Dixie
Crypto Aryan writes:
I’m not southern, don’t know much southern history, and haven’t participated in any of these forums. However, based on what I have read, I always associated the South in the pre-civil rights era with a large amount of “race mixing” and multiculturalism, certainly more than anywhere else in the USA.
(1) First, there were anti-miscegenation laws in every Southern state until the Loving decision in 1967.
(2) Second, the greatest taboo in Southern history was black male/White female miscegenation – it was formally illegal and culturally taboo to the point of provoking violence.
(3) Third, there were legal and cultural barriers to miscegenation in the Old South, but when it did happen, almost always between White men and black women, it was considered illegitimate.
The offspring of any such unions were considered black and inherited the status of the mother. Society considered miscegenation illegitimate and refused to recognize multiracial families.
That’s why Dixie never became Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic.
(4) Fourth, the Old South was a multiracial society based on a racial caste system. It was not a multicultural society.
The closest thing in the South to a multicultural society would be New Orleans and Southern Louisiana. Even there, the black/white racial division dwarfed ethnic and cultural divisions among Whites.
Louisiana has never been like Quebec. The presence of blacks in the South and the domestic institution of negro slavery – which did not exist in Quebec, or New England for that matter – bridged the social and economic divide between French and Anglos.
The same is true of other ethnic minorities like Irish and Germans. In the South, they became White and were absorbed into Southern mainstream culture. Even the Jews were far more reconciled to white supremacy and segregation in the South than elsewhere.
Social peace and rapid assimilation of White ethnic minorities was one of the many benefits of slavery.
Black nannies breast-feeding white babies, white families going to black neighborhoods for weddings and funerals of those who worked for them.
The Old South was a caste based society with an elaborate racial hierarchy. As long as blacks remained in their place and observed the rules of that society, race relations were typically friendly.
(I think I read about that in David Duke’s book), Charlie Rich learning music from black sharecroppers, Strom Thurmond’s girlfriends, and so on.
Strom Thurmond had an illicit affair with a black woman that wasn’t revealed until after his death because it was a source of shame that would have ended his political career.
“Negro music” was known in the Old South and was discouraged as a taboo among Whites because it was considered lewd and vulgar.
I also read an interesting essay by Zora Neale Hurston written in forties or early fifties ,opposing the NAACP and desegregation, basically calling for black self-advancement and voluntary rather than coercive association between the races.
The Booker T. Washington faction preferred to focus on economic development rather than stirring up racial animosity by engaging in a frontal and futile assault in white supremacy.
Arguing that the South was not a gulag for black Americans would seem to be very helpful, and historically accurate.
It wasn’t anything close to a gulag.
At the same time, it was nothing like BRA either. It was the exact opposite BRA in many ways. BRA is an inverted form of Jim Crow.
Silver writes:
I can accept that the consequences were catastrophic. Do you have a source for that statistic?
Of course.
It comes from Andrew F. Smith’s Starving The South: How the North Won the Civil War.
That’s another argument, one I don’t disagree with, as you well know.
So the free negro is more accurately described as an economic cancer whose presence elevates the crime rate, causes property values to drop, lowers the quality of public schools, burdens social services, corrupts the political system, prompts White flight, and deters business investment resulting in “blighted” neighborhoods and cities?
If so, isn’t this just an admission that the free negro is a burden to society whose costs outweigh the benefits whereas the slave was a capital good that promoted progress and prosperity?
Doesn’t that explain the relative decline of the Mississippi Valley from the richest region in America to the poorest?
That’s right, it wasn’t obvious. It also wasn’t obvious at one time that the earth was round or that it moved around the sun but knowing what you know now why would you ever go back?
This is a false analogy.
The superiority of heliocentrism over the geocentric model is confirmed by observation and its ability to predict the motion of planetary and other celestial bodies.
Is the same true of anti-slavery? It was a fanatic movement based on sentiment and enthusiasm which imposed its moral verdict on society through mass violence rather than the merit of its arguments.
