Thanks. Nice writing. Just to say, though, the fact of Black culture today being an adoption of White southern culture is well-known. It was a social fact in sociology and criminology classes for me in college (2005-2010). So, it is not a special revelation known to conservatives and denied by liberals. It depends on whom you ask. Different people have different inventories of knowledge. As for slavery, it was a "peculiar institution" in the American south. In the other times and places you mention, slavery was not an extra-legal status. In Making Big Money in 1600, Nellie Hannah tells of a Bosnian slave woman in Cairo who sued in court three men who tried to cut her out of a deal she brokered for her owner. At that time no free, noble, or royal woman in London or Paris would have had the same right. In the United States, "Black Laws" of the 1830 took away the rights of free Negroes. In the early colonial era, before slavery was economically important, one theory of law was that you could be born free to a slave: slavery was not an inherited status. It was just one idea of one time and place. So, as you say, it was complicated. But it was certainly contrary to theory that all men are created equal. Ever read Gone With the Wind? I could not finish it, but I found her view the cracker family revealing. For one thing, they were culturally defined by their poor grammar: "should of" for "should have." (Edited by Michael Marotta on 10/27, 2:11pm)
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