No, Slaves Didn't Build This Country

No, Slaves Didn't Build This Country

By Brandon Morse | 

The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.

Not long ago, Disney ripped off any pretense of being a family company and dove head-first into the social justice muck with an episode of “The Proud Family” that featured a slam poetry segment that echoed the fringe critical race theory claim that “slaves built this country.”

As RedState reported, it soon surfaced that the writer of the show is a very loud and proud social justice radical named Latoya Raveneau, who has a “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” and wants to introduce “queerness” to the shows your kids watch whenever she gets the chance. She also bragged that no one at Disney is trying to stop her.

First things first, we need to torpedo this idea that slaves built this country. While it’d be unrealistic to say they weren’t a part of the nation’s development, putting them as the prime constructors of an entire nation is like saying the guy who crafted the axle at the car factory built your vehicle. He was definitely a part of it, but he hardly gets to take full credit.

So many kinds of people came to the new world and worked their own land, built their own towns, and established their own societies without the help of slaves. For one, the Trans-Atlantic slave trade transported well over 12 million slaves, but only a little over 300,000 made their way into the United States. This didn’t happen all at once. Slavery did officially begin in 1619, but it began with just over 20 slaves.

To think that over the course of time that singular group of people built an entire nation — even a burgeoning one — by themselves is the height of fantasy. Especially as you continue to plug in the numbers.

The slave population would later balloon to around four million by the time the emancipation proclamation was signed in 1863, and while that number is tragically large, it doesn’t mean that there was a slave for every family. The vast majority of slaves were held in the agrarian south and even then, only around 25 percent of the south was wealthy enough to own slaves.

Meanwhile, the slave-free north continued to outpace the south by leaps and bounds, including agriculturally according to Warfare in the Western World:

“But in a longer struggle the North’s advantages were substantial. With a population of 20 million, the Northern states obviously possessed a much larger military manpower base, but their industrial capacity was far greater as well. In 1860 the North had over 110,000 manufacturing establishments, the South just 18,000. The North produced 94 percent of the country’s iron, 97 percent of is coal and – not incidentally – 97 percent of its firearms. It contained 22,000 miles of railroad to the South’s 8,500. The North outperformed the South agriculturally as well. Northerners held 75 percent of the country’s farm acreage, produced 60 percent of its livestock, 67 percent of its corn, and 81 percent of its wheat. All in all, they held 75 percent of the nation’s total wealth.”

These stats immediately wreck the idea that “slaves built this country.” Not only did the north succeed greatly without them, but the majority of the south also didn’t have them.

The idea that white people were sitting in rocking chairs sipping tea while black people did all the work from 1619 to 1863 is, frankly, stupid. It dismisses the blood, sweat, and tears of many different kinds of people, including Mexicans, Germans, Irish, Chinese, and more. It purposely shoves aside the industriousness of an entire country looking to build a new world and make something for itself.

Yes, slavery did play a part, but not nearly enough of one to claim all the credit. This leads me to the idea that reparations are owed to the black population of the United States by the taxpayers of this country.

No. No one owes anything to anyone for the atrocity that is slavery. For one, no one alive today was around to commit that sin or have that sin be committed upon them. Whatever guilt there was for it has long since died off. Outside of the church, the idea of original sin is ludicrous. White people alive today are not guilty of what a percentage of white people did long ago. Moreover, the nation that declared slavery illegal and went to war with emancipation being a goal leading to an astounding loss of life is not responsible for reparations either.

This nation’s story is, in part, a struggle against slavery beginning at its very foundations. White supremacy was never the intended goal of those most loyal to the American dream and spirit, despite the claims of race hustlers. Nothing is owed because there is no one around to whom anything would be owed.

Social sin is non-transferable.

Raveneau is, like most radical leftists, incredibly bitter and bigoted herself. Her racism against white people is clearly on display, as is her disdain for a country that sacrificed much to shed itself of the slavery she’s using as a tool to exert social control over innocent people. That Disney is allowing this to happen shows just how lost it is and how it too wishes to damage this great nation’s reputation and cast its people as villains for simply existing in a place where once there was slavery.

The bitter truth that race hustlers need to face is that white people today aren’t guilty of slavery. White supremacy is not the foremost wish of the vast majority of white people in this nation today, and anyone who says differently is trying to sell you something that would be detrimental to everyone for having bought it.

Slavery is evil and it should be left in the past. No one living today should try to bring it back, not in practice or as a social tool to use as a method of social dictatorship.

https://redstate.com/brandon_morse/2023/02/14/no-slaves-didnt-build-this-country-n703440