I apologize. I didn’t notice your use of the term “relative” in the passage I was responding to (on the previous page).
If all the enslaved mechanical farm equipment in the Midwest was declared to be persons with civil rights rather than machines and industrial agriculture collapsed as a consequence, might we assume that the relative decline in the Midwestern economy and the resulting poverty would stem from the triumph of this version of anti-slavery?
That may have been the only compelling argument for their introduction, but it’s not the only compelling argument for their retention. I’d be the first to agree that niggers suck (or as I put it in my worst “fuck niggers” moments, “niggers equals shit, complete shit and nothing but shit, the absolute shit of the earth,” lol), but the question of what to do about it is ethically and politically complex, not ethically and politically simple, and I just don’t see that behaving as though it is simple helps any.
Okay.
What are the compelling ethical and political arguments for the retention of the free negro? Assuming there is another compelling argument other than the economic argument for slavery?
As an avid MR reader I’m sure you recall me making almost precisely that point myself not so very long ago.
Prices are always in flux. The price of slaves varied over time because they became more valuable as cotton became a more profitable crop.
Abolition forced a reassessment in the value of the free negro. This happened in every country where slavery was abolished.
To my knowledge, in every case the result was that the free negro (and everything that had been based upon negro slavery) wasn’t nearly as valuable or worth near as much as it had been before.
Just look at what happened in Haiti and Jamaica before even getting to Dixie.
The point here, however, is that the value of the assets one owns (or rather the value of one’s equity in those assets) is not the appropriate measure of an individual’s value to society,
Prices are the measure of social value. The price of my house on the market is the value of my house to society.
It might have a different value to me. The “value to society” is merely the sum of subjective assessments of individuals set as a dollar figure.
… because the individual in question may have, on the one hand, opted for a consumerist lifestyle that eschews amassing assets or, on the other hand, may have inherited a vast amount of property that he’d unlikely be able to ever earn enough to purchase on his own. (Given this line of reasoning, I suppose there are some individuals whose net worth is a perfect reflection of their value to society, but there is no way to distinguish these individuals from any others, so net worth remains an inappropriate measure in all cases.)
Sure it is.
The consumerist individual has a low net worth (from the vantagepoint of others) because the value his assets (to society) only marginally exceed his liabilities. Should his lifestyle ever change, his net worth would also change for better or worse.
The trust fund baby who inherits a great fortune might temporarily possess assets (properties, companies, stocks and bonds, etc.) which are quite valuable to society. His relative position in society though is also in flux and the value of his assets will change depending on how he manages them.
The trust fund baby would have assets that are more valuable to society than the consumerist.
Okay, so make it $135,000 in my example. But in turn you’ll have to cease claiming that slaves were “worth: $135,000 in 1861 since that only applies to 2009 (because the kind of labor they can do in 2009 didn’t exist in 1861).
You still miss the point that employers employ these people, so for them it’s worth it. There’s no getting around this.
Umm … the whole point of the essay was to measure the value of antebellum slaves in 2009 dollars.
$1 dollar in 1860 wasn’t worth $1 dollar in 2009. A slave that was bought for $800 in 1860 would have cost over $20,000 in 2009 dollars.
Three measures were given: the real price, the labor income value, and the social status value. Of those, the labor income value is the appropriate measure, and a slave bought in 1860 would be worth the equivalent of $135K in 2009 dollars.
Of course this is not to say that a slave bought today would be worth that much today. That was never the point of the essay.
I wanted to focus on individuals because slaves were purchased as individuals not as households (at least so far as I’m aware, though I’m sure a budding slaver like you will set me straight if I’m wrong), which I hoped would make the task of spelling out to you why your use of net worth as a measure of value is incorrect.
Slaves were purchased as individuals and in groups.
We don’t even have to consider the value of slave households because it would have been significantly greater than the value of a single slave.
An entire free household in 2012 isn’t worth the real price of a single slave in 1860 much less the labor income value of a single slave.
Note: As the weather permits, I will respond to Silver. There is a pretty bad thunderstorm outside. I don’t want to fry my new laptop so I am using my mobile phone.
