Chomsky News Network

[Brad DeLong]

>Brad DeLong wrote:
>
>>Well, as a descendant of some of the few slaveholders in colonial 
>>Maine, I am prepared to take a measure of historical responsibility 
>>for slavery, but I'm unwilling to say that I am part of a 
>>slavery-creating "we." It's a "they"--definitely a "they"...
>
>As Americans, we're all heirs of slavery - it shaped the physical 
>and social environment from the first, and many of the issues around 
>race we live with today are its sequelae. And how about British 
>industry, which thrived on slave-picked cotton? Britain's wealth and 
>empire were built in part on slavery. It's one of the great crimes 
>that many modern fortunes are founded on.
>
>Doug

Not to mention nineteenth-century continental European peasants whose 
shirts were cheaper because they were made from slave-grown cotton. 
Incidence ramifies widely...

But I meant something different: I am a 1/36 legatee of a trust that 
owns the farmhouse in Maine that said slave ("Prudence") helped 
maintain.

On the other hand, one of my New England sea-captain ancestors 
brought home a bride, one of my ancestresses, from Barbados--a 
"servant girl." Odds are overwhelming that at least one of her 
grandparents or great grandparents involuntarily took the middle 
passage...

Brad DeLong