Disclaimer: I am not a statistician. This is a bunch of shitty napkin math from the Intro to the 1860 Census PDF. This could be a "fun" argument with true-believers who are able to rationally think in the slightest (good luck finding them) or a thought experiment in the very least with anybody. I am writing this out to practice for future arguments and welcome criticism to bolster or diminish any ideas I present.
Since I will reference antiquated and unpolite terms for race found in the census, I will define them here:
Black: Pure african ancestry or modern black population in present tense
Mulatto: Mixed black-white ancestry
Colored: Black and Mulatto populations together
And now the big ^secret Black people are more than likely to be related to slave owners than the vast majority of white people.
#Only a small minority of whites owned slaves.
If there is criticism to my assessment, I more than welcome scrutiny to the paragragh below
The total number of slave owners was 385,000 in 1860 (p. ?). The number of white males 18-45 y.o. was 5,624,065 (p. 15) The largest percentage that could possibly be of white slave ownwers is 6.85% of white males, which would be even smaller if males 45+ were added to the denominator and if colored slave owners were subtracted from the numerator. Subtracting colored slave owners (261,918 (p. 10)), this number shrinks to 123,082 or 2.2% of white male population 18-45, which would rapidly approach the popular figure of 1.4% of all white males if the older white population were accounted. Assuming this slave-owning white population was relatively sedentary, only whites with ties to the south would need be worried to be tied with this group. Immigrants from Europe in the prevailing century would continue to diminish this legacy elsewhere.
The population of non-blacks, men and women was (31,443,321-4,441,730) 27,001,591 (p. 2 & p. 7). This figure would further drop white involvement (123k) to 0.45%, or in other words 99.55% of whites did NOT own slaves at the most or 98.6% (385k) at the least (I might be including Indians and Mexicans somebody double check)
Curioiusly, Google was loathe to provide the black slave holder figure, so I took it from a table in the cited census. I also could not verify the total slaveholder number, and relied on various sources pointing to apx. 380,000, but none of them disclosed whether that included blacks. So I had to guess, and my guess seemed to snugly fit that figure given by that popular tweet the other day.
Unsurprisingly, Politifact, in an attempt to debunk the tweet/figure of white involvement would only increasingly narrow the parameters i.e. they would compare the slave owning population only to white males in the south, then number of households they would represent compared to total white households in the south, to inflate the number of involvement to 30% and conflate that with ALL whites.
~
#Blacks are more than likely descended from black or white slave owners.
##Blacks descended from white slave owners.
The total number of blacks in 1860 was 3,853,478 (p.7). Mulattoes totaled 588,353; which is 13.25% of the total black population in 1860 (p. 8). The white part of their ancestry is overwhelmingly from their male white masters since black-white marriage was unheard of (p. 9).
Since slave importation was banned in 1808, the existing black population today could only be sustained by blacks who may or may not be of mixed white ancestry. The probability of being genetically tied to a slave holder could only increase with time since being of mixed ancestry mattered little in black culture of courting, then and now. The number of non-slave african immigrants would be negligible, and it is even admitted that it is negligible since American blacks being tied to slavery is an overwhelming assumption conceded by the left.
##Blacks descended from black slave owners.
Couple the above with the fact that 53% (!) of freed slaves owned slaves (p 10), it is more likely for any American black person to be descended from a slave holder than a white person in most of America today. Convincing a black person of this is problematic, since it is hard to positively prove through geneology for...reasons (but honestly most people are pretty shit at recording family history). Hopefully DNA markers can point to more truth than a lack of family records would, but I wouldn't put it past ancestry companies to withold this evidence from clients, since it's pay-to-play anyways and hearing that might be bad for business.
Yhe lesson is that slavery is a super shitty practice that taints all humanity, so why bother pointing fingers if we don't do it in the USA anymore (legally)?
My personal opinion (owing to my Mormon and Mennonite heritage): Original sin is a retarded concept any way you spin it, whether in religion or critical race theory. It makes no sense to have to repent for the sins of your parents. I think the right for reparations passed with the breath of the last living freed slave.
It's settled then. Mulattoes should pay true black people reparations for the sufferings their ancestors inflicted on the blacks. Starting with Nicole Hannah-Jones and Colin Kaepernick.
Original sin is a very good thing in religion, because the realization of man's fallen nature leads you to accurate conclusions about his behavior. Original sin is not inherited sin in theology, but it is the sin that negatively affected human nature and made it so that man could not but sin.
Why is this important? If you believe in the perfectability of man, then you will go down the rabbit-hole of utopianism that has wrought so much death and destruction over the past 2 centuries. As Chesterton pointed out, original sin is the one religious dogma that is empirically verifiable.
I'm not religiously Christian but I agree. Original sin in Christianity kept the population humble because it applied to EVERYONE and kept people from getting so narcissistic and full of themselves.
But "woke original sin" only applies to straight white people (sometimes only non-liberal straight white people), therefore everyone else still gets to be a narcissist and even straight white people get to shit on other straight white people for being "worse" and not deferring to the superior people of color.
Well, not always successfully, but it helped. More importantly, you are not going to put absolute power into the hands of one man when you know that man's nature is fallen, and that there are no perfect men, nor any omniscient leaders.
