Slavery, Racism and U.S. Economics

1. Slavery, Racism and U.S. Economics Instructor Pacas

2. From The Apology of Socratesby Plato • Some one will say: And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end? To him I may fairly answer: There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying: he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong-acting the part of a good man or of a bad…

3. From Lies My Teacher Told Meby James Loewen • “Very few adults today realize that our society has been slave much longer than it has been free. Even fewer know that slavery was important in the North…” • “Most textbooks downplay slavery in the North, however, so slavery seems to be a sectional rather than national problem.”

4. Cont’d • Slavery’s twin legacies to the present are the social and economic inferiority it conferred upon blacks and the cultural racism it instilled in whites. Both continue to haunt our society. Therefore, treating, slavery’s enduring legacy is necessarily controversial. Unlike slavery, racism is not over yet.

5. What Causes Racism? • J. Loewen is correct when he states, “racism in the Western world stems primarily from two related historical processes: taking land from and destroying indigenous peoples and enslaving Africans to work that land. To teach this relationship textbooks would have to show students the dynamic interplay between slavery as a socioeconomic system and racism as an idea system.”

6. Slavery = $ • Because the slave system and its dynamic was an economic profitable system the U.S. (as an entire national polity- that is to say both the North and the South) supported the system. • A split between North and South would only occur if either region jeopardized the interests of the other.

7. Economies • Southern Agrarian Economy: • 1790 500,000 African slaves were producing 1,000 tons of cotton in the South. • By 1860 4,000,000 African American slaves were producing 1 million tons of cotton. • By the time of the Civil War cotton accounted for almost 60% of American exports. • Since the Southern states did not have a good infrastructure for trade they were highly dependent on the North to fill this gap.

8. Creating and Maintaining a Racist Ideology in the Southern States. • The French philosopher Montesquieu discussing the issue of race, humanity and slavery observed in 1748: • “It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures (Africans) to be men, because, allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow that we ourselves are not Christians.”

9. 1860 Southern States • By 1860 the population of the South was roughly 1/3 slave. • Every sector of this society was expected to support the established system of racial inequality. • The understanding and acceptance of the collective population that some were born free and others were born slaves. • The sole determining factor of which is the color of one’s skin.

10. Cont’d • Montesquieu could not have been more wrong. • Southern Church pulpits used the Bible as a means to argue that slavery was sanctioned by God and particularly the enslavements of black Africans by a white Christian society. • Southern churches used the story of Ham in the Bible to justify the enslavement of blacks.

11. The North • The historical narrative that portrays the North as concerned with the plight of African Americans is not historically factual. • As Abraham Lincoln pointed out in his public speeches time and again the plight of blacks in America was a concern only to the degree of how it affected the Union. • This hypocrisy was not lost on many abolitionist intellectuals of the time.

12. The Split • Southern interests threaten Northern interests: • First the balance of power in government-competing interests agrarian vs. industrial only served to divide and weaken the nation. • Industry and trade required a freer hand in policy making than agrarian/slave/Southern states would allow. • A secession of the Southern states would jeopardize access to territory necessary to strengthen and expand trade and industry.

13. Cont’d • Slave system was not profitable for North as the upkeep of slaves posed a serious challenge: • Wage Slavery, job competition and mass racism and prejudice in the North.

14. The System • Free labor allowed the industrialist sector to tap into the vast resources of immigrant, African-American, female, child, none-protestant and native (i.e. U.S. born not Native American) labor to compete against each other for jobs that paid meager wages.

15. The dense population of the North made it profitable to pay laborers a miserly wage. • From this wage laborers were personally responsible for their living expenses. • The use of bondage slavery in the North would have left a large percent of the population without jobs and ripe for revolution.

16. Cont’d • Effectively these groups were divided against each other and antagonism against each other kept industrial interests safe. • An influx of new immigrants to the already saturated pool of labor only helped foster this antagonism and resentment often erupted in violence based on religious, racial or gender differences.

17. Tools of Social Control • Racism/Nationalism/Social Darwinism and the Parochial View of the globe. • Education/Indoctrination