced an endogamous color line since 1691. A genetic enclave of mostly Afro ancestry formed, was mistreated for three centuries, and is still maintained. From this, Americans conclude that the root of U.S. racialism is slavery, and that the color line itself was and is A Good Thing.
"U. S. slavery" was not fundamentally different from slavery elsewhere. It had local characteristics, but that has always been the case with slavery: Greek slavery differed from Roman slavery differed from Egyptian slavery, etc. Its essence was and always is involuntary servitude.
My understanding of slavery elsewhere in the Americas is that it was no less brutal than slavery in the United States, indeed, in at least some areas even more so, in that slaves were routinely worked to death.
You ask in your paper why Americans are so preoccupied with slavery. Several possible reasons come to mind. As I believe you yourself explained, endogamous barriers resulted in the perpetuation of distinct groups in the United States, meaning that, unlike in Latin America, most Americans do not have (or in many cases believe they do not have) slaves as ancestors. Those who do have slaves as ancestors are unlikely to feel guilt over slavery, and in nations where everyone does, it is hard too to find a surviving group to resent. Another is that slavery was the subject of great tension between the states, and the cause of the Civil War. For those reasons alone, it would be an imortant part of American history. But I believe that far and way the most important reason is that slavery so contradicts the principles of democracy and civil liberty that became central to this country's identity, and so firmly entrenched in the morals and ideals of its people. It is a blot on American history, not so much when seen in historical perspective (since other nations practiced slavery and the practice ended at very roughly the same time), but when compared against the new American ideals. Furthermore, because it persisted after the nation became a democracy, it cannot be ascribed to an intruding group, e.g., the Spaniards. It was an act of the American republic and, as such, American citizens feel a certain degree of responsibility for it.
You refer to "pathological racism" on the part of the United States, but it is hard to see how it is either more nor less pathological than tribal oppressions around the world, race-based or not. How is it any more pathological than the enslavement and extermination of Native Americans by the Spaniards, or the mass importation, after the Natives grew scarce, of Africans? How is it any more pathological than the ghettoization, explusions, and pogroms that afflicted European Jews, or the Holocaust? Than Apartheid in southern Africa? Than "No dogs or Chinese" colonialism, or the opium wars, or any of the other oppressions of empire, whether British, Russian, Chinese, or any other? The list of tribalist oppressions is fairly endless, and, unfortunately, shows no signs of being complete.
Nor do I see any evidence that racism directed against Africans is peculiar to the United States. I note for example that Osama Bin Laden habitually uses a word that means "Negro" as a synonym for "slave," and famously referred to Obama as a "house Negro." And the color-based distinctions made in Latin America, with all their apocryphal-Eskimo-describing-snow classifications, seem to me merely a different way to create racial hierarchies. Latin America did not ban exogamy, and that is interesting. But unless I'm missing something, I see no racial paradise. It is simply that the "pathological" system takes different forms, the forms having been determined by peculiarities of situation and history.
More to the point, your refutation of my assertions:
a) theories of racial inferiority were developed or seized upon in part to provide justification for the Atlantic slave trade and b) that the racism of some white Americans was at least partly a consequence of observation of black people who had been kept ignorant by slavery?
would seem to be refuted in part by your own statement that "The former position is evidenced by propaganda depicting African Americans as sub-humans, published by southern politicians in the tumultuous decade before the Civil War." That in the wake of slavery different systems developed in Latin American areas seems to me interesting and worthy of research, but I don't see that it precludes a casual link between slavery and racism, as opposed to pointing to cultural and practical differences of the sort that have created numerous divergences between Anglo-American and Latin-American society, and within those groupings as well, e..g, between the American North and the American South, not to mention the larger distincts such as French vs. Spanish.
And none of this affects my original assertion that American slavery was a racist institution. An institution that enslaves only those with some degree of African heritage can hardly be called anything else. Whatever slavery in the Americas was, it was never an equal opportunity employer.
From this, Americans conclude that the root of U.S. racialism is slavery, and that the color line itself was and is A Good Thing.
Quote:
Gallup's recent Minority Rights and Relations survey updated a long-term trend that asks Americans if they "approve or disapprove of marriages between blacks and whites."
More than three in four Americans say they approve of marriages between blacks and whites -- similar to the results measured in 2003 and 2004.
[quote="fwsweet"]No. It could not. You persist in conceptualizing the unique form of chattel slavery practiced in the United States as definitive or typical. "Slavery" is nothing more than lifelong hereditary involuntary labor. In Latin-America (including Spanish Florida and the gulf coast):
Slaves had full citizenship rights, including the right to sue their owners or to file criminal charges against their owners.
Slave children were required to learn the three R's, and owners were legally required to make sure that this happened.
Slaves had the right to demand their freedom by presenting 5 percent of their market value and promising to pay the remainder over time. Slave owners had no choice in the matter.
Slaves were allowed to own slaves, and many did.
Once freed, former slaves continued as full members of society, with all civil rights.
