this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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This isn't related to the article, but I wanted to pick at the 'benefits of slavery' question.
I think it's important to acknowledge the 'benefits' of slavery, because it's important to remember who it benefitted and at who's expense. To claim that it benefits no one would be to deny the greed and callousness that spawned these human rights abuses.
Slavery in the past has brought massive advantages and benefits to many people today through the accumulation of intergenerational wealth, at the expense of minorities who are still systematically denied access to this wealth. To claim that these benefits don't exist would be to diminish the scale of issues slavery has brought, and is still bringing, to modern day.
It's important to note who benefited from it and how, because it explains why there was such a fight to stop an obviously cruel and barbaric practice. Even the Founding Fathers knew it was wrong, but most of them still did it. They kicked the problem down the road because tobacco wasn't profitable to grow in America anymore, so they thought the "problem" would solve itself in a generation or two. Then the Cotton Gin made slavery profitable, so it boomed.
We need to be able to talk how it was beneficial, and who benefited from it, so we can see why it was so hard to end. Because we have a very similar problem with fossil fuels, and capitalism. They're both destroying the world and causing us to do barbaric things to people. But there's resistance to ending dependence on both, because they have benefits, even though most of those benefits go to an elite few.
Mount Vernon (George Washington's estate) does a pretty good job of exploring that mind set without ever justifying slavery or down playing the horrific nature of it. American society was built on slavery, so the people born at the top and benefiting from it would have no reason to question, is this right, because if it's not then all the people who raised me were evil and that can't be true.
There is a lot of similarities between the slave owner class of the civil war and the "capitalist elite" of today. "Why ban slavery if I'm not enslaved and could maybe one day own a slave" is about like "why tax billionaires if I don't need the government and I might one day be a billionaire?".