re: #188 Aunty Entity Dragon

The sugar and rum trade was still part of American commerce. The only reason I can see that heriditary white slavery for Irish Catholics never got a foot hold in America is that it was simply too easy for a white slave to vanish and go to another colony where he or she would not be known. Indeed, white indentured servants did it all the time, and numerous newspaper and broadside prints still exist of wanted ads for indentured runaways (who in some ways had it worse then chattel slaves, since the “master” had little reason to actually keep them alive. Slaves were a long term investment. Servants…well, who cares? Lots of horrifying forensic evidence coming out of colonial Jamestown on malnutritian, beatings and murder of indentured youths.)

In any event, the (white)descendents of Irish slaves* still living on Barbados suffer from severe inbreeding, mental illness and poverty and are largely excluded from the rest of the island society.

*Almost all of the people on Barbados have some degree of Irish ancestry at this point.

All of which argues that slavery as practiced in the US was almost uniquely racist.

The decision was made in the 17th Century in the colonies that became the US that heritable enslavement was uniquely for blacks. This is probably one reason why it took hold so firmly and dug in so deeply - the enslaved were much easier to segregate from the rest of the population, and their distant origin allowed the slavemasters to convince themselves of the lack of a common humanity.