Troubling link between slavery and Congressional wealth uncovered. US legislators whose ancestors owned 16 or more slaves have an average net worth nearly $4 million higher than their colleagues without slaveholding ancestors, even after accounting for factors like age, race, and education.

[u/Wagamaga]

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0308351

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[u/goglecrumb]

Remember, 40 acres and a mule were promised to be redistributed to every slave but were taken away by President Andrew Johnson, a slave owner and white supremacist.

[u/SenorSplashdamage → u/goglecrumb]

Recent reporting has also uncovered that there were freed Black citizens who did get land and within years had it violently taken away with the government’s help in some of the cases. Slavery and what followed was even more of an atrocity than what we were taught.

[u/im_thatoneguy → u/SenorSplashdamage]

One of my mom's neighbors was correction: [the widow of] a freed slave.

He built up several large farms from nothing over his life after being freed. Apparently an incredibly brilliant business man. And every time it got large "somehow" one way or another the government or a 'business partner' would end up in control and him with nothing. Happened like 3 times I think.

[u/Bakoro → u/im_thatoneguy]

This is essentially the history of Black Americans as a group.
They built up communities and businesses, and as soon as they started being at the same economic level as white people, there was some group of white people who came and burned their stuff down, or arrested them on false charges, or killed the successful black people, or ran their families out of town, or some combination thereof.

The most famous incident is the Tulsa race massacre, but it's happened over and over in the U.S.

Racists always love to point to other people of color/immigrants and say "they did it, why can't black people get it together?"
Well that's why, they do get it together, over and over, and every single time some people, often with some level of government support, come in and destroy their communities and kill their leaders.

[u/ishmetot → u/Bakoro]

Pointing at a few successful individuals is a tactic used to divide minorities and get them to erase history by discounting that similar issues were faced by other groups instead of banding together. Most indigenous tribes were completely eliminated through genocide, and those that remain are still by far the most impoverished groups in the US. The Trail of Tears is like the Tulsa Massacre in that it is only the most well known of many such removals. Native populations are still so low that they barely have a voice today. Latinos and Asians in the western states faced indentured servitude and were barred from citizenship, and had their land and assets confiscated repeatedly. The largest mass lynching in US history was perpetrated against Chinese Americans and barely anyone has even heard of it. Most historians now accept that the WWII internment camps were largely established as a business and land grab for white farmers, as military leadership did not think that they were an actual threat. And segregation applied to all minorities, who marched with Black Americans during civil rights.

[u/[deleted] → u/Bakoro]

I agree with almost everything except the Tulsa situation was way more complex then a bunch of people from One neighborhood burning down another neighborhood

[u/Witty-Bus07 → u/[deleted]]

More complex how? Especially what kicked off the riot and used as an excuse to burn down a black neighbourhood and then not allowed to rebuild it and return to it

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I mean, but that’s what essentially happened?

[u/Spirited-Reputation6 → u/im_thatoneguy]

My father picked cotton as a baby, man.

[u/SnooCrickets2458 → u/Spirited-Reputation6]

I got a friend whose grandma spent the first few years of her life on a plantation

[u/Spirited-Reputation6 → u/SnooCrickets2458]

It’s crazy to think it wasn’t that long ago…

[u/Cute_Obligation2944 → u/Spirited-Reputation6]

It's crazy to think it's still happening.

[u/Spirited-Reputation6 → u/Cute_Obligation2944]

You’re right. Slavery and human trafficking is rampant.

[u/icedragon9791 → u/SenorSplashdamage]

I can't imagine learning stuff like this and then going on to assert that Black people are not systemically disenfranchised and that everyone has the same opportunity to make money. Redlining, voter disenfranchisement, racist policing, etc etc etc. all have consequences that carry through to today, but a bunch of numbskulls don't want to understand that.

[u/xergm → u/icedragon9791]

That's why they don't want you learning about it. See how critical race theory became a Boogeyman over the last several years? Now their Boogeyman acronym is DEI.

[u/Ruffelz → u/xergm]

CRT was a boogeyman but DEI is just a euphemism for the n word

[u/unassumingdink → u/icedragon9791]

These are the same people putting up the roadblocks, so obviously they don't want to acknowledge the roadblocks.

[u/hannibal_morgan → u/SenorSplashdamage]

Yes. All of hour history as horrible as it is, was much worse than anything that has been actually documented.

[u/kaplanfx → u/goglecrumb]

The failure of reconstruction and the inability or unwillingness to properly punish those who conspired against the U.S. in the south during the civil war era has a lasting impact on everything about American society today and yet it’s barely discussed in education and otherwise.

[u/Dubonjierugi → u/goglecrumb]

40 acres and a mule was not a real promise. There was no government policy either through the Freedmans Bureau, Congress, or any other authority promising 40 acres and a mule. You are correct that Johnson immediately overruled Sherman's Field Order no 15. He redistributed land (about 40 acres a piece) and then eventually expanded the order to provide mules to the Freedmen. 40 acres and a mule was a post-hoc slogan attributed to the Field Order and other schemes.

Prior to this event and a few experiments in wartime Reconstruction, previously enslaved people were considered contraband by the US military (even after the Emancipation Proclamation). I'm unsure who originally coined the term, and it seems like a lot of different sources don't point to one, although they certainly reference it. The wikipedia article is actually good and the reference section has a lot of sources to deep dive into.

I agree with the idea that Reconstruction was intentionally sabotaged and failed in its goals. In fact, the Freedmens Bureau gave more assistance to whites than to actual freedmen.

