The C.O.W.S. THE HALF HAS NEVER BEEN TOLD Part II

The Context of White Supremacy hosts the second study session on Edward Baptist’s 2014 publication, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery And The Making Of American Capitalism. Baptist, a White Man, authored this text to center the enslavement and mutilation of black bodies as the foundation and central economic enterprise of America. He contends that the shackling and forced labor of black people was not an inefficient industrial system and it would not have come to a natural conclusion on its own. The book chapters are named after body parts to emphasize how the White slave system represented total war on black bodies. The Economist offered a stinging review of this book, charged that “Mr Baptist has not written an objective history of slavery. Almost all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains.” They ultimately apologized and withdrew their review. Last week’s installment detailed how slavery is regularly sanitized and divorced from the methodical cruelty against black people it rewarded. Baptist also highlights that even Whites who did not directly benefit from slavery saw unifying with White enslavers as serving the greater White good.