David J. Snyder, PhD

Historian, writer, editor. I blog about history and writing at Working on a biography of the great civil rights organizer, Daisy Lampkin.

[David J. Snyder, PhD @Fractal_Past]

My book examines how US power once worked, and how the Dutch built one of the great welfare states with, and despite, US assistance:
American Power in the Netherlands: Modernization and the Politics of Clientelism, 1941-59: David J. Snyder: Bloomsbury Academic - Bloomsbury

[David J. Snyder, PhD @Fractal_Past]

In your writing, all your choices matter. Give hard thought to what gets capitalized and what is not, what gets named and how, what gets a synonym and what never does. All of these reveal the values on which your story is built: https://t.co/83hIhti4Hs

[David J. Snyder, PhD @Fractal_Past]

@doc_thoughts What is T-N Coates's line? "They made us a race, we made ourselves a people."

[David J. Snyder, PhD @Fractal_Past]

@ijbailey Capitalism's defenders are its worst advocates.

[David J. Snyder, PhD @Fractal_Past]

@jemelehill @SholdonDaniels There are a couple concepts we want here: 1) slavery drove capital formation 2) slavery drove modernization and tech. change in other industries [textiles, RRs, shipping, banking, etc.] 3) other forms of peonage replaced slavery after 1865, i.e., Jim Crow.

[David J. Snyder, PhD @Fractal_Past]

@Julie8409674864 @aly_sand @rirokpik (I misstated the OP. I should have said "The claim that systemic racism is not and was never a thing.")

[David J. Snyder, PhD @Fractal_Past]

@Julie8409674864 @aly_sand @rirokpik 60 years is barely more than one generation, 2 at most. And I would agree that in that time, very substantial progress has been made. Not entirely unlike the timeframe of earlier immigrant groups. But that is a very far cry from the OP claim that systemic racism isn't a thing.

[David J. Snyder, PhD @Fractal_Past]

@Julie8409674864 @rirokpik No, I said (or meant) that *disparities* in generational wealth are a *product* of systemic racism. Racism causes wealth disparities. I suppose you could say that the desire to cause generational wealth disparities is a leading driver of racism. That sounds inelegantly phrased.

[David J. Snyder, PhD @Fractal_Past]

@aly_sand @Julie8409674864 @rirokpik ??? doesn't matter. You either have peonciples or you don't. Every penny is a wealth transfer, magnified by capital growth. Anyway, I imagine in an era before income taxes, that the proportion is much higher than you're betting.

[David J. Snyder, PhD @Fractal_Past]

@tonyannett Polanyi, but its also an interesting debate WRT imperialism: does (imposed) market behaviour enslave or liberate?

[David J. Snyder, PhD @Fractal_Past]

@babsy007 @davidharsanyi shipping. insurance. textile factorization, etc.
(and not for nothing, 10% is a HUGE marginal factor in an economy as diversified as the US. I don't know if that figure is accurate, but if it is it means capital for every other industry.)

[David J. Snyder, PhD @Fractal_Past]

@alexgr8s1 @davidharsanyi No because slavery is a system of extraction, with many of those extraction points in the north (textile mills, banks, Wall Street, shipping and insurance companies, etc.) It's not unlike why Wal-Mart rarely enhances (economically) any community where a store is located.

[David J. Snyder, PhD @Fractal_Past]

@Julie8409674864 @rirokpik and 2) I would strongly support anti-poverty supports to poor white communities (e.g., Appalachia). We should have greatly expanded access to schools, hospitals, job training, capital, etc. But those communities often refuse to support such policies, usually because of #1 above.

[David J. Snyder, PhD @Fractal_Past]

@Julie8409674864 @rirokpik Well, you're shifting the terms of the debate, but I would say 2 things: 1) you are absolutely correct, that poor whites are victimized as well, which is why elites have so often promoted racism, to keep poor whites from recognizing their own exploitation (see Bacons Rebellion);

[David J. Snyder, PhD @Fractal_Past]

@Julie8409674864 @rirokpik From about 1877 until, in every case in the south, at least the early 1960s. My parents' generation. And capital doing what capital does, this is why we speak of "generational wealth." Read my post. Yes, things are better. But Jim Crow is a disease not immediately healed from.

[David J. Snyder, PhD @Fractal_Past]

@yesterdaypills @GalliMaurizio69 Thoughtful. If it was talent alone--that ephemeral quality of magical creativity we can't quite describe--then we would have to explain how three of the most generationally talented composers of the 20th century emerged all at once from Liverpool, of all god-forsaken places.

[David J. Snyder, PhD @Fractal_Past]

@Julie8409674864 @rirokpik For much of the 20th century, state-sponsored southern colleges, that required tax revenues from black citizens but systematically excluded them from attendance. A clear transfer of wealth from black labor to white capital.

[David J. Snyder, PhD @Fractal_Past]

@rirokpik A little while back I tried to depict and explain what systemic racism means, for lay readers or those unfamiliar with the history: https://t.co/7p15KW1Sqz

[David J. Snyder, PhD @Fractal_Past]

American global influence is clearly in a period of decline, but for most of the 20th century American pop culture modeled powerful ideas about freedom and self-realization to global audiences. Here I speculate about one particularly moving case: https://t.co/DpkCnij02Q

[David J. Snyder, PhD @Fractal_Past]

@MidwitRoyalty @wil_da_beast630 lol. No, they ceased being a multiracial empire.