“The Confederacy – and the slavery that spawned it – was ... one big con job on the Southern, white, working class,” says Frank Hyman in an op-ed for McClatchyDC.com. “A con job funded by some of the ante-bellum one-per-centers.”
What many poor whites didn’t realize, perhaps, was that slavery cut labor prices for the unenslaved, too. Slave labor made up a quarter of the more highly skilled trades in manufacturing, construction, and lumber.
The South was rich before the Civil War, but its wealth was in splendiferous private mansions, while most Southern whites had lower literacy rates and lower land ownership rates than their peers up North.
The one-percenters made their case with propaganda. Planters, Hyman writes, supported more than 30 regional pro-slavery magazines and a plethora of other publications that implied, first, that the economy was a zero-sum proposition: That is, if Blacks benefited, Whites would lose out. Second, they argued that slave ownership had benefits for the entire society and not just the slave-owning wealthy. Prosperity, in other words, would trickle down to the poorer slice of White society.
This bucket of twaddle was spun into the gossamer web of the Cause, which killed primarily poor men and effectively starved their families.
We know by now that the trickle-down theory is bunk, although it is still a favorite stalking horse for today’s one percenters, including the Koch family and Rupert Murdoch -- Hyman’s examples -- through the right-wing think tanks they promote.
Today, poorer workers still lionize wealthy people who have done them harm. Bill Gates all but invented the gig economy, hiring by contract in a way that allowed few Microsoft workers to enjoy job security. Correct me if I’m wrong. Why do we, and why does he, think he’s a sage?
Not to mention, as another group member put it recently, “Why [do] poor rural people support tax cuts for fatcats?”
The link below will take you to the full op-ed. Its publisher, the McClatchy Co., owns 29 daily newspapers in 14 states.
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/opinion/article136803208.html?fbclid=IwAR3uNJCOEBzxPGzGDI8kiWMTzbASwKUzjykzCE2xymGZ_4z1JrQ-46B-epU
No comments:
Post a Comment