Yeah, no guarantee of a movement and change, but damn. I haven't been at the level of poverty you were in, but I have teetered on the edge, both as a child and as an adult, and it gives a completely different point of view. Even there, though, I can look back and see a boatload of white privilege that helped me. People I follow on Twitter have sharpened my awareness of that.
Veering somewhat, I'll tell you a book that blew my mind. In a university library, I ran across a collection of letters from the colonists in what became Georgia -- their letters back to London. Fabulous stuff. No connecting material, just the plain unornamented letters. Did you know that when Georgia was founded, slavery was forbidden? Oglethorpe disapproved of it, so they used Irish indentured servants, and treated them like dirt, but the indentured servants plotted together, and many escaped into the coastal wilderness and got away. So now there are letters saying, "All the other colonies have slaves, and we can't make a success without them."
And then it hit me -- they wanted black slaves ONLY so they couldn't run away easily. They couldn't speak English and they were visibly different. Yeah, they looked down on them, but they looked down on the Irish just as much.
Oh, and all the letters saying that making money was impossible? There were others from a young man from trade or farming who had one servant/employee who he worked alongside, and he wrote his mother that he was making tons of money, but you had to be willing to work. He didn't want slaves.
I can see so many of those attitudes now. Even the young man, although he was admirable, I can see his descendants saying that all it took was willingness to work, and not understanding that he had said that against the rich people. Not the poor.
Re: Oh my stars and garters.
Veering somewhat, I'll tell you a book that blew my mind. In a university library, I ran across a collection of letters from the colonists in what became Georgia -- their letters back to London. Fabulous stuff. No connecting material, just the plain unornamented letters. Did you know that when Georgia was founded, slavery was forbidden? Oglethorpe disapproved of it, so they used Irish indentured servants, and treated them like dirt, but the indentured servants plotted together, and many escaped into the coastal wilderness and got away. So now there are letters saying, "All the other colonies have slaves, and we can't make a success without them."
And then it hit me -- they wanted black slaves ONLY so they couldn't run away easily. They couldn't speak English and they were visibly different. Yeah, they looked down on them, but they looked down on the Irish just as much.
Oh, and all the letters saying that making money was impossible? There were others from a young man from trade or farming who had one servant/employee who he worked alongside, and he wrote his mother that he was making tons of money, but you had to be willing to work. He didn't want slaves.
I can see so many of those attitudes now. Even the young man, although he was admirable, I can see his descendants saying that all it took was willingness to work, and not understanding that he had said that against the rich people. Not the poor.
I've rambled, and need to go to bed.