Slavery was SO MUCH worse than people imagine. I wrote my dissertation on slavery and it is incredibly traumatizing. In grad school I had to dramatically shift my entertainment habits to cope. No more dramatic or realistic shows and movies. Just escapism.

Y'all always gotta make it weird. Why y'all gotta make it weird?

@PhuzzieSlippers Yes! It completely reoriented my thinking on slavery when I realized, to whites at the time, slavery was like homeownership today: the path to upward mobility. Absolutely zero regard for the humanity of the enslaved.

@matt_blackwell EXACTLY!!! It was a wealth building tool in the exact same way.

@PhuzzieSlippers What are some good books about slave economics. I’m exploring how slavery influenced the evolution of contract law doctrine in the US.

@EtienneT_Esq So many depending on what you're actually looking for: "The Half has Never Been Told." "Between Slavery and Capitalism." "Time on the Cross." "The Polticial Economy of Slavery."

@PhuzzieSlippers Some people don’t get, slaves weren’t people, they were things. They could be beaten, traded, force fed. Think what we do, in “inhumane conditions”, to birds, cows and goats, cock fighting, etc. Slavery was awful, to the slaves that is. The owners had very handy work animals...

@PhuzzieSlippers But yet we don't mind slaves digging out precious metals throughout the world, making our Nike's and iPhones.

@PhuzzieSlippers “Sold down the river.”

@LaurasBrink For sure. Chattel slavery, especially as practiced in the US where the system was race based such that to be black was to be a slave, is much more pernicious than being a POW. It doesn't have the same long-lasting intergenerational impact.

@PhuzzieSlippers It’s gruesome nightmare fuel, a thousand times over. There’s still so much work done obfuscate its sheer horror, it comes up in places I (naïvely) didn’t expect, like Harper’s Ferry. A white man advocating urgent abolition at any cost still must be discredited, 160 yrs later.

@PhuzzieSlippers Your body as payment to settle a gambling debt.

@PhuzzieSlippers Thank you. I am halfway through Slavery's Capitalism. I stopped for a while and need to finish it. I had read other emotionally similar books previous. This validates that this subject really is hard, although definitely needed.

@PhuzzieSlippers Imagine someone absconding on said debt with their “property” to a place where owning people wasn’t legal, refusing to obey that law as well, and starting a war to establish a new slave state in an area that was once free. Also known as the republic/state of Texas.

@PhuzzieSlippers And the fools who say "slavery happened so long ago, why is it still an issue" it's called unaddressed traumatic experience. It's in the DNA of how we function, how we think, how we live, the fears we share. It's what we have as a collective, unfortunately.

@PhuzzieSlippers I'm reading The Hemingses of Monticello and every time the "Farm Book" is mentioned in relation to a birth or death it takes my breath away. Stops me dead.

@PhuzzieSlippers The breeding was the worst part for me. The young and I mean very young girls. Bargaining.