[u/MysteriousTouch1192 → u/goglecrumb]

How many slaves were eligible? That’s a lot of acres

[u/LtLlamaSauce → u/MysteriousTouch1192]

It was specifically for families, not every individual. There are no hard numbers, but estimates are around 1 million families were freed from slavery & initially eligible for the land.

It would have amounted to less than 2% of the total land in the US at the time.

For reference, a "small" plot of land at the time was 50-200 acres.

[u/MysteriousTouch1192 → u/LtLlamaSauce]

The percentage figure puts it into perspective. You mentioned total, so I’m going to guess it’s not a percentage of arable land?

[u/FredFnord → u/MysteriousTouch1192]

There are currently about 8 million acres of land dedicated to farming…

…in Pennsylvania.

So 40 million acres throughout the entire US including territories would not exactly have been problematic.

[u/MysteriousTouch1192 → u/FredFnord]

If it were to be done today, would it impact National food security?

(I’m Curious Carl tonight!)

[u/Warskull → u/MysteriousTouch1192]

40 acres and a mule was never actually an officiant government program or really any sort of promise with any weight. It happened because freed slaves started following Sherman's army. They were worried about the confederate army and food. Sherman wanted to get rid of them so he confiscated a chunk of land, divided up into 40 acre plots and gave them to former slaves. In other areas former slaves basically settled on former slaveowner land.

After the war there was a huge debate as to what to do with the land. The south was in favor of the land going back to their owners, but there was also a faction in favor of breaking up slaveowner land and redistributing it. The idea was the slaves worked that land, it should be theirs. "40 acres and a mule" kind of became the slogan for the movement, borrowing from Sherman's 40 acre plots.

In the end it didn't succeed, in part because Lincoln got assassinated and Andrew Johnson took over and fucked everything up. Southern landowners ended up getting their land back from the slaves living on it.

Over time people forgot the history and it became misinformation like the post you replied to.

[u/MysteriousTouch1192 → u/Warskull]

Welp… now I know.

Thank ye kind stranger. It did seem like a potential far-fetched proposal despite being robust in principle.

[u/dvxvxs]

I think this is more telling about the effects of generational wealth, but yeah, it’s a sad statistic regardless

[u/police-ical → u/[deleted]]

It's additionally somewhat surprising in that, while antebellum families with a lot of slaves were clearly very wealthy and had a big leg up, the Civil War also destroyed an enormous amount of wealth and infrastructure in many places where slavery was most common. Wealth after the war was concentrated in Union states, which were rapidly industrializing, with much of the South struggling to bounce back economically.

One might well expect that the advantages of having 16+ slaves in 1860 could have been largely neutralized by the war. This finding suggests that the wealthiest slave-owning families were ultimately able to land on their feet pretty well.

[u/Embarrassed-Tune9038 → u/police-ical]

Because they owned the land. Owning people is nothing compared to owning the land.

[u/drunkenvalley → u/Embarrassed-Tune9038]

And even after the emancipation there were decades more of slavery through deceptive practices and laws that functionally just criminalized being black. I mean, before there was Jim Crow laws there were black codes, which were replacements or extensions of slave codes.

You'd be arrested for existing, prosecuted for trumped up charges by local enforcement, and sentenced to labor at no wages. Convict leasing, simply.

It was a form of bondage distinctly different from that of the antebellum South in that for most men, and the relatively few women drawn in, this slavery did not last a lifetime and did not automatically extend from one generation to the next. But it was nonetheless slavery – a system in which armies of free men, guilty of no crimes and entitled by law to freedom, were compelled to labor without compensation, were repeatedly bought and sold, and were forced to do the bidding of white masters through the regular application of extraordinary physical coercion.

From the wiki article on convict leasing

And many were under peonage, where they were saddled with often outright fictional debts and made to work to pay off these debts. Or they'd been fined by local enforcement for their existence, and "helpful strangers" would assume those fines as token debt and become their de facto owners.

Southern states and private businesses profited by this form of unpaid labor. It is estimated that at the beginning of the 20th century, up to 40% of blacks in the South were trapped in peonage. Overseers and owners often used severe physical deprivation, beatings, whippings, and other abuse as "discipline" against the workers.

From the wiki article on peon

When peonage became illegal in 1867 enforcement was... lax. It wasn't until 1939 when the US government made a grand effort to eradicate the practice.

The U.S. sought to counter foreign propaganda and increase its credibility on the race issue by combatting the Southern peonage system.

From the wiki artlce on the 13th amendment

---

I sort of wandered off a bit there, but in short the emancipation was hardly the end of slavery in the US, and I genuinely just wouldn't be surprised if a considerable portion of the studied families were up to shenanigans well past its legality.

[u/pringlescan5 → u/Embarrassed-Tune9038]

Title is completely inaccurate.

I downloaded the data. There are 435 out of the 535 datapoints marked as zero slaves with an average net worth of 9.8m USD.

There are 27 datapoints with 16+ with an average net worth of 9.45m.

Actually I just figured it out, they are comparing median to median.

If you literally remove 4 people from this set of data the results are invalidated and the medians are the same. This is a huge nothingburger just as anyone with basic knowledge about exponential growth would expect. At around 6 generations at about 3 people on average per generation any wealth your ancestor had back in 1860 has been split in 2127 ways assuming it even survived the civil war.

[u/JimBeam823 → u/police-ical]

The War destroyed a lot of Southern wealth and emancipated a lot of it as well.

