One historical note I was not aware of until several months back, which was covered in a few books on related subjects which I read at the time, was that for more than a decade after the Civil War, the standard of living and level of equality experienced by recently free blacks was actually quite high. The levels of prejudice which led to the passage of the Jim Crow laws were actually cultivated by deliberately targeted propaganda by upper class industrialists who feared the political threat of lower class white and black laborers acting together as a voting bloc.
(I was initially skeptical of this as a posited explanation for the levels of prejudice which came about in ensuing decades, since humans can easily be induced to turn on each other without any pragmatic incentives, but not only do writings from those who were alive at the time reflect a genuinely dramatic nosedive in the state of racial relations, but some of those who were involved in the propaganda efforts wrote with surprising frankness about their intentions.)
It’s questionable how predictable this turn of events could have been prior to the emancipation, but had it been avoided, the quality of life for free black Americans in ensuing decades might have been considerably higher, and for a decade or so after the war, their quality of life was likely rather higher than we might expect.
The levels of prejudice which led to the passage of the Jim Crow laws were actually cultivated by deliberately targeted propaganda by upper class industrialists who feared the political threat of lower class white and black laborers acting together as a voting bloc.
I think the argument I saw hinged on the strife that happened after emancipation, which is perhaps an argument for more Reconstruction rather than an argument against emancipation. But I don’t remember it well enough; perhaps someone else has seen something similar.
One historical note I was not aware of until several months back, which was covered in a few books on related subjects which I read at the time, was that for more than a decade after the Civil War, the standard of living and level of equality experienced by recently free blacks was actually quite high. The levels of prejudice which led to the passage of the Jim Crow laws were actually cultivated by deliberately targeted propaganda by upper class industrialists who feared the political threat of lower class white and black laborers acting together as a voting bloc.
(I was initially skeptical of this as a posited explanation for the levels of prejudice which came about in ensuing decades, since humans can easily be induced to turn on each other without any pragmatic incentives, but not only do writings from those who were alive at the time reflect a genuinely dramatic nosedive in the state of racial relations, but some of those who were involved in the propaganda efforts wrote with surprising frankness about their intentions.)
It’s questionable how predictable this turn of events could have been prior to the emancipation, but had it been avoided, the quality of life for free black Americans in ensuing decades might have been considerably higher, and for a decade or so after the war, their quality of life was likely rather higher than we might expect.
I think the argument I saw hinged on the strife that happened after emancipation, which is perhaps an argument for more Reconstruction rather than an argument against emancipation. But I don’t remember it well enough; perhaps someone else has seen something similar.