07-09-2020, 02:15 PM
I've been re-reading my W.E.B. Dubois copy of "Black Reconstruction in America - 1860-1880." What a stupendous work!!
What jumps out at me, especially upon reading the first three chapters, I. The Black Worker, II. The White Worker, and III. The Planter, is the tragedy of the missed opportunity! If only. If only, the emancipated slaves and their white-worker counterparts could have seen what they had in common! They were both viewed as inferior cogs in the machine. The white workers had been duped to think that their lot in life was somehow superior and desirable just because they had someone to look down on.
Imagine what could have come out of a labor movement that combined the shared concerns of the emancipated slaves and the white grunts who, incidentally, did most of the dying for "The Cause."
Now, after these 155 years, we see the results of the hand-me-down society of the South being lived out among the white descendants as well as the continued legacy of slavery, Jim Crow and endemic racism. A couple years ago, my sister and I spent a few days in West Virginia. What a shithole. And, it's virtually 100% white. If a pure white society was the active variable in developing civilization, WV should be a paradise.
What a missed opportunity. Can one even imagine a labor movement composed of all the emancipated slaves, PLUS all the "white trash" underclass? Wow.
What jumps out at me, especially upon reading the first three chapters, I. The Black Worker, II. The White Worker, and III. The Planter, is the tragedy of the missed opportunity! If only. If only, the emancipated slaves and their white-worker counterparts could have seen what they had in common! They were both viewed as inferior cogs in the machine. The white workers had been duped to think that their lot in life was somehow superior and desirable just because they had someone to look down on.
Imagine what could have come out of a labor movement that combined the shared concerns of the emancipated slaves and the white grunts who, incidentally, did most of the dying for "The Cause."
Now, after these 155 years, we see the results of the hand-me-down society of the South being lived out among the white descendants as well as the continued legacy of slavery, Jim Crow and endemic racism. A couple years ago, my sister and I spent a few days in West Virginia. What a shithole. And, it's virtually 100% white. If a pure white society was the active variable in developing civilization, WV should be a paradise.
What a missed opportunity. Can one even imagine a labor movement composed of all the emancipated slaves, PLUS all the "white trash" underclass? Wow.
[font=Arial Black]... a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition.[/font]