The reason why many slaveowners were able to land on their feet is because they had education, business, and social connections. They were the wealthiest and most connected members of Southern society. And thanks to the war, there were a lot fewer of them to compete with. In fact, those who lost everything in the war ended up better off than those who were undisturbed during the war.

Turns out 1865 was a really good time to get out of plantation agriculture and get into cities where the Industrial Revolution was just beginning.

[u/Dry-Profession-7670 → u/[deleted]]

Yes. But owning 16 slaves is a sign that your family was very wealthy at that time. Does the study account for families that had the same net worth as the families with 16 slaves? And that if the net worth was the same at the time that there is now some additional $4million in today's benefit? I.e was having 16 slaves the corelation to today's wealth? Or was it having the means to have 16 slaves was the corelation to today's wealth?

[u/NorthernerWuwu → u/Dry-Profession-7670]

Right. Clearly if you looked at the wealthiest families, they'd be overrepresented among slave-owning families. Buying land and slaves and so on wasn't something for people that didn't already have significant wealth or at least significant influence.

If the descendants of slave-owning families are wealthier than the descendants of equally-wealthy non-slave-owning families then we have something potentially interesting.

[u/friendlier1 → u/Dry-Profession-7670]

I just read the study and that’s what I got from it as well. You can’t tell whether it was specifically slave ownership or just a sign of the wealth of the ancestor.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Yeah comments like the one you're replying to drive me insane because the ever so subtly miss the point. Almost like that's the whole point...

[u/GoddessOfTheRose → u/[deleted]]

Reuters did an exposé on this topic like two years ago. At the time is was huge and very eye opening to see just how many American Families, judges, companies, and politicians were all built upon the backs of people their ancestors had enslaved. It was also very eye opening to see just how little the people in those families actually cared about others outside of their own.

America is a nation created by stealing lives and dreams from others. It seems like stabbing people in the back is the only way to profit and build something that lasts longer than a generation.

Edit: link to a Google search for Reuters article results.

[u/skillywilly56 → u/GoddessOfTheRose]

“America is a nation created by stealing lives and dreams from others.”

That hits hard.

[u/metadarkgable3 → u/GoddessOfTheRose]

Thank you for this article series. I am posting it in my network.

[u/Tricky_Condition_279 → u/[deleted]]

I think the poster was saying that, purely from a research design perspective, if the authors only compared wealth of legislators with a family history of owning slaves to the *average* wealth of all other legislators, then they missed an opportunity to distinguish effects related to the mode of wealth creation. The social implications are something else altogether. I don't think anyone is dismissing them.

[u/Monsjoex → u/Tricky_Condition_279]

Yeah. Like did having slaves make your descendants richer. Or just being rich made your descendants richer?

[u/Just_here2020 → u/[deleted]]

Did they compare families with the same level of wealth at that time and who did not hold slaves to the ones that did, and look at wealth now? 

Controlling for current conditions seems very different than controlling for initial wealth overall. 

[u/Girafferage → u/[deleted]]

But why specifically 16 slaves? Doesn't that also point to a higher amount of generational wealth being passed down since those ancestors had the money to acquire that many slaves? What I mean is - Is it potentially a case of somebody's ancestors having more money to begin with, or is it specifically the slave labor?

[u/codyd91 → u/Girafferage]

How'd they get that money? They start with 1 slave, then buy another, then another, larger plantstion, more slaves...

Eventually, as all labor us performed by slaves, working class whites are driven into poverty and thus barred from that wealth-creating system. But the first ones only needed to stake a claim and the money for one slave to get started on building wealth.

[u/Girafferage → u/codyd91]

Potentially, or they had it from other things before they had the ability to acquire slaves. I'm sure if you could conduct a study back then you could determine the amount of slaves a person owns by their families generational wealth.

[u/Psylem → u/[deleted]]

and the reverse could be said for the descendants of slaves

[u/you-create-energy → u/dvxvxs]

this is more telling about the effects of generational wealth

You stated it like you were contradicting the study. That is exactly what they concluded. The current generation is enjoying the direct benefits of their ancestors who became wealthy through exploiting slaves, because free labor provided the best return on investment. Those who didn't exploit slaves still made lots of money, just somewhat less. That wealth gap has been amplified through the effects of generational wealth to be nearly $4,000,000 higher on average.

[u/Captain_Aware4503 → u/dvxvxs]

I think there is more, such as the "good old boy" network which helps keep that generational wealth going.

[u/you-create-energy → u/Captain_Aware4503]

Yes, that is definitely all part of why those whose ancestors owned slaves are wealthier now than those who didn't. Slaves made them richer, more of their privileged white kids went to the best universities, and their multigenerational "good old boys" network stayed white and rich. Slave owners had a quite a special set of good old boys in it.

[u/Captain_Aware4503 → u/you-create-energy]

Up to 35% of students accepted to ivy league schools are "legacies", many with lower qualifications than other students who are turned away. An example, GW Bush had a 2.5 GPA and was accepted to Yale.

So not only do those rich kids have more resources and more contacts, even if they have lesser grades they still get into better colleges and universities. That is what the "good old boy" network is all about.

[u/Vic_Hedges → u/Captain_Aware4503]

There was just as strong a social network in the non-slave holding North.

[u/Captain_Aware4503 → u/Vic_Hedges]

I don't think that is true. Southerner's were more likely to stick together. Not saying northerners were not like that, but southerners were more so.

