Enslaved People Never Caught Up
What
Southern dynasties’ post-Civil War resurgence tell us about how wealth is really handed down
Andrew Van Dam, April 4, 2019, The Washington Post
Emancipation should have laid waste to the Southern aristocracy.
The economy was built on the forced labor of enslaved Africans, and
almost half the Confederacy’s wealth was invested in owning humans.
Once people could no longer be treated as chattel, that
wealth evaporated.
But less than two decades after the Civil War, Southern
slave-owning dynasties were back on top of the economic ladder,
according to an ambitious new analysis from Leah Boustan of Princeton
University, Katherine Eriksson of the University of California at Davis
and Philipp Ager of the University of Southern Denmark.
Their research upends the conventional wisdom that slave
owners struggled after they lost access to their wealth. Yes, some fell
behind economically in the war’s aftermath. But by 1880, the sons of
slave owners were better off than the sons of nearby Southern
whites who started with equal wealth but were not as invested in
enslaved people.
The sons of formerly enslaved people never caught up, of course. By 1880
more than 90 percent of them were still in the South, and most
still worked as farm laborers, tenant farmers or sharecroppers. In the
120 years that followed, they consistently saw lower
pay and less upward mobility than similar white men, according to
a separate 2017 working paper by economists Marianne Wanamaker of the
University of Tennessee and William Collins of Vanderbilt University.
continue
think
absolute power depends on absolute control over knowledge, which in turn necessitates absolute corruption
Popular posts from this blog
Here is where you can find us: https://thebigisms.wordpress.com/2020/11/29/my-white-friend-asked-me-on-facebook-to-explain-white-privilege-i-decided-to-be-honest-yes-magazine/ (we will leave this blog up since there is so much history to read and consider.)
The truth about Jackson’s savagery was just as disturbing as the fake news. After a particularly bloody battle in 1814, Andrew Jackson’s men counted the dead Indians by cutting off their noses. They collected 557 noses. and... (this comment) Jackson ran an ad in the Nashville Gazette, in October, 1804, for the capture of a runaway slave, which stated that in addition to the reward, he would pay an extra $10 per 100 lashes (up to 300), to anyone who willing to inflict them upon his miscreant property. He was known to hold a vengeful lifetime grudge against anyone whom he felt had slighted him, regardless of how minor the supposed offense. His betrayal the Choctow tribe, whom he persuaded to become American allies over the British during the war of 1812, culminated in the “Indian Removal Act” (Trail of Tears), of which he took personal responsiblity to see implemented, resulted in the death of thousands of men, women and children. It’s no surprise that the current occupant of the Wh
Daniel H. Wilson, PhD (Cherokee), is the author of several books, including the New York Times bestseller Robopocalypse and the forthcoming The Andromeda Evolution The Truth Is Out There Writing truthfully is an act of bravery. It takes courage to put words into the world, knowing they will be judged and you along with them. The more truth there is to a story, the more powerful it is, and the more vulnerable the one who wrote it. I am proud that every piece collected here represents a facet of truth, contributed by a group of writers who each are unique, talented, and courageous. Some of the stories in this issue of TCJ Student paint pictures of fleeting moments of melancholy or happiness, while others capture the span of years that it takes trees to root. Some turn outward into the world to thrill with whip-crack snaps of violence, and others fold inward to ponder the patterns of thinking that can define a people. These stories are fascinating and touching, and the
Comments