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It’s true that slavery was practiced by many civilizations throughout history, and it continues today. I’m also not a fan of the contemporary, “critical” approach, or at least the way it has unfolded in mainstream public life in the US (happy to elaborate as to why). That said, chattel slavery as it existed in the US really was exceptionally bad for a lot of reasons.

(1) slavery and treating people of other ethnicities badly wasn’t a new thing, but the ideology of there being a natural hierarchy of races was a new idea and it led to new cruelties.

(2) In the European Middle Ages, there had been a taboo against Christians holding other Christians as slaves. The western slavers knowingly took advantage of the chaos in early modern Europe and did it anyway, over opposition, constructing the above ideology to justify it.

(3) the scale of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was unprecedented. It dwarfed the Barbary and Indian slave trade. Maybe Rome or the golden age Islamic slave network were on a comparable scale when various factors are accounted for, but neither were chattel systems, and they lacked the whole racial dimension.

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taeric 2 days ago | parent [-]

This is not actually held together that well, sadly.

Your first point, I suspect, is almost certainly not true. The concepts of racial or familial lineage with divine connotations is pretty old. The entire "divine right of kings" and related hierarchies have long been there. I /think/ you are trying to say that it was a scientifically supported hierarchy and it was bad for that reason. I think that is defendable?

Not clear what point 2 has to do with US slavery? Similar existed in the Barbary area, where it was just a different religion being preferenced.

Your third point is the most amusing of them to hold against slavery as it existed in the US, though. Yes, the trans-Atlantic slave trade was unprecedented. With the majority of those enslaved not going to north america...

I think I said this in another thread, but worth repeating. There is nothing at all "well actually" in what I'm saying. Slavery is bad. Period. I wish people didn't plaster over how bad it was elsewhere in a rush to attack the US, though.

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EarthBlues a day ago | parent [-]

I don’t think you’re defending slavery and I think the US is a good country. I dislike the contemporary progressive account of history. It’s the same genre of justificatory political manga as the Whig history it seeks to upend.

That said, I stand by every word of my argument.

I used the word natural as in naturalism, the intellectual movement that emerged in Europe in the Renaissance and came to fruition in the Enlightenment. Naturalistic racism was indeed new. I can point you to the texts where it was developed. It was accepted as cutting-edge science among enlightenment figures like Voltaire and Kant. I object strongly to the term, “scientifically-supported” racial hierarchy. Science in the post-baconian sense cannot support a concept of a racial hierarchy. Such a concept is a value judgement. Values are and can only be extrinsic to modern, empirical science (another lesson of history our progressive friends have failed to learn).

When it comes to the nature of this value judgement, I do think it makes things worse that the western slavers should have known better. Christian society had been agonizing over slavery for more than a millennium; what does this mean for our own seemingly invincible moral convictions that it all melted away so quickly? I don’t think our contemporary political discourse, left or right, can handle serious answers to the question.

As to the exceptional evil of the US system, there was nowhere else that the hereditary and permanent racial chattel system was implemented and enforced so thoroughly (I could maybe grant Haiti as a possible exception). Spanish and Portuguese slavers used religious justifications carried over from suspicions of Jewish and North African converts after the reconquista. This was disgusting, but it also meant that the slaves’ status was impermanent and mutable. Manumission was vastly more common, and social-racial boundaries were much more permeable. This is reflected today, where racial relations are far less damaged in Latin America than in the North.

	▲	taeric a day ago \| parent [-]
		So, yeah, my read is you are basically arguing that it was the first time "science" was used to try and justify slavery. I meant my "defensible" statement to be that I think that argument is defensible. But, largely because the scientific revolution was so recent. Before that, it was divinity that set up hierarchies of people. It was still based on "blood and soil," all told, though? In fact, I largely view that as trying to use the new tool of "science" to justify what the old system had setup? (Again, I think this argument has legs, so I'm not trying to completely "debunk" it.) I'm far too removed from any time in my life where I was reading history documents, but the christianity slant is still odd to me. Specifically, I remember reading back in the day that some anti-slavery groups were instrumental in converting slaves to christianity in an effort to undermine it. That, in turn, was itself coopted, such that it was not necessarily a success. (And I'll throw in the caveat that I didn't find history that engaging.) My gripe on the "nowhere else had hereditary slavery" is that this is complicated. Firstly, many places basically ended bloodlines of their slaves. Castration and executions were the norm. So, hard to see that this is really a comparison that you'd want to stake a "which is worse" debate on. They are both abhorrently evil. (And, not shockingly, serfdom has its own curve ball to this debate. That was hereditary and while slavery has obviously worse aspects, I don't understand why people seem to think serfdom was mostly fine.) Bringing it fully to this general topic. The slave narratives being a US literary thing is largely because that is allowed in the US. Do I think the US should get a pass and kudos for amplifying voices of people that they used to enslave? Complicated question. Well, sorta complicated. I can firmly say "get a pass and kudos" should be dismissed as a silly statement. But, it is frustrating that places that almost certainly did worse things heavily censor their histories. This isn't even really debated. But, because people hear the US criticisms and the others are largely silenced, so many people take the view that there are only US criticisms. Edit: Meant to say thanks for the opening. I know this is a topic that is prone to yelling way too easily. I'd also be interested in reading any texts you recommend reading.