I like a lot of what economist David R. Henderson has written. I’ve been reading his stuff for years and I’ve liked a lot of it. However, when I read his post at the American Institute of Economic Research, “The Surprising Beneficiaries of American Slavery”, I’m sorry to say that I think it strongly suggests that he just doesn’t get it.
Take this, for example:
Who gained nothing from slavery? Except for the rare person who inherited an estate that slavery enriched, every contemporary non-black American gained nothing from slavery.
That is simply untrue, at least unless you hold a very narrow definition of “enriched”. Rather than lean on “enrichment”, I would rather just ask who owned slaves? The answer to that question is 20% of white Southerners owned slaves. Why own slaves if you don’t benefit from it?
Furthermore, you didn’t need to own slaves to benefit from it. For example, some of the wealthiest Northern families, e.g. the Bushes, founded their wealth on the slave trade.
And then there’s this which is thornier:
Who suffered from slavery? The slaves themselves. They were brought from Africa against their will, and they were forced to work without receiving the full value of their labor.
The slaves themselves were not the only ones harmed by slavery. It may not be intuitive but poor whites were harmed by slavery, too. Poor whites were in competition with slaves. Slavery lowered the prevailing wage as well as changing what got done.
And this which is thornier yet:
Who gained from slavery? Americans of African descent.
The late economist Walter E. Williams said that slavery was the worst thing ever to happen to his ancestors, but the best thing ever to happen to him. Why? Because instead of growing up in Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Senegal, Mali, or the Democratic Republic of Congo, he enjoyed the opportunities, wealth, health, security, and freedom of the United States.
The descendants of slaves, such as Williams, received the bounty of being born in America, where the average per capita annual income for blacks is $24,509. While the enslaved people came from a variety of African countries, the five mentioned above have an average annual income of $1,650. Over a hypothetical 40-year career, the difference is hundreds of thousands of dollars.
You might think the descendants of slaves suffered a financial loss because contemporary blacks have an annual income that is $17,600 below that of whites. But that’s an unrealistic comparison. If it weren’t for the forced relocations of the slave trade, those who would be getting reparations today would be Bissau-Guinean, Angolan, Senegalese, Malian, or Congolese, not American.
He bases his calculation on an error. Relatively few black Americans have 100% African ancestry. Most have at least 25% European ancestry and some as much as 95% European ancestry. If their ancestors had not been brought as slaves from Africa to the colonies, they wouldn’t be earning $1,650 a year. They wouldn’t exist at all.
Where I agree with him is that reparations for slavery for present day black Americans are unjust. They’re not just unjust but foolish, divisive, even malicious.
And if your father had never met your mother………….
I think there are some intergenerational shifts behind a lot of his conclusions.
“Except for the rare person who inherited an estate that slavery enriched, every contemporary non-black American gained nothing from slavery.”
He may be alluding to the fact that most of the slave owners arrived from the South and West of England where freeholders were rare, and various forms of tenancies on large estates created wide class disparities. It was the wealthy families that were planted in the South with the money to buy slaves, though usually not as wealthy as families that planted second sons in rich colonies like Barbados. Everybody knows that was where real wealth was created, and why the Sugar Islands dominate the Western hemisphere today.
“Who gained from slavery? Americans of African descent.”
I’m not comfortable with this framing. It would seem to offer some justification for all kinds of horrible things for the potential benefit of surviving descendants generations away. I think the underlying reality is the country’s wealth did not originate from slavery and antiquated plantation economics, but from parts of the country in which slavery was minimal and large numbers of free people, built a modern economy.
This. Furthermore, having reflected on it I believe there is a connecting link among the 1619 Project, the uproar about downplaying slavery in any form, Afrocentrism, etc. The exponents of those want black history at the center of American history but like it or not it is now and always has been peripheral.
“Who gained from slavery? Americans of African descent.â€
So if all your family was killed in the Holocaust except your grandfather and he escaped to America, and you are now successful, you should be grateful for the holocaust? A psychotic mother kills all her kids but one and he decides to become a psychiatrist and is successful at it so he should be glad Mom killed everyone else? His argument is absurd.