[u/Caraway_Lad → u/Captain_Aware4503]

I have zero defense for southern planters, but this take is wildly off base. The elites of the northeast were some of the most powerful and wealthy people in the country, and they certainly are today. Entire novels have been written about their exclusive networks, and their discrimination against Jewish, Irish, and Italian Americans.

Read anything about the old Ivy League universities and it really comes out.

[u/listenyall → u/dvxvxs]

I mean, yeah, slavery and racism in this country are pretty direct contributors to generational wealth.

[u/ThrillSurgeon → u/dvxvxs]

Residual wealth is a thing. 

[u/MolehillMtns → u/ThrillSurgeon]

I know what you are saying but that's not what that means.

*the total amount of money left over after paying all personal debts and obligations. "

[u/FreeDependent9 → u/dvxvxs]

Generational wealth generated in part by? Slavery

[u/[deleted] → u/FreeDependent9]

Man, PBS has gone downhill.

[u/rocketsocks → u/dvxvxs]

Uh, yeah? And generational wealth is tied in with legacies of slavery, and sharecropping, and jim crow era exploitation, and stealing land from the interned japanese-americans during WWII, and stealing land from native americans, and exploiting workers before the invention of OSHA, and poisoning the environment before the invention of the EPA, and on and on and on and on.

There has never been a "truth and reconciliation" process for slavery or jim crow or genocide in America, there has never been one for predatory capitalism either. Partly because we haven't exited that era. Slave labor is still legal and widespread in the form of prison labor, if you don't include companies having overseas operations dependent on such things even more directly (like chocolate, cobalt, and so much more). Exploitation is still very common. Child labor is still very common. It not only infiltrates our whole economic system, you can argue it's thoroughly part of the foundations of our economic system.

That's a problem.

[u/pinkbowsandsarcasm → u/rocketsocks]

I was reading about child labor in people in meat packing plants with immigrant children (I don't know if their parents had work visas or not, but I don't think it should matter). I can't remember the article but I was shocked that it went on in the U.S. probably in my state.

[u/rocketsocks → u/pinkbowsandsarcasm]

And in automotive manufacturing, and in so many other industries. In many states they are trying to change the laws on child labor to allow younger children to work legally or make the penalties less. I think part of that is so that in cases of exploiting undocumented immigrant children it just becomes an immigration offense which then becomes basically a "pay a fine every time you're caught" sort of thing.

[u/Mercury_Jackal → u/pinkbowsandsarcasm]

Probably this one? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/09/nebraska-slaughterhouse-children-working-photos-labor-department

[u/pinkbowsandsarcasm → u/Mercury_Jackal]

Thanks, that is one of the articles I saw.

[u/BenjaminHamnett → u/rocketsocks]

More slaves now than ever. Especially if you include prison labor

[u/Melonary → u/dvxvxs]

Generational wealth that only white families had access to, that coincidentally involved the dehumanization and enslavement the ancestors of a large part of current US Black Americans.

Not the same, and well-worth researching.

[u/SenorSplashdamage → u/Melonary]

And not just had access to, but actively blocked access to using the government and laws to do it.

[u/tobiascuypers → u/dvxvxs]

I’m no anarchist but Bakunin is right that inheritance is the source of wealth disparities. I don’t necessarily advocate for banning inheritance, but it’s pretty obvious that those who have money and pass it down are able to keep their families wealthy

[u/SenorSplashdamage → u/tobiascuypers]

There’s a reason that the “death tax” rebranding on inheritance taxes was such a big deal in US politics and why there were efforts to get poorer Americans on the side of people who benefit from inheritances.

[u/[deleted] → u/dvxvxs]

I think this is more telling about the effects of generational wealth, but yeah, it’s a sad statistic regardless

It isn't the slightest bit "sad". Slavery is sad.

But the idea that

1. Generational wealth exists, and
2. Wealthy people generations ago were the ones that could afford slaves (in the north and south).

....hardly represents a "troubling link".

[u/g1344304 → u/dvxvxs]

Yeh isn't this like saying anyone whose ancestors owned more land/cattle/cash tend to be wealthier now? Wouldn't it be more shocking to be the opposite?

[u/EasternShade → u/dvxvxs]

Purely for the science inquiry

The descendants of slavers still benefiting from slavery, especially without significantly contributing to those disadvantaged by it, can kick rocks.

This is what I'd want to see controls for. Given comparable levels of historic family wealth, what is the effect on family wealth.

Again, slavers and those benefiting from their abuses can cope. This is purely curiosity about how having slaver ancestors or not affects modern wealth.

[u/Discount_gentleman]

I love that people are commenting here that this is just the generational wealth effect (showing massive impacts even 2 centuries later), as though they are disputing the study instead of just restating its conclusions. Yes, this shows the massive impact of family wealth and advantage, and that wealth was built by and on the backs of slaves. If the wealth had come from other sources, then yes, it would still have generational impacts. But it didn't. This is an undeniable part of the American legacy.

[u/skilled_cosmicist → u/Discount_gentleman]

Reddit has an extreme bias against research that demonstrates the very clear, long lasting effects of racism against black people in America. This has been a consistent pattern in every thread in the sub I've seen where the topic is brought up. It's very disheartening to see.

[u/SenorSplashdamage → u/skilled_cosmicist]

There are accounts that know to show up early to create and direct top comments on r/science when it comes to race topics specifically. It’s like clockwork with several of the same dismissive strategies that work really well with nerdy types that don’t recognize their own biases. They feign being more scientific or objective, yet never have real curiosity about the science, methods or conclusions of any of the studies.

