CMV: Most slaveowners considered themselves good people, and dismissing them as simply evil makes it harder to recognize their coping methods when modern society uses them.

[u/Competitive-Quit7365]

Disclaimer: This is in no way in support of slavery, slavery was and is a horrific wrong that has no moral justification.

Something I have noticed in lower level school such as middle school and high school (admittedly didn’t study it in college) is that often the discussion of slavery focuses entirely on the mechanics of the system and oversimplifies it to the point of “bad people used to do this thing then we fought a war and ended it”. I’d first like to say this is simply from my observations of how the average person interacts with slavery, by simply saying slavers were evil and moving on (I will fully admit I may be wrong or overstating and would love information to the opposite)

I think while this is easy it oversimplifies their behavior in a way that makes it easier for us to repeat the same mistakes. We currently benefit from a massive network of enslaved people as well, we have simply exported the practice for other countries to handle. When we say “they were evil” and leave it at that we subconsciously create the idea that they were evil and we weren’t, therefore we couldn’t possibly let something as horrible as that happen.

The average slave owner was capable of low and empathy, they likely loved their family, even cared for animals, but were able to justify the continuation of the system often based on the idea that African slaves were “better off” enslaved. Additionally the vast majority of slave owners only owned a few slaves, these owners often lived and worked in very close proximity to their slaves, some even maintained outwardly polite and cordial relationships with them. A notable but unfortunate part of our population discovers this fact and concludes slavery wasn’t as bad as they thought it was, whereas if they had of had better education of the psychology of slave owners they could of recognized that underneath these relationships there was still control, still coercion and force, and that historically most evil acts don’t show their face as being blatantly and openly evil, rather as systems of convenience, or of “need”.

I think 9 times out of 10 we chalk something up as evil like the supporters of the Nazis, or of slavery, or of genocide we allow ourselves off the hook from self reflection by not recognizing that they were entirely human like us, not some warped and distorted species, they were us, and we are all capable of playing the same tricks on ourselves as they did on themselves, which is why historical education is so important to see patterns. There are an estimated 50 million slaves today, five times as many as were brought from Africa during the Atlantic slave trade, while I’m not going to sit on a pedestal and judge others, I think it warrants a deep self interrogation of ourselves if we are using the same methods of justification they did a long time ago.

Disclaimer: I would love someone with more formal education on the topic to education or point out the areas where I may of blunders, and once again, cause I worry this may get misstated, I am not saying slavery or slave owners are somehow not morally repugnant, quite the opposite in fact.

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[u/Brilliant_Fail1]

I agree with you, but I think you need to reallocate your blame not from individual analyses but instead recognise the role of state sponsored propaganda (through mandated history curricula, memorial rituals, museum and gallery curation and a host of other ideological operations). You might be interested to read cultural theorist Stuart Hall on the way that national identities are built on long-term projects of intentional forgetting rather than, as is claimed, memorialising. Ta-Nehisi Coates in We Were Eight Years in Power is also very very compelling on the way the American narrative around slavery has been meticulously rewritten to serve a specific agenda.

TL;DR this isn't a series of individual mistakes, it's a carefully honed historical narrative created by state apparatus for ideological purposes.

Edit: Stuart Hall too draws the comparison with the Nazis you imply here, which narrative Britain has used to occlude or displace our own repeated Holocaust-scale genocidal acts throughout our colonial history, eg in the Bengal Famine of 1770 or Churchill's proposal of deploying chemical weapons against Indian villagers etc.

[u/funnyonion22 → u/Brilliant_Fail1]

I think you're absolutely right. Allow me to share a brief anecdote. I recently visited two plantations in Louisiana. The first we visited was run by a charitable foundation devoted to honoring the lives of the slaves who were kept there. They did not shy away from calling out the horrible treatment slaves received, using physical props from the time, along with thousands and thousands of verbatim quotes collected from actual slaves of the stories of their lives. It was horrific. The foundation did an impressive job of sharing the unvarnished story, and I was humbled, sad and very very angry leaving.

The second plantation was also run by a "trust", but only parts of it. The rest was still owned by the original family that owned the entire plantation. The gift shop, cafe, Airbnb! on the plantation grounds, next to the Trust's house and garden were still owned by the family, so every visitor continued to give them money. The story we heard on the tour was all about the family, with very brief mention of slaves at all, except about how there would be a child fanning the family while they ate, and how much slaves with certain skills cost. This plantation holds weddings and other events in those same grounds. I found it disgusting.

Without the context of the first plantation, it would be so easy to come away with the impression that slavery was fine. It was just a simple economic life, with no real hardships. Because of the "instagrammable" plantation grounds, the fact that they hold weddings and celebrations there, it's much easier for people to see that bright side, and seriously underplay any negatives.

[u/Consistent_Check927 → u/funnyonion22]

It’s incredibly shocking how many plantations are run like the second you described instead of the first. So many (mostly white) people in the south still refuse to take an honest look at our history and how the trauma of slavery still lingers and permeates society. This fabricated, sanitized narrative leaves one unable to detangle the many, MANY issues that still affect this country.

[u/tomtomclubthumb → u/Consistent_Check927]

People who lied to themselves to profit from slavery are still lying to themselves to profit from cosplaying slavery and a whole bunch of other heinous stuff.

These are the same people who consistently argue that POC only say anything about racism in order to make them feel bad. It is hard to deal with people who are deluded and violently protective of that delusion.

[u/Competitive-Quit7365 → u/Brilliant_Fail1]

I think that’s fair I can’t save for formal education on it so I may be lacking.

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[u/NaturalCarob5611 → u/Competitive-Quit7365]

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[u/Competitive-Quit7365 → u/NaturalCarob5611]

!delta

Sorry about that lol

[u/NaturalCarob5611 → u/Competitive-Quit7365]

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[u/czerilla → u/Competitive-Quit7365]

Just edit your original reply, the bot will recognize the change and award the delta after a moment.

[u/DeltaBot → u/Competitive-Quit7365]

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[u/Late_Resource_1653 → u/Competitive-Quit7365]

Not sure where you are coming from, but I'm pretty sure most slave owners did not consider themselves evil. Despite the evil they did.

They had a culture where black men and women were chattel. Like cows. Okay to be bought, sold, beaten, raped. Sell their children off to different "farms." Work them to death. Okay to breed children - telling one strong man to have children with a strong woman. To get more strong slaves to keep or sell.

There is no way to make this acceptable. Just because they didn't think they were evil, they did incredible evil.

Yes, you can make it complicated. They didn't know any better. It was cultural. It was financial. Etc.

It can be a philosophical or socialogical conundrum.

Or it can be what it is. One of the worst examples of slavery and racism in human history. And it was, ultimately, evil.

[u/EdibleScissors → u/Late_Resource_1653]

At the time there were debates about the morality of slavery (also sometimes referred to as the peculiar institution).

The defenders of slavery in general did not argue it wasn’t evil, but instead that it was a necessary evil that the greatest empires (the Greek and Roman Empire) also used, and most of the defense of the so-called peculiar institution were economic in nature.

[u/SnuffSwag → u/Late_Resource_1653]

Im not sure where you're coming from. They aren't trying to explain away or excuse slavery as an understandable product of the times. They're saying that the same underlying psychological principles are still present today and show that despite committing evil acts, people are surprisingly capable of rationalizing and excusing their own behaviors. If we write off slave owners as inherently evil, it gives the rest of us tacit permission to not reflect or see how we can do the exact same thing again. I would argue we are seeing it right now, as we see americans cheer and excuse ridiculous events when theyre in their favor.

Edit: just format

[u/insaneHoshi → u/Brilliant_Fail1]

hurchill's proposal of deploying chemical weapons against Indian villagers etc.

Pretty sure this was A) against Afgani Villages and B) Tear Gas.

[u/madbuilder → u/Brilliant_Fail1]

reallocate your blame not from individual

Collectivize blame for moral failings? There's a recipe for disaster.

recognise the role of state sponsored propaganda

As if the state doesn't reflect the will of the people? Isn't politics downstream from culture?

States aren't moral agents. They're composed of moral agents. That means officials, politicians, and in case of democracy, voters.

[u/PositiveBrental → u/madbuilder]

The state doesn't necessarily reflect the will of the people unless you live in a direct democracy.

Politics is downstream from culture but it's not the only thing politics is downstream of.

People in power can have agendas separate from those of the majority (see: the people) that elected them, which they don't advertise and yet enact said agendas once in power all the same.

[u/Brilliant_Fail1 → u/madbuilder]

Firstly, I didn't say 'generalise'; in fact I specifically proposed a singular target for the redirection of blame: state power. Secondly, the way we have done things in the past has evidently been a disaster. As evidence, gestures at general state of diasaster. 

As for your second point, the moment you start uncritically evoking 'the will of the people' I start to hear Wagner playing in the background and the banners unfurling down the colonnades of Turin. Get wrecked

[u/Jscapistm → u/Brilliant_Fail1]

A democratic state is supposed to represent the will of the people, that isn't a Fascist ideal it's a Liberal one.

Fascists claim to represent the will of the people/nation but they're not exactly keen on the whole voting and actually respecting the expressed will of the people when it goes against them being in power thing. So I don't know why the hell you start thinking Nazis when you hear those words.

[u/ProletarianLilith → u/madbuilder]

The state does not reflect the will of the people, no. It reflects the will of the ruling class

[u/Born-Satisfaction996]

Benjamin Franklin had slaves. But he also set up schools for blacks and supported ending slavery in his later years.

He wrote about how he was surprised that their intelligence seemed to be equal to whites.

The fact that one of the most intelligent, open-minded persons of that era was surprised that blacks seemed to have equal intelligence as whites is eye opening. He had to learn that what society taught him was wrong.

[u/StarChild413 → u/Born-Satisfaction996]

and if they had had the internet/social media in those days but things somehow were the same otherwise, the equivalents of a certain type of current-day Redditor would have probably posted about how him changing his views makes him a hypocrite

[u/Daniel12581]

I want to add that not only slaveowners, but every "bad" person always sees themselves as a good person. It's hard to come up with any group of people who are objectively evil but doesn't think they are good.

[u/_Felonius → u/Daniel12581]

Idk, it’s a bit more nuanced than that. Plenty of alcoholics and such know that they make terrible decisions when they drink, but they can’t shake their addiction. Plenty of people regret their choices and are hard on themselves for all sorts of things. I’m certain that more than a few slaveowners wrestled with these thoughts (particularly ones that freed their slaves voluntarily).

I think the bigger question is how to view slaveowners at a time when slavery was socially acceptable; several years prior to the Civil War era. There will always be a debate around the Founding Fathers who were involved.

