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Comment by ModernMech | Hacker News Reader

It's recent enough that people living today knew former slaves. That's not ancient history at all, so I think the comparison is not good. I'm sure Brazil also has to deal with fallout of their practices, but I don't see how it changes how the fallout of US slavery impacts the US.

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I don't know any former slaves.

I don't know anyone that has spoken to a former slave.

And most people of color in the US's ancestors were not slaves in the US south. They came as immigrants from other countries.

The issue is not slavery. It might be racism. But it is not "I can't have slaves anymore"

It really doesn't matter what you personally know, that's not the point.

A full 76 of current serving US Senators were born before the passing of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which officially ended segregation and the Jim Crow era).

That certainly means it's recent to me. My own parents (both still alive) grew up while "separate but equal" was still law of the land.

So, yes, it's definitely racism. Or shall we say, the lasting imprint of slavery and the Confederate ideology more generally. Reconstruction failed and therefore allowed the Confederate ideology to persist for 100 years of Jim Crow and right on into today.

I think you need to check the math on that. Knew a former slave maybe?

Yes right indeed, edited.

>It's recent enough that people living today knew a slave.

Slavery ended in 1865. That's 161 years ago. So maybe there are a few modern 80-year-olds who interacted with 80-year-old former slaves when the modern 80-year-olds were infants. Those 80-year-old former slaves would themselves have no memory of slavery since it would've ended before they could form memories. And the modern 80-year-olds would have no memory of the interaction, since they themselves were infants when the interaction happened.

In other words: There aren't very many of these people, and it's unclear if most of them would count.

You know something which happened more recently in the US than slavery? Prohibition. A trendy, self-righteous moral crusade which didn't accomplish what it set out to achieve, and ended up creating a bunch of problems instead.

I think Prohibition is a pretty good template for understanding the form and tendencies of modern left-wing activist movements. But--at least reducing alcoholism was a good cause that we had a shot at doing something about! Short of inventing a time machine, crusading against slavery from centuries ago seems rather pointless. That's not a problem for activists whose primary goal is to be trendy and self-righteous, of course.

That's not the point, it's that people who were slaves died in a time when color TVs existed. This woman died in 1964! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_J._Cooper

That's not long enough ago to call it ancient history.

Someone who died in 1964 was technically a slave, but not yet old enough to function as a slave. Real slaves were mostly dead by 1940, the few who remained are outliers

Babies being born into slavery served the slave system just as much as grown men slaving in a field. Slave was a legal status in a system, not a job title. A baby born into slavery is a real slave, not a fake slave.

  Either George, who enslaved her mother, or his brother, Dr. Fabius Haywood, who enslaved her older brothers, Rufus and Andrew,[3] was probably Anna's father

So Anna came into existence because her mother was raped by a man who legally owned her as property. And that was recent enough that Anna lived to witness Gilligan’s Island.

Moreover, she was still a slave until she was six and served her masters as a domestic house servant. When you were six you were probably being educated to read and write and do math.

You guys are so quick with your “well ackshually” that you’re missing the point which is very simple and has been restated by other posters.

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