Last edited Fri Nov 22, 2013, 05:42 PM - Edit history (1)
That was the same reason we needed the Civil Rights Act. They were in response to 100 years of Apartheid and 200 years of slavery before that.
Many countries never had segregation in the first place. Brazil's military, as well as those of other former slave societies, had people of color in desegregated units from their inception.
Race was not discussed at the Constitutional Convention: Slavery was. Slavery was a key issues at the convention because enslaved African Americans were property. The only way in which race was discussed was in denying the very humanity of Africans Americans, in comparing them to apes. That kind of pseudoscientific racism that emerged to justify slavery was practiced at the country's leading universities throughout the 19th century. Saying African Americans have the mental equivalence of apes is not a good thing. That ideology did not prevail in other slave societies in the Americas. That was our very own fucked up contribution to racism.
Other nations in the hemisphere were able to abolish slavery without war. The issue that Lincoln ran on in the 1860 election was Free Soil. Look it up. It ain't abolitionism.
And you're a civil rights attorney? 
Jesus. We really are fucked.
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