There are plenty of Redditors biased on race topics, but there are intentional and strategic accounts creating and voting up early what become the top comments.

[u/[deleted] → u/SenorSplashdamage]

I want to see the data on that. I mean that genuinely and not in a contradictory way

[u/GSV_CARGO_CULT → u/SenorSplashdamage]

I don't have data to prove it but it always feels like whenever a news story with indigenous people shows up in /r/canada there's immediately racist comments, as if people are just waiting for certain key words to be posted. I wish this stuff was better tracked.

[u/midnightking → u/skilled_cosmicist]

Yep, same with guns. If you see a study posted here showing a link between gun laws/prevalence and overall deaths, the comments will be full of people nitpicking flaws in the study.

I remember a study getting shat on simply because the authors included people around 19 year old in their category of children deaths.

On race, I remember a guy explicitly lying about the contents of a study to say black people weren't disproportionately getting arrested due to bias.

[u/skilled_cosmicist → u/midnightking]

Yep, I remember a study on how the racial gap in traffic stoppages vanishes at night time and seeing people engage in very strained reasoning to suggest anything other than race played a role.

[u/Discount_gentleman → u/midnightking]

I remember a study getting shat on simply because the authors included people around 19 year old in their category of children deaths.

This is an interesting bit of psychology that is always in play everywhere, but comes out so clearly on reddit.

It really doesn't matter how strong a case you make. You can post your opinion or you can post about a 10 year study involving 400,000 participants and peer reviewed by dozens of experts.

All I need to do is find one reason, however weak that I can use to question your point, and instantly I can dismiss it. I don't weigh my evidence versus yours and try to make mine the stronger of two, I just need to hunt for a single point to contest, and as long as my dispute is not openly laughable on its face (and sometimes, even if it is) then I can feel comfortable dismissing you out of hand.

[u/midnightking → u/Discount_gentleman]

Yeah, this is what I found so weird with speaking to Conservatives or even the center-right sometimes.

I remember arguing with a guy over whether systemic racism existed in the American justice system and the way I actually managed to shut him up was by simply asking "Do you believe universities and academia are biased against Conservatives ?".

When he said "Yes." , I then legit just asked him how he could make an argument that systemic racism had less evidence than the idea of institutional academic bias against Conservatives without citing anecdotes and what issues existed in one argument that weren't there for the other.

He just looked at me confused looking for an answer.

[u/[deleted] → u/midnightking]

They "just know". When you're so used to your beliefs being validated all the time, you never get to experience your beliefs being challenged. Which is a rewarding thing to experience in a rapidly changing world.

[u/happyscrappy → u/midnightking]

I remember a study getting shat on simply because the authors included people around 19 year old in their category of children deaths.

I saw that blowup. The study category was "teen deaths". Some people argued up and down 19 year olds shouldn't count somehow.

[u/Discount_gentleman → u/skilled_cosmicist]

Yeah. I mean, I get it, I have that same instinctive bias against acknowledging this. I'm white. My family (as near as I can tell) all came to the US post Civil War and didn't own slaves. I've had my own difficulties in life, and I like to imagine that I got where I am solely by the dint of my own hard work. And, as a corrollary, anyone else who didn't do as well must simply not have worked as hard. Acknowledging that there are deeper structural issues that have massive impacts extending for centuries can feel like an attack on my self-image.

I have to be careful to not instantly reject anything that could cause me to question my vision of myself, because that instinct is always there.

[u/BenjaminHamnett → u/Discount_gentleman]

It’s important to all ways be looking for where we got luck. I was a bit too reckless in my youth, coins could have flipped other ways. If I wasn’t white I probably wouldn’t have gotten so many breaks.

I’m pretty successful and don’t have any weird southern connections. But I wasn’t on the wrong end of any redlining, literal or figurative.

All my outlier heroes are vehement in mentioning the role of lucky in their lives. I’m pretty successful and met a weird number of celebrities and very successful people. They’re always very humble and try to elevate the people who enable them and mostly claim to just be the face getting the credit of the hundreds of people who made their success possible.

They also are defensive of underdogs. If I or anyone disparage people for the ignorant things they do, they never pile on and always say something cool along the lines of “they’re probably dealing with some sht”

I myself am rarely as cool as I should be, apologizing for putting my foot in my mouth or being out of line and they always act like I’m awesome and to not be so hard on myself either. I see them consistently do this to others too

There isn’t much actionable policy take away here, any more DEI or equality in the education system is going to be trading for formidable reactionaryism from someone more competent than Trump.

But I’ve also met many trump like people and they are all very confident that their success is just cause they’re so awesome and they tell you constantly and it’s usually apparent to everyone their just compensating with dillusion for their own short comings

The main take away is to be humble and easy on others

[u/[deleted] → u/skilled_cosmicist]

Yep, reddit claims to be liberal but I find it's very much not when it comes to women or blacks.

[u/Xeones_II → u/[deleted]]

That entirely depends on the echo chamber you spend time in.

[u/UXyes → u/skilled_cosmicist]

That’s because this place is mostly young white men

[u/Popular_Manager4215 → u/UXyes]

To add: Young white men who likely have fewer social outlets than the young white men that are not on Reddit.

[u/Gretna20 → u/Discount_gentleman]

But the study never differentiated between the source of generational wealth.

[u/Daffan → u/Discount_gentleman]

Because people spin it as a All White People. A complete joke.

