In all of nature exists hierarchies. Like the rungs of DNA, a top and bottom are present in everything God created. There is predator and prey, alpha and omega, worker bee and queen, and maker and consumer. It is the natural order of things. However, only in humanity exists the concept of one side of the hierarchy forcing the other to do its bidding against the other’s will. Humanity is the only creature in nature that understands the concept of free will and yet wills to deny it is a universal concept.
Slavery has destroyed virtually every society in which it was practiced. That fact is true from the Egyptians and Romans in antiquity to the Nazis in modern times. In America, slavery was the catalyst of the most devastating war in this country’s history and today continues to act like an apparition that refuses to be exorcised.
The majority opinion of the modern white population in the post Civil Rights era about the country’s racist past is “get over it,” while the majority opinion of the black population is “acknowledge it and show some damn respect.” So who is right? Well, to a degree, both are. Any good psychologist will advise the best way to solve an issue is to acknowledge the issue, understand the issue, and then move towards the future leaving the issue resolved and understood. The operative word here: understand.
Slavery in America was not just the main factor that led to war, it was a disastrous economic model in its time and led to an economic model that helped cause the Great Depression and finally the economic model of the Welfare State that is straining the current treasury.
The founders of the United States not only understood slavery was morally wrong, but they also knew it was unsustainable economically. Thomas Jefferson attempted to introduce language in the Declaration Of Independence that blamed the King of England for the practice. That language was rejected by other slave holders because it would acknowledge publicly that slavery was evil. It is also important to note that almost all of the founders who owned slaves inherited them. Going back to Jefferson, his economic situation was such that he could not free his slaves because his creditors would not let him. They were property in the eyes of the bank.
Economically, the industrial revolution doomed slavery; however, its practitioners knew they were being forced into bankruptcy by the changing economic climate and war became inevitable. Was the Civil War about tariffs? Yes. Was it also about slavery? Yes.
Slavery was based on economic need of cheap labor, ie. hands in the field. Those people enslaved did not get paid, but they received free housing, free food, and free medical care. The model was upside down for the person at the top of the rung. Compounding the problem was that since the bondsmen and women had no economic incentive to produce, many plantations dealt with under-performance and the costly and constant need to hunt down runaway property. Slavery was destined for eventual economic collapse, war or no war.
The economic model that followed was every bit as disastrous. This model was based upon greed and racism. From the 1870′s through the Jim Crow era, the generations of free blacks had to work every bit as hard as they did on the plantation, only this time, they were not given anything for free. Share cropping replaced bondage, but it was economic slavery none the less. Furthermore, there was very limited access to education and even less access to the creature comforts every human being deserves. Jim Crow laws in the southern states violated one of the inalienable rights: the right to pursue happiness. During that time large segments of blacks fled to the industrial northern states where they were equally taken advantage of economically. Continuous backbreaking labor in the factories netted barely enough money for basic survival. Meanwhile, those very few at the top enjoyed all of the wealth that unfettered capitalism allows.
While most readers here would agree that capitalism is the best economic model designed so far in human history, unregulated capitalism is just as dangerous as communism. This time, unfettered capitalism created an economic model that could only eventually collapse, and it did, bringing the country to its knees. In a hideous irony, it was the blacks that stayed in the Jim Crow south that weathered the Great Depression the best. They had land, they were not in a dust bowl, and they had their hands meaning many of them never had to stand in bread line.
The government’s attempt to right the wrongs of the past created the economic model Americans have today, the welfare state. The modern welfare state is not comprised of only black Americans. Welfare is available to everyone; white, black, latino, citizen and, in some cases, illegal aliens wallow up to the trough daily. However, the welfare initiatives were primarily created to give opportunity to the historically oppressed minorities. What it has created is generations living solely off of government largesse. Another irony is that welfare has become a form of mental slavery and it has institutionalized poverty. Welfare has diminished the value of the family because broken families (single mothers) receive more benefits. If the father is not in the home, the mother gets more money.
The Maryland chapter of the NAACP found that indeed the Welfare state has led to increased crime. Quoting directly from their report, “the ready access to a lifetime of welfare and free social service programs is a major contributory factor to the crime problems we face today.” This creates an almost endless cycle that drains the nation’s treasury. The criminal male must be housed and fed and his family remains on welfare. Once out of prison the convict finds his criminal status makes it almost impossible to find employment, so he returns to crime and eventually returns to prison.
While it is true that statistics based on population reveal more blacks are incarcerated than their white counterparts, and statistically more blacks are on welfare than whites, the evil of generational welfare knows no color of skin. Generational welfare destroys equally. What is just as bad is that the very people who pay for the welfare state are finding themselves in need of welfare because just like the economic models of slavery and Jim Crow, the economic model of the welfare state is collapsing upon itself. More and more people are beginning to see we as a whole are headed towards chaos.
History can teach volumes to those who are open to learn. Slavery and its wrongs are still with us today and that is not a black problem or a white problem, it is an American problem.
