400 Years of African Slavery in America

[Ken]

On property rights: I don't think that we can accept documents as absolutes (denying every pre-modern "undocumented" property) and I don't think that we can accept actual "usage" as an absolute (favorizing the lifestyles of people who use and need the vastest amount of space). The reasonable standard must be somewhere between those extremes. That was all I wanted to say.
Generally, if there are questions of "just distribution", I try to define the boundaries: What is definitely too much on the one hand or too little on the other hand? And I am quite prepared to leave anything further - the vernier adjustment - to others. This is an example of my method.

As this has become a blog about economics and international relations, I perceive a certain tendency. Economical changes have often good as well as bad outcomes, and I perceive a trend to focus singularly on the bad outcomes (as examples of white or Western guilt). For example, when Gualtemaltequians earn money in the U.S. and send it back to their relatives, the natural outcome is that house prices in Guatemala will rise. This problem is in no way a matter of U.S. American guilt and U.S. Americans are not even the first who have to fix it. The Guameltequians have to fix it by building more houses, in that way (a) lowering again the cost of housing and (b) creating a local building industry. If things don't work that way, there's the question: What is wrong with Guatemala?

More generally, nobody denies that life contains, occasionally, zero sum situations. And I am all for replacing them by win-win situations. But even in win-win-situations the comparative advantage can differ more or less - things being only a bit better for one party and being a lot better for the other. Must we correct such differences in advantage, retroactively? I have no principles about that. Only I think that people who dream of a perfected "just" society ought to start their experiments on a private basis, for instance with a cooperative society - before they transfer their model to the more elevated level of national or world economy.

You might wish that property rights work that way. Some middle ground as you say. But in North America they do not. The history that repeated itself time and again across the North American continent was that native groups were given ABSOLUTE property rights to their ancestral lands in the form of treaties. Not just the right to hunt and fish. But absolute sovereignty over their lands by treaty. Then gold would be discovered. Or land poor settlers would encroach on tribal lands and instigate conflicts. And then the US Army would come in and push the tribes further back if vigilante groups of armed settlers didn’t do it themselves. Rinse and repeat across the continent.

If higher economic uses had any legal weight then I could go into say Kansas and take any dry land wheat farmers lands and put in a toxic waste disposal site or factory or any other industrial facility that generated more income per acre than dry land wheat farming. Luckily our laws don’t work like that. Just like they didn’t advantage farming over subsistence hunting on the land in the 19th Century.

As for Guatemala? The problem there isn’t housing prices. It is overpopulation, climate change, lack of economic opportunity, and government and industry corruption that makes solving those problems more difficult. Housing is actually incredibly cheap in Guatemala. There are no building codes. Anyone can throw up a house with some concrete block and metal roofing. The problem is that a large portion of the population has no viable means to earn a living.

[ohio jones]

... Gualtemaltequians ... Guameltequians ...

Guatemalans. En Español, Guatemaltecos. On horseback, Guatemalequestrians.

[Only an Anz]

Interesting topic Dan, given that the punditry has spent the last week debating the efficacy of the NYT's "1619 Project". Consonantly, I read an interesting little exhortation to sanity and humility from Dr. Phil Jenkins at Baylor today and thought it fit well with the discussion in this thread.

One may protest that a white European Christian civilization that allowed slavery was by its nature so thoroughly tainted that it represented a kind of cancer on the earth, which needs to be purged from history. But we would then need to ask what point of reference we are using to condemn that culture, and whom we might celebrate in its place. Historically, where do we find cultures that rejected and condemned slavery as an institution, and which posed stern moral objections to the fact of slavery? Such did exist, notably in much of Christian medieval Europe. But where else? Not, of course, in the Classical world; nor in the world of Islam until very modern times; nor in many modern African communities; nor in Persian or Indian or Chinese history; nor among Native Americans, Aztecs, or Mayans. Not only were these slave societies, but the slavery principle remained uncontested.

"Look at them, they're worse than us...?" Using the smokescreen argument of someone (from Baylor, no less) here hardly seems the thing to do.

[Only an Anz]

And slavery existed in Europe and also existed in various meso-American societies, so it seems rather silly to try to pinpoint a date when it was “introduced” to America.

There was also an active African slave system when the Europeans showed up and decided to start buying some for themselves. However I think it is meaningful to look at American slavery specifically since this is the one place we can work to repair the past. This is on us, not all the other slave systems that predated it. I think there is a sort of Neo-Confederate history that likes to think of slavery as a random condition that falls on to humans from time to time and is nobodies fault, like the common cold, thus acknowledging the damage or working to repair it is meaningless.

The history of slavery is mostly people being sold into debt bondage or as war spoils (including the trans-Atlantic slave grade).

American slavery was unique in being chattels slavery, but was a mere blip in the context of human history.