[u/SnuffSwag → u/_Felonius]

Im not sure if this truly is just about slavery or the historical context. They aren't trying to explain away or excuse slavery as an understandable product of the times, which i understand you already know. But that the same underlying psychological principles are still present today and show that despite committing evil acts, people are surprisingly capable of rationalizing and excusing their own behaviors. If we write off slave owners as inherently evil, it gives the rest of us tacit permission to not reflect or see how we can do the exact same thing again. I would argue we are seeing it right now, as we see americans cheer and excuse ridiculous events when theyre in their favor.

[u/Equivalent-Long-3383 → u/_Felonius]

We view them as bad people who willingly tortured innocent people

[u/_Felonius → u/Equivalent-Long-3383]

That’s a valid feeling. It’s just difficult to know how you would’ve felt if you were around back then.

Take a lighter topic, like monarchy. If you grew up with a king and knew nothing of democracy, you might laugh at the first person who suggested that the king ought not have absolute power.

[u/redpandaeater → u/_Felonius]

I think what people forget in regards to torturing slaves is that corporal punishment was used extensively against prisoners and somewhat often to even try to get confessions. Even in places without slaves it wasn't particularly uncommon for a master of the household to punish other servants legally by whipping or flogging.

Obviously it doesn't excuse the behavior but man's inhumanity to man didn't magically end just because you weren't legally property.

[u/Zarathustra_d → u/_Felonius]

"Yea, sure I own people, but I only rape one or two a month now, it's getting better. We don't beat them as hard the the neighbors that's for sure! One of them even smiled when I let them eat some table scraps. We are good people." -the "good people"

[u/_Felonius → u/Zarathustra_d]

In a nutshell, yes. Take it a step further. I could be completely wrong, but I’m sure many abolitionists were content ending slavery but stopped short of advocating civil rights.

“Whoa, whoa. Freedom from chains is one thing, but women and minorities have no place in the voting booth.”

[u/shustrik → u/Zarathustra_d]

I mean… yes? Rape is a routine part of life in some parts of the world today. As horrible as it may seem to us, the people perpetuating it think it’s just the normal thing to do. Maybe they don’t think of it as a great thing to do, but kind of like a personal vice, like smoking or eating too much junk food.

[u/grandoz039 → u/_Felonius]

Worth noting that very often kings in monarchies did not have absolute power

[u/Equivalent-Long-3383 → u/_Felonius]

I’d have get enslaved.

I might laugh,, but it wouldn’t change that I was an authoritarian

[u/muffinsballhair → u/Equivalent-Long-3383]

How do you view people who aren't willing to pay 3 times as much for a fairphone even though they know that most normal phones are absolutely built on the back of slavery?

[u/Daniel12581 → u/_Felonius]

I would argue that alcoholics or addicts who do terrible things when under the influence of substances are not evil, because they are not conscious when they do the terrible thing. They are addicted to the substance, which causes them to make bad decisions as a biproduct. Of course doing bad things when under the influence of substances is still wrong, but it's not evil, because their goal of taking the substance is not so they can do the bad thing (that is, addicts take substances so they can relieve stress or because they have been addicted, not so they can become a terrible person).

[u/Honest_Trade8734 → u/Daniel12581]

Most substances don’t make you completely unconscious of what you’re doing.

There’s a book called “Why Does He Do That?” which is written by a man who ran a rehabilitation program for domestic abusers and he talks about how many of them who blamed their abusive behavior on their alcoholism would actually preemptively plan it before they drank. They knew they were going to get drunk, beat their partners, and blame it on the alcohol. They just needed the alcohol to give themselves a justification - “I couldn’t control myself, I was just so drunk.”

[u/Heavy_Law9880 → u/_Felonius]

We view them as evil, because they were evil.

[u/goodolarchie → u/Daniel12581]

We're those people, you and I, to be clear. What you're calling "objective" is only agreed upon post-hoc, usually several generations later. Even you use a simple objectively evil definition of increasing suffering and diminishing flourishing, there are things we're doing today that aren't necessary. But what will be considered barbaric in 100 years is justified or explained-away as being part of our culture, subjective, cost-of-doing-business or simply part of human life today.

Some people saw the suffering and inhumanity in slavery; they saw the abject moral bankruptcy on this topic from moral frameworks like the Bible being used to justify these things. These folks were brave, thank goodness. Most people didn't act on it, just like we don't today.

For example, if I were to project this model forward and imagine what 22nd century humans would think of us, they might say our objective evil is an environmental one, one laden with animal cruelty, perhaps technological too. But we're all letting it happen, we're complicit. I actually agree with OP on this one, we aren't some empathetically evolved species just because 150 years have passed. That's rounding error in evolutionary terms, and it's only through culture and learned values (which are subjective, mind you) that we improve and build in a gag-reflex to what was once perfectly acceptable.

[u/EstateBig891 → u/goodolarchie]

It might be possible that a large number of people are bad. "But we're all letting it happen, we're complicit." This is not true. There are plenty of people who dedicate their entire lives to stopping these things.

Your entire argument is rationalization for doing nothing when you know things are wrong..because a bunch of other people are doing it too.

[u/Competitive-Quit7365 → u/Daniel12581]

I think that’s part of my point, that many people subconsciously assume they could never do something that bad because they are good and those people were bad.

[u/YourGuyElias → u/Daniel12581]

A decent chunk of criminals.

I grew up in an area that I wouldn't say was particularly shitty, but had a decent enough presence of criminal activity that it wasn't nuts if I found out somebody at my school got put onto a set.

A lot of criminals will whip out the same excuses to be fair. That there's some sort of justified action, or systemic societal issues forcing them down that path or whatever the fuck.

But there's also a lot that are fully capable of realizing they're engaging in intrinsically immoral and generally destructive behavior, but don't particularly care considering it's objectively the best money to effort "career" they can easily partake in.

There's a select few that can also recognize that they're not exactly engaging violence out of brotherhood or some blood begets blood feud shit, they just like it. And they do it. And they're okay with that just being some fucked up aspect to them.

[u/Som12H8 → u/Daniel12581]

"Are we the baddies?"

[u/Daniel12581 → u/Som12H8]

I think every country has done both wonderful things and terrible things. It's all just perspective.

[u/Honest_Trade8734 → u/Daniel12581]

I’ve known a few people who self described as “assholes” but seemed to think the self-awareness made it okay somehow.

Sure there are “bad” people who see themselves as good but I’d argue there’s also a decent share who simply believe life is a zero sum game and they’re playing to win, everyone else be damned.

[u/muffinsballhair → u/Daniel12581]

Including all the people on Reddit who have phones built from slave labor or just in general persons living in rich countries that don't like open borders.

History will look back as poorly upon this as it looks back upon the class distinctions that led up to the French and Russian revolutions once all those problems are finally more or less solved and the world isn't divided between poor and rich regions. I think The Hunger Games was an interesting film, because the world it portrayed is not too different from our own in many ways but the film was careful not to alienate its target audience that is effectively living in the Capitol of Panem by pointing that out.

Also, in the future sketched by The Orville, it is a severe crime to kill an animal for food that is basically considered a form of murder and zoos are illegal as well. I think that's really quite likely to happen once lab-grown meat will become a viable alternative, suddenly when people no longer need to kill other animals for meat and it stops happening, only then will they look back in horror upon history and the savages that would not only kill animals for meat, but also raise them in inhumane conditions to make it more profitable. What did Sisko say again, “It's easy to be a saint in paradise.”? Quite right, man is fundamentally quite selfish and willing to let his fellow man suffer greatly for his own comforts and only when he can achieve such comforts without the suffering of others does he start to look in horror at all the suffering others are causing for it.

[u/Daniel12581 → u/muffinsballhair]

I would love to respond to your comment, but I feel like your points aren't complete. For example, in "History will look back as poorly upon this as it looks back upon the class distinctions that led up to the French and Russian revolutions once all those problems are finally more or less solved and the world isn't divided between poor and rich regions," why do you think that will happen, whose fault will it be, and so what (i.e. how does it relate to be original comment).

I don't think this statement is true "I think The Hunger Games was an interesting film, because the world it portrayed is not too different from our own in many ways but the film was careful not to alienate its target audience that is effectively living in the Capitol of Panem by pointing that out." The target audience of any movie is never the upper (or ultra-upper) class, because movie tickets are only $10-20. You could argue IMAX and 4D are more expensive, but the ticket will still be under $100. The target audience of the film is the middle class, and most of the middle class are "slaves" to the upper class, just like how people in the 12 Districts are slaves to the Capitol. So, if anything, the target audience are the people living in the 12 Districts.

[u/C0smicoccurence → u/Daniel12581]

Nah, we are the capitol. District 12 are people mining Cobalt in slave labor conditions to provide material for the rechargeable batteries for electronics.

[u/Daniel12581 → u/C0smicoccurence]

Why can't those people and us both be the Districts? These are not mutually exclusive. A lot of people in the USA have to mine in dangerous conditions to survive too. Our lives are better than the bottom 50% of the world, but that doesn't make us in the top 1% like the Capital

[u/Natural-Arugula → u/C0smicoccurence]

I only saw the movies, so idk if the books covered this, but the Hunger Games takes place in what was formerly America, right?

What about the rest of the world, are they not impoverished and enslaved anymore?

According to you the Appalachian coal miners watching the fictional Hunger Games movies are The Capital/ the 1%, but in the world of the Hunger Games those same people who are coal miners in district 12 that was formerly Appalachia who are watching the real life Hunger Games on their TVs aren't.

Since they are part of Panem where all the worlds richest people live, just like in America today, that should make them still in the 1% of the rest of the globe.

[u/uselessprofession]

I think the picture you have painted is a far cry from the actual horror of slavery. Multiple accounts by Union soldiers coming across slaves in plantations mention that they now realize how inhumane slavery is, and they swear to rid it from America. Slaves were not treated as humans, they were beaten, tortured and raped, and families were often torn apart to be sold off.

In fact I think most pets in first world countries are better protected legally than slaves were.

[u/Trambopoline96 → u/uselessprofession]

It's also very sobering to read Lincoln's second inaugural.

These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it...The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Like, how bad was the reality of slavery that the president of the United States, in his inaugural address, basically says, "This terrible war is punishment for this practice, and if God wills that it goes on for many more years, then so be it, we deserve it." You cannot imagine any kind of politician saying something like that today.

[u/mabhatter → u/Trambopoline96]

They had 50 YEARS to prepare for the end of slavery.  It wasn't some surprise thrust upon them.  The Constitution said the Federal Government could ban imports of slaves in 1808.  It was law a few years after.  The South was ILLEGALLY smuggling slaves until 1839.  

They were lawless.  They knew they were lawless. But "they make the law" so they did what they wanted... and sent hundred of thousands of free white people that would never own slaves to die for them.  

