wcaleb’s avatarwcaleb’s Twitter Archive—№ 13,880

      1. 1. Here’s another thing: slaves’ labor on the White House shows how far we’ve come, but also illustrates why slavery lasted so long.
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      2. The O’Reilly crowd points out the mix of labor at the White House, with slaves & free immigrant laborers working side by side.
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    3. But as @sethrockman would tell you, that mix illustrates that the rise of wage labor did not mean the inevitable fall of slavery.
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      4. Rockman’s book *Scraping By* shows that in early Baltimore, employers turned both to slaves & free laborers to do work.
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        5. White employers profited from “interchangeability of different works along a continuum of slaves-for-life to transient day laborers” (7)
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          6. For @sethrockman such practices, also seen in White House construction, challenge “the presumptive antagonism of slavery and capitalism.”
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            7. They also show there was nothing inevitable about abolition. Rise of wage labor, cities, industry. None of it required freeing slaves.
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              8. On the contrary, “hiring out” slaves gave owners income while off-loading costs on others (in case of White House, on the govt).
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                9. Look at the W.H. story from slavers’ P.O.V.—you get pure profit & ability to sell the enslaved person, too. ...
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                  10. Look at same story from government’s P.O.V.—you get coerced labor from people who have absolutely no negotiating power over terms ...
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                    11. … And that means you also can pay those “free” laborers whatever you want, because if they won’t take it, well, there’s always slaves.
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                      12. Now you’re starting to see why it took a war to end slavery: powerful people don’t give up a “deal” like that without a fight.
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                        13. And of course, all of this is before we’ve even looked at this story from the slaves’ P.O.V. medium.com/@Limerick1914/anticipating-the-neo-confederates-f8d6489f829d#.pulztwwpj
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                          14. So, in his “these are just facts” shtick, O’Reilly is actually revealing more than he intends: slavery’s insidious resilience in the US.