But there’s no universal normal with respect to slavery. Slave labor was normal for a very long time, maybe millions of years. Can’t prove this. It isn’t normal anymore. If you agree, would you want to re-word this?
Does your narrative take into account house slaves? There’s a selection process in who gets to b…
But there’s no universal normal with respect to slavery. Slave labor was normal for a very long time, maybe millions of years. Can’t prove this. It isn’t normal anymore. If you agree, would you want to re-word this?
Does your narrative take into account house slaves? There’s a selection process in who gets to be a house slave.
Does your view of negative selection take into account the NBA, NFL, and Olympics?
Assuming that you’re correct, that there was a negative selection process in American slavery, how big of an effect is this? How many generations were negatively selected and how many generations would it take to nullify the effects? Assuming 200 years of negative selection (1665-1865), then 200 years of natural selection (1865-2065) the effect should almost certainly be neutralized.
But I think this still misses the most important point. There’s not enough space to write it out here but it has to do with the role of people that do grunt work. Such workers are valued then and still valued now. So I don’t see how there can be a
negative selective process going on here. I’ll have to take up this point in a full post on my Substack. People that do manual labor are very valuable. People that do mundane work are very valuable. People that do routine, mindless work are very valuable. Do you take this into account?
Slaves were largely stripped of their cultural heritage, which is a negative selection process. Slavery also has enduring effects in undermining trust, a serious form of negative selection. (With Homo sapiens, one has to consider both genetic and cultural selection effects.)
Transatlantic slavery was a very particular form of slavery. In temperate zone Americas, the high survival (so low turnover) rates resulted in the slaves adopting a form of the religion of their masters. In tropical zone Americas—where the death rates, and so population turnover, were much higher—you get more African syncretic religions.
There was a selection process in who was enslaved (and who did the enslaving). Those doing the enslaving tended to be better at coordinating and connecting, those being enslaved tended to be worse.
The Saharan passage was every bit as horrible as the Atlantic passage, and lasted far longer. But Islamic slavery involved a very high rate of castration of males, while Islam was a polygynous culture where having a Muslim father made you a Muslim. So the consequences were different. There is no identifiable ex-slave diaspora within Islam, despite Islamic slavery lasting so much longer.
Labour is a very different matter. Yes, slaves were enslaved for their labour but slavery has very particular features.
Even there, there are other selection effects. Afro-Caribbeans in the US have persistently done better, on average, than the descendants of Americans slaves. Some of this is the voluntary-migrant initiative effect. Some of it is a longer history of self-government. Some of it is different cultural evolution. (The comparison between the failed state of Haiti and the successful one of the Dominican Republic on the same island is striking.)
It is clear that the descendants of American slaves were doing better and better up until the social shock of the 1960s, whereupon a range of negative things happened. The triumph of the civil rights movement did not have the consequences equalising outcomes effect that folk hoped, hence a lot of the ideological and policy dysfunctions since.
What struck me about your summary is it treated “Whites” as an undifferentiated bloc. A large part of the issue was precisely that they were not. Even now, Euro-Americans remain way less lopsided in their voting than other ethno-racial groups.
Good on the first paragraph.
But there’s no universal normal with respect to slavery. Slave labor was normal for a very long time, maybe millions of years. Can’t prove this. It isn’t normal anymore. If you agree, would you want to re-word this?
Does your narrative take into account house slaves? There’s a selection process in who gets to be a house slave.
Does your view of negative selection take into account the NBA, NFL, and Olympics?
Assuming that you’re correct, that there was a negative selection process in American slavery, how big of an effect is this? How many generations were negatively selected and how many generations would it take to nullify the effects? Assuming 200 years of negative selection (1665-1865), then 200 years of natural selection (1865-2065) the effect should almost certainly be neutralized.
But I think this still misses the most important point. There’s not enough space to write it out here but it has to do with the role of people that do grunt work. Such workers are valued then and still valued now. So I don’t see how there can be a
negative selective process going on here. I’ll have to take up this point in a full post on my Substack. People that do manual labor are very valuable. People that do mundane work are very valuable. People that do routine, mindless work are very valuable. Do you take this into account?
Slaves were largely stripped of their cultural heritage, which is a negative selection process. Slavery also has enduring effects in undermining trust, a serious form of negative selection. (With Homo sapiens, one has to consider both genetic and cultural selection effects.)
Transatlantic slavery was a very particular form of slavery. In temperate zone Americas, the high survival (so low turnover) rates resulted in the slaves adopting a form of the religion of their masters. In tropical zone Americas—where the death rates, and so population turnover, were much higher—you get more African syncretic religions.
There was a selection process in who was enslaved (and who did the enslaving). Those doing the enslaving tended to be better at coordinating and connecting, those being enslaved tended to be worse.
The Saharan passage was every bit as horrible as the Atlantic passage, and lasted far longer. But Islamic slavery involved a very high rate of castration of males, while Islam was a polygynous culture where having a Muslim father made you a Muslim. So the consequences were different. There is no identifiable ex-slave diaspora within Islam, despite Islamic slavery lasting so much longer.
Labour is a very different matter. Yes, slaves were enslaved for their labour but slavery has very particular features.
Even there, there are other selection effects. Afro-Caribbeans in the US have persistently done better, on average, than the descendants of Americans slaves. Some of this is the voluntary-migrant initiative effect. Some of it is a longer history of self-government. Some of it is different cultural evolution. (The comparison between the failed state of Haiti and the successful one of the Dominican Republic on the same island is striking.)
It is clear that the descendants of American slaves were doing better and better up until the social shock of the 1960s, whereupon a range of negative things happened. The triumph of the civil rights movement did not have the consequences equalising outcomes effect that folk hoped, hence a lot of the ideological and policy dysfunctions since.
All sounds plausible. I’ll keep an open mind. Thanks for the detailed explanation.
Are you familiar with Robert Higgs book, Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy, 1865-1914?
Not familiar with the volume, no.
I’m not sure if it’s relevant to your narrative, but I started reading more of it last night.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-152819627
What struck me about your summary is it treated “Whites” as an undifferentiated bloc. A large part of the issue was precisely that they were not. Even now, Euro-Americans remain way less lopsided in their voting than other ethno-racial groups.
Interesting. This what Substack is good for.