We would do well more to focus on present day debt bondage and problems with spoils of war and other forced labour than spend too much time ruminating on the past, particularly when much of our country is descended from people who migrated here in the 20th century. American slavey truly is a footnote, and was also eradicated - unlike much of the rest of the world.

"American slavey [sic] truly is a footnote"

....not for all of us. Yours truly is descended from Quakers on one side and slaveowners on the other. I've in fact met a woman who is my relative BECAUSE OF slavery and accompanying r*ape. Please do not speak for all of us...for some, it is something that still weighs on them often.

[Only an Anz]

Most of us grew up with a carefully sanitized American history that mostly leaves black people out of everything before Frederick Douglass.

I would hope history is being taught in a more balanced way these days. I certainly grew up being taught the "carefully sanitized" version when I went to public school in the mid 60's.
I especially remember the Virginia History book we had in the 4th grade. It must have been written by some Confederate sympathizers. It championed "states rights" as being a perfectly good reason to fight a civil war. (the war really wasn't about slavery, so the book said) Northern soldiers were portrayed as doltish and not very bright. While the boys in grey were smart and dashing and with a high sense of honor about defending their native land. In all the early battles (which were mostly fought in VA) the Rebs had the best strategy and usually won the battles with less men and less casualties.
It was crazy; while I knew and felt that slavery was was evil and wrong, I found myself rooting for the Rebels.
That was VA history, the "sanitized version" in 1966.

I grew up in the North. Our version of history portrayed Northerners as almost completely innocent, minimized racism, said that we went to war to free the slaves in the Civil war, etc. None of that was true.

It mentioned Frederick Douglass and George Washington Carver and Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, but I suspect even my history teachers did not know the history of slavery in the 1600s and 1700s, and they certainly did not teach how it affected the Constitutional Conventions and the formation of the Constitution.

And it told the story of slavery almost completely in the context of the Civil War, ignoring earlier history. We did not learn about white slavery in early America or how slavery changed from the 1600s to the 1800s, or that slavery continued in parts of the South after the Civil War despite the change in laws.

How much of this is covered in CLP publications or home school history books?

Can't speak for CLP, but I was homeschooled k-12. My mom who (perhaps not incidentally) is descended from Quakers, taught us quite a bit and we read several books (i.e. "Amos Fortune" and some of Mildred Taylor's work) which were probably not in the public school curriculum at the time.

[Bootstrap]

Can't speak for CLP, but I was homeschooled k-12. My mom who (perhaps not incidentally) is descended from Quakers, taught us quite a bit and we read several books (i.e. "Amos Fortune" and some of Mildred Taylor's work) which were probably not in the public school curriculum at the time.

Can you tell us about Amos Fortune and Mildred Taylor?

[Only an Anz]

Can't speak for CLP, but I was homeschooled k-12. My mom who (perhaps not incidentally) is descended from Quakers, taught us quite a bit and we read several books (i.e. "Amos Fortune" and some of Mildred Taylor's work) which were probably not in the public school curriculum at the time.

Can you tell us about Amos Fortune and Mildred Taylor?

Here's an example listing of her books: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/book ... -d-taylor/

"Amos Fortune" we read when I was in 5th grade? Maybe 6th? Some time before the end of 1998... so it's been a while since I read it. From memory though it's about early slavery in America (i.e. in New England)

Edit: per the summary of the book on Amazon, he was a slave in Massachusetts.

[Josh]

slavery has existed throughout history, on every continent, in Biblical times, in present day.

So have rape, sexual abuse, murder, and genocide.

I wish people would not minimize what slaves went through in America. I wish people would not make excuses for slaveholders. Slaveholders knew that they were taking advantage of other people by force. They knew they were dehumanizing helpless people.

That's an important part of American history.

That's why Exodus has always been such an important church in the Black preaching tradition in America.

Some of us consider it more important to focus on present day atrocities than historical events 150+ years ago.

[Ken]

slavery has existed throughout history, on every continent, in Biblical times, in present day.

So have rape, sexual abuse, murder, and genocide.

I wish people would not minimize what slaves went through in America. I wish people would not make excuses for slaveholders. Slaveholders knew that they were taking advantage of other people by force. They knew they were dehumanizing helpless people.

That's an important part of American history.

That's why Exodus has always been such an important church in the Black preaching tradition in America.

Some of us consider it more important to focus on present day atrocities than historical events 150+ years ago.

What about historical events from 2000+ years ago. Or from 500 years ago if we are talking about the origins of Anabaptism. Are those relevant?

[Josh]

Can't speak for CLP, but I was homeschooled k-12. My mom who (perhaps not incidentally) is descended from Quakers, taught us quite a bit and we read several books (i.e. "Amos Fortune" and some of Mildred Taylor's work) which were probably not in the public school curriculum at the time.

Can you tell us about Amos Fortune and Mildred Taylor?

Speaking as a homeschooled person who used some CLP curriculum, yes, I was assigned a biography of Amos Fortune to read growing up. My mother happens to be descended from Quakers too.