A nation built for freedmen’s success would have benefited all Americans

Evidence

That America would be one where the subsequent ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment on December 6, 1865, which made 4 million black Americans legally free, meant the end of chattel slavery and the death of white supremacy. In that America, it would have been commonplace for black Americans to thrive—and resulted in a better future for all Americans. That is because white supremacy has the potential to hurt everyone—including white people—as you will discover in these pages. A nation structured to ensure the success of the formerly enslaved would have been designed for all Americans’ success. Instead, we created a country that did everything it could to keep the freedmen in bondage—through violence if necessary, while harming others along the way. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 22

Categorization

• XREF: That white supremacy harms whites too is the counterintuitive move that answers the ‘why black reparations help everyone’ objection — a whites-also-benefit framing.