What Share of Wealth Is Owned by the Richest 20 Percent of All Us Families
This article was published in 2017
People think they know everything about slavery in the The states, simply they don't. They recall the majority of African slaves came to the American colonies, merely they didn't. They talk about 400 years of slavery, but it wasn't. They claim all Southerners owned slaves, only they didn't. Some argue it was all a long time ago, just it wasn't.
Slavery has been in the news a lot lately. From the discovery of the sale of 272 enslaved people that enabled Georgetown University to remain in operation to the McGraw-Loma textbook controversy over calling slaves "workers from Africa" and the slavery memorial existence built at the University of Virginia, Americans are having conversations about this difficult period in American history. Some of these dialogues have been wrought with controversy and disharmonize, similar the Academy of Tennessee educatee who challenged her professor's agreement of enslaved families.
As a scholar of slavery at the Academy of Texas at Austin, I welcome the public debates and connections the American people are making with history. However, there are still many misconceptions about slavery, as evidenced by the conflict at the Academy of Tennessee.
I've spent my career dispelling myths near "the peculiar institution." The goal in my courses is non to victimize ane group and celebrate another. Instead, we trace the history of slavery in all its forms to make sense of the origins of wealth inequality and the roots of discrimination today. The history of slavery provides vital context to contemporary conversations and counters the distorted facts, internet hoaxes and poor scholarship I caution my students against.
Four myths about slavery
Myth 1: The bulk of African captives came to what became the The states.
Truth: Just a piffling more than than 300,000 captives, or 4-6 percent, came to the United states. The majority of enslaved Africans went to Brazil, followed past the Caribbean area. A significant number of enslaved Africans arrived in the American colonies by way of the Caribbean, where they were "seasoned" and mentored into slave life. They spent months or years recovering from the harsh realities of the Center Passage. Once they were forcibly accustomed to slave labor, many were then brought to plantations on American soil.
Myth Two: Slavery lasted for 400 years.
Pop culture is rich with references to 400 years of oppression. At that place seems to be confusion between the Transatlantic Slave Trade (1440-1888) and the institution of slavery, defoliation simply reinforced past the Bible, Genesis fifteen:13:
Then the Lord said to him, 'Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants volition be strangers in a state not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated at that place.'
Listen to Lupe Fiasco – only ane hip-hop creative person to refer to the 400 years – in his 2011 imagining of America without slavery, "All Black Everything":
[Claw] You would never know If you could always be If you never attempt You would never see Stayed in Africa We ain't never leave And so there were no slaves in our history Were no slave ships, were no misery, call me crazy, or isn't he Encounter I vicious asleep and I had a dream, it was all black everything [Poesy 1] Uh, and nosotros ain't go exploited White homo ain't feared and then he did non destroy it We ain't work for free, run across they had to utilize information technology Congenital it upwardly together then we equally appointed Outset 400 years, encounter we really enjoyed it 
Truth: Slavery was not unique to the United States; it is a function of nearly every nation'due south history, from Greek and Roman civilizations to contemporary forms of human trafficking. The American part of the story lasted fewer than 400 years.
How, then, do we calculate the timeline of slavery in America? Nigh historians employ 1619 as a starting point: 20 Africans referred to equally "servants" arrived in Jamestown, Virginia on a Dutch transport. It'south important to note, however, that they were not the first Africans on American soil. Africans first arrived in America in the late 16th century not as slaves just as explorers together with Spanish and Portuguese explorers.
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I of the all-time-known of these African "conquistadors" was Estevancio, who traveled throughout the Southeast from nowadays-solar day Florida to Texas. As far as the establishment of chattel slavery – the handling of slaves as property – in the United States, if we use 1619 as the beginning and the 1865 13th Amendment as its cease, and then it lasted 246 years, not 400.
Myth Three: All Southerners owned slaves.
Truth: Roughly 25 percent of all Southerners owned slaves. The fact that i-quarter of the southern population were slaveholders is notwithstanding shocking to many. This truth brings historical insight to modern conversations virtually inequality and reparations.
Take the case of Texas.
