In reading chapters 8 and 9 of Why Nations Fail, I learned a lot more about the history of Slavery and the slave trade, specifically in Africa and Europe. They do briefly address slavery in the United States, but the focus is mostly on South Africa. About slavery in the US they said,
"In the United States, southern slavery was often referred to as the "peculiar institution." But historically, as the great classical scholar Moses Finlay pointed out, slavery was anything but peculiar, it was present in almost every society. It was, as we saw earlier, endemic in ancient Rome and in Africa, long a source of slaves for Europe . . ."
So originally a bunch of groups of people were enslaving each other, even members of their own groups, especially in Africa. Europe transitioned away from enslaving their own people to just oppressing them as serfs, while Africa didn't. The book states that "before the early modern period, there was a vibrant slave trade." There were various reasons for this that I won't go into, but "most slaves who were sold were war captives transported to the coast [in Africa]."
The slave trade was so bad in Africa, that it was basically government sanctioned, "so that no matter what crime you committed, slavery was the punishment." Africa created their political institutions and their economy on the capturing and selling of slaves. This book says they instituted a "process in which all laws and customs were distorted and broken to capture slaves." The African States were transformed, it says, into "slaving states."
In time, as Africans transitioned away from absolutism and began to have private property rights, the regular citizens began to make money and succeed, even the blacks. They were able to produce things cheaper than the European market, which undercut the profits of those in Europe. So the Europeans or the whites deliberately tried to drive them out of business and keep them impoverished so that it wouldn't undercut their profits. The whites deliberately passed laws to benefit themselves and institutionalize that benefit by law, while deliberately keeping the blacks in poverty to maintain them as a cheap labor force.
"Both of the goals of removing competition of white farmers and developing a large low wage labor force were simultaneously accomplished by the Natives Land Act of 1913. The Act, anticipating Lewis's notion of dual economy, divided South Africa into two parts, a modern prosperous part and a traditional poor part. Except that the prosperity and poverty were actually being created by the Act itself."
The dual economy that was created didn't happen naturally or organically. It happened because of the laws that were put in place. "[T]he act of 1913 . . . definitively institutionalized the situation... and set the stage for the Apartheid regime." The Apartheid regime gave political and economic rights to the white minority, disregarding and deliberately oppressing the 80% black majority. This regime lasted from about 1950 into the 1990s.
"To the development economists who visited South Africa in the 1950s and 1960s when the academic discipline was taking shape and the ideas of Arthur Lewis were spreading, the contrast between these homelands and the prosperous white modern European economy seemed to be exactly what the dual economy theory was about. The European part of the economy was urban and educated and used modern technology. The homelands were poor, rural, and backward. Labor there was very unproductive. People, uneducated. It seemed to be the essence of timeless, backward Africa. Except that the dual economy was not natural or inevitable. It had been created by European colonialism. Yes, the homelands were poor and technologically backward, and the people were uneducated, but all this was an outcome of government policy, which had forcibly stamped out African economic growth and created the reservoir of cheap, uneducated African labor to be employed in European controlled mines and lands."
What were these government policies that had been instituted to keep the blacks uneducated and in poverty? I'll list a few. The economic incentives they had to succeed were removed. They weren't allowed to own land, they were denied political rights, and education was discouraged. The whites in power deliberately kept the people unskilled and uneducated to reduce competition for skilled jobs. They were excluded from specific positions and weren't allowed to be businessmen, entrepreneurs, scientists, or engineers. They weren't allowed to vote, hold political office, or join the military. The system had been structured to ensure that they would remain uneducated, unskilled, and available as a labor pool. "The dispossession of the African farmers led to their mass impoverishment. It created not only the institutional foundations of a backward economy, but the poor people to stock it." There was a vast reversal of living standards after these policies were implemented. Wages fell despite economic growth for a really long time. It says that "over this period South Africa became the most unequal country in the world."
"But even in these circumstances, couldn't black Africans have made their way in the European modern economy? Started a business, or have become educated and gotten a career? The colonial government made sure that these things could not happen. No African was allowed to own property or start a business in the European part of the economy." The "Colour Bar" was a racist invention of the South African regime that was "extended to the entire economy in 1926 and lasted until 1982." This policy removed the possibility of economic advancement, refused to invest in black schools, and discouraged black education. "There was to be no seamless movement of poor people to the modern sector as the economy developed. On the contrary, the success of the modern sector relied on the existence of the backward sector, which enabled white employers to make huge profits paying very low wages to black, unskilled workers." These conditions lasted to some degree until the overthrow of the regime in 1994. That's very recent
Another thing that's recent is the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s in the US. While it seems like a long time ago, it makes it easier to understand in terms of lifetimes. Those events occurred in most of our grandparent's, and some of our parent's lifetimes. It would be extremely naive to believe that the residual attitudes and behaviors of some people or institutions wouldn't bear the stain of racism in the US today.
However, it was enlightening to have an example of a racist institutionalism to observe. I am glad that blacks in the United States have property rights, but I am concerned about how welfare sometimes removes economic incentives. I have friends who use WIC or Medicare who have to be careful not to be "too successful" because if they are the help that they rely on will be removed and they won't be able to make ends meet anymore. Is this institutionalized racism where economic incentives to advance have been removed? Maybe, but that seems less about race and more about poverty, which isn't restricted to race. I don't think there are deliberate attempts to keep blacks unskilled and uneducated, and I don't see evidence of them being excluded from specific vocations or political positions. Our highest office in the country was held by Obama, a black man, only a few years ago. Blacks in the US are allowed to vote, hold political office, or join the military. I am in favor of rooting out any institutionalized inequality we have in the US based on race, class, or any other characterization. Feel free to point out to me where the specific laws and problems are in our system as I'm very happy to write my representatives about them.
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