Listening to a podcast about slavery in the United States and the cotton industry. Amazing. There has of course been slavery throughout human history. I don’t buy the idea, even back in antiquity, that people didn’t really have the capacity to understand that slavery is wrong. I don’t think that’s a very big intellectual leap to make — you know – that it’s wrong to own another human being, or that they didn’t understand these were “people”.
Interesting point in this podcast is the extent to which American capitalism was shaped and continues to be shaped by the institution of slavery. CEO’s making hundreds or thousands of times what their employees are making? Except for the beatings the attitude is mostly still there. People as a means to an end, rather than deserving of dignity and respect simply because they are human, and the weird acceptance that this is the “way things are.” Kids in cages? Check. Separated families? Check. Working people barely getting by? Check.
A while back I read Kendi’s “Stamped from the Beginning” and he talks about slavery being integral to the founding of our country. And it is all about money. In order to get rich in colonial America you needed a labor force were the ones in power have total control over the workers.
So it was greed that invented the racist thinking that justified torturing other humans.
It is amazing how money warps human interactions. And yet it the world today economics is the prevailing philosophy that guides society.
By the way, what was the podcast?
Yup.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/podcasts/1619-slavery-cotton-capitalism.html