No, Slaves Didn't Build This Country

You can see where what you said

“To suggest that slavery played little or no role as the original poster in this thread has suggested is even more absurd.”

And what you meant seem to be fairly wide apart?

He didn’t imply they didn’t contribute. But when the statement is all encapsulating as WE BUILT THIS NATION is… pointing out the fact that no .. that’s not accurate is going to lessen the contributions that were made quite a bit from the original statement.

 

Except that poster has a poster history. And my general take isn't that he's a WS. He's putting out statement. If you think he's completely wrong, fine, then argue. It's certainly not an "I'm a duck, prove me wrong" type of post.

 

The poster has definitely posted some questionable material before, more questionable than this actually. We're 6 pages in, so I dont think lack of discussion is a problem here.

 

Yeah. The subject of the post is not only consistent with WS talking points, the method is as well. Dumb down a complex topic to a triviality that seems self evident. Works well on the aggrieved and those that suffer the pangs of cognitive dissonance.

 

A lot of kerfuffle over this issue is generated from the statement within the 1619 Project, a great book which is now also on Hulu. Based upon the reaction to it, it's a very dangerous thought that shouldn’t even be entertained.


An only slightly less controversial way of teasing out some of the same points is looking at the scholarship of Woody Holton, who is one of the contributors to the 1619 Project. Without faulting the emphasis on the Founders, he makes the rather unremarkable observation, supported by scholarship, that no mass movement like the American Revolution is the product of only a few individuals, even considering leadership. He talks about the fact that it was a mass movement, not always a majority movement, with many constituencies, including marginalized constituencies, all of which were necessary but not individually sufficient.


It really is a "We the People", so long as we recognize that the “People” must include all of us, even if it didn't at the time. As the less academic constitutional theorist Heidi Schreck has amplified in her great work, which at least last year was available on Amazon Prime - "We all belong in the Preamble”. A lot of our problems could be addressed if we start from that cornerstone.


Woody Holton - Wikipedia

 

I don't disagree about the discussion, I was early in reading and got annoyed at that lazy-ass, typical in 2023, probably hasn't been on the planet a long time, type of response. I personally give people the benefit of the doubt (grace) and I think discussion's profit from that. Anyways I'll pipe down now.

 

This.

 

Living out west here, there's a better case that Mexicans built a bigger portion than slaves.

 

Douglass North's research on economic development focuses on the role of institutions & exploring the institution of slavery he makes this comparison between econ development in the S vs the N.

According to Douglass North, the roots of southern stagnation are to be found in the geographic patterns of trade in the antebellum period. The South, using slave labor, grew cotton and exported it to the American North and to Britain. With the receipts from its northern shipments it purchased foodstuffs from the Midwest and industrial goods from the North. With its receipts from European shipments, it purchased luxury items and other industrial wares. Little was ploughed back into the South as internal improvements. Schooling was denied slaves and was poorly provided to southerners in general. Cities, those generators of agglomeration economies, were rare in the South. Innovation was thereby stifled.

The North ran a very different ship. With far more equality of income and wealth, northerners purchased goods produced by local tradesmen and local firms. Its funds were ploughed back into local industry and internal improvements. Its people were the best educated in the world. The North established institutions that served an egalitarian society and that furthered an industrial and growing region. The South had norms that reinforced a caste and race-based society and that inhibited growth at the service of a master class. Such institutions have long lives.

The message, repeated in many of Douglass North's later works, is that when institutions serve to enrich one group (masters, feudal lords) at the expense of another (slaves, serfs), it does not matter that these institutions also reduce the potential income of the elite. Pareto-improving trades are generally impossible between the two groups, and thus there is no assurance that more efficient institutions will drive out less efficient ones.


CONVERSABLE ECONOMIST: Douglass North and Institutions

Here is North providing a layman's summation of a lot of his work on institutions.
https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.5.1.97

 

Full quote and Obama saying EXACTLY what he meant.

"Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that." The sentence "If you've got a business, you didn't build that" was publicized by his political opponents during the 2012 presidential campaign, as an attack by Obama on business and entrepreneurs. The Obama campaign responded that the criticisms were taking the phrase out of context, and the word "that" in the phrase was referring to the construction of "roads and bridges" in the previous sentence. Fact-checking organizations reported that Obama's remarks were incorrectly used out of context in order to criticize the president.

But go ahead because a black guy couldn't possibly be praising our fathers for building our country....This is like the Willy Horton ad - a Rorschach test for bias where people are fed a half quote knowing their preconceptions will lead them to a false answer.

 

Regarding reparations, Germany is still paying them to holocaust survivors. Some Germans oppose them.

 

Agreed, but Edward Baptist pushes back on some who try to extend similar arguments in ways they won't bear, saying that slavery as an economic model was on the inevitable road to collapse. It was immensely profitable. Even Brazil ended de jure slavery by 1881, so there were other pressures as well. But economically, it was a very successful institution.

A few fictional alternate history treatments imagine that the institution remained. My favorite, which presumed the Crittenden Compromise became law

 

It's a semantic difference, but the point stands. The barbaric institution of slavery most certainly enriched colonists who settled in Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia. Acquiring slaves enabled them to attain headrights to land at nominal cost. In Virginia this system was instituted in 1618 and abolished in 1779.

Settlers looking to establish tobacco plantations, and later cotton in the southern colonies, needed land and labor. Indentured servanthood did not provide what the early entrepreneurs required as Europeans were reluctant to come to America in numbers sufficient to do the necessary work. They found their solution in the importation of slaves.

I comment on this topic out of shame as ancestors of mine were engaged in this practice early on. In 1660 a many times great grandfather acquired 4000 acres with headrights in Virginia when he bought 800 slaves. His grandson's slaves built a palatial home, Stratford Hall, on that land in the early 1700's. His great grandson, Robert E Lee, was born in that house.

The Lee's got what they deserved as their fortunes were lost in the War.

 

All of us profited.

 

You think the OP was trying to start an enlightened dialogue?

Redstate might as well be skinhead.com

But I am sure you nailed it. He/she was trying to start an enlightened dialogue.

Carry on!

 

I’m not su

Maybe the OP can come back and explain what he hoped to accomplish with the thread

 

Not returning to this "enlightened" dialogue makes the post even more suspicious. What's the term? Drive by?

 

The problem is that no one is claiming that slaves built all of this country. And I hope no one thinks they didn't contribute anything to this country's wealth.
So what are we discussing? The percent?

In retrospect, the OP probably violates this rule, but since we're more than 100 comments in ...

 

Here is what they don't understand. This is something MTG would say or any of the far right wing section. Centrists/moderates on both sides don't want to see or hear this stuff. It makes them look even crazier than they already look. That article only helps drive normal folks towards the middle. The GOP currently sits far right at the moment. These white grievances don't play well with 70% of the country.

 

Tell us more. It’s the friendly, open minded posts that really set you apart.