One of the most fascinating statistics is that a majority of white people have voted against the Democratic presidential nominee in every federal election since the Democrats supported the civil rights act on 1964. The fact the majority of the majority racial demographic were like whoa hold on let’s hit the brakes here in response to the idea that black people are people is pretty revealing of some deep seated internal issues in a nation that was founded on a race based caste system.
I say race based caste system because the American/Western brand of chattel slavery practiced via the Atlantic slave trade is very different compared to slavery historically in other parts of the world. Partus sequitur ventrem meant that children born to slaves inherited the status of slave with the goal of establishing black people as a permenant underclass of livestock to remain in a state of perpetual bonded labor eternally.
This is why the story of the Haitian revolution is so powerful. Slaves expelled their slavers (the French) not once but twice and upon establishing a republic put in their constitution Slavery is forever abolished. This was decades before Britain or the US abolished slavery.
That’s not true; Partus sequitur ventrem was common in many societies with slavery since ancient times. The Wikipedia article gives pre-islamic Egypt as well as Korea starting in the 11th century as examples, but is very thin on this and extremely America-centric. But also in the Ottoman empire, children of slaves were slaves themselves.
It has existed in other societies (without the same level of institutionalization or rigidity) but slavery elsewhere generally 1) Was not strictly race based and 2) had legally recognized pathways out of captivity. Generally slavery was tied to a debt that needed to be repaid or captivity during war and rather than an inherited bonded status. There are numerous stories of slaves being freed and rising to positions of prominence within society in other cultures. European enslavers genuinely believed that nonwhite, particularly black people, did not have a soul / were not fully human, which led to this level of dehumanization. When it comes to scale, impact and just profound inhumanity the European Atlantic slave trade is in a class of its own.
Ottoman slave law did not adopt a comparable hereditary rule. Ottoman jurisprudence treated slavery as a personal condition that could be inherited from either parent, but the practice varied regionally and often depended on the master’s discretion. Children of enslaved mothers could be freed, sold, or retained at the owner’s pleasure, and manumission was relatively common. Moreover, the Ottoman slave market relied heavily on the capture and purchase of individuals rather than on large‑scale, plantation‑driven reproduction; the economy did not depend on a permanent, generational slave workforce.
I would disagree that it was common in most other societies with slavery. Even in those where it was used, it was not instituted as a “generational slave workforce” intended to power a revenue engine like the plantation economies (while giving nothing back to the people/slaves that made that wealth possible).
One of the most fascinating statistics is that a majority of white people have voted against the Democratic presidential nominee in every federal election since the Democrats supported the civil rights act on 1964. The fact the majority of the majority racial demographic were like whoa hold on let’s hit the brakes here in response to the idea that black people are people is pretty revealing of some deep seated internal issues in a nation that was founded on a race based caste system.
I say race based caste system because the American/Western brand of chattel slavery practiced via the Atlantic slave trade is very different compared to slavery historically in other parts of the world. Partus sequitur ventrem meant that children born to slaves inherited the status of slave with the goal of establishing black people as a permenant underclass of livestock to remain in a state of perpetual bonded labor eternally.
This is why the story of the Haitian revolution is so powerful. Slaves expelled their slavers (the French) not once but twice and upon establishing a republic put in their constitution Slavery is forever abolished. This was decades before Britain or the US abolished slavery.
That’s not true; Partus sequitur ventrem was common in many societies with slavery since ancient times. The Wikipedia article gives pre-islamic Egypt as well as Korea starting in the 11th century as examples, but is very thin on this and extremely America-centric. But also in the Ottoman empire, children of slaves were slaves themselves.
It has existed in other societies (without the same level of institutionalization or rigidity) but slavery elsewhere generally 1) Was not strictly race based and 2) had legally recognized pathways out of captivity. Generally slavery was tied to a debt that needed to be repaid or captivity during war and rather than an inherited bonded status. There are numerous stories of slaves being freed and rising to positions of prominence within society in other cultures. European enslavers genuinely believed that nonwhite, particularly black people, did not have a soul / were not fully human, which led to this level of dehumanization. When it comes to scale, impact and just profound inhumanity the European Atlantic slave trade is in a class of its own.
I would disagree that it was common in most other societies with slavery. Even in those where it was used, it was not instituted as a “generational slave workforce” intended to power a revenue engine like the plantation economies (while giving nothing back to the people/slaves that made that wealth possible).