The US Slave Regime, Part II

  

The US Slave Regime, Part II

Peter Schultz

 

                  So, the question occurred to me: What’s the better description of the regime created in the United States with the Constitution and thereafter: a slave regime or a white supremacist regime? The latter.

 

                  As Baptist wrote in is The Half That Was Never Told: “… then again, there was the fact that a third of the refugees [from Cuba] were free people of color, forbidden to immigrate to the US and unwanted by whites in New Orleans – particularly by English-speakers who preferred the ostensible clarity of their own American pattern in which all black people were assumed to be enslaved.” (54)

 

                  But it should read deserved to be enslaved. Enslavement was a value, not just a fact. Such value required white supremacist thought, beliefs, actions. White supremacy was/is more fundamental than slavery, because slavery as a fact could be accidental or incidental, as could white rule as well. But regimes are not the results of accidents or incidents. They don’t grow. They are constructed on the basis of values thought to be best, while those possessing those values justifiably rule.

 

                  Per Baptist: “Allowing slavery’s expansion, the mayor and other wealthy Louisianans insisted, made white New Orleans and white America more prosperous and more united, binding states and factions together.” (55)

 

                  “The governor himself enforced only a single law. Following territorial regulations to the letter, he expelled all free males of color over the age of fifteen who had entered on refugee ships.” (55)

 

                  Slavery was a reflection of white supremacy. But white supremacy was a reflection of elitism. So, it turns out that elitism is the fundamental political phenomenon, one that needs attention in order to ameliorate the human condition. Should Plato’s Republic, e.g., be read as a critique of elitism? And, when done, wouldn’t that be “a horse of a different color” than that ridden by some neo-conservatives and others?