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Originally Posted by Weichert
Interesting comments. Slaves were accountants, shop managers, lived in apartments atop their stores (Implication being that they owned the stores) or lived in hotels?
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Oh, no, no no. They were slaves....they did not own anything.
Money is still money. It doesn't take a Big Brain to realize that some people have the gift of gab and sell people anything. You're going to put those people in a position where they can do exactly that, skin color notwithstanding.
Some skills are family-based, meaning that you're a tailor, or black-smith or cobbler, because your father was, because his father was, because his father was. That is true in many cultures regardless of race. If you are a skilled black-smith, I don't need to be there. You can run the shop for me....which frees me up to do something else.
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Originally Posted by Weichert
There were a very few exceptions but not nearly as common as you imply.
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It was never my intent to imply that it was common. It was in fact uncommon. How uncommon? If you want numbers, I don't know, but I would venture to guess less than 5% of the total slave population.
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Originally Posted by Weichert
Anyway, do you have links for those comments?
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It's culled from university history and political science text-books, and Thomas Sowell discusses it in at least two of his books (it's well foot-noted and he goes into detail about riverboat captains who were Black Slaves), and so does Walter Williams.
I do know from one of the text-books, the basis for the research is Decennial Census records.
The impression one gets is that this was a very select-group who probably never spent time on a plantation. From Day One they were performing some domestic service in a city or town. They may have been on a plantation briefly only until it was recognized that the slave has some unique or special talent, and then was traded or sold to someone in town.
In a small town environment, after two or three generations, the towns-folk would become accustomed to them....I suppose maybe the Stockholm Syndrome in action...and they were given more privileges and responsibility. That might be one explanation.
Clarifying....
Mircea