this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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Although I agree with your overall point, in this case I think people don't like it because that's how it's most recently been used in this context.
their personal benefit... personal?? it's not like slaves could quit, and find another job. if they developed skills, it helped them perform their forced labour, and so the benefit is all to their owner and master.
I assume he meant that benefitted them after emancipation. Or something.
Go to the Atlanta History Museum sometime, their civil war exhibit has a whole section of "were the slaves really better after being freed" shit that's pretty disgusting.
"Yeah we freed them, but we were allowed to restructure our laws to keep them subjugated and continued to treat them as subhuman. So was it really worth it?".
Reconstruction should have, at a minimum, barred any supporter of the Confederacy from holding office again, or, even better, had the leaders hanged as traitors. Instead we let them continue just with "banned" slavery (except for as punishment for a crime).
We then allowed slave owners to write the laws to integrate formerly enslaved people into their society, and, surprise surprise, they structured the laws to benefit themselves and keep the formerly enslaved as second class. So instead of "was ending slavery worth it?". It should be asking "was keeping slavers alive worth it?" as we are still dealing with the consequences of that today.