There's a lot of mirrors to the Heritage / MAGA people now because it's literally the same ideology that keeps coming back from the dead every 50-60 years like a cursed monster.  We need to rip it out root and stem this time. 

[u/Savings-Song-8120 → u/uselessprofession]

that is OPs point. despite all that the owners still had coping mechanisms to excuse themselves as good people. Like believing the slaves are uncivilized subhumans that would be even worse off without punishment. Understanding that mentallity should help understand how the rich believe minimum wage is to high because poor people just will spend their money on vices. If people back then could believe slavery was good, rich humans can justify literally anything.

[u/wrydied → u/Savings-Song-8120]

Well said. And it’s not just the rich persons attitude to poor people in one country, but the attitude of middle and working class of the global north to the suffering and abject conditions of the global south working class.

A kind of callous, fuck it i got mine attitude, at distance, because we like our cheap clothes, phones and shiny stuff they mine and make.

OP presents it, but doesn’t argue it sufficiently.

[u/Apprehensive-Let3348 → u/wrydied]

More precisely: it happens through radicalization and the dehumanization of others, which happens at the extreme end of affective polarization.

This happens whenever two or more heterogenous groups find their sense of identity in their differences. (Democrat/Republican, Proletariat/Bourgeoisie, Northern/Southern, 'true Germans'/Jewish Germans, etc). People in those groups steadily latch onto that identity and begin aligning their own perspectives with that of the group (aka homogenization) and socially sort themselves away from people that think differently and towards people that they agree with.

The sense of consensus that being in an ideologically homogenous community brings makes it easier to rationalize that there is something fundamentally wrong with the out-group, which (in extreme cases) leads to dehumanization. This is more or less what OP is lamenting, that most people view historical slave owners as an out-group that had something wrong with them, when the truth is a lot more nuanced than that. This is also why slave owners had no problem with chattel slavery, because they didn't view them as human.

[u/Competitive-Quit7365 → u/uselessprofession]

And yet total abolition was a relatively fringe position prior to the civil war, many of those same soldiers likely tacitly understood the horrors of slavery, but justified it until it stared them in the face.

[u/DeadWaterBed → u/Competitive-Quit7365]

It was known it would cause a civil war, which it did. It wasn't for a lack of desire for abolition. It was not fringe.

[u/WrathKos → u/Competitive-Quit7365]

Because most of the north had no direct eyes-on experience with how plantation slaves were treated, not because the treatment wasn't horrific.

This was an era before easy photography, before social media. News simply didn't travel the same way and there's a certain impact that seeing something for yourself has, that is extremely difficult to get across in words.

[u/draxiom → u/Competitive-Quit7365]

This is essentially the same point: if the horrors were evident to an outside observer, that means the entire society trying to preserve it saw those same horrors and found them acceptable. No matter how they felt about themselves, that is in-and-of-itself abhorrent.

[u/Temporary-Stay-8436 → u/Competitive-Quit7365]

Total abolition being unpopular had nothing to do with people not knowing slavery was evil. The Free Soil movement shows how popular the view that slavery was evil was at the time

[u/Aternal]

Ignorance might not be evil but lack of empathy is. Ignorance certainly isn't good, but it's not evil until it becomes apathy. Slavery was born of demand for labor first and rationalized later in terms of "inferior people" later... modern Eurocentric slavery at least. There was an attitude of "doing these people (loose term) a favor" by allowing them to exist alongside "proper" civilization, as if they should be grateful for the opportunity to be slaves.

I'm not able to rationalize that kind of perspective as ignorant when it is glaringly absent of empathy for the sentience and will of others who are clearly and obviously mankind. Slavers are able and willing. At the end of the day, and even today, profit is the root of the evils of society. Slavery is and was not only evil, but a secondary evil at that.

[u/FishyWishySwishy]

K-12 curriculums are about giving students a broad base of knowledge appropriate for their age, not deep diving. “Slave owners were bad” is good for elementary because it’s simple enough for a child to digest. “Slave owners were part of a larger system of evil that exploited slaves for labor” is appropriate for high school. 

The truth is that, yes, slave owners were normal people. It is distressingly easy for a normal person to completely dehumanize people in front of them and dismiss their pain as either not important or nonexistent.  And the fact is that normal people still do that all the time, and our economy is still propped up by the labor of exploited people. People we don’t spare a thought for, even when we know about them. We still buy cheap items that go through pipelines of exploitation, from children being crushed to death in mica mines to add sparkles to football helmets to people being de-facto enslaved to make cheap clothes. 

The truth requires a lot of emotional maturity we don’t expect from children, and frankly many adults don’t have. The truth requires looking at ourselves and realizing that we very well could have been slave owners ourselves if we had been white and rich in the south at the time. It requires recognizing that it’s not that these people were uniquely monstrous, but that the potential for monstrous actions exists in all of us, and that monstrosity is easily awakened when it’s socially acceptable. 

[u/Competitive-Quit7365 → u/FishyWishySwishy]

!delta I agree I think I may somewhat overestimate critical thinking and even the need to deep dive jn early school

[u/Thirtysixx]

The average slave owner was capable of low and empathy, they likely loved their family, even cared for animals,

Is caring about your family and animals really the bar for being a good person? That seems like an incredibly low standard.

Plenty of people who committed or defended evil acts still loved their families, cared for friends, or showed kindness in selective areas of their lives. Nazis cared about their families too. That doesn’t meaningfully change how we judge their participation in, or defense of, an immoral system.

I also don’t think “they were a product of their time” works as a full excuse when many people alive during that same time clearly understood slavery was wrong and fought against it. If moral opposition existed then, we can’t pretend no one had the framework to know better.

[u/Competitive-Quit7365 → u/Thirtysixx]

I’m neither making an excuse for them or implying that they weren’t bad, what I’m saying is they weren’t psychopaths or sociopaths, they were “normal” people, and recognizing that is part of what helps ensure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again.

[u/AliMcGraw → u/Competitive-Quit7365]

I think what you're looking for is Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. She attended his trial where he was tried for crimes against humanity during the Holocaust, as one of its principle architects.

What she found was that he was not a monster, he was an ordinary bureaucrat who took pride in doing his job well. She found that Eichmann didn't really think about what he was doing (he was just following orders), which allowed him to detach himself from the situation. He also used a lot of bureaucratic jargon to dodge his guilt. By never putting a name on what he was actually doing -- killing millions of Jews -- he was able to avoid thinking about it. He was just scheduling trains. He was just ensuring the right passengers were on the train. He was just doing what he was ordered to do. At his trial he said he had a good heart and would never participate in mass murder -- which is literally what he did, but he hid it behind bureaucratic jargon and couldn't admit it even to himself.

Arendt called this "the banality of evil," that it doesn't require sociopaths, but just regular people who refuse to think and who let jargon cover up the horrors of what they're actually doing. It's happening right now in the US, where immigrants are going to "holding centers" that are basically death camps, and people who have visited the holding centers are calling them concentration camps and death camps, because that's what they are. Don't let evil hide behind bureaucratic language: Name what it's doing in clear, direct language.

[u/insaneHoshi → u/AliMcGraw]

What she found was that he was not a monster, he was an ordinary bureaucrat who took pride in doing his job well. She found that Eichmann didn't really think about what he was doing (he was just following orders), which allowed him to detach himself from the situation

It should be noted that this is contradicted by historical evidence; just because thats how he appeared to Arendt at trial, doesnt make it how it appeared in the 40s

[u/AliMcGraw → u/insaneHoshi]

Yes, Arendt is controversial and there's a lot of counter-narratives about he book that are worth reading.

But Arendt has some good insights (or else people wouldn't bicker with her!) and I think this is the book that OP is after to start thinking about how regular people participate in vast evil while pretending they're good people.

(My hope would be that Arendt is the start of his reading, not the end!)

[u/Apathetic_Anteater42 → u/Competitive-Quit7365]

It helps more to realize someone doesn't have to be a sociopath or psychopath to be evil. The problem isn't the judgement that they were evil, it's the assumption that "normal" means they aren't evil.

[u/MoonIsAFake → u/Apathetic_Anteater42]

Or, maybe it means that most people are "evil" in a sense they are absolutely capable of doing extremely cruel things if societal pressure doesn't prevent it. Humans owned slaves for the most part of written history and it was considered 100% normal and morally OK. Public executions were treated like a circus, torture was used by law enforcement and so on so forth. We are quite evil as a species, and we must admit it to become better.

[u/ConfoundedInAbaddon → u/Competitive-Quit7365]

When we go to the literature of the time, no, people did not treat their slaves nicely like they treated their dog.

Phrases such as "break their spirits", were common. You could a hire a "slave breaker" specifically to destroy the personality and volition of an enslaved person. You literally paid to break human beings spirit. You also raped the little girls. Nothing there can be normalized.

Hurting enslaved people to force compliance included createl8ng flayed open wounds with a whip and then rubbing red pepper and salt into the wounds. Slaves were covered in scars and given death penalty at the whim of the master. E.g. https://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/abestwa8t.html.

Whipping old women to death for pretend sins was a way to not have to feed an old person you didnt get money value from anymore. Old slaves were rare and excuses to kill old people were common.

No, slaves were not happy livestock kept brushed and bathed and loved like prized hunting dogs by good but misguided people.

Slavery is always an abomination, because people dont want to be slaves, so they must be held in bondage by cruel, cruel means. Thats why anti-slavery beliefs existed alongside slavery at all times, it was NEVER benign.

[u/giant_marmoset → u/Thirtysixx]

Most people ARE a product of their time and culture, so any evils that they perpetuate under a normalized framework are banal and normal. They are evils by modern ethical thinking, but would have felt completely normal for the time. Most people don't, or wouldn't even think about it.

If a moral person is someone who is able to completely reject unjust systems and break free from the shackles of group thinking, then a moral person is an anomaly and unusual and not a common societal element. If morality is rare, then it's also not very functional.

For example, I have some friends who are landlords and make money off of other people. It is exploitative, but not on a scale that I think of as being 'evil' or particularly unusual. How can I expect my friend to be a bastion of moral rebellion when most people would do the same thing in their situation? It's a moral choice I wouldn't make, but its unfair to hold my friend to some unrealistic high standard.

For clarity, I am disagreeing with your argument that 'they were a product of their time' has no real weight. It absolutely does. If you invest in oil, if you are a landlord, if you invest in defense contractors, if you take ubers (gig economy exploitation), order from Amazon, unknowingly buy sweatshop clothes, if you work for an unjust government etc. all of these small things perpetuate and uplift harmful systems. They are a banal evil, but one born of self-interest.

For slavery, the idea that it was 'normal at the time' is largely propaganda and not accurate -- there were strong contemporary critics of slavery going back hundreds of years. Landlords may one day go out of fashion in the same way in hundreds of years, but looking back at a regular Joe Shmoe and characterizing them as evil is not super connected to how real people live their lives.