The current flap is mostly about the effort to minimize how awful chattel slavery was for the slaves. It’s at least debatable about how central they were to the economy but when people put numbers to it they are large.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-18/pay-check-podcast-episode-2-how-much-did-slavery-in-u-s-cost-black-wealth#xj4y7vzkg
“The racial wealth gap begins with slavery itself, which was a huge wealth generator for White Americans. The economic value of the 4 million slaves in 1860 was, on average, $1,000 per person, or about $4 billion total. That was more than all the banks, railroads and factories in the U.S. were worth at the time. In today’s dollars, that would come out to as much as $42 trillion, accounting for inflation and compounding interest.
Slaves didn’t just make slaveowners rich, they helped them get richer. “There were literally slave backed securities,†says Mehrsa Baradaran, author of The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap. Slavery was also the engine driving the cotton economy, which enriched everyone from banks, shopkeepers, and insurers, too. Meanwhile, slaves lost out on an estimated $20.3 trillion in wages for their labor.”
The $1000 number has been substantiated with contemporary ads. They actually sold for a bit less in the earlier 1800s and a bit more closer to the War of Northern Aggression.
I think part of the problem is that we use too many euphemisms. If we are blunt and just say that white people stole from black people for over 200 years I think that is better framing. Put that way we clearly should have paid that back in some form as is usually done when people steal. I dont see an especially good way to do it now. However, the question I have asked a bunch of people is “after the CRA was passed and Jim Crow was ended in the 60s, how long would we expect black people to catch up to white people given the disparity in capital accumulation, especially human capital?”
Steve
I concur with your disagreement with his assessment of who gained from slavery. However, I think this:
reflects a category error. To illustrate its problems consider this example. My ancestors were all white. Some of Barack Obama’s ancestors were black. If your statement were true it would imply that my ancestors stole from Barack Obama’s ancestors. But that is definitely false.
What is true is that some white people stole from some black people. As it works out some of the descendants of those white people are now very rich and powerful. I think you can make a justice argument to compensate the descendants of people who were slaves in the U. S. prior to Emancipation by taking the unjust proceeds aware from those people. There is no such justice argument for taking money from whites as a category, at least some of whom did not benefit from slavery and/or were actively harmed by it, and giving it to blacks as a category, some of whom were not injured by U. S. slavery prior to Emancipation because their black ancestors were not here in the U. S. prior to Emancipation.
I think you could argue that modern day blacks in America are better off than they would be if they had been born in Africa, and I would include the black underclass in that assessment. But I don’t think any slave would have been worse off in Africa. Of course the original slaves had been slaves in Africa, too, and had been sold by their African owners to the Europeans.
But that misses the point. There is a large African-American underclass, maybe 25 million people, who have been left behind, who got no benefits from affirmative action, and who survive basically on white charity, guilt, and fear.
By the way, reindustrialization (which is likely impossible) would not help any worker, because you have compete with Chinese factories. Those factories are already very heavily automated, and the Chinese are using the merger of AI and 5G to further optimize their operation. Their lead in the Fourth Industrial Revolution is insurmountable, barring nuclear war. In that case there is no manufacturing anywhere.
Inserting that ridiculous proposition that 20% of Southerners were slave owners by counting the children of the 3% of Southerners who did own slave weakens any further argument, pro or con. It is akin to asserting that 90% of pre schooler own a car and basing a driver safety course on that number.
Dave Schuler: The exponents of those want black history at the center of American history but like it or not it is now and always has been peripheral.
The American Civil War is hardly peripheral to American history.
steve: So if all your family was killed in the Holocaust except your grandfather and he escaped to America, and you are now successful, you should be grateful for the holocaust?
Too bad about his Great Aunt Rachel, what with her rape, sale of her children, torture, and death. But Walter E. Williams got his.
Dave Schuler: There is no such justice argument for taking money from whites as a category, at least some of whom did not benefit from slavery and/or were actively harmed by it
That’s not how it works. The offending institutions are responsible, including the States and the United States, not only for slavery, but for other forms of oppression following the Civil War. Everyone bears the burden, whatever that might be.
William: Inserting that ridiculous proposition that 20% of Southerners were slave owners by counting the children of the 3% of Southerners who did own slave weakens any further argument, pro or con.
Scarlett O’Hara was just as much a beneficiary of slavery as her father. (It’s more accurately stated as 20% of Southern families owned slaves.)
Dave- I was very specific in saying that white people stole from black people. There were clearly those who benefited directly like slave owners or during Jim Crow those who got away with paying blacks poorly increasing their profits. However, many white people benefited indirectly. White people had eliminated having to compete with 10% of the population for the better schools or better jobs. The better medical care and better housing.