Really? Ive never heard or read of that. Care to steer me to some sources?
Edit. Hey Frank, i just found out that Matthew Restall's new book about afromexicans,The Black Middle:Africans,Mayans, and Spaniards in Colonial Yucatan came out over a month ago. read a snippet of it and it seems interesting.
I don't know why Latin American cultures, whether Spanish, Portuguese, or French, eschewed endogamy, but I can speculate that intermarriage discouraged the creation of some racist institutions.
Could it be an Anglo way of doing things , i don't believe the British also encouraged intermarriage or racial mixing on a scale seen in the latin countries.
The Latins would of been Roman Catholic right , what was the main Christian Church for the new American Colonies , could religious belief hold the answer to U.S. Style Racialism ?.
Or is it the way you said here
Quote:
But unless I'm missing something, I see no racial paradise. It is simply that the "pathological" system takes different forms, the forms having been determined by peculiarities of situation and history.
Anyway i t is very interesting stuff, I particularly enjoyed Frank's essay.
I don't know why Latin American cultures, whether Spanish, Portuguese, or French, eschewed endogamy, but I can speculate that intermarriage discouraged the creation of some racist institutions.
Could it be an Anglo way of doing things , i don't believe the British also encouraged intermarriage or racial mixing on a scale seen in the latin countries.
The Latins would of been Roman Catholic right , what was the main Christian Church for the new American Colonies , could religious belief hold the answer to U.S. Style Racialism ?.
Or is it the way you said here
Quote:
But unless I'm missing something, I see no racial paradise. It is simply that the "pathological" system takes different forms, the forms having been determined by peculiarities of situation and history.
Anyway i t is very interesting stuff, I particularly enjoyed Frank's essay.
Really? Ive never heard or read of that. Care to steer me to some sources?
Legal History of the Color Line pages 228-229. Francisco Xavier Sánchez owned Francis Philip Edinburgh, who owned Holbran. The story is also in No Color Line in Spanish Florida. See also the stories of the Kingsleys, Frasers, Wiggins, and other lancados in the essay on slavery versus the "race" notion. Other sources are named there. Personally, I like Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge MA: Harvard University, 1998), where he discusses the lancados's role in the transatlantic slave trade.
Last edited by fwsweet on Fri 31 Jul 2009 03:14; edited 2 times in total
"U. S. slavery" was not fundamentally different from slavery elsewhere. ...
JoshH, I am cutting you off. Your grace period as a new member has expired. Read the last sentence of rule 1.2. You are neither teaching nor learning. You are simply quarreling with everything that I present, expressing unsubstantiated opinions, switching topics multiple times within each post, and generating straw men. The next time that you post an opinion, any opinion, anywhere except in the two political advocacy forums you must precede it with your qualifications. See rule 3.1 for details. Failure to do so will result in immediate suspension of your posting privileges.
Here are some of the many topics you have introduced into this thread. If you would like to pursue any of them (one by one, without constantly changing the subject, and without expressing unqualified opinions), please initiate a separate thread for whichever topic(s) interest you.
How Jim Crow manifested in the north versus in the south.
The relationship between slavery and racialism.
How Reconstruction Louisiana's color line(s) differered from South Carolina, Florida, the upper south, the midwest, and the northeast in the same period.
How exogamy rates are computed.
Whether Lincoln and Douglass had a "warm" relationship.
What was the cause of Lincon's racism.
The differences between slavery and involuntary servitude (indenture).
U.S. racialism versus ethnocentrism anywhere.
U.S. racialism versus colorism.
U.S. racialism versus the Arabic language (which uses the same word for "Negro" and "slave").
Regarding your implication that the U.S. endogamous color line is weak, based on a survey that most people claim to approve of intermarriage. The exogamy rate of African Americans is under 4 percent. The only comparable phenomenon is the Hindu caste system. The issue is not what people claim to approve of. The issue is what they do. This is not an invitation to debate. I repeat, express one more opinion in this forum, or any forum other than the two political advocacy forums and your posting privilege will be suspended.
Spiral wrote:
Could it be an Anglo way of doing things , i don't believe the British also encouraged intermarriage or racial mixing on a scale seen in the latin countries. The Latins would of been Roman Catholic right , what was the main Christian Church for the new American Colonies , could religious belief hold the answer to U.S. Style Racialism?
The (Protestant) British West Indies had (and still have) a three-caste system (Black, Coloured, White) with intermarriage rates of 20-40 percent, comparable to exogamy rates among any ethnicities anywhere. On the other hand, (Catholic) colonial Maryland was among the strictest enforcers of the negligible (less than 4 percent) intermarriage rate characteristic of the U.S. color line. A better hypothesis is differing cultural traditions. During the "Moorish" occupation of Iberia, Afro-Euro intermarriage was routine. Then, within a century after the reconquest, Iberia had already assimilated the descendants of about 100,000 sub-Saharan slaves.
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So no need to go filling up your race in any document at all. Unless you need that racial information for ulterior motives (and suspiciously evil motives, I may add). 