When it established statehood, the Lone Star State had a shorter flow of Anglo-American chattel slavery than other southern states – only 1845 to 1865 – because Spain and Mexico had occupied the region for almost one-half of the 19th century with policies that either abolished or express slavery. Still, the number of people impacted by wealth and income inequality is staggering. By 1860, the Texas enslaved population was 182,566, but slaveholders represented 27 percent of the population, and controlled 68 percent of the regime positions and 73 percent of the wealth. These are astonishing figures, just today's income gap in Texas is arguably more stark, with 10 per centum of taxation filers taking home 50 percent of the income.
Myth Four: Slavery was a long time ago.
Truth: African-Americans have been gratuitous in this country for less time than they were enslaved. Do the math: Blacks have been free for 152 years, which means that most Americans are but ii to iii generations away from slavery. This is not that long ago.
Over this same menstruation, all the same, former slaveholding families have built their legacies on the institution and generated wealth that African-Americans have non had access to considering enslaved labor was forced. Segregation maintained wealth disparities, and overt and covert discrimination limited African-American recovery efforts.
The value of slaves
Economists and historians take examined detailed aspects of the enslaved feel for as long every bit slavery existed. My own work enters this conversation by looking at the value of individual slaves and the ways enslaved people responded to being treated as a commodity.
They were bought and sold just like we sell cars and cattle today. They were gifted, deeded and mortgaged the same way we sell houses today. They were itemized and insured the same style we manage our avails and protect our valuables.
Enslaved people were valued at every stage of their lives, from before birth until afterward expiry. Slaveholders examined women for their fertility and projected the value of their "future increment." As the slaves grew up, enslavers assessed their value through a rating arrangement that quantified their work. An "A1 Prime hand" represented one term used for a "starting time-rate" slave who could do the near work in a given twenty-four hours. Their values decreased on a quarter calibration from three-fourths hands to i-fourth hands, to a charge per unit of nil, which was typically reserved for elderly or differently abled bondpeople (some other term for slaves).
For instance, Guy and Andrew, two prime males sold at the largest auction in U.S. history in 1859, commanded different prices. Although similar in "all marketable points in size, age, and skill," Guy was US$one,280 while Andrew sold for $1,040 because "he had lost his right eye." A reporter from the New York Tribune noted "that the market value of the correct middle in the Southern country is $240." Enslaved bodies were reduced to monetary values assessed from year to year and sometimes from calendar month to month for their entire lifespan and across. By today's standards, Andrew and Guy would be worth nearly $33,000-$40,000.
Slavery was an extremely diverse economical institution, 1 that extracted unpaid labor out of people in a variety of settings – from small single-crop farms and plantations to urban universities. This diversity was also reflected in their prices. And enslaved people understood they were treated every bit commodities.
"I was sold abroad from mammy at 3 years former," recalled Harriett Hill of Georgia. "I remembers it! It lack selling a calf from the cow," she shared in a 1930s interview with the Works Progress Assistants. "Nosotros are human beings," she told her interviewer. Those in chains understood their condition. Even though Harriet Hill was too little to remember her cost when she was three, she recalled beingness sold for $1,400 at historic period ix or ten: "I never could forget it."
Slavery in popular culture
Slavery is role and parcel of American pop culture, but for xl years the television miniseries Roots was the primary visual representation of the institution, except for a handful of contained (and not widely known) films such as Haile Gerima'southward "Sankofa" or the Brazilian "Quilombo."
Today, from grassroots initiatives such equally the interactive Slave Dwelling Project, where school-aged children spend the night in slave cabins, to comic skits on Saturday Night Live, slavery is front end and center. In 2016 A&E and History released the reimagined miniseries "Roots: The Saga of an American Family unit," which reflected 4 decades of new scholarship. Steve McQueen's "12 Years a Slave" was a box office success in 2013, actress Azia Mira Dungey made headlines with the popular web series chosen "Ask a Slave," and "The Underground" – a series about runaway slaves and abolitionists – was a hit for its network WGN America. With less than one year of performance, the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History, which devotes several galleries to the history of slavery, has had more than one million visitors.
The elephant that sits at the center of our history is coming into focus. American slavery happened – nosotros are still living with its consequences. I believe we are finally set up to face it, learn well-nigh it and acknowledge its significance to American history.
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Editor'due south note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on October. 21, 2014.
Source: https://theconversation.com/american-slavery-separating-fact-from-myth-79620
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