But it’s hard to know exactly which individuals benefited. Some white people would have gotten the good jobs anyway. For all you know your ancestors might have gotten worse jobs if they had to compete against black people who were freely able to go to the schools of their choice and compete freely for work. Then how much responsibility do those people who bear who watched Jim Crow take place and did not intervene? Did they not intervene knowing it gave them some advantage in the marketplace?
What you are left with is clearly that black people as a whole suffered major financial losses, to say nothing of loss of life, injury, family. However, because we cant figure out exactly how or if to compensate them for years of theft we didnt address it, except for maybe some attempt at affirmative action which made white people angry.
The number is at least 20%. As pointed out above if the husband was technically the owner the wife and kids also benefited. There were also a lot fo people who might own slaves for a while but need to sell them if money got tight. So if you added up people who owned or had owned slaves it is probably well over 20%.
William- So you would claim that in a family where the father owns the car he never drives the kids anywhere in that car? When they become teens they dont get to drive the car? What about the wife? I have a pick up truck. I loan it to family when they need one. Doesnt family benefit?
Steve
Everyone today agrees slavery is wrong and that African sourced slaves and their ancestors bore the financial brunt of that.
Leaving aside slavery of aboriginal peoples as that was principally south of our own borders and the ancestors seem to have suffered little harm as few actually survived their ordeal.
It’s once we get into the details that the demands for restitution get thorny and divisive.
I’d propose a voluntary National go fund me perhaps designed to authorize payments on tax returns and distributed based on census bureau records to all Americans with any African based affiliation .
Trying to sort out well to do Black descendants of slave owners is hopeless and divisive and just not who we are as a nation.
I would expect African American rights organizations to compete for administration of the program and the free market to act as always to guarantee efficiencies in its implementation.
Would I expect this to improve anyone’s long term economic outlook? Of course not.
Moral hazard and the ease of spending found money would negate any benefit but the point of reparations was never actually about that, but rather revenge.
which is why reparations paid to black people because they’re black are unjust.
And not only Dave’s last comment, but there were many blacks who owned slaves, and blacks who sold slaves, so given Zach’s comment blacks are collectively responsible as well. So let’s call it a wash. And I look forward to Zach contributing his monetary resources, perhaps offering self imprisonment, in return for his culpability. (Snicker)
When are people going to learn that this is all just a hustle designed to enrich the race baiting industry? It’s not even thinly veiled. It’s obvious.
Drew: So let’s call it a wash.
The institutions remain liable. The situation would be quite different if the end of slavery hadn’t been followed by generations of more oppression.
My paternal ancestor, a young boy at the time, was captured in the battle of Worchester against Cromwell’s New Model Army, was imprisoned, and eventually sent to the US as an indentured servant.
The whole idea of whether it would have been better for me, or anyone but that boy, if that had not happened is completely both irrelevant and unknowable. For one thing, single events in history that are generations old don’t solely shape what’s happening today. History isn’t a set of apothecary drawers that you can open individually and assume that changing the contents of that drawer would trace a direct line through history to a better or worse outcome.
So this line is pointless in the same way: “Who gained from slavery? Americans of African descent.†Or any of the many examples where humans were conquered, brutalized, or enslaved.
As for slavery as an economic system, leaving aside its inhumanity and brutality and focusing just on the economics, it was a bad economic system compared to the alternatives. Slavery is good at concentrating wealth and power, but other than that, it stunts development. The argument by some that American economic success is primarily thanks to slavery suggests that slavery is a better economic model than the likely alternatives – which is crazy. One of the principal effects of slavery in the South was to greatly slow industrialization which, not coincidentally, became a big factor in the Civil War.
The enslavers and enslaved are all long dead, and the extent to which various institutions are responsible largely depends on what – today – one thinks they are specifically responsible for, in what way, specifically, they are responsible, and what their specific obligations are. In other words, the details matter a great deal here.
Zachriel:
Oppression.
But, of generations of free Americans by other free Americans.
In other words, class struggle,
not slavery or necessarily racism.
Just so you know, I am in favor of some type of permanent reparations for slavery not because I think it’s right but because I’ve given up on the notion of American Blacks being able to pull themselves along.
A system of permanent support is necessary but reparations are easier to swallow than permanent charity and as these people do have pride well……you do know.
