It took almost two and a half years for the Emancipation Proclamation to make its way to Galveston, Texas, where it was read aloud on June 19, 1865, celebrated today as Juneteenth. It took a good deal longer for slavery to get its due in history books, Hollywood movies, or daily discourse. But the days when slavery was airbrushed out of movies, minimized as the cause of the Civil War, and considered too taboo for polite company are long gone.
For the past several decades, American elites have been fixated on the topic. From Roots, the highest rated TV show of the 1970s, to “The Case for Reparations,” 12 Years a Slave, and The 1619 Project, America’s filmmakers, journalists, and influencers have created an enormous stream serving a common thesis: that the legacy of slavery, America’s “original sin,” is vast, deep, and everlasting. This Juneteenth seems like a good time to take stock of how we remember slavery, what we forget, and what our approach to the past means for our future.
That phrase legacy of slavery is one we’ve all heard in history classrooms, on cable news, even in presidential speeches. But what does it mean? And why does it matter?
I recently taught a course on the “legacy of slavery” to a group of freshmen at the University of Austin. In that course, I defined the “legacy of slavery” as the long-term consequences of American slavery that can still be seen, felt, or measured today. This definition may not be controversial. The controversy, however, comes when people claim that specific features of modern American society fall under this definition.
In the popular press, no corner of American society has escaped the accusation of being “rooted” in slavery. The list includes: the Kentucky Derby, capitalism, asset depreciation, double-entry accounting, Excel spreadsheets, gynecology, tipping, mass incarceration, the Second Amendment, prison labor, at-will employment, work requirements for welfare, the police, the electoral college, Jack Daniel’s whiskey, fine dining, abortion bans, coffee, the American childcare system, Wall Street, America’s food system, Brooks Brothers, U.S. currency, the word cakewalk, and the obesity crisis.