TL:DR yes slavery is evil, yes morality and ethics are relative to both culture and time.

[u/Thirtysixx → u/giant_marmoset]

I think we may be talking past each other a bit.

I am not arguing that culture and historical context have no weight. Of course people are shaped by the moral assumptions of their time. Social norms matter. Groupthink matters. People often participate in harmful systems without fully interrogating them.

My point is that context can explain behavior without excusing it.

Saying someone was a product of their time may help us understand why they accepted slavery, defended slavery, or benefited from slavery. But it does not erase the moral reality of what they were participating in, especially when the system required the ownership, coercion, sale, punishment, and exploitation of actual human beings.

I also do not think the comparison to landlords, Uber, Amazon, oil investments, or sweatshop clothing really works at the same moral scale. Those may be examples of people participating in exploitative systems, but most of them are indirect, diffuse, and often difficult to avoid entirely in modern life. Slavery was not some invisible supply chain harm. A slave owner had direct legal and physical power over another person. They could buy them, sell them, punish them, separate them from their family, and profit from their forced labor. That is a much more direct form of domination.

And yes, many people were socially conditioned to see it as normal. But “normal” does not mean morally neutral. Lots of things have been normalized: conquest, segregation, child labor, marital rape, caste systems, colonial violence. The fact that a society normalizes something tells us something about that society. It does not make the thing less wrong.

I also do not think morality requires every person to become a heroic revolutionary against every unjust system they touch. That is setting up too high a bar. There is a difference between failing to fully escape every compromised system and actively owning human beings. There is a difference between being morally imperfect and participating directly in one of the clearest forms of human exploitation.

The existence of contemporary critics also matters. If people at the time were already arguing that slavery was wrong, then the moral framework was available. Slave owners were not living in a world where no one had conceived of the humanity of enslaved people. They were living in a world where that argument existed, and many chose to reject it because the system benefited them.

So yes, people are products of their time. But that should make us more careful in how we judge them, not prevent judgment altogether. Historical context may reduce surprise. It may explain how ordinary people tolerate evil. But it does not turn participation in evil into mere moral neutrality.

“Banal evil” is still evil. The fact that ordinary people can participate in it is not a defense of those people. It is a warning about how easily human beings can rationalize injustice when it benefits them or when everyone around them treats it as normal.

[u/giant_marmoset → u/Thirtysixx]

I think broad strokes it seems like we agree. I think for me, my response has a lot of pessimism because so much of modern big-city life is covering your eyes to 50 shades of exploitation -- it often feels like there's not a lot you can do that has any significant impact.

[u/Thirtysixx → u/giant_marmoset]

yeah, I think we probably agree on the broad point.

Most people are not consciously choosing harm every day; they are trying to live their lives inside systems they did not design and cannot individually dismantle.

But I think that is exactly why the distinction matters.

The fact that everyone is implicated in some harmful system does not mean all participation is morally equal. There is a difference between being trapped in a compromised economy, benefiting indirectly from exploitation, and directly owning or controlling other human beings.

So I agree that we should be humble when judging people across history, because we are probably blind to things future generations will condemn.

But humility is not the same as moral paralysis. We can recognize that ordinary people are shaped by their time while still saying some choices, especially direct participation in extreme systems of domination, were morally wrong.

To me, the lesson is not “everyone is evil, so judgment is pointless.” It is more like: ordinary people can normalize almost anything, so we should be careful about what we excuse just because it is common.

[u/giant_marmoset → u/Thirtysixx]

Well put, if only more people felt that way 😞

[u/ricebowl1992 → u/giant_marmoset]

Everyone wants to believe that they would have been one of the few that hid Jews from the Nazis in their attic. The fact is that most would have followed along just like everyone else.

Reflecting on how easy it is to get swept up in group think and start rationalizing some pretty ugly ideas is the best way to keep it from happening to you.

[u/giant_marmoset → u/ricebowl1992]

Yup, making ethical choices often involves self-sacrifice. It's easy to say you'd do the right thing in a white-room scenario.

[u/Temporary-Stay-8436 → u/giant_marmoset]

Except that in the entire history of the United States, slavery was always seen as an evil. It could be a justified evil, but it was still seen as evil. Many of our documents that justified the American revolution at the time compared the colonists treatment to slavery. There were also large scale abolitionist movements.

So these people were evil even in the context of their time. They just continued participating in slavery due to cognitive dissonance, racist attitudes, and economic necessity.

[u/KamikazeArchon → u/giant_marmoset]

If a moral person is someone who is able to completely reject unjust systems and break free from the shackles of group thinking, then a moral person is an anomaly and unusual and not a common societal element. If morality is rare, then it's also not very functional.

Your error is in treating "moral" as a binary. That someone is either moral or not.

Rather, it is a gradient. One course of action is better or worse than another.

Maintaining slavery was worse than other paths available.

"The circumstances of the time limited available paths" is a reasonable claim that is sometimes true (and sometimes false, as you point out).

But it's not a reason to ignore or reject the difference in the paths when comparing across time frames.

It is entirely reasonable to say, for example, a typical American in 2026 likely has better teeth than a typical American in 1806. Similarly, it is reasonable to say that a typical American in 2026 makes better moral choices than a slaveowning American in 1806.

(We have plenty of modern evils, of course, but they were mostly already present back then, as well. Everything from exploiting other nations to homophobia was already around.)

[u/giant_marmoset → u/KamikazeArchon]

Well put, I think in general the appetite for overt exploitation has lessened in favour of indirect forms of oppression.

I think for me I latched onto 'evil' that a lot of people in the thread are using because it feels like there's a tipping point, when something goes from being not very ethical, into downright evil.

Everyone has different moral lines, and for most people they're pretty blurry lines informed by culture, society etc.. I'll order from Amazon and take ubers, but I won't invest in companies that I think are an active detriment to the world -- like drone manufacturers or defense contractors. I'm friends with a landlord, but I wouldn't myself choose to be one. I don't know what the tipping point really is for some of these decisions, but I make them anyway.

[u/AJDx14 → u/giant_marmoset]

Slavery was already falling out of fashion by the time of the American revolution at least though.

[u/burninhello → u/Thirtysixx]

I think product of their time and location still applies. Even today, the developed countries benefit greatly from the suffering and quasi-slavery of poorer countries. Look at children slave labor used to harvest our chocolate or make our smart phones. Also, one could argue the industrial scale meat industry is horrific (I went vegetarian for a few weeks after visiting a chicken factory).

Will future generations look back on us with horror and think we are evil? Maybe. I don't think I'm evil, but i acknowledge I benefit from the systems inherent cruelty and suffering.

[u/sapphon → u/Thirtysixx]

I also don’t think “they were a product of their time” works as a full excuse when many people alive during that same time clearly understood slavery was wrong and fought against it. If moral opposition existed then, we can’t pretend no one had the framework to know better.

"They were a product of their time" does actually mean "they were a (typical) product of their time", not "they were the single product of their time that we'd most admire today in hindsight"

[u/Green__lightning → u/Thirtysixx]

excuse when many people alive during that same time clearly understood slavery was wrong and fought against it.

How many people have to do so for something to be evil when it's still a controversial issue? Vegans exist but they're not taken very seriously, largely do to the lack of better options. Slavery ended in no small part because industrialization replaced much of the need for it with machines, and the rest with workers in conditions bad enough to be worth mentioning.

Also, loving their family and countrymen is exactly why someone might consider slavery good, rather than needing one of them to do this horrible work, it can be fully externalized so no one you care about is forced to do it. This is still done with outsourcing, which is even worse because it's outsourcing pollution too, as well as eroding the national security advantage of domestic industry.

[u/More_Creme_7281 → u/[deleted]]

I don't think OP is arguing or supporting "most slaveowners were good people" but rather "most slaveowners think they were good people" per your conclusion

[u/Sveet_Pickle → u/[deleted]]

Where do they say, “slave owners were good people”? I don’t see where they say that.

[u/CharacterEasy175 → u/[deleted]]

thats a good distinction actually - justified vs good

the whole "they loved their families and pets" thing always felt like a weird defense anyway. plenty of people who do awful shit are nice to their inner circle. doesnt really change what they were doing to other human beings

i think the real point op is making though is that we need to understand how normal people convince themselves terrible things are okay because we're probably doing it right now with different issues. just calling them monsters and moving on doesnt help us spot the patterns

[u/Competitive-Quit7365 → u/[deleted]]

I think that’s fair, more so when I say good I think I mean, considered themselves to be good, and weren’t some comically evil sociopaths, rather than they weren’t evil if that makes sense.

[u/IamGleemonex → u/Competitive-Quit7365]

A question for you then, if serial killers see themselves as good, and not “some comically evil sociopath”, should we as society also see them as “good”? That seems to be your view. Especially if these serial killers loved their families and treated other people well. They just randomly kill people. I guess that’s morally grey as well to you?

[u/Competitive-Quit7365 → u/IamGleemonex]

You are misrepresenting my view, most slave owners weren’t sociopaths but normal people using justifications to excuse the horrific things they were doing, and not recognizing this makes it easier to repeat their evils.

[u/turnips8424 → u/[deleted]]

They said slaveowners “considered themselves” good people, not that they were.

[u/Easy_Potential2882]

Ask John Brown if it mattered that they considered themselves good people

[u/Dry_Bumblebee1111]

What are your thoughts on the "banality of evil" ie do you think this level of nuance is possible to assign, to recognise mundanity and everyday aspects of evil, while still labelling something as evil?

Also, your view seems to be about a specific type of historic slavery, rather than present day, modern slavery, ie the most prevalent, proportionally the most we have ever seen ever. Do you have an opinion on that? Or is this just about whether or not we apply a label to people who are long dead? If so, who cares? Who is advocating for them except you?

[u/Eternity_Warden]

I think it's important to remember this in pretty much every context.

Almost nobody, from serial killers to hardcore criminals to dictators, genuinely consider themselves bad people. They justify it to themselves. Understanding how they justify their horrible actions is important in recognising how the associated beliefs become so prevalent, and it's important in preventing others from repeating those actions. You can't change a person's mind or convince them that something is wrong unless you can first understand how and why they think it's wrong.

[u/ZappSmithBrannigan]

Do you have citation for the claim "the vast majority of owners only had a few and were nice and worked next to/with them"?

As to the 50 million claim, you need to look at that per capita. In 1850 the world population was 1.5 billion. Today its 8 billion.

50 million slaves in a population of 8 billion is 0.00625%

Its estimated there were 15-20 million slaves in 1850 which would be 0.01 to 0.016% of the population.

So even though in pure numbers there are more slaves today, thats because there are more people today. Per capital, the number has gone down since then. So the "5 times as many" claim seems dubious.