You’re right. Dixie doesn’t look like Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic. It’s looks alot more like Uganda.
That’s why I prefer Vermont thank you.
@Joew
I thought you said you lived in northern California?
@Chris313
I do live in Northern California. My reference to Vermont concerns a discussion I had with Fr John and Hunter Wallace the other day about Vermont. If you don’t mind.
Great write up, Hunter, as usual. Thanks.
With what the South has been through it should be 10 times worse than it is.
The argument for slavery (as I understand it) is that blacks are simply not capable, on average, of participating in an advanced, civilized society. Perhaps this is true, though I am not sure that the inability of blacks to function in our society is proof of that.
However, I still think that there is a compelling moral argument against enslaving anybody. The use of the power of the state to take anybody’s labor is still robbery. I’m not sure that it matters that the victims are black.
I don’t deny that cultural and legal changes would be beneficial — I can list a few if you’d like. But endorsing slavery for blacks is a bit much. Or am I misunderstanding you?
It’s interesting to compare slave prices to Afleats.
While under contract (tram slaves) they are cash cows. After retirement (manumission)! they are bankrupts.
All the tales of ruined ballers are very similar to the contrast between the value of a slave and a free black. I hazard a guess that blacks in slavery lived tolerably better than 90% of modern blacks. The reason they desired freedom was just jealousy for the wealth they saw around them in the hands of Betters.
Afleats= Athletes.
@ John
Your guess is totally off-the-wall : totally wrong.
@ John
If blacks aren’t truly human*, how then could the blacks get jealous about not having wealth? Animals don’t know about money and wealth.
* As many who support slavery say.
Joe – shut up.
John – your Afleates analogy is fabulous. I’m stealing [it]. Brilliant!!!!
Crypto-Aryan = Full On Kike.
Front man for the schmoozies at TCM, Robert Osborne, is playing the 1931 classic drama:
” A Free Soul ”
Great drama. Riveting. A Critics Choice movie. About:
“A hard-drinking lawyer’s daughter falls for one of his underworld clients”.
MGM : 1931
Check your local listings for time.
Zippy,
If your point is that slave societies are extractive, then I agree. Blacks in a condition of slavery are coerced into working for their masters who profit from their labor.
The same is true of free societies. In free societies, free laborers are coerced by necessity into working for the capital of their employers who extract their labor in the form of profit.
Slavery is an economic system that fosters racial solidarity, conservatism, and aristocratic values.
Free labor is an economic system that undermines racial solidarity and fosters liberalism and social revolution.
What would Patriarch Shem say about Hollywood? Would he like the old Hollywood? Or does he just dislike modern Hollywood? What would he think of “The Bells of St Mary’s”? The classic with Ingrid Bergman and Bing Crosby. Would that pass his okay?
What would he say about “Gone with the Wind”? Would that pass? Or, “Red Badge of Courage” ? Would Patriarch Shem be upset about the love of the White Caucasian Christian race to indulge in internecine war ? The mercenary attitude of so many whites? What would Patriarch Shem think of, “Steel Magnolias”?
Hunter – it you do a post on this – I want a H/T:
http://personalliberty.com/2012/07/17/trayvon-martin-memorial-in-the-works/
Gone With The Wind was powerful because it contrasted the poverty and inferiority of the New South with the virtues and abundance of the Old South. It was also true.
How many blacks lived in cramped cells in the deep south? As Millions do now.
Field work kept everyone fed and clothed.
@ Denise: There’s bound to be a Trayvon public memorial, and best seller books, a movie….
“Gone with the Wind” is still fabulous. And there were no NAGAS in “Steel Magnolias”
Animals do understand territory, quantity and comfort. Which is as good a measure of wealth as anything else.
There is a scene in Gone With The Wind where Big Sam rescues Scarlett from the Black Undertow. The film shows how ex-slaves descended on the cities and created the first ghettos on the outskirts of Atlanta.
We take the existence of these black slums and the criminal underclass that breeds in them for granted today. They didn’t exist in the South until Reconstruction.
