The emancipated slaves did fine without the giveaway, and probably would have achieved equality if not for their subsequent repression through Jim Crow.
The original history of post-emancipation experience of emancipated slaves was one of racial inferiority. In this view, the Klan played a heroic role saving the South from the black and tans.
Revisionist history then blamed black lack of progress on the rise of the Klan, Jim Crow, segregation, and so forth. The Klan went from the good guys to the bad guys. But, this revisionist history kind of side-stepped black inferiority. Maybe the majority of blacks were inferior, but there was a black elite that was superior.
In one of the few challenges to this revisionism, is ...
Robert Higgs, Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy, 1865–1914.
He shows that blacks actually made progress since emancipation.
Inferiority, superiority - feh!What counts is that “If you think you can do it, or if you think you can’t - you’re probably right.” - Henry Ford
Slaves were inculcated in a “can’t do” attitude to keep them subservient. So if in fact any particular one of them “can’t do,” we don’t know if that is “inferiority” - or just inculcation. That is the import of what Thomas Jefferson said when asked about the subject. And it’s hard to gainsay.
But in practical terms, what matters now is now - and the immediate future. The problem isn’t “the legacy of slavery,” it is the legacy of the Democrat Party - not just in the antebellum South, but most importantly the “Great Society.” LBJ saved the Democrat Party from irrelevance with that ploy, because it stopped the progress of blacks by seducing them into the belief that they needed the government, and the Democrats were there to help.
- Losing Ground:
- American Social Policy, 1950-1980
- Charles Murray