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Comment by MrOwnPut | Hacker News Reader

> Anti-racism seeks to end that system.

Explain how you apply "anti-racism" please. If you're excluding people based on their skin color or origins, that is racism, even if they are white or asian.

> Everybody agrees that the US was hugely racist to start out and for centuries thereafter.

Speak for yourself, not everybody. If anything we were the colony to finally collapse the system after many centuries of it being standard across the world.

It's kind of a slap in the face for all those people who fought to end it.

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Your theory is that, for example, turning people into property based on race was not racist? If so, I don't think there's much point in a discussion here.

For those more reasonable who want to know about what anti-racism is opposed to, I'd suggest reading Loewen's Sundown Towns, Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning, and Mills's The Racial Contract as beginner-friendly looks at the system of racism, its historical and intellectual roots, and how it all played out historically.

Did I say that? Reply to what I say, not words you create. The system was created long before the US.

Many people were involved in this system, from the warring tribes in Africa selling prisoners, to countries like the UK setting up colonies with slaves for cotton, tobacco, etc.

We were the colony that finally stopped the system. It took a long time and a lot of blood because it was the system, but it was ended.

If your point is that the US didn't invent racism, I agree. Again, read Kendi, who traces its roots back pretty well. But that doesn't mean the US wasn't hugely racist both during its colonial period and long after. And again, if that's something that you can't see, I'm not sure what the point of further discussion is.

> Your theory is that, for example, turning people into property based on race was not racist? If so, I don't think there's much point in a discussion here.

Given that the enslaved had been so subjugated by others of the very same race, how could the institution itself possibly be called essentially racist?

I can only hope you're trolling here. But on the off chance that is a sincere question, maybe read the books I recommended.

Or if you'd like a quick answer from the Confederacy's Vice President, you might read the Cornerstone Speech, which includes these words: "Our new government['s]...foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

If you're having trouble seeing the racism there, I'm not sure how else I could help.

You quote the Cornerstone Speech correctly, which was a post-hoc rationalization, a propaganda effort to encourage millions of fighting age men to lay down their lives for an economic system that was based on slavery which, I've already proven, was not an essentially racist institution.

Remind me again, in the US, how many white people were sold in to chattel slavery?

If even you could somehow make a convincing argument that the pre-war system was not inherently racist (which you cannot), the post-war system of neoslavery would put the final nail in that coffin.

> Remind me again, in the US, how many white people were sold in to chattel slavery?

Even an answer of zero doesn't address or contradict my original point.

There's no such thing as "neoslavery". Racism was certainly used after the war to reduce labor solidarity between the white working class and the newly-freed black laborers, however, that fact also doesn't address or contradict my original point.

You have proven no such thing, unless you're using some sort of definition of racism so outside the norm that either way it looks like a poor use of my time to try to explain your mistake to you.

Now this is the second time you're ignoring the context of the supply of the very slaves being discussed, so I determine that you are not discussing honestly.

I don't feel responsible for what you have chosen to conclude here, so go wild.

>Kendi

Maybe try suggesting some serious historical scholarship instead of ideologues.

Oh? What books would you recommend here?

Still waiting!

> Speak for yourself, not everybody. If anything we were the colony to finally collapse the system after many centuries of it being standard across the world.

USA was very late ending slavery, most European countries had already outlawed it long before the American civil war. USA was the colony that required a war to stop treating people like cattle, that is its history.

I wouldn't say "long" before. They did before, but they were also the ones who created those colonies with slaves in the first place.

They were also buying those slave made goods, continuing the triangle, even well after they abolished it in their homeland.

So yes, they may have "ended" it at home, but they basically just outsourced their slavery to colonies they had setup.

> So yes, they may have "ended" it at home, but they basically just outsourced their slavery to colonies.

This isn't true, if the American revolution hadn't happened then those slaves would have been freed peacefully already by 1833:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833

Or maybe that would have triggered an American revolution again because Americans love their slaves, I mean it happened that way as is...

UK abolished slavery for themselves 30 years prior to the US abolishing it, mainly because their sugar plantations had lost their worth.

But the UK still continued to buy US cotton, knowing full well it was enabling the slave trade to continue.

And the most important point was they had setup all of these colonies with these systems in the first place.

You said this:

> we were the colony to finally collapse the system after many centuries of it being standard across the world.

That is blatantly false. That was my point. You are right the Europeans weren't angels, but you were absolutely wrong there, America was the colony that was dragged kicking and screaming to abolish slavery long after everyone else had already done so, it absolutely wasn't the colony that finally collapsed the system of slavery it was pushed by everyone else to end it and then still had to go through a civil war doing it.

The American colonies supplied the Brits with cotton. The system was setup to do so by UK. UK was buying the slave picked cotton well after they abolished/outsourced slavery.

The UK even continued slavery in Indian colonies until 1843. They only abolished sugar plantations because it was not profitable anymore.

If the American colonies didn't rebel from the UK, they may have not abolished the cotton plantations themselves because they highly depended on it.

The US didn't "actually" abolish slavery until the 1940s. This is only partially your fault for not knowing, the US school system turns a blind eye to neoslavery in the post war era with the technicality that slavery is still legal for prisoners and that pretty much any crime could lead you to be enslaved in the south if you were the incorrect race.

It's a bit disingenuous to defend people who ended it while simultaneously pretending it never happened.

Where did I say it never happened?

It's a bit disingenuous to put words in my mouth.

You replied in disagreement to

> > Everybody agrees that the US was hugely racist to start out and for centuries thereafter.

But your bio says you are a deliberate troll, so presumably you knew that.

So you think me not agreeing the US "was hugely racist" is the same as me saying slavery never happened?

You don't think it's me saying that the US was part of a system that had existed long before it was even a country, even though I said just that?

BTW my bio is a homage to Socrates being persecuted for asking questions and going against the mob.

That's like saying murder isn't heinously evil, because murder has existed long before you or I.

You've done nothing but ignore my words, misinterpret my bio, put words in my mouth, and spout off poor analogies.

I think we're done conversing, if you could even call it that.

Sad, I’d love to hear all about how ‘poor’ my analogy was.

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