The Black Undertow was created by abolition. It existed before the war in slums in the Northeast created by runaway slaves.
Okay.
I was inquiring into what Patriarch Shem thinks about Hollywood and sundry matters. Everyone has an opinion– that’s very nice. But the Patriarch — He Be The Man. He’s like the Big Daddy of all of us according to the religious ones here who are so considerate and so concerned about our souls — the most important and supreme matter of all – interprete the bible for us. What’s Patriarch Shem’s [ whoever he may be] take on all of this ?
A football/basketball team is like a plantation. Generally managed by whites while played by blacks. there’s a few overseers like quarterbacks who often seem to be white. The players are valued at astronomically high prices that are oddly similar to slave values in a variety of ways. You even have transfer fees and dealerlike agents. The player’s lives are managed to the nth degree. Riches are showered in them. Every advantage and sexual favour is heaped on them.
Many Black players upon retirement seem to fall apart financially though. Once out
of the system they can’t cope. Even though stars have a really amazing starting point they relentlessly screw it all up.
Red Badge of Courage is alot more realistic than Gone with the Wind. If Big Sam saved Scarlett — and if this is true, then why were the blacks during the Reconstruction period a cause for so many problems. Doesn’t seem to me the blacks were saving the Scarletts– more like raping the Scarletts and trying to take advantage of the white Southerners every chance they could. That’s why the Southerners had to start the KKK. To protect themselves from the ” Big Sams”. Red Badge of Courage is the truth. Not Gone With The Wind.
John, yes! I see exactly what you’re saying.
Today’s college foo’ bah star is the modern equiv of a plantation slave. He is a “student athlete” so he is unremunerated (at least in $ terms). Since he’s not even intellectually capable of making anything of his “education”, he’s essentially having his talents used for free and taking all the risks to his physical well-being of being a slave doing hard physical labor. And mammies essentially sell their sons into this system, just like the mammies did back in the Dark Continent.
Sure, the “football hero” gets mares provided to him for nookie, but then, again, so did the plantation slaves.
But these foo’bah playahs are worse off than old time chattel slaves at least in this one sense: The old time plantation owner had to provide for his slave in his dotage when he was no longer profitable. Modern universities don’t bother themselves with that burden.
Hunter makes a number of good points here. Football players in the early years of the NFL were not evaluated as highly as they are now. Same goes for all professional sports. In the 1930s a soccer player was simply hoping to save up enough to buy a pub or a grocery shop maybe with enough fame start a brand. Now they are themselves major landholders with huge assets. The value of the sportsman could fluctuate down again depending on the demand for sports entertainment. Actors are somewhat similar. Film and TV transformed the price an actor might demand to astronomical levels. It’s the same with hardy slaves.
I can well imagine that there were slaves who were 275 lbs of muscle who were the engine of the plantation. They got to eat extra beef, chicken, lamb and monopolize the female slave population, not unlike the college ball system. They probably even had extra medical care. Of course most of them would be turned into physical wrecks by their late twenties, but now that problem is completely outsourced to the taxpayer rather than the private responsibility of the team owner.
I know the Hollywood shmoozies want to usurp white Christian America. Did you ever see the Hollywood schmoozies make a movie about the One and Only Patriarch Shem ? The shmoozies are hiding our heritage from us! The schmooze didn’t even ever make a movie about Patriarch Shem’s cousin Melchizedick, oops excuse the typo, Melchischmeckle, oops again, that’s not it, Melchizedek, that’s more like it.
Who was Melchizedek anyway ? Does he have anything to do with Crypto-Aryans and silver*? Or modern-day Americans at all ? I guess his cousin Patriarch Shem is all about Real Aryans and Gold** : Was Patriarch Shem Big Daddy in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” ? It’s all so confusing — especially for a member of the Guidomite tribe. I still can’t figure out the Risorgimento and Gioberti — let alone schmoozy Hollywood. Well, there’s always tomorrow. I can’t think about this now. I’ll think about it tomorrow.
