When it comes to slavery, the past isn't past

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:

Dr. Mia Brett
@QueenMab87
This week @washingtonpost released a database that shows over 1700 congress members owned slaves but that only tells half the story. We are still dealing with the political system that enabled them. My latest for @johnastoehr

editorialboard.com
When it comes to slavery, the past isn’t past
We aren’t just fighting the historical legacy of slavery, but also the current political system that was always meant to uphold it.
11:42 AM · Jan 13, 2022

https://www.editorialboard.com/when-it-comes-to-slavery-the-past-isnt-past/

No paywall
https://archive.fo/POclJ

The Post released a database this week of every elected member of Congress who ever owned slaves. The article attached to the database includes important stories of individuals remembered as abolitionists but who also owned slaves. These large numbers and individual anecdotes only tell one part of the larger story of the effect of slavery on our political system.

Why were over 1,700 slave owners elected to Congress? Why were 12 of the first 18 presidents slave holders? And why did so many people who didn’t own slaves, or freed their slaves, continue to support pro slavery laws?

While there are of course obvious economic factors, owning slaves produced a lot of wealth, which maintained political power, there are also important structures imbedded in our political system that privileged slavery and today continues to privilege reactionary rural white politics.

While the word “slave” does not appear in the Constitution until the 13th Amendment, there are many provisions of the document that showed complicity in the perpetuation of slavery as an institution.

*snip*

[alphafemale]

1. It still happens in the US

They just use the euphemism prison labor.

[Marcuse]

2. And migrant labor

[Solly Mack]

3. K&R

[crickets]

4. K&R for visibility.