@Andy
The details are non- navigable.
Unless in a courtroom with detailed ownership records, generations of earnings, proof of financial transactions and provable gains and losses related to supposed racial bias .
Alright then, someone Black, four generations removed from his ancestors slavery Should bring such a suit. Love to see it work though the courts.
“but there were many blacks who owned slaves, and blacks who sold slaves”
Care to define many? The numbers i have seen from pro-slavery conservatives put it at around 12,000 or about 0.3%.
“So let’s call it a wash.”
Says the side that was ahead 997:3.
“which is why reparations paid to black people because they’re black are unjust.”
But that also means no white person has to repay what was stolen. It also means that since close to 100% of black people suffered losses from having their money and lives stolen from them essentially none of them gets justice. That’s how it works though doesnt it? We are OK if harm accrues to a minority group but no harm must come to the majority.
“The argument by some that American economic success is primarily thanks to slavery suggests that slavery is a better economic model than the likely alternatives ”
I have never heard anyone make that claim. Granted that there are people who make wild claims the numbers suggest it was one of the central parts of our economy. Using Bradley Hansen’s numbers (one of the economists leading the slavery wasn’t bad effort) GSP in 1860 was about $120 Billion in current dollars. There were 4 million slaves. they sold at that time for about $1000 apiece. Convert that to modern dollars and it is $160 billion. (4 million slaves and inflation a factor of 40) How many other industries in 1860 held capital that was much larger than national GDP? If someone has different numbers happy to look at them.
Steve
Grey Shambler: But, of generations of free Americans by other free Americans.
In other words, class struggle,
not slavery or necessarily racism.
The KKK, lynching, and Jim Crow were racist oppression, often under color or protection of law.
Andy: As for slavery as an economic system, leaving aside its inhumanity and brutality and focusing just on the economics, it was a bad economic system compared to the alternatives.
Slavery was bad for economic development in the South, but to the North it was an important source for the extraction of resources (human and material) to fuel industry—colonialism, in other words; good for Britain, bad for India; good for France, bad for Indochina; good for Belgium, bad for Congo.
Zachriel,
The KKK, lynching, and Jim Crow were racist oppression, often under color or protection of law.
But the distinction is that AA’s previously had been oppressed due to the fact that they were chattel. After emancipation it was because they were viewed as a potential political force with voting rights and were a threat to the existing power structure which had no obligation to roll over and play dead in the face of this new challenge.
They had in fact a moral obligation to family and community and the fact that Newly freed slaves were facing an uphill battle gaining political power does not constitute evil but rather natural political process.
Crimes such as lynchings or voter suppression should be condemned and punished but the political struggle is not a crime and Southern Whites should not be punished for their legal efforts to protect their own families.
“Southern Whites should not be punished for their legal efforts to protect their own families.”
So it was perfectly fine that Southern Whites passed laws that kept blacks from competing with whites? After all, that is how they chose to use their political power. Also, exactly how does a minority gain the political power so that they can obtain equal economic opportunity. In a country of laws, a republic of laws, that shouldn’t be an issue but it was as the politics allowed Southern Whites to ignore the laws.
Steve
Andy,
bad economic system compared to the alternatives:
Which had yet to be developed.
Cotton, and more profitable yet, sugar, were at the time manually intensive .
Sugar, the cocaine of its day, triggered a gold rush activity which had little regard for human rights or niceties.
Slavery is a means of production, a source of energy, a primitive one at that, but also very basic and intuitive and therefore common in human societies.
Also, exactly how does a minority gain the political power so that they can obtain equal economic opportunity;
IDK, ask the Jews, ask the Asians,
what is different about African Americans apart from having been former slaves? History I’ve seen seems to be that they were doing pretty well up until about 1919 with the second iteration of the clan rising during and with encouragement from the Democratic Wilson administration . Forty years and Two world wars later another Democratic administration under President Johnson targeted Blacks again with the Great Society dependency policies.
They do not and cannot gain political power without the effort and desire and determination that requires.
Jews and Asians were never chattel slaves and they didnt face Jim Crow laws. Also, you should go read some real history. Blacks weren’t doing so well in the period from 1865-1919 if you look at the actual numbers. 1890-1920 is often called the nadir of black history in the US. Among other things Plessy was decided in 1896.
https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/freedom/1865-1917/essays/nadir.htm
Steve
Steve