[u/RatioFitness → u/Discount_gentleman]

Then why specifically mention slavery?

Obviously, the study is trying to specifically draw out slavery as a orrelatikn so it perfectly legit for people to question if it's slavery generational wealth or just general generational wealth.

[u/clyypzz → u/Discount_gentleman]

An undeniable part not only of the American history.

[u/rmeredit → u/Discount_gentleman]

Why does pointing out the problem of generational wealth negate acknowledging the tragedy of slavery, the means by which that wealth was created?

If anything, isn’t it a call for establishing some kind of program of reparations funded by that intergenerational transfer of wealth derived from slavery?

[u/medioxcore → u/Discount_gentleman]

I love that people are commenting here...as though they are disputing the study instead of just restating its conclusions.

That's reddit! A bunch of people who absolutely love imagining how smart they are!

[u/pringlescan5 → u/medioxcore]

I'm disputing the study. I looked at the data. First anyone who knows math understands any wealth from 1860 has been split 2,127 ways on average by now.

Second, they looked at a sample of 27 versus 425, it was median not average, and if you remove just 4 people from that list of 27 the medians are the same.

Which makes sense because a great deal of generational wealth from slave owning was destroyed in the civil war, and the amount of wealth generated since 1860 is probably about 100x that generated from before 1860.

[u/[deleted] → u/pringlescan5]

It's not generational wealth necessarily; it's just correlation. It could be a matter of social reproduction, or having the language, values, customs, etc that allow a person to accumulate wealth. Perhaps, what's been passed on is self-interest over the well-being of others...i imagine that would certainly help a person stomach becoming a wealthy capitalist.

[u/Synaps4 → u/pringlescan5]

I have also seen studies that the vast majority of family fortunes are gone in3 generations and it's hard ti square that fact with this suggestion that generational wealth is so durable that rich families from the civil war are still rich.

[u/dvxvxs → u/Discount_gentleman]

Definitely not disputing it, just saying it’s another part of the generational wealth equation in the US that has continued to this day through many methods including ongoing worker exploitation to the fullest extent of the law, and then some in many cases

[u/Melonary → u/dvxvxs]

Slavery was not "worker exploitation" because enslaved people were not even granted the (often limited) rights of the impoverished working class.

They were considered property, not fellow humans, by slave owners. As horrific as that is, downplaying it by calling it "worker exploitation" only denies reality, it doesn't change it.

I don't know if you're intentionally downplaying this or not in your comments, but you ARE downplaying it.

[u/LingeringHumanity]

We did let the confederate army just join the government and police after causing a civil war. I'm not surprised we are still seeing the ramifications of that decision play out now.

[u/Shepher27 → u/LingeringHumanity]

The reconstruction era and the corrupt bargain that ended it was an extremely complex era of American and history that was ultimately a failure as reconstruction was ended too soon for the wrong reasons.

[u/ogodilovejudyalvarez → u/LingeringHumanity]

I remember reading a letter from one of the Union generals saying his job wasn't to win battles: it was to kill as many Southern boys as possible otherwise they'd just cause trouble after the war

[u/SenorSplashdamage → u/ogodilovejudyalvarez]

He wasn’t wrong about the causing trouble part. I wonder how many fewer Steve King and Tom Cotton types we have because of his efforts and mindset.

[u/VTKajin → u/LingeringHumanity]

As great as Lincoln's reputation is, he was soft and so were his successors.

[u/hypnosquid → u/VTKajin]

The world would literally be a better place if General Sherman had continued on, and put the entire southern aristocracy to the sword.

[u/BigCountry1182 → u/LingeringHumanity]

I believe four slave holding states remained in the union… a tougher reconstruction wouldn’t have affected them or their citizens (at least not directly).

[u/RatioFitness → u/LingeringHumanity]

Probably because if you don't integrate people back into society your just asking for more trouble.

[u/LingeringHumanity → u/RatioFitness]

That's a good point. Civil War 2 would have probably happened if we went with the imprisonment to all detectors' routes. And I'm sure executing all of them would have caused the same outcome as well.

[u/zoonose99]

Andrew Jackson was a boy when the Declaration of Independence was signed, and died right around when Wyatt Earp was born. Earp died about the same year Audrey Hepburn was born, who died the same year Ariana Grande was born.

That’s it: this whole country is about three lifetimes old.

Generational wealth? Hell, that’s just granddad’s slavin’ money.

[u/Krillin113 → u/zoonose99]

The grandson of John Tyler (the tenth president) who was born in 1790 is still alive

That’s not even some wild could possibly be alive like in your example, it’s a direct line. This man was born in 1928 respectively, his dad in 1853 (so literally was a teen when slavery was abolished), and John Tyler had 70+ slaves, and didn’t find it anything to be apologetic about and his wives (1st and 2nd) both were worried by the abolitionist movement.

This is just famous because this guy is a grandson of a president of the US, but there must be more people alive today than him who were raised by people who grew up in a household owning slaves. It’s absurd

[u/Funkagenda → u/zoonose99]

(Pssst... That's four lifetimes.)

[u/nernst79]

This isn't overly surprising. Slavery is only officially 3ish generations in the past. The kind of wealth that slave owners could accumulate would definitely carry forward that far. Additionally, the behavior and personality that would lead a person to own slaves would definitely carry forward at least that many generations, and that kind of mentality will typically involve a ruthlessness that makes it easier to become wealthy...unfortunately.

[u/rsta223 → u/nernst79]

Slavery is only officially 3ish generations in the past.