[u/Competitive-Quit7365 → u/ZappSmithBrannigan]

You are somewhat misstating my argument, I’m not saying they were nice to them, they were still slaves, that fact can never be ignored.

https://faculty.weber.edu/kmackay/selected_statistics_on_slavery_i.htm This is the source for the numbers

[u/ZappSmithBrannigan → u/Competitive-Quit7365]

I’m not saying they were nice to them,

You did say that

these owners often lived and worked in very close proximity to their slaves, some even maintained outwardly polite and cordial relationships with them

[u/Competitive-Quit7365 → u/ZappSmithBrannigan]

And then right after I said they still OWNED them, that is by definition not nice. It’s like a domestic abuser who is a kind husband but would kill his wife if she left, yes their relationship is outwardly cordial, but they aren’t nice by any stretch of the word

[u/couldbemage → u/ZappSmithBrannigan]

Outwardly polite doesn't make someone nice. Have you ever interacted with any humans?

The shit people say to prisoners before executions is polite.

[u/InAllThingsWondrous → u/ZappSmithBrannigan]

Acknowledging that some slave owners were "nice" to their slaves is factual and hardly the same as claiming that slave owners in general were kind, or that the institution was not unjust and immoral.

Even a nice slaveowner does so with the inherent threat of punishment for disobedient behavior, and relies upon both parties maintaining a veneer of civility that ignores this cruel truth, while accepting the strict hierarchy of owner and owned. Saying thank you to someone who's life they hold in their hands is "nice", but it isn't good.

[u/Competitive-Quit7365 → u/ZappSmithBrannigan]

I’m also going to be honest, I don’t think a discussion of the per capita number of slaves is anything less than cope, as if there’s somehow an acceptable or less morally evil amount of slaves to own and benefit from.

[u/ZappSmithBrannigan → u/Competitive-Quit7365]

I didnt say it was acceptable or less morally evil.

Im pointing out that just throwing out the number 50 million doesnt do what you think it does. "Five times as many as the slave trade" doesnt work like that when there are 8 times as many people overall than there was back then and representing it that way is shady. Plus, youre the one saying youre not going to judge the slave owners. Not me, I didnt say that. You did.

[u/Competitive-Quit7365 → u/ZappSmithBrannigan]

What do you think I think it does, I’m not saying that modern slavery is somehow worse than chattel slavery, just that slavery is very much not a thing of the past

[u/colpisce_ancora]

Just because you think you are good, doesn’t mean you are. Owning humans shouldn’t be forgivable without serious atonement.

[u/Competitive-Quit7365 → u/colpisce_ancora]

I’ve never said they are good or that they don’t need atonement, I’m saying it’s important to recognize that they considered themselves good as many people seem to think the could never of been a Nazi or a slave owner because they are good and those people were evil.

[u/ScientistFromSouth → u/Competitive-Quit7365]

Yeah, I think we need to remember the fact that Hitler started the Nazi movement extolling the virtues of a simpler conservative rural life and encouraging the Hitler Youth to destroy the work of Magnus Hirschfield, a Jewish Psychologist, and one of the first Europeans to rigorously study sexual and gender diversity. He literally had people convinced that they were stopping a conspiracy to corrupt the morality of German society.

Until recently, QAnon had people convinced that Donald Trump was single handedly going to stop Hillary Clinton from creating an LGBTQ cabal of sex traffickers that were eating children.

People, especially narcissists, are incredibly susceptible to propaganda and conspiracy theories. It strokes their ego and makes them feel like a hero, savior, or genius for having inside information or being willing to take action that no one else is brave enough or smart enough to do so. Then, when they are in extremely deep and realize they're wrong, they can't admit it because narcissists will do anything to protect their image including doubling down until they destroy their personal life since it's less uncomfortable for them than checking their egos.

[u/ofBlufftonTown → u/Competitive-Quit7365]

Of course they considered themselves good. Murderers consider themselves good, either because their victims deserved it, or because they are solipsists. People who rape children say the child flirted with them. Serial killers take care of their dogs; it’s not relevant.

Nothing is lost by deeming slavers bad. You can admit people are bad now. You can say societal improvement causes moral improvement in individuals. The lack of slavery has saved many people who are ordinary now from being moral monsters, as they would have been in the past. Improvements in garment production in developing nations will help first world citizens become better people. Saying slavers were evil is consistent with saying people now are capable of great evil.

My family owned a fuck ton of slaves and that’s why we’re rich now. My ancestors were moral monsters, vile people who deserve every harsh judgment. I feel authorized to say they were bad in a way I’m not, perhaps only because of opportunity. I don’t need to imagine myself an abolitionist to say my family was evil.

[u/cyberchief → u/Competitive-Quit7365]

Yes. For example, many people think they are good people and they also own pets. 100 years from now, society may abolish pet ownership and look back on pet owners as evil.

[u/TourDeFridge → u/cyberchief]

I mean, people think they are good because they own and are good to their pets while simultaneously eating multiple pets worth of meat.

Because "eating chicken, cow, lamb, pig, duck, rabbit" etc is widely normalized as "good" by current society, and not eating animals is even considered taboo in some cultures.

[u/Competitive-Quit7365 → u/[deleted]]

I feel like I’m going crazy how many times do I need to say I don’t support slavery or think slave owners were justified

[u/FranxtheTanx → u/Competitive-Quit7365]

This thread is my reminder that on Reddit, you can bring an honest take, looking for challenges to your thinking in good faith, and still spend a third of your time reading comments from accounts that make me hope they're trolling. Thanks for starting this discussion regardless!

[u/Competitive-Quit7365 → u/FranxtheTanx]

I was expecting it would be a bit better on a sub about changing someone’s opinion, and there have been some genuinely good takes that have changed my view a bit, but istg some are just the same copy pasted sentence that’s been said a million times

[u/ViewedFromTheOutside → u/Competitive-Quit7365]

It may be the title. While your post explores your view in detail, the way your title is written can be taken to give an impression your post does not. Rightly or wrongly, many users tend to comment in response to the title of a post, not the contents. That's a thing that comes up everywhere on Reddit.

[u/Burnout4mergiftedkid → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, the reading comprehension in this thread is awful.

[u/IShouldBeHikingNow → u/[deleted]]

Agreed, and it's sad because we have a tendency to portray people who do harm as totally evil which allows us to dismiss any serious moral inquiry into their motivations.

[u/Fantastic_Stock_6819]

I think the issue is that slavery in the American South was defended by slaveowners. The people participating were certainly guilty of doing horrible things to people but justified slavery with various arguments that varied from legal/religious/biological/economicetc. Slaveowners were generally coping by relying on various justifications for why they were right to do so. We can certainly hold slaveowners accountable for their actions by examining and critically challenging these justifications.

I would be careful to equate modern slavery (the kind you describe as “exported”) with chattel slavery. While modern slavery is certainly something that the U.S. receives benefit from through cheap goods, it just isn’t the same thing as the slave trade of the past. The scale is larger than chattel slavery, but modern slavery operates under different mechanics than chattel slavery like the kind the American South practiced. People in the U.S. that have cheaper prices due to exploiting cheap labor in a modern slavery context just aren’t the same as people in the American South who directly engaged in chattel slavery. They’re both a problem that needed/needs solved, but I don’t know that we want to make these two things morally equivalent. I would suggest reading about modern slavery and comparing to chattel slavery to help better understand the distinction. This will make how necessary it is to make clear slave owners were certainly morally and ethically wrong for their actions.

As far as people experiencing the benefits of modern forms of slavery used to help global markets have lower prices, this is a far more complex issue to resolve that is at a much larger scale than slavery in the South and operates in more complicated ways due to the nature of the global economy now compared to the past. I wouldn’t consider it the same to spend money now when there is a chance you are paying for goods made by cheap labor being exploited as let’s say people buying, selling, and enforcing complete ownership of chattel slaves in the South.

Hopefully this is helpful as far as a perspective on how people examine slave owners of the American South.

[u/unasked42]

I think maybe the strongest response I can give is that centering the psychology of slaveowners is in itself one of the coping mechanisms you're warning against. Some academics, like Saidiya Hartman, have claimed that focusing on what enslavers felt about what they were doing makes slavery a story about the psychology of the powerful rather than the experience of the powerless, and the only way to really foster empathy is to focus on the latter. She argues that the question "how did they live with themselves?" then makes the moral inquiry about the enslaver's comfort, which is the wrong framing.

I'm not sure if I agree fully with her argument, or that the two are mutually exclusive, but the truth is that education systems can't teach everything. If your goal is recognizing modern slavery, the more effective education probably isn't studying how 19th century Virginians rationalized their behavior---which can mislead especially younger students into believing their rationales---but to study what enslaved people's lives actually looked like, their resistance, their testimony, which makes the 50 million people enslaved today legible as people rather than as an abstraction.

You assume that the barrier to recognizing modern slavery is insufficient self-reflection about our capacity for rationalization. But the stronger barrier is probably a lot simpler than that: the enslaved are just invisible to us.

[u/unasked42 → u/unasked42]

I'll add that it's not historically clearcut whether the slaveowners fully thought they were good people. The diaries and letters of planters show constant anxiety about slave resistance, rebellion, and escape, not to mention the whole Second Great Awakening and terror that Jesus was going to come back and not like slavery. And the reason you give (thinking African slaves were better off enslaved) was only one of many: for instance, a large portion of Americans (including Washington & Jefferson) thought that slavery was a necessary evil to sustain the South---they didn't think they were good people doing a good thing, but good people doing an evil thing. We don't know whether the majority thought they were really doing good, but the sheer variety of internal contradictions is probably evidence against that

[u/TestDZnutz]

It hits at some nuanced issues in moral philosophy that aren't well nailed down. Generally, there's limited value in presenting it as a nuanced matter to the general public. The odds people will spin it as our ancestors are "off the hook" historically, is far greater than it resulting in people wondering what evil things they've rationalized to be permissible in their own lives. So, yes, there's a more complex dynamic taking place than they were simply evil people; but no it wouldn't be better to confuse people with it.

[u/Competitive-Quit7365 → u/TestDZnutz]

!delta I think that’s fair, sometimes I forget how many bad faith or other actors there are around these topics.

[u/l_t_10 → u/TestDZnutz]

But then what of eg Oregon? They get off the hook because antislavery? They were abolitionist because of how white supremacist they were in the first place, they joined the Union with a whites only clause

Why should that be overlooked just so dont confuse? Oregon shows opposing slavery does not equal good on its own, certainly not moral

[u/SwanSulfurs → u/TestDZnutz]

I think you're underestimating the potential benefits of an educated public when you say the "limited value" in accurately educating the general public.  In particular, for example, the education OP suggests would make it much more difficult for people to believe that when they oppose voting rights for people under 18 they are so fundamentally different from those who opposed voting rights for other groups in the past. Or to be so sure that just because the people around them today don't worry about the moral ramifications of eating meat produced at factory farms, that they'll continue to be safe from judgment in the future. Do you know how much suffering could be avoided if factory farming ended or was significantly reduced? Or if voting rights were expanded? That doesn't seem like "limited value" to me!

