Archive for 'Race & Politics'
Bush, Gore, & the Florida Re-Count
The liberal bias so characteristic of college history faculties is most apparent in the coverage given to modern day political issues. Any battle between modern day Republicans and Democrats is likely to be portrayed in history texts more or less the same way it is portrayed by the Democratic National Committee: making the Democrats, for whom college professors overwhelmingly vote, look good; and making the Republicans look bad.
A good example of this bias is the coverage given to the Year 2000 presidential race between Texas Governor George W. Bush (R) and Vice President Al Gore (D). Young students learning about this race in a freshman history class are likely to hear all the same talking points that Gore supporters were using back in late 2000 and early 2001. Students who are interested in hearing the other side of the story will have to resort to sources of information (like this website) that are as committed to a conservative point of view as college faculties are to their liberal agenda.
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Jim Crow and Capitalism
“Prejudice is free but discrimination has costs“ Thomas Sowell
Two earlier HistoryHalf posts addressed the relationship between slavery and economic progress, or lack thereof, in the United States. One post makes the case that standard textbook portrayals of black slavery as an important underpinning of American economic growth are false. The other post describes the slave system as an economic liability that destined the South to lose the Civil War.
This week’s post is about the continued economic backwardness of the states of the old Confederacy during the Jim Crow era, and the explosion of productivity and profit that the Southern states have enjoyed since the Federal Government brought a forcible end to racial segregation.
Free States, Free Enterprise
“America; where people do not inquire concerning a stranger ‘who is he,’ but ‘what can he do?’” Benjamin Franklin
Last week’s post included quotes from several college history textbooks, all of which claim that America’s fantastic economic growth was achieved, during the nation’s first few decades, by the ruthless exploitation of slave labor. While it is certainly true that slaves were ruthlessly exploited in our nation’s early history; it is not at all true that the slaves, their white exploiters, or the lands they farmed were the real drivers of America’s economic growth.
From the time the nation was founded the real wealth creation happened almost exclusively in the Northern states, where slavery was never very common, and where it was made illegal early. The rapid growth in productivity and prosperity that made America the envy of the rest of the world was made possible by legal and cultural conditions unique to the Northern “free” states. The Southern states lagged behind (as did the rest of the world) because Southern culture was hostile to all the things that made the North thrive. It also happens to be true that many of the North’s leading entrepreneurs were passionate abolitionists.
Slavery and American Capitalism
“Slavery was not a sideshow in American History, it was the main event.” Dr. James Horton, George Mason University.
From the day the America was founded, her economic growth was the envy of the rest of the world. Academics and other liberals are pretty consistent in the explanation they offer for this rapid early growth. The nation’s prosperity, they tell us, was built on the backs of black slaves. American capitalism, they say, is so closely linked to slavery that its achievements should always be viewed with shame. This negative portrayal of American enterprise shows up in textbooks, in classrooms, and even in publicly-funded “educational” broadcasting.
There is another side to the story.
