This was one of the most important aspects of white culture and the strategy of divide and conquer and the creation of whiteness. ASPIRATIONS. The biggest carrot of all for poor whites was the chance (however small) they had of becoming one of the privileged class. It was very important that poor whites knew that they were just a good poker hand away from joining the planter class (this happens to be the faux history of Gerald O’Hara, Scarlett’s dad from Gone with the Wind…..just to give you an idea of how important this narrative was and is to white culture….not to mention Tom Lea, Kizzy’s master from Roots, one cockfight away from being a member of the planter class).
The last frontier is the past.
And the frightened, insecure white man flees to it as if it’s his mother’s bosom sitting on the throne in the promised land.

And yes to your point about abolitionists. Take Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. It helped turn public opinion against slavery and galvanized the abolitionist movement in a very important way, but when you read it today, it does not hold up well; it reads preachy, melodramatic and essentialist.

And, hopefully, we will come across as extremely prejudiced by the standards of people in the future, because that will mean that their standards have evolved and have become higher than our own.

Fair questions…the North didn’t, to my knowledge, require an admission of guilt or responsibility for starting the war as a condition of the cessation of hostilities, although I may be wrong on this. Obviously, racism continued after the war, as its legacy, but then it continued in the North as well. So what would have constituted a sufficient apology from the formerly Confederate states?

I suppose it would have been the governmental elimination of racist laws and policies, and the vigorous prosecution of private citizens who engaged in race-based crimes. Perhaps that would have set the tone and discouraged groups like the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the KKK from forming. The truculent, defiant attitude that is behind poll taxes, segregated schools, and the waving of the Confederate flag is the same today as it was then.

Listen up, bubbas: We have comment moderation, and I will enforce it. The South will not rise again in this thread. Go cut some new eyeholes in your sheets instead of wasting your time hanging around here.

Black farmers’ payout is because they themselves were victims of ongoing, documented discrimination by the USDA. The anger over it just pure racism. If those farmers were white and the USDA had fucked them over, no one would oppose them receiving damages.

Now obviously Steve King is not a southerner so this is off topic a bit but it always seems to me that the fall out from slavery is still not exactly dealt with in this country. (In much the same way that Britain still has colonial issues to the ninth degree)

There has been endless discussion about apologies and reparations for slavery, but it’s a fairly difficult problem to navigate, especially a century after the fact. It’s a very different situation than post-war Germany.