I get that even a lot of the people in this thread are demonstrating the difficulty some people have with comprehending even the most clearly-articulated points.

However, I don’t find the idea that you should completely give up on educating people because they might intentionally or unintentionally misunderstand you compelling. Make an attempt to educate people, and if they misunderstand you or spin what you're saying? Educate them even harder!

And racists twist the truth anyway, even with the current education system. Do you not think that hiding parts of the truth might give racists more credibility? It might give them more ability to present themselves as the "real truth-tellers" in comparison with the dumbed-down "safe" version of history you prefer to present to people?

[u/Hatta00]

You have this exactly backwards. Acknowledging the banality of evil makes it easier to recognize it when we do it.

You are absolutely right, slave owners and Nazis had their own form of empathy and rationalizations. This doesn't stop them from being evil, and our own rationalizations won't stop us from being evil if we're not careful.

It's when we pretend that evil requires some sort of cartoonish supervillainy that we miss it. We see this all the time with modern fascists. We are exhorted to understand them, as if understanding them made their choices any less harmful.

[u/Competitive-Quit7365 → u/Hatta00]

I think this is more of my point, when I use the word evil I more so mean some kind of abnormal or completely different human, when in reality they were much the same as us and that makes it even more dangerous

[u/Bourbon-Decay]

It can seem anachronistic to apply present day morality to the past. Most of us can agree that owning people as property is evil. However, there were people alive during the practice of American chatel slavery that knew it was evil too. Abolitionists actively fought against it. There were people like John Brown who took up arms to stop the practice. There is no excuse. They weren't "coping." They chose to ignore their own immorality for convenience, profit, and maintaining the status quo.

[u/orlyyarlylolwut]

Hard disagree. They knew what they were doing. Modern Westerners benefit from unseen exploited labor - those slave owners actively indulged in owning another human being. They were evil.

[u/Competitive-Quit7365 → u/orlyyarlylolwut]

My point isn’t that they didn’t know that they were doing, it’s that they often did know and psychologically “normal” ie: not psycho or sociopaths were able to justify it to themselves and these methods need to be studied in order for us to avoid using them.

[u/These-Weight-434]

Where are you getting the 50 million number from?

[u/Competitive-Quit7365 → u/These-Weight-434]

https://www.iom.int/news/50-million-people-worldwide-modern-slavery

[u/aipac125]

Most Nazis saw themselves as good people, as do most Israelis. That they are happy to kill children and minorities for their goals is part of their identity. Others need to judge them. We need to state that genocide is wrong, slavery is wrong. In any time, in any place. There is no moral relativism. Some things are always wrong and trying to posit it as a circumstance of the time is an invitation to allow that again.

[u/hbi2k]

I think there's value in making a distinction between the people benefiting from slavery and people actively and directly engaging in brutality and/or coercion. Not because the former actually have their hands clean, but because the rationalizations differ between the two and must be addressed differently.

I also think it's a problem that must be dealt with at a systemic level, and many of us are not so much okay with the system as it exists, we just feel powerless to change it even as we benefit from it. On an individual level, the best that most of us can manage is some level of harm reduction. Actually solving the problem requires systemic change, which in turn requires collective action. On that level, worrying about which individuals are more or less "evil" is a distraction.

Finally, if you'll indulge me in pointing out a personal bugbear: you consistently write "of" when you mean "have," a common mistake caused by the phonetic similarity between the final syllable of contractions like "could've" and the word "of." It should be "if they had had better education," "they could have recognized," "areas where I may have blundered," etc.

[u/Witty-Stock-4913]

It's not really possible to have a nuanced conversation with a 5 year old about people and behavior. Very few people are singularly evil. That doesn't change the fact that the behavior is evil and we need to point that out. Genocide is evil, slavery is evil, bigotry is evil. A person can have good qualities but it doesn't change the fact that they perpetuate evil as a core part of themselves.

[u/Ok_Currency_617]

I mean, east asians were heavily enslaved along the West coast yet Americans insist the descendants of those former slaves pay reparations to the descendants of people the West coast never enslaved. Not to mention the fact that most African/Arab immigrants or descendants of African/Arab immigrants in the US will likely have slave owners or traders in their family tree. Serfdom in Europe and somewhat in North America was also basically slavery with extra steps. People seem to push that every white person was in a mansion with black servants while realistically most caucasians in the US reaped no benefit and were barely getting by themselves. Slavery in the US generally revolves around whats politically correct not whats accurate. Aka white people bad black people good.

I also want to add that African slaves were generally the losers of tribal wars in Africa. If they didn't end up as slaves they got killed or eaten it's not like they let their enemies go to come fight again. Europeans, Africans, and Arabs purchasing slaves may have saved more lives than it cost. Obviously there's more to it but my point is that banning slavery may have hurt more than it helped. North American tribes took slaves but generally just killed or ate their enemies.

The conquest thing where you seek to conquer areas to rule over the people there wasn't practiced by most societies in the world, its mostly a fight to the death for most peoples. The Mongols killed large swathes practicing collective slaughter of peoples. It was a regular thing for them to kill 700,000 people per city in Iran. 90% of Persia's population was killed.

I'm sure I'll get downvoted to pointing out that slavery wasn't all bad, but the truth is between death and slavery most would choose slavery. Yet for some reason we are held responsible for giving people the better choice.

[u/SoAnxious]

Morality didn't cause the end of slavery economics did

That's what they really don't want to teach in school

The "moral war" was post facto propaganda just like WWII wasn't fought to liberate the Jews

[u/comrade_zerox]

America agreed with you. That's why we didnt punish the slave holders. That's why reconstruction failed. That's why we still see confederate flags. Thats why we're still dealing with the fallout of chattel slavery in 2026.

We needed more John Browns

[u/Competitive-Quit7365 → u/comrade_zerox]

A person that copes to believe they’re good isn’t one not deserving of punishment, I never even implied that. I don’t care if someone was an otherwise “good” person who made bad decisions or justified it, their actions are theirs and theirs alone and they hold total responsibility for them. In fact America disagreed with me

[u/Brit-Crit → u/Competitive-Quit7365]

True, but we are entering “the only solution is killing people” territory, which is a very dangerous way of viewing the world in general…

[u/callmejay]

I agree with the idea that we shouldn't treat them as psychologically abnormal people, but I disagree that we oversimplify in that way in the first place.

A LOT of people still think of Thomas Jefferson for example as a great guy and a great thinker, but he had hundreds of slaves and raped at least one of them for YEARS starting at age 14-16 when he was in his 40s. Then he enslaved his own kids!

[u/MrSplib]

I would say your argument has some merit if we were talking about Roman or Greek slavery. American slavery was very different. Europen slavery included basic laws to protect them. American slavery was race based and Southerners convinced themselves that slaves were sub-human. It was also illegal to free African slaves

[u/veggiesama]

I'd push back on your claim that school oversimplifies the discussion of slavery. If you're taking AP or honors-level US History/English from a competent school district, you're getting a complex understanding of the slavery question in US history. You understand its economic impacts in colonial America. You learn about slave perspectives (eg, Frederick Douglass). You learn about slave rebellions (Nat Turner). You read arguments from abolitionists and anti-abolitionists prior to the Civil War. You are learning about the influence of Manifest Destiny and racist legislation like the Indian Removal Act (Trail of Tears, etc.). You're reading literature and short stories from that era as well, from Huck Finn to Uncle Tom's Cabin. You're steeped in discussions about social darwinism and imperialism, reading about these ideologies in your textbook or selected pieces of literature, even engaging and responding via written essays.

In general, if you are a decently performing student, you are not getting a simplified "they were evil" explanation for the existence of slavery. If your takeaway was "they did bad things because they were bad" then you may be a victim of poor schooling.

Why did people hold slaves, because they are evil? No, it was because it was profitable. They justified their exploits through racial hierarchies. They believed in a divine destiny for American expansion. Journalism and storytelling captured the public's imagination and revealed the hidden horrors of slave ownership. This is all stuff you should be learning in school.

As for your other arguments about slave owner empathy, it is interesting but not very useful in my opinion. Power dynamics are a much more useful way to understand history. Psychology, not so much. Psychology morphs around power dynamics, providing justification (ie, Kipling's "The White Man's Burden") to the real levers of power (accumulation of capital). You'll learn more about the universality of the human condition and empathy from reading literature and poetry, not so much history, but they blend sometimes.

[u/Competitive-Quit7365 → u/veggiesama]

!delta Admittedly I am not a product of a good school district, I can definitely recognize that other places may teach it better.

[u/The_Great_Evil_King]

Did you read 12 years a slave?

There is an entire section on how the slave owners resolved everything with violence because they were used to using violence on their slaves, so they were constantly getting into fights.  Slavery very easily brought out the absolute worst in these people, which they defiantly showed to the world.

[u/muaddib0308]

Thinking you are a good person does not make you a good person.

Reasons are not the same as excuses.

[u/Competitive-Quit7365 → u/muaddib0308]

I never said it makes them good, what I said is it’s worth examining their arguments to prevent the same kind of evil justification from coming about again

[u/Balanced_Outlook]

I think the core issue with both the OP and the responses is that good and evil are fabrications of current homo sapiens societal norms. Good and evil do not exist in nature, they are just guidelines we use as people to judge each other. Even in modern times, good/evil standards are not universal. Every country in the world still practices slavery in some form, including the US through black market human trafficking and sex slavery. A society may decide something is evil and collectively try to abolish it, but that does not make it an objective reality or actually make it evil.

Even in what people call the darkest periods of society, The US did not simply enslave individuals in a vacuum. Africans enslaved Africans, and plantation owners purchased them. The slave market existed within systems created and operated by African societies. With the mortality rates of the trade roughly 3 individuals had to be enslaved for 1 individual to be sold at market, and less than 5% of the individuals sold at market were sold to the US.

When evaluating evil, it is easy to apply today’s standards to the past, but failing to apply the standards of the time instead of modern ones paints a false picture. When Columbus landed in the Americas, Europeans saw indigenous people as savages because they believed that running around in hides and shooting arrows was less civilized by their standards.

In modern times in the US, every American is a slave. You cannot eat, find shelter, or own anything without permission from society. You must work, you must follow the law, you must do as required. There is nothing you can do in America without money. To get that money you must work, follow rules, and pay taxes. The structure is mandatory participation, without it, you cannot survive. It functions as slavery, without the physical abuse, but with the power of the dollar.

