No offence...

Fragment of a discussion from User talk:ColbertFan
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Nebby has addressed the 10% figure, so:

"The South seemed just fine without the slaves."

Yes, after decades of Reconstruction. The transition from a plantation-, agriculture-based economy did not happen overnight, and it never fully took place. Furthermore, even after slavery itself was eliminated, the status of blacks (and of course black plantation workers) did not change very much; blacks were very much still an underclass in the South, especially after the Union troops left in 1877 - this culminated in Jim Crow. Put simply, the South did fine after Reconstruction without the "slaves", but still relied upon blacks as an underclass.

"The problem is what Abe Lincoln did the South; that caused the real problem for the South."

Are you talking about stuff like wp:Sherman's March to the Sea? Reconstruction? You haven't described what this "problem" was.

Blue (pester)00:39, 14 March 2011

Blue has answered this very, very well. I was going to say things along similar lines, but I'll cut it down to this:

You're right, the Union was racist, the CSA was racist. But we shouldn't judge historical characters by our standards, but their contemporary standards. What would now be considered homophobic would be considered perfectly normal. Would we say the Founding Fathers were homophobes? No.

But, in the context of that period, there can still be such a thing as a racist state. If a state if FORMED on the principle that one race can own another, when slavery has been illegal in Great Britain and the Northern United States for decades, and they're clinging onto their 'negroes,' then they are racist by contemporary standards.

I simply don't think the statement, "The CSA wasn't (mainly) racist," is a sensible one. Going back so far, when racism wasn't neccecarily viewed as a 'bad thing,' it still means something, and the CSA was the embodiment of that.

DalekEXTERMINATE02:51, 14 March 2011