Both had slavery, but South Carolina was a shipping hub for the British in their exploitation of the Caribbean. They had a huge slave trade.
The north on the other hand was poorer, and was mostly populated with farmers. (many of whom used slave labor).
So the colonies were split apart in 1712. The split was completely peaceful. After all, a colonist was considered a subject of the crown first and foremost. At least until some got a bit uppity about 50 years later.
The split you were probably thinking about was Virginia and West Virginia. That one was 100% a split over slavery at the start of the civil war.
You should have mentioned that those poorer northern farmers were mostly former indentured workers who weren’t allowed to resettle in the southern areas due to stigma against them.
Of course, Ms. Haley would probably also mention that that was pre-revolution and thus doesn’t really count.
She’s also stated that the civil war was a states rights issue (blerg) and also doesn’t count.
You know what would count, though?
The Asian Exclusion acts of 1875, 1885, 1917, and 1924. All of which had popular support.
America has always had racism, but America has never been a racist country
I'm really quite stunned by this claim. She seems to be parsing words to dodge reality. The US wrote slavery into its Constitution, engaged in a series of racist genocides of the indigenous people, and excluded immigrants of various ethnicities throughout its history. We've certainly improved, but to say we've never been governed by racism is either ignorant, revisionist, or pandering to some of the worst people.
Article I, Section 9, Clause 1 of the US Constitution:
The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.
Congress was supposed to "figure out" slavery in 1808…
Oh slight aside, the US Constitution is kicking the can on slavery here, which Congress in 1808 kicked the can, and so on until we decided to have a flight about it. So just FYI, kicking the can has been a tradition of the US since inception. It's clearly a time honored tradition.
Anyway, On Art. I S9 C1 and with Art. IV. S1 C3 we got the Dred Scott vs Sandford which posed this question.
The question is simply this: Can a negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all of the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guarantied [sic] by that instrument to the citizen?
And hold on to your seats folks, because the answer was "no". The Supreme Court ruled that only white people could be called citizens. And to be clear: NO MATTER WHERE THEY WERE IN THE UNITED STATES. That was a 7-2 decision.
On the contrary, they [black people] were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.
This is considered to indicate that black people could never become citizens and that States could only confer selective rights to them that only held so long as the State they were in continued to confer that right. Meaning, if say Illinois decided that they weren't going to protect black people's rights because the composition of the State Assembly had changed, POOF, black people had no rights, no matter how long they may have previously enjoyed freedom before hand.
They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.
No person who has ever read the Dred Scott opinion in full could ever say the words Haley has spoken and take themselves seriously. But the decision didn't stop there. It went further.
Upon these considerations, it is the opinion of the court that the act of Congress which prohibited a citizen from holding and owning property of this kind in the territory of the United States north of the line therein mentioned, is not warranted by the Constitution, and is therefore void; and that neither Dred Scott himself, nor any of his family, were made free by being carried into this territory; even if they had been carried there by the owner, with the intention of becoming a permanent resident.
This effectively removed every single compromise that Congress had created thus far to appease slave states. It basically indicated there could never and for all time be a free black person anywhere in the United States and there was absolutely nothing any State or Congress could do to fix that outside of amending the Constitution. And furthermore it super charged this part of the Constitution.
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
Art. IV. S2 C3 of the US Constitution. The is the fugitive slave clause of the US Constitution and after Dred Scott, slave states used this as justification to invade neighboring states and take any black person they could lay their hands on back to their state to be placed into slavery. Because their State laws allowed such "claims" and they were coming to take delivery.
This is the full text of the Dred Scott ruling and I encourage anyone facing someone who says "America was never racist" to give them this to read. I think this should be mandatory reading for everyone, because Justice Taney isn't just spouting things from a vacuum. The words in this ruling come from somewhere deeper than the person giving them. I could go on, but there's no way to reasonably think this nation has never been racist. Facts just do not support that view.
Let me share a passage from the dissent in a Supreme court case known as Plessy v Furguson. The majority of the court had just ruled that it was OK to force blacks to use seperate railcars from whites. Not only that, but it was OK for for the government to force railway companies to have such a rule. With this backdrop Justice Harlan spoke in dissent, arguing for true equality under the law. In the screed for justice, he wrote:
There is a race so different from our own that we do not permit those belonging to it to become citizens of the United States. Persons belonging to it are, with few exceptions, absolutely excluded from our country. I allude to the Chinese race. But, by the statute in question, a Chinaman can ride in the same passenger coach with white citizens of the United States, while citizens of the black race in Louisiana, many of whom, perhaps, risked their lives for the preservation of the Union, who are entitled, by law, to participate in the political control of the State and nation, who are not excluded, by law or by reason of their race, from public stations of any kind, and who have all the legal rights that belong to white citizens, are yet declared to be criminals, liable to imprisonment, if they ride in a public coach occupied by citizens of the white race.
Thats right folks. There was a period of us history where even your pro equality arguments were steeped in racism
More to the point. Even if you (for some reason) set asside the hole issue of slavery; there is still the whole Jim Crow era, where we litterally codified rasism into law.
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley claimed the US has “never been a racist county” pandered to racists during an interview with Fox News on Tuesday.
While everybody else is seeing this for the absurd, ignorant, revisionist history horse shit that it is, I choose to see this as an example of how women are equal to men. Nikki has single handedly proven that women can be just as stupid as any man carrying water for the white supremacists.
If the US has “never been a racist country” why did it take us 232 years to elect a non-white person as President? Why did it take a Constitutional amendment to allow non-white Americans to vote? Why did Congress have to pass laws telling white people to serve Black people in their stores, allow Black people to go to their schools, and allow Black people to live in their neighborhoods?
“I mean, yes, I’m a brown girl that grew up in a small rural town in South Carolina who became the first female minority governor in history, who became an UN ambassador and who is now running for president. If that’s not the American dream, I don’t know what is,”
She likely wouldn’t have been the “first female minority governor in history” hundreds of years after the founding of the US if we didn’t have a long history of racism and sexism in the country. Nice of her to include some contradictory evidence right in her statement.
Like, from day 1 our country was a big institutionalized fight between racists and anti-racists, and the moment anti-racists looked like they might not lose horribly, the racists started a civil war over it. And then after the anti-racists won the war, we lost the peace, and ushered in another 100 years of institutionalized racism.
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