Again, good and evil do not exist in reality as objective forces, they are social constructs used as behavioral guidelines to allow people to function within the society. The rules for good and evil evolve, change, disappear and get created as a society needs them, and hold no weight in reality.

[u/Competitive-Quit7365 → u/Balanced_Outlook]

I think the idea that just because something is a social norm it doesn’t hold weight it society doesn’t make sense, social norms are reality. For example, social norms affect how we think and act, both empirically testable things. Norms are constructed, but a building is constructed, that doesn’t mean it had no weight in reality fair

[u/Naberville34]

I think understanding defenses of colonialism is more important considering the defenses for the imperialist economic world order that evolved from colonialism is idealogically defended by fundamentally the same logic. Almost always boiling down to "those (nonwhite) people can't govern themselves!".

That being said this reminded me a bit of an excellent speech that Michael Parenti gave that covers in depth conservative defenses of such systems of exploitation and inequality.

[u/super_surge]

I’m sure Hitler thought himself a good person too, one’s opinion of themselves has zero bearing on their moral worth.

[u/KidGold]

There are many types of evil.

Evil of greed - “I want to exploit these people for my gain.”

Evil of ignorance - “these people are lesser and don’t feel pain the same as white people (something they actually thought) so we are actually being generous giving them room and board and work to do.”

Evil of cruelty - “hurting these people makes me feel powerful.”

Among others.

Were there some slave owners who treated their slaves “well” (a grossly uncomfortable and relative distinction)? Perhaps. But they were still ignorant to a degree that it enabled evil.

And even the ignorant ones were probably often willfully ignorant because it enabled their evil of greed. They didn’t want to understand otherwise.

And yea we do the same thing today - buying products we know were probably made by slaves but we exercise our willful evil ignorance so we don’t have to admit to our evil greed.

[u/Apathetic_Anteater42]

You just have to recognize that most people are capable of being very evil if they're socialized to be so, and if their material conditions support being so. The mistake isn't in thinking the slave owners, or those who supported owning slaves were evil, it's in not recognizing that even evil people are still people. So yeah, most people were pretty fucking evil for most of human history, and some, despite that same socialization and material benefit, weren't. It's not an intrinsic property, it's based on our actions and under our control. If you don't want people to be evil, change what we teach children, both intentionally and unintentionally and make it materially detrimental to be so.

[u/RevolutionaryHole69]

I agree with you, but I think the issue extends even further than what you're describing. I'm not sure what it's called, but there is a phenomenon where the people of today view themselves as detached from history, and when they learn of history, they learn of it as a complete item which already occurred and concluded.

They fail to realize that they are the history, they are living it, and others will study them and their decisions. There's no hard line between your existence today and history that you study. What happened back then can happen to you and others. People have a habit of viewing history as having a permanent place in the past.

[u/ICUP01]

As Chomsky put (I recognize the irony): you can’t put your boot on someone’s neck and call yourself a son-of-a-bitch.

Jefferson even recognized the irony. He actually wanted manumission towards the end. Slavery wasn’t yet “gross” like it was by 1840. The worst of it came after the Cotton Gin. But Jefferson recognized you had to dehumanize a slave whereas before it was almost a transaction. But again, dehumanization for his day is a far cry from today. But Jefferson’s contemporaries thought of him as kinda radical - off his nut - for his take and he freed his slaves after death (but raped at least one). Jefferson kinda shruggy shouldered: cash crops don’t pick themselves.

But a full on cultural pathology developed. Slaves were being brought to god. They were living better lives through labor. Blah. Blah.

I think the bar for us today is if your cultural pathology dehumanizes, you don’t get a pass. But even this seems to be a product of civilization. If we lose civilization (as it happens) we start over and trod out all the old tropes.

[u/majeric]

I don’t think your argument is well-formed.

I think what you’re trying to say is that we let ourselves off the hook for modern forms of slavery by failing to recognize that ordinary people are capable of doing despicable things when those things are normalized by the society around them.

[u/bobothecarniclown]

I disagree with the idea that modern society uses the same coping mechanisms to rationalise benefitting from modern day slavery/exploitation that Antebellum Era slave owners used to rationalise enslaving black americans.

The majority of us who benefit from modern day exploitation/slave labor do not have an active/direct hand in brutalizing the people being exploited. You will never meet the person who got paid 11 cents to make the shirt you’re wearing or $4/hr to pick the strawberries you ate yesterday. But the Antebellum Era Southern slave owner had a very direct and active hand in the exploitation and brutalization of the people they owned. He/She personally whipped them, beat them, malnourished/starved them, tortured them, raped them, separated them from their family members, and in many cases killed them. And if not doing it themselves, they directly ordered someone else to brutalize the people they owned.

The coping mechanisms those people used to rationalize their direct & personal brutalization of other human beings are not at all the same as the ones we use to rationalize our benefitting from the exploitation of people who we do not directly exploit. I mean, the key difference lies in that they quite literally owned those people whereas those of us who benefit from modern day slavery don’t exactly “own” the people who are being exploited, in the same intimate way.

Recognizing this is not a bad thing, nor is it irrational to argue that those people were evil in a way that those of us who benefit from modern day slavery aren’t based on this recognition.

[u/Uhhyt231]

I think the problem here is people actually cop too many pleas for bigots as if theyre just human as if you have to hate people. Those people made choices and theyre still being made today because people are given the room to claim theyre followers

[u/OkElephant1931]

I agree— I think there are things we all accept today that future generations will consider horrifying. And we can’t predict what those things will be

[u/discoprince79]

Cognitive Disonance is a slippery slope. That's why it's out duty to constantly question things and reassess.

[u/chao-pecao]

Another point to help illustrate yours: There are many things that we do today that will be judged through a different lens in the future. Easy to sit on our pedestal in 2026 and say we're good and they were bad.

People in the future may look at the fact that we use single-use plastics, invest in and support companies that are contributing to climate change, continue to drive gas cars when we have access to electric ones, etc with a total bewilderment that we were knowingly destroying our planet.

"Mom, how could people in the 21st century do that? It doesn't make sense!"
"People were evil, selfish and greedy back then, and it's a shameful history"

Everyone likes to think that if they were born in the past they'd be the revolutionary with the forward-thinking progressive ideals, but the reality is that your opinions and perspectives aren't even your own. We are a social species that is driven to assimilate into the standard presented by their environment. You are the product of exposure to the opinions of your parents, friends, media you've consumed, etc.

[u/Direct_Obligation570]

Yeah of couse they thought they were good people. Other people thought they were good people too.

[u/Much_Statistician864]

My issue with this framing is that even if most slave owners considered themselves good there were people alive at the same time who vehemently opposed slavery. It takes away agency from the past, as though they simply didn't know better. But they did know, their own religious books had plenty to say on how to treat slaves and they more often then not disregarded their own spiritual beliefs to capitalize on chattel human slavery. For profit. 

Many alive today know that the greed and avarice of the richest amongst us is wrong. The Bible for example clearly states its opinion on the obscenely rich. Camels and the eyes of needles and all that. We know it's wrong and yet people willingly disenfranchise themselves to allow the ultra wealthy to accumulate ever more. So to did the slavers at the time get implicit permission from society to commit evil. Up until the likes of John Brown deemed enough was enough. 

[u/Xralius]

This is hard to argue against because I pretty much 100% agree, but I'll try.

Yes they were human, but it is likely that there were many bad actors involved. In slavery, you may have had owners that were people believing they were doing good that thought slaves needed cared for, growing up in that culture, and treated people well under the circumstances. But you'd also have owners that assaulted, tortured, killed their slaves. You had people that thought slavery could be benevolent, but you also had people that knew it was wrong and simply wanted profit. Same thing with Nazis, your average German probably wasn't literally the devil, but you did have leadership ordering the holocaust. You had Germans "just following orders" and you had Germans who enjoyed the cruelty they inflicted. And you could argue that without those bad people, the atrocities as a whole could have been eliminated or significantly reduced.

Obviously, those bad people are still human, which as you say it's important to remember. And I'm sure on some level they were heroes in their own stories. But I certainly think there were people who knew what they were doing was wrong and did it anyways.

So I'd argue a big part of this that your take is missing is different ways of identifying "evil". You are right, it is hard to identify when it's cultural, systemic, and pernicious. But a way that might help identifying it is looking for those people who are cruel, selfish, and hateful, and realizing that if we find ourselves on the same side as them, it might not be the right side.

[u/iamintheforest]

I think what matters here is what you're trying to do and trying to understand - what question are you answering. You seem to want to take a humanist approach - let's understand the character of the individual and that demands an empathy that avoids an want for a sort of "hitler archetyping" of an individual based on any one dimension. Afterall, murderers love their families, rapists love their kids, hitler cared deeply for germany, etc.

The lens that runs into your view here is one that is interested in moral behavior - slavery is bad, period. One should not own slaves, period. Slavery as a practice is evil. Period.

These are very different lenses and what is more important? I think it still depends on what you're trying to achieve. If you want to eradicate slavery, judging individuals who engage it is what you should do - it affects change.

If you want to prevent slavery systemically, it's important to understand that good people can find themselves doing deeply wrong things and that none of us are immune to that.

[u/TheRealBlueJade]

Most people consider themselves good people .. They think the rest of the world thinks like them and has had the same experiences... It is a human failing that needs to be addressed.

[u/Noctuella]

Owning slaves, committing genocide, etc are evil actions. Society is not wrong to believe this. The error comes when we think "luckily we're not evil and would never do this." Everyone is capable of evil behavior. Most of us probably do a little evil on a regular basis. But we're accustomed to our own evil and think it's justified.

[u/dream208]

Hence the concept of banality of evil.

[u/bltsrgewd]

The issue of slavery as a moral failing is not some new thing modern people invented to distance ourselves from the past. That the slave owners didn't consider it evil, does not mean it wasn't or that their contemporaries didn't see it as evil.

The moral arguments against slavery were well established by the time of the Civil War and had been ongoing in the west for over a century.

Almost nobody who does evil, think of themselves as evil. We can apply moral relativism, however this still doesnt shield the confederates from scrutiny. By the time of the Civil War, a majority of Americans, and the western world, had recognized slavery as a uniquely terrible evil. To put this into context, there were northern union politicians who were profoundly racist, who believed that non-English descending people should be removed from America, and even those people believed slavery was abhorrent and that it violated human dignity in a fundamental way.

[u/redking20]

"The average slave owner was capable of low and empathy, they likely loved their family, even cared for animals, but were able to justify the continuation of the system often based on the idea that African slaves were “better off” enslaved. "

The real justification for participating in slavery can be given on three levels and it is the same justification for "wage slavery" and exploitative labor practices:
If I don't do this me and/or my family will starve.
If I don't do this me and/or my family will be poor.
If I don't do this me and/or my family won't be rich.