* I hope the silver is real at least, if not the Aryans.
** ditto
“course most of them would be turned into physical wrecks by their late twenties, but now that problem is completely outsourced to the taxpayer rather than the private responsibility of the team owner.”
Exactly! Universities, who make such a to-do about being anti-racist and all progressive, are neo slavers, with one difference: they have connived enough to get to outsource the costs of the medical care of the slave after he’s served his purpose, onto the rest of us.
And don’t anybody run silly arguments that winning college football teams generate revenue to give smart White boys scholarships. Virtually all the money the teams make gets spent on coach salaries and extra revenue to the university to keep overpaid professors of useless and generally false factoids, like, say, Afreakan American studies, in the chips.
“course most of them would be turned into physical wrecks by their late twenties, but now that problem is completely outsourced to the taxpayer rather than the private responsibility of the team owner.”
Exactly! Universities, who make such a to-do about being anti-racist and all progressive, are neo slavers, with one difference: they have connived enough to get to outsource the costs of the medical care of the slave after he’s served his purpose, onto the rest of us.
And don’t anybody try to run silly arguments (not that the regular posters here would) that winning college football teams generate revenue to give smart White boys scholarships. Virtually all the money the teams make gets spent on coach salaries and extra revenue to the university to keep overpaid professors of useless and generally false factoids, like, say, Afreakan American studies, in the chips.
@John
Your first post about blacks being jealous had to do with money– not anything else but money. Your 2nd post trying to come up with b/s to try to appear as if you really meant territory and not money is b/s.
Division I college sports is exploitative, especially football. The schools, coaches, TV networks and everyone involved in the delivering the games make big money. The players get nothing Of course, no one makes anyone participate. So not exactly slavery.
At the professional level, it seems only the ex-Black players fall apart. Is this a surprise? A few people in this audience may recognize the name Laurence Taylor. He was top Black player 20 years ago, recently arrested for sex with an under-aged girl. He sold his superbowl ring for $200,000 he was so hard up for cash. For some reason, ex White players never end up this way.
Not to go too far off topic, but the NFL is facing waves of lawsuits from former players. The players’ claim is that the NFL didn’t disclose the full risks of injury and trauma, and, so the theory goes, many now ex-NFL players deserve additional “compensation.” It makes me wonder if it the whole thing is simply a disguised, back-door way for ex black players who were too stupid to properly manage their millions to go back to the well and extract more money from the NFL.
I said wealth. Not money you peawit fool.
Lew, of course it’s a backdoor way to get the 40 acres and a mile. It’s not slavery to play a sport but it’s certainly a “farm” and not that far off being a “plantation” in term of organization. I was merely comparing to show a similar social/ labour structure. Not the moral issues of voluntary contracts and slavery.
Joe, 40 acres and a mule represented wealth at the time.
@John
You meant money when you said “wealth” and you know you it.
I don’t want to drift too far from the point of course. A college ball player is technically worth zero dollars. However the play can generate masses of cash for others. The same is true for a professional. Most of the money Generated by the player ends up in the pockets of broadcasters, adcompanies, brands, owners, coaches, staff.
The money made by the player himself is often willothewisp or gone in a flash. They can’t operate outside a very exploitative system very well. They are happy as an exploitable commodity.
White players don’t have quite the same problem. There are cases of raging alkies or burnouts but they are rarer.
I said wealth. Don’t put words in my mouth. Massa didn’t literally have a roll of benjamins that he’d flash infront of a nig! Dolt!
He had nice clothes, horses, jewelry, gun collections, furniture, carriages, houses, libraries… That stuff provoked jealousy.
Blacks liked the shine stuff.
So I suppose what is a college footballer worth? How much to whom? At what point in history?
One reason why the North attacked could well have been the increased value of the slave around 1860. That large an asset in the hands of a cultural rival (and perhaps by this time ethnic rival) would have been enough of a reason to war. Thebes may have gunned down Sparta for similar reasons. It’s wasn’t slavery per se but the commercial
rivalry.