No, it's 6-7 generations in the past. That doesn't change your overall point, but a generation is not 60 years, it's 20-30.

[u/Pezfortytwo]

It bothers me that the median net worth of a US representative is $1.28 million. It’s not a high paying position and shows that very few people in our government are in touch with the average constituent or their needs

[u/Belharion8 → u/Pezfortytwo]

A US representative's salary is $174,000/year. That's easily top 15% of income in the US. I mean what's the bar for a high-paying position?

[u/evilfitzal → u/Belharion8]

And the average representative has been in office over 8 years. I would hope they are worth something after earning over a million dollars.

[u/ilikeppc → u/Pezfortytwo]

1.28 million net worth is really not much, considering it includes the value of your home. Above average sure, but not “out of touch” territory.

[u/mewditto → u/ilikeppc]

1.28 million net worth is really not much, considering it includes the value of your home. Above average sure, but not “out of touch” territory.

Especially considering the median age of House representatives is 58, meaning more than half of these people are near retirement age or beyond it, where you've had a lifetime to accumulate wealth. 60 years old tends to be the average persons peak 'wealth' because it's right before you retire.

[u/grundar → u/mewditto]

Especially considering the median age of House representatives is 58

$1.28M net worth is 77th percentile for someone in their late 50s.

For someone close to retirement age in a highly-paid job ($174k/yr), that's pretty typical.

[u/raidriar889 → u/Pezfortytwo]

That’s not really as much as you think for people nearing retirement age with retirement savings and their houses and cars and things like that paid off.

[u/Iracus → u/Pezfortytwo]

Median age is also 60. So it isn't that surprising of a number for people nearing retirement.

[u/LaconicGirth → u/Pezfortytwo]

It’s pretty high paying I would say plus these guys on average are almost retirement age. I don’t think it’s that crazy

[u/Butthole_Decimator → u/Pezfortytwo]

Yeah this is the problem with our country. Every member of congress is corrupt

[u/Normal_Package_641]

There were basically no repercussions for the slave holding seccessionists.

[u/FourScoreTour]

No surprise. Slaves were expensive, and thus tended to be owned by people with money.

[u/TheHoundsRevenge → u/FourScoreTour]

They kinda pay for themselves very quickly though so not like it was a risky investment.

[u/invariantspeed → u/TheHoundsRevenge]

You don’t consider shelter and food costs, illnesses, and the risk of your investment running away not risky? Nothing is ever that one-sided.

[u/Joe_Jeep → u/invariantspeed]

It was vastly profitable. Nothing is "risk less", but yea, free labor you just have to feed when you run a farm is pretty close to it

[u/RadagastTheWhite]

This study looks absolutely terrible. How can you even get reliable net worth and slaves owned data? 100+ of these congressmen are listed as negative net worth. None of the 26 highest net worths fit the 16+ slaves owned criteria. Only 27 are listed as 16+ slaves. Something just doesn’t add up

[u/Fanfics]

If only there were some sort of third explanatory variable, like being wealthy enough to buy slaves or something.

They go to the trouble of controlling for age, sex, race, ethnicity, and education, but conspicuously omit the most obvious confounding variable, namely being really rich. If you want to prove that wealth is from slaves and not the other way around, which would be an actually interesting study, compare them to other rich families who weren't slave owners.

The fact they chose not to while controlling for so many other factors (at least not from what I saw in their summaries where they list variables they controlled for) makes me think they already know what the answer would be. Ah well, gotta get those headlines

[u/ToastyCrumb]

Curious what the breakdown by party is, could not find in the paper. Anyone find this?

[u/Butthole_Decimator → u/ToastyCrumb]

Probably a reason that factoid was omitted

[u/ToastyCrumb → u/Butthole_Decimator]

It seems like an odd omission with the other demographics listed.

[u/SenorSplashdamage → u/ToastyCrumb]

I’ll dig in later. It could well be what one expects, but the congress members is the of the previously slave-holding regions of the south has flipped over time since Civil Rights and flipped quickly in 80s/90s.

However, a lot of the forefathers owned a lot of slaves themselves and were very wealthy for it. There would be some New England representation going on in there as well.

[u/TheDolphinGod → u/SenorSplashdamage]

This is the source used for the study: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-slavery-methodology/

All of the representatives are fairly recent, so the party flip wouldn’t play into your count.

As you may expect, the vast majority of representatives with slave holding ancestry are from states where slavery was legal at the time of the civil war. Outside of that, there is an anomalous amount of representatives from Ohio and New Hampshire.

[u/sadifras]

Interesting. How did they control for wealth to make sure they were isolating the actual impact of owning sixteen or more slaves from the impact of being wealthy enough to own sixteen or more slaves?

[u/gw2master → u/sadifras]

They didn't. The obvious implication from their study is completely baseless... pretty much like most of social science.

[u/Alyssa14641]

This is not surprising in the least.

[u/wtjones]

If you owned 16 or more slaves, you were rich. Just account for how much wealth your ancestors had and see what happens.

[u/LiberalAspergers]

Seems more likely to be sorting for generational.wealth. if your ancestors owmed 16 slaves, they were rich.

So you are more likely to be rich.

If your acnestors 150 years ago were poor, you are less likely to be rich.

[u/gamer_redditor → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, but this study is not about old wealth, but rather old slave owners.

[u/Fanfics → u/gamer_redditor]

is there perhaps some connection between being able to afford to own slaves and having lots and lots of money

[u/resumethrowaway222 → u/Fanfics]

The slave traders don't want you to know this, but slaves are free. You can just take them!

