I understand if this is a sensitive time, that comparisons to the civil war may not be the most helpful.

However, if these are not helpful, I would hope we would not attempt to use these moments that we should be united in attempting to claim that slavery in the United States would have simply stopped. Historians today reject this, and historians like Eric Foner, Gavin Wright, James Oakes have all written books that provide evidence that slavery was expanding and evolving, and that a major cornerstone for nearly half of the country's economy was not going to disappear in 10, 20, or 100 years.

IRC was invented before the end of the South African apartheid - the United States was lucky to avoid such a terrible fate.

As an aside, it's not pleasant to see speculative conjecture about the inevitable end of slavery side-by-side with quotations from RFK, and feels counter to the goal of the pinned comment.

Thanks to the mod team for generally keeping this comment section civil.