More Myths that the North Lives By

Especially in connection with the Civil War, the North is portrayed as the good guys and the South as the bad guys.  At best, only half true.  The following are some excerpts from the PBS introduction to the documentary, Traces of the Trade:

"A central fact obscured by post-Civil War mythologies is that the northern states were deeply implicated in slavery and the slave trade right up to the war.  The slave trade in particular was dominated by the northern maritime industry.  Rhode Island alone was responsible for half of all slave voyages.

"The North also imported slaves, as well as transporting and selling them in the south and abroad.  While the majority of enslaved Africans arrived in southern ports. . . most large colonial ports served as points of entry, and Africans were sold in northern ports including Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Newport, Rhode Island.

"The southern coastal states from Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland were therefore home to the vast majority of enslaved persons.  But there were slaves in each of the thirteen colonies, and slavery was legal in the north for over two hundred years.  While the northern states gradually began abolishing slavery by law starting in the 1780s, many northern states did not act against slavery until well into the 19th century, and their laws generally provided only for gradual abolition, allowing slave owners to keep their existing slaves and often their children.  As a result, New Jersey, for instance, still had thousands of persons legally enslaved in the 1830s, and did not finally abolish slavery by law until 1846.  As late as the outbreak of the Civil War, in fact, there were northern slaves listed on the federal census."

For more on the pervasive impact and presence of slavery in the colonies, read Racist America by the sociologist Joe Feagin.

Recently the sanctimonious North has been engaged in a lot of self-righteous blather about the Confederate flag.  But the North itself is deeply racist, both past and present, though it has never flown the Confederate flag.  The North's racism has been tied to the Stars and Stripes.  My reading of US history would lead me to this conclusion---that far more ethnocentrism and oppression are tied to the Northern flag than the Confederate flag.

1.  The North was the center of the slave trade; the slave trade was more evil than slavery.

2.  The North engaged is slavery also; they just ended it sooner than the South.

3.  The North partially financed slavery and profited greatly from the cotton trade, a product grown by slaves.

4.  The North is currently heavily involved in mass incarceration and racial profiling; the Confederate flag does not fly over Northern prisons.

5.  The Big Banks and Wall Street are largely Northern entities; they drive the racial wealth gap.  Wall Street once traded slaves; Wall Street does not fly the Confederate flag.

6.  I see no sign of a deep-seated repentance and restitution by whites in either the North or the South.  Genuine biblical repentance and restitution would result in the white church aggressively attempting to end both mass incarceration and the racial wealth gap.

7.  Hint: Even if the South gets rid of its Confederate flag, its racism will not end.