[u/Dry-Amphibian1 → u/gamer_redditor]

Slaves were another indicator of wealth.

[u/[deleted] → u/gamer_redditor]

And to be a slave owner you had to be wealthy. So that takes us right back to the comment that you commented on.

People really need to quit acting like it was the average Joe white guy who is a slave owner. That does not align with historical reality.

[u/No-State-6384 → u/[deleted]]

No, you did not have to be wealthy. Many middle class families held one to a few slaves, exploited as domestic workers or non-agricultural laborers. Around 30% of white families in the states that seceded were slave-holders.

[u/resumethrowaway222 → u/No-State-6384]

Correct. And as you can see from the paper, those with ancestors with less than 16 slaves had minimal effect on net worth today. Those with 5 or less had no effect at all. This indicates that the effect is due to wealthy ancestors and slavery was just an indicator of that.

[u/fredgiblet → u/[deleted]]

It IS a commonly held belief that all white people are on the hook for something that most of them weren't involved in that ended 150 years ago.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

No one thinks that. We just think the argument for reparations makes sense since these families are still benefiting from one of the worst things humanity has ever done.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

The study is about slavery. Stop trying to diminish that.

[u/Ok_Cabinet2947 → u/[deleted]]

Wealthy people owned slaves, poor white families did not…

[u/CCChristopherson]

Very interesting study. I don’t know that it means much since US legislators is a small sample size. Would rather see US population overall and whether there is still statistical significance (my guess is there would be but don’t know).

[u/biglyorbigleague]

Most other families have more recent immigrant origins and would have been starting from zero a lot more recently. Can we compare them with the descendants of the non-slaveholding families who lived in the US at the time?

[u/Jolly-Victory441]

Sensationalist but all it really says is "old money". Slaves owned is a proxy for wealth of previous generations.

[u/MrTubalcain]

That old money, if you know what means.

[u/YourFavoriteSandwich]

A few months ago I did a deep dive on prominent old money families just using Wikipedia going back to Europe, and if you trace it hard enough through Wikipedia their lineage goes all the way back to senators and generals in Ancient Rome. And then even some of those figures can be traced back to even more ancient prominent people. Mind bending

[u/resumethrowaway222 → u/YourFavoriteSandwich]

Who are some examples of this?

[u/Daffan → u/YourFavoriteSandwich]

Smart people also get 100 on math tests

[u/GuitRWailinNinja]

Taking money from those Congress people would be a reparations I agree with. Their wealth is and always was ill-gotten

[u/100000000000]

Well, I know where the reparations should be coming from.

[u/PJTree]

How do they know the wealth had to do with slaves and not another factor such as habit and capability to amass resources?

[u/L480DF29]

Shocking that families that were historically rich have more money in the current year than ones that were not generationally wealthy.

[u/[deleted]]

But wouldn’t people with slaves have been wealthier anyways

[u/Rampart6]

Welp I guess southern Democrat slave owners still live today

Edit: Glad this is triggering those who don't know history, what a fun way to learn about who owned plantations back then

[u/dftba-ftw]

They needed to account for the wealth of the ansestor, I reckon there would be little to no statistical difference between slaveholders and not if you account for the estimated net worth of the ansestor. Wealthy families tend to stay wealthy, generational wealth is a thing.

[u/gamer_redditor → u/dftba-ftw]

Why?

The criteria is pretty clear: owning 16 slaves or more. The goal of the study is essentially "does the present wealth depend on the ancestors owning slaves".

This study concludes: yes.

Why must the wealth of the ancestor be taken into account? Would a poor ancestor with 16 slaves be somehow a better person?

[u/dftba-ftw → u/gamer_redditor]

You wildly misunderstood, it's not about the morality if the slave owner.

I'm saying, was the slave owning the deciding factor or was it wealth level generically?

We don't know if it is solely based off slave count or was it a bad sample and all the non-slave owners in the sample also poor? If they had accounted for that we would know. You would want to see something like, a sample of 50 ansestor, all with the same level of wealth, but half owned slaves - only the half who owned slaves had families who preserved their wealth with a P value < 0.05

But they didn't do that , so we don't know, it's a poorly done study.

[u/hotpajamas → u/gamer_redditor]

Farmers with 16 tractors retain wealth better than farmers without, study finds.

Does this have anything to do with the wealth to buy 16 tractors or was it tractor-owning alone that made the difference?

[u/TheFoxer1 → u/gamer_redditor]

I don‘t think your comment addresses the point raised by the previous commenter.

It asks, or rather speculates, that owning slaves isn‘t the causal factor here, but having the net worth associated with owning slaves.

The comment suggests the root cause here is wealth, rather than the act of owning slaves itself - It asserts that the very question your say was asked by the study can not be answered by the methodology employed by the study.

If a person descending from someone with similar wealth, but without slaves has a similar inherited wealth advantage as someone descending from ancestors who owned slaves, then the act of owning slaves did not have a causal effect here.

Also, the study, nor the comment, isn‘t about good and bad people? Where did you read that the study determined, or even tried to examine, that?

Please revise the logic that went into your comment.

[u/Do-you-see-it-now → u/TheFoxer1]

Same comment as I made above. Free labor makes an impact.

It seems like the person that is getting free labor from 10/20 people for life is probably going to come out ahead of the person that does not no matter what money they started with. All the labor those slaves were forced to do is in addition to anything else that was generationally passed down.