Only when those 'superior people of color' agree with what the white people believe that they should think.
True, just ask Candace Owens. Although they like to say they "aren't really black" or have a "white soul" or some nonsense to get around it.
I believe the academic term is "internalized whiteness".
White adjacent
There's also no equivalent to "hate the sin; love the sinner" in woke ideology. They just get added to the long, long list of people who are going to be put up against a wall when the time comes.
Along the same lines, many NPCs cling desperately to guilt because it gives them a sense of agency. These people lack an independent will to affect the world around them, but the idea that they were capable of making different decisions in the past gives them solace. The infamous Catholic guilt channels this false sense of agency as a way to keep the sheep in line, and they are happier for it.
Yeah that's the basic problem I've noticed.
I disagree, I think the only utility of Original Sin is that it is an easy way to use shame as a weapon of compliance to an asserted moral authority.
I think you may misunderstand what it is. It is not "you are guilty for having been born". It is "your nature is such that you cannot but sin". That last thing is undoubtedly true, though you and I may disagree with Christians as to what its origin is.
Like many aspects of Christianity: take it up with the Christians. A lot of idiot moral authoritarians have previously taken it as the former, or have used the latter as an excuse to manipulate people psychologically and emotionally.
I am not aware of that. I do know that this is the way it is interpreted in atheist polemic. Even the great Christopher Hitchens spun it the incorrect way, probably not intentionally maliciously.
That's a problem I've been trying to explain for... IDK... 15 years or something?
I've got no problem with most intelligent theologians explaining detailed Christian philosophical concepts.
That is not the "Jesus take the wheel" types that the rest of us interact with every day. The intellectual leadership of Christendom is basically fucking dead, and it's now just up to random pastors, priests, activists, and Evangelicals who only recently became more reasonable.
Christians have been using God as a crutch and calling themselves good Christians because they went to Church on Sunday for the entirety of my life. The issue is that I can listen to a Christian Theologian explain a Christian philosophy and be fine with it. It's too bad Christians haven't heard of it, or haven't otherwise taken the lessons to heart.
I don't believe in anything you just said.
I especially don't rely on other peoples thoughts to dictate my own.
Jump down a rabbit hole. Why don't you jump down my rabbit hole.
Do you believe in the perfectability of man?
I believe those words could mean anything either of us wish for them to mean. And for me to agree to said concept would be meaningless on a text based forum.
There is no nuance in text, and your words are meant to embrace greater concepts steeped in contextual teachings.
With that in mind, I can not in good conscious agree or disagree, to such broad ill defined Questions.
Hey man, I'm still looking over the census and I just discovered a huge problem with your analysis:
The chart you're looking at says "non-slaveholding" and "slaveholding" but you need to look at the heading - the heading says "states"
You thought that 261,918 was the number of black slave owners. No. It's the number of free blacks in slaveholding states. I don't (yet, I'm still looking) see any information on how many of those 261,918 free blacks actually owned slaves.
Yeah I thought that's where the problem was, which is why I gave both numbers. It's good to have a second opinion.
Additionally, I didn't account for other members of the household involved in slavery. Statistics is a crapshoot for amateurs like me.
It wasn't unheard of, it was illegal.
In any case, none of this is really super surprising when you think about it. Freed slaves still would have probably lived in the south, and as such would have had the right to own slaves. Hell, some of them might have been determined to buy slaves that were family & friends, and then go through the burdensome process of freeing them legally.
Additionally, huge swathes of the current white population to the US immigrated to the US post slavery. I'm one of those people. As such, they have zero relationship to slavery. Meanwhile, although many blacks in America also have no relationship to slavery; the ones that do... are still more likely to be related to slave masters than the swathes of the white population with literally no ties to slavery.
As you noted, slavery wasn't super common. Some of those stats would have included people like Ulysses S. Grant, who was given a slave that the previous owner was attempting to free, so he (the slave) basically had to hang around the house and do chores with Grant until they could go through he hassle of actually freeing him, which took years. (People really don't understand that Slaveocracy was genuinely a thing and that freeing slaves incorrectly was criminal)
The only people who had plantations of slaves were extremely wealthy. Considering the south was incredibly poor (partly due to slavery), it's not a surprise that most people in the South didn't have slaves. Possibly the cruelest joke of the Civil War is that the Confederacy desperately defended slavery... by making poor people who's wages were deflated by slave labor, go fight to preserve slavery. yaaaaaaay don't vote democrat.
I can't find that number either. I really think you need a source for that. It's the linchpin of this whole thing.
Great work on the rest of it though.
Linchpin? Racist! /s
I said afterwards that was Google, but yes that was a weakness.
It's just communism. It's just another crack to push communism into. It's always just communism. Your reason, facts, and logic do not matter and have no meaning in this discussion. All that matters is they push communism hard, and whenever possible.
All races has done bad things to other races in some time in its existance. All races had events where they were the pepetrators or victims of rape, genocide or enslavement. All current race and cultures are the winners through conquests. Borders change.
Its natural in a macabe way.
Reparations = taking money from people who never owned a slave and giving to people who never were a slave.
This is my point entirely.
Why should I, who never owned a slave, pay reparations, to a group of people who were never owned as slaves?