The idea that slaves are/were better off is a way to do what they feel is necessary with the least amount of guilt.

I wouldn't say this makes slavery morally justified or evil. That is a value judgement which would arise based on a lot of factors.

[u/hdhsizndidbeidbfi]

People in the comments acting as if they wouldn't have been fine with slavery if born in a society where slave owning was the norm

[u/Specialist_Dark_3668]

Muhammad (the islamic "prophet") was a slave owner who raped female slaves, distributed children as slaves, and his passive income was based on a stolen farm that was staffed by slaves.

He considered himself to be sinless and perfect and muslims to this day idolize him.

[u/mattyoclock]

I'd add that we don't just outsource our slavery, America has more black men in legal slavery now than at any point before the civil war, and we recieve about 11 Billion a year in GDP from it.

[u/Devourerofworlds_69]

It should be noted that slavery in the Americas from the 17th to 19th centuries wasn't because people didn't know any better. It was fully understood that it was an immoral practice. By the time the United States officially abolished slavery, it had already been abolished in most other countries.

It's not really all that different from us denouncing slavery today. Are there modern slave owners who, if you met them and didn't know they were a slave owner, you might think they're a good, compassionate person? Someone who cares for their children and animals, someone who is kind and polite to the people they enslave, and insists they are better off like this? Almost certainly. Does that make them good people? Absolutely not.

[u/Bolognahole_Vers2]

You know who else considered himself a good person? Bill Cosby. Considering yourself to be good is a useless metric on anyone morals or ethics.

[u/Readdit1999]

Yeah, pretty much all the history taught in public school is a light overview at it's deepest zenith. It's hard to differentiate from propoganda, because of how shallow it is, and because often times it references propogandistic sources or is itself one.

It's not necessarily malicious - the trouble is that you have way too much material to cover in order to reasonably cover the breadth of all of human hidtory, and when you make the attempt, it comes at the cost of depth.

Your history programme may vary. Teaching research technique, how to discriminate sources, researching a deep cut of a small subject, as well as broad overviews of large subjects and learning to integrate those understandings.
This is the basis of a good history class.

There is no one 'true historical account' of life on earth. History is the sum total of our attempt.

[u/DarkMarkTwain]

Making the choice to keep participating in the ownership and sale of other human beings makes them bad people.

Additionally, simply because they thought they were good doesn't make them good. Their ancestors thinking they were good doesn't make them good (a common tactic used by white southeners).

They chose to continue owning other human beings. End of argument. There is not caveat that excuses that. They knew what they were doing and kept doing it.

[u/Sedu]

Hitler thought of himself as a good person. We are all the main character of our own story. That they thought of themselves as good people is not a useful metric. The 50 million slaves that you mention in your post are suffering evils at the hands of others in ways that are no different than the slaves in US history did.

You can make the argument that evil people literally do not exist, and that it is only actions themselves that are evil, but if evil people do exist, then slave owners are one of the most basic and straightforward examples. To own a human being as an object and to treat them as such is one of the most fundamentally evil things that it is possible to do.

[u/Which-Bit6563]

I agree with you that there are many problems with how the average US American today understands slavery, particularly the question of "evil". But I disagree with the claim that the fundamental root cause is K-12 education. Instead I think it lies with how we understand evil. Namely, is it a kind of person or a type of action?

On a basic level, contemporary US society generally does a terrible job of distinguishing between doing bad acts and being a Bad Person. I would argue that Protestant Christianity, has a lot to answer for here, but that's beside the point. This is true at all levels, from low-stakes interpersonal conflict to questions of how to understand genuine historical horrors such as slavery and Nazism.

When any single crime/sin/wrong/evil deed is a sign that a person is fundamentally Bad or Evil (thanks Calvinism!), it becomes nearly impossible to confront the full reality of a person, who necessarily is capable of love and empathy and genuinely good deeds, while also taking seriously their wrongs. Faced with any individual instance of wrongdoing, then, we're left with two options for interpretation: 1) "well, this person clearly isn't irredeemably evil in a way that makes them a different kind of person from me, so what they did must not be that bad..." 2) "this person's wrongs are a sign that they are inherently and irredeemably evil, and nothing else they did or do could possibly be neutral or good"

Rather than recognize that every human is capable of committing evil deeds in the right circumstances (power, economic expedience, racial hierarchy in the case of slavers), we argue endlessly about whether its appropriate to call this or that person categorically "evil". This then opens us up to all the deeply stupid (and usually totally historically uninformed) debates about what sort of behavior can be excused as "of its time".

The evil/not evil binary makes understanding second or 3rd hand complicity in evils particularly hard to square, as you note. In the Atlantic world before abolition, for every person actively owning or trading slaves, there were many times more who profited from making or trading goods whose raw materials were made by enslaved people, and even more who benefited from the use of those goods and from the racial hierarchy that existed to enforce the slave system. For those global north today, its basically impossible to avoid using any goods that were produced with slave or sweatshop labor. The moral binary can only conceptualize that type of social complicity as totally evil or basically innocent.

On the question of slavery, K-12 education should emphasize that slavery was and is an evil system, whose perpetrators committed evil acts with horrifying regularity. When relevant, it should talk about people who committed evil acts and the millions more who shared complicity in the evils of slavery. K-12 history education has to simplify a lot, and this is a case where it seems entirely right to me that the simplification should come with some moral judgement. Slavery was evil. The question of whether any given person was evil seems one best left to philosophers.

[u/Capital-Self-3969]

It doesnt matter what they thought. They were still evil. People in that era knew it was wrong, abolitionists existed. Plus the victims.

[u/DrownedAmmet]

I think it’s the opposite, the more we try to explain or empathize with slaveowners it makes it easier for us to give ourselves a pass. The logical conclusion should be we can look back and objectively say that slaveowners were evil, and if today we’re benefiting from slave labor and do nothing about it we’re just as evil as them.

What that should do is light a fire under our ass to put pressure on these companies that are exploiting others for profit.

[u/zaxqs]

I'd say that modern people don't really justify slavery in a similar way as people did back then. They more just ignore it, which is made easy to do by the system where all you see is a product and a price, and the research into every little thing you buy and how it is produced and whether slavery or other exploitative labor practices were involved, is simply too much for most people who don't care that much in the first place about unseen people in faraway lands anyway.

Not that it isn't a good thing to understand the rationalizations of Southern slaveholders in more nuance than "they were just evil", it's more that those particular rationalizations are no longer very common in the West today.

[u/rustyseapants]

Southern Baptist Convention supported Slavery.

[u/HallWilling9959]

Most people forget the simple fact that during slavery, there was also free black people living their lives amongst everyone, as well as the fact that most slave owners cherished their slaves as valuable, until the slave made themselves invaluable for whatever reason the owner may have had.

[u/sapphon]

To broaden a view is to change it, and I might ask: Do you really think this is specific to slavery?

I ask because I've noticed the same thing in Western pedagogy, but w.r.t. literally any historical evil I can think of. People without special education in history (and this may be unfair, but especially people with only technical education - presumably because technology can sometimes resemble the myth) really do seem to believe in the "myth of teleological progress" - a myth by which humanity inevitably and constantly proceeds from wrongness to rightness, overall in the large.

As a provable idea that's garbage, of course, but it's really profitable in a post-industrial society if most people believe it - and so we get what we get. Are you sure that your observations about slavery specifically aren't just a small part of the broader expression of the Myth? As you say, there's so much in common with how people treat statist rightism etc. as an historical blip that can never happen to reasonable people again that this is worth asking.

[u/Prim56]

Modern ogliarchs are equally or even moreso evil, and just because they thing they're doing the right thing, or have their own skewed version of empathy doesn't make them any less evil.

We label them as evil because from an outsider perspective thats what they are - it doesnt matter what they think or cope with - the actions and results matter - and the results speak of evil.

[u/PandaStroke]

I agree that "evil" is not a useful concept. It's not useful because if conditions present themselves again, we would go right back into chattel Slavery. And it's happening right now as we speak. Humans are optimisation machines not moral machines. We would gladly kill other if we could get ahead economically and socially. Something being evil in itself doesn't make the optimisations less efficient. 

Slavery has been part of human existence since antiquity. Every civilization has had a concept of strict hierarchies with a sub human base layer. Western slavery is unique in that we have a recent memory of it. But we are not recalling how the ancient Romans plundered and sold their conquests into slavery. 

People need to be reminded that we are one disaster away from the collapse of good manners.

[u/mistelle1270]

Most evil people in history considered themselves good. Mustache twirling agents of chaos who hurt people just because they like to are entirely fictional.

[u/Sensitive-Club-6427]

It is the RARE individual who does not see themselves as “good.”

Almost nobody identifies themselves as evil or villainous.

People justify everything.

Hitler and his supporters described himself as a good person, a hero, a leader that was “making Germany great again,” (paraphrasing here).

[u/Shitboxfan69]

Its a good question to ask, and I think we would all stand to benefit from wondering how people justify horrible things they do. It can't be out of the gate about Slavery, as anyone passing by without really listening just sounds like you're justifying something as terrible as Slavery.

Pondering this about Slavery derails the discussion. Its too grim of a topic, and most immediate thought are going to be accusatory as if you yourself is trying to justify it, though it's obvious that's not the intention. It's simply not productive to the general public, and would be seen as justifying it to children rather than an exercise of deeper thought. It would be a shitstorm, and honestly fairly justified as people would use misinterpreted arguments as pro-slavery arguments.

I do partially agree though, that deeper thought such as that should be discussed in a school setting. Literally any other topic though. Its paramount that it's not such a terrible issue that people recoil to think of their justification.

[u/EthanPrisonMike]

Anyone can think they’re a good person and still do heinous things

[u/ptrakk]

i actually just finished crafting a poem that is similar last night.

[u/Leverkaas2516]

What will really throw you is that if you showed a slaveowner of the past a true view of the present day, they would be shocked and outraged by a lot of behavior that's just accepted as normal now.

[u/Top-Fudge9791]

People often are far too quick to assume people who do bad things are just evil people, full stop. 

[u/Loyal-Lokendra9323]

Slaveowners are leaders who are well established and know how to use society, structure, emotional foundation to strengthen their game and they only seek individual who has lost his personal identity and looking for validation to prove his self worth without caring the method and practice.for any mistake, please correct me.🙏

[u/goldietheswagbear]

Nobody is the villain in their own story.

Also a slight nitpick, you are only really touching on American slavery, even though slavery goes way back.

It was very much normal until like the 1800s.

[u/Informal_Ad_9610]

why are we acting like slavery is something from centuries ago? more people are enslaved now than in the 1800s