@John
Uh, the North didn’t “attack” the South.
1.) President Buchanan refused to surrender Federal forts in the South to seceding states. State troops seized them by force or threat of force.
2.) Some spoiled brats from the Citadel fired on an unarmed Northern supply ship without provocation.
3.) Southern guns fired on Fort Sumter, initiating the official hostilities of the war.
nice try to spin things Chris, but the north tried to reinforce and resupply an occupying fort in a foreign port. That’s an act of war
North Vietnam also “started the war” in the Gulf of Tonkin.
I believe The Star of The West was a civilian ship. Southerners fired first, and even continued to shoot at it as it acknowledged the warning volley and turned and left.
Y’all started it.
Hunter, the August 2 1964 incident most certainly did happen, and there are photographs of commie torpedo boats during the firefight, a bullet-ridden US fighter jet, and North Vietnamese casualties to confirm it.
Sending federal troops into the Confederacy to occupy South Carolina property was an act of war.
Then again, few nations in the world are not subjected to Yankee military bases.
Thanks for your civil reply, Hunter. I do appreciate it that you are willing to accept polite criticism on your blog.
I think I’ve figured out your world-view now. In terms of how you describe the world, you seem to be a Marxist, though you disagree with most Marxists on prescriptive matters. Your notion that free laborers are “coerced by necessity” to work for “capital,” which then extracts economic rents is right out of the Marxist paradigm. Which makes a free society just as extractive as a slave one and obliterates the moral distinction between them. Marxists typically use this to argue that socialism is desirable to replace capitalism; you seem to be arguing instead for neo-feudal society.
One problem with your analysis is that in a free society businesses compete for labor. People may be “coerced” by the nature of the universe to do something for a living, but they have a wide variety of different options as to what to do. The scope of variety, of course, depends on one’s abilities and the surrounding economic conditions.
Further, people are free to save their own wealth and become capitalists themselves — to use their capital to start a small business. This allows them to capture any profits that accrue. Capital is not fixed.
Finally, the notion that the return on capital is an economic rent — that it’s extractive in the same way as slavery is extractive — is dependent on the Marxian labor theory of value. Which, put simply, is wrong.
I certainly agree that blacks are, on average, less intelligent and more prone to physical violence than whites. I agree that if space aliens kidnapped all the blacks, we’d all be better off. But a black man with an IQ of 82 and a very short time horizon is still a human being, and I don’t think you or I have the right to enslave him.
Thanks again for your civil response. You’ll note that while I disagree with you, I’ve tried very hard to be polite, and to avoid gratuitous name-calling or the like.
It’s not IQ. There are plenty of stupid whites. They do not tend to be violent thugs or burden everyone else in quite the same way. Also if the blacks are free to multiply they enslave us through their bad habits, low motivation and aggression. Equally they vote like a herd. Not like ordinary men.
Hunter,
Could you please state what the per capita incomes were according to Smith (and summarize any other related data if available and is not too much to ask)?
It’s possible, but over the course of 100 or 150 years or whatever too many other variables creep into the equation.
No, this is just not true. A brain surgeon would continue to have high value to society because his services are so rare and valuable. What he does with his income after he earns only has the most distant and indirect impact on his value to society. He becomes no less a brain surgeon if he fritters his earnings away at the race track than if he uses them to pay off his mortgage or invest in a tree farm or what have you. You could argue that his consumption decisions have some effect on his value to society — eg he consumes copious amount of porn — but it really does strain the concept.
It’s the assets that are valuable to society, though, not the trust fund baby himself. We know this because the assets would remain valuable whether he owned them or not. Their value has nothing to do with any of his abilities. This is why net worth is not as good a guide to “value to society” as income. (Though income is hardly perfect either. Some rappers earn high income but it’s obvious society would be better off without them.)
That’s how much a slave would be worth in the year 2009, considering the uses he could be put to. But a slave in 1861 cost $20,000 in 2009 dollars. If he was worth any more than this in 1861 then he would have cost more in 1861 (but he wasn’t, so he didn’t).