[082349872349872]

> "are we making things better at the rate that we should be"

TFA's first few pages mention that most people underestimate current inequities. Considering that it took 80 years after the 14A for the US Armed Forces to desegregate[0], and it's been over 150 years now and the US has arguably still not managed to say "mission accomplished"[1] on Reconstruction, I would agree the answer is clearly no.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9981

[1] similarly 50 years (and counting) without ratification of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Rights_Amendment ; my country didn't have nationwide female suffrage until the late XX, but a couple of decades after doing so we had the equivalent of the ERA in our Constitution.

[s1artibartfast]

Something I wonder is if there are any countries that have successfully managed reconstruction, and if so, how?

It recently struck me that the US approach and challenges addressing the aftermath are quite different than other colonial powers.

Following the end of slavery for other colonial powers, the former slaves and their decedents were separated from the parent nation state, allowing the Colonizer to move forward without really resolving the damage and injustice.

This means that in the US, we observe the long legacy of slavery as racial inequality between citizens of different race.

However, for a country like France, this is observed of the inequality between France and a former colony like Hati.

At least for me, this was not an obvious realization and I thought that the US was uniquely bad at post slavery reconstruction. Perhaps the US is doing the better than other former slave nations. To look at this through the lens of economics, Black Americans earn ~70% of the national average. Haitians earn ~5% of the French national average, adjusted for purchasing power.

This is not to say we can't to better, but I do think it is helpful to understand the scope of the project and challenge undertaken.

[082349872349872]

Good point. On the other hand, looking at the rest of North America, Mexico managed to abolish slavery with comparatively little violence, and Canada (as part of the Empire) did so with no violence. Both did so before the US took 4 years and 650k+ deaths to getting around to it.

cf https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33931615

Between all that and the Monroe Doctrine having been enunciated suspiciously close to the Vienna Congress anti-slavery declaration in Europe, I lean towards the US as having unique issues with slavery and its aftermath.

[s1artibartfast]

Im not really contesting that the US banned slavery after other countries, or that there was significant resistance. I certainly agree with the US having unique issues with slavery and the aftermath. In fact, I think my point highlights that fact, but tries to dig at what some of those issues are.

Im not sure what conclusions we should draw from the difference in dates and how hard abolition was US, aside from the fact that slavery was more economically entrenched in the south than most other places. After all, the north abolished slavery it in 1804, long before Mexico or Canada.

Similarly, the number of slaves in Mexico ranged between 20,000 and 45,000 prior to abolition. Historians estimate that Canada had fewer than 4,000 slaves. These numbers are both far fewer than the 4 million slaves who toiled in the U.S. south. Both Canada and Mexico also paid the owners of the freed slaves compensation, as did many other countries [1].

Lastly, as a minor note, I think that saying it took the US 4 years and 650k lives is an understatement. The abolishment movement in the US predates the revolutionary war and formation of the country itself, so I think it would be fair say it easily took 100+ years.

I think there is also something to be said about the rise of racial inferiority as a post-hoc justification for slavery in the south, which I understand to be primarily an American invention, but I'm not sure if or where it fits in. Prior to this, most civilizations held that the only justification needed to hold slaves was the power to do so. Most also held that other races were inferior, but the two concepts were unrelated, with independent reasoning.

[edit] After writing this, another thought occurred to me. Perhaps one of the main reasons why the abolition of slavery in the US was so protracted and bloody was the weakness of the federal government. This both limited the ability to finance compensation, but also meant there was no monopoly on military power to enforce abolition on resistant states.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensated_emancipation

>cf https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33931615

What a beautiful song

[082349872349872]

> weakness of the federal government. ... meant there was no monopoly on military power to enforce abolition on resistant states.

still digesting the rest of your reply, but on this point: prior to the civil war, the US army had made its units up out of people from the local area. In the run up to the civil war, some of these units defected en masse, with their command structure intact. Ever since, the army has been careful to rotate geographically diverse people through each unit, ensuring spatial and temporal mixing.

(if chatter surrounding events of the past few years {Bundy, Floyd, J6} is to be believed, the army is not worried about the ability of its officer corps to distinguish between legal and illegal orders as it is the inclinations of potential splinters at the squad level)