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bigyabai 19 hours ago

250 years ago, every American was a beneficiary of slavery too. Help remind me how that one ended, will you?

anonym29 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don't think this is your point, but semantically, doesn't this necessarily assert that either:

1. African Americans were not Americans, or

2. African Americans, the victims of slavery, somehow benefited from it?

I would disagree with both of those assertions.

Further, consider that a vast majority (90%+) did not own slaves. Were non-slave-owners beneficiaries of slavery? What about poor, unskilled whites, who had their own wages effectively suppressed due to the negligible labor costs of slavery - were they really net beneficiaries of slavery? They certainly were not the main victims, but that doesn't automatically make them beneficiaries, either. Slavery was overwhelmingly a horrific practice by wealthy elites for wealthy elites, not by all white people for all white people.

saintjavelina 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

busterarm 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It ended with one half of a country being so mad about their standard of living changing that they had a bloody civil war about it. You're proving my point entirely.

I was never talking about right or wrong, I was talking about whether people are willing to sacrifice their standard of living substantially just to be "right" about something.