AHC/PC/WI: WAY Less Racism In The US

Now the PODs for this do have to retire minorities being in the statistical status quo (as in they're still in the US around the same numbers throughout history as OTL). Anyways how can America still have the minorities and not be as racist throughout its history? Definitely slavery would be around but can it be tweaked so the racist element doesn't stick?
 

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Now the PODs for this do have to retire minorities being in the statistical status quo (as in they're still in the US around the same numbers throughout history as OTL). Anyways how can America still have the minorities and not be as racist throughout its history? Definitely slavery would be around but can it be tweaked so the racist element doesn't stick?

Slavery especially race based slavery is based on creating The Other, it dehumanizes and changes the human into the slave.

"Why are those particular folks slaves?"

"Because they are inferior/beasts of burden/made by g-d to do this for us."

You can't have a non-racist society with an ex black slave population basically.
 
What if abolition of slavery started in the 1810's and was started from within the southern, Dixie society.

That is, Southerners were not agitated by northern abolitionists but started freeing slaves on their own accord.

Southern plantation owners discovered that a sharecropping system where former slave families received a portion of the land to work was more profitable than slavery.

As the country expanded west, the sharecropping system went with it.

Slavery reduced, no Jim Crow laws .....

Yes, racism will exist, but should be lower
 
Ending the racism against Native Americans isn't as hard, actually. If you avoid the War of 1812 and make Anglo-American relations better during the 1800s and 1810s, a lot of the violence between British-backed tribes and settlers disappears. Prior to 1812, the national attitude towards Natives was much more benevolent- Washington and Jefferson had a paternalistic view, and devoted thousands of dollars to tribes like the Cherokee so they could fit in with the United States. Tippecanoe, 1812, and Andrew Jackson changed that attitude completely, and Manifest Destiny solidified the anti-Native policies. Actually, even avoiding Jackson might be enough to improve relations with Natives.
 
More Caucasian Slaves

There is a school of thinking which says the Irish were sent to the Americas as slaves as well, not to mention petty criminals from England's prisons.

Three conditions might cause less racism in the US.

1. Have more Caucasian slaves.
2. Make the slavery more like the Roman model, with slaves able to buy freedom, and Freedmen able to rise up in society.
3. Possibly go with a good old Anglo-Saxon disgust at what the Spanish and Portuguese and French (despicable Latin bastards!) were doing in their colonies.
 
There is a school of thinking which says the Irish were sent to the Americas as slaves as well, not to mention petty criminals from England's prisons.

Three conditions might cause less racism in the US.

1. Have more Caucasian slaves.
2. Make the slavery more like the Roman model, with slaves able to buy freedom, and Freedmen able to rise up in society.
3. Possibly go with a good old Anglo-Saxon disgust at what the Spanish and Portuguese and French (despicable Latin bastards!) were doing in their colonies.

Weren't the Spanish colonies, at least, much less racist than the American ones? Mixed-race marriages were much more common, for example.
 
What if abolition of slavery started in the 1810's and was started from within the southern, Dixie society.

That is, Southerners were not agitated by northern abolitionists but started freeing slaves on their own accord.
Maybe based on ideas of Christian service to others? (and I'm serious, as misguided as this may be) And maybe the additional idea that everyone's Christian walk, including a slave's is different. So, even though southerners still believe slaves and former slaves are inferior, this provides a reason for treating each person as an individual.

And maybe if they could get started a little earlier than 1810.
 
Weren't the Spanish colonies, at least, much less racist than the American ones? Mixed-race marriages were much more common, for example.

The Spaniards cared less about who your parents were and more about where you were born. Peninsulares from Spain always held higher rank than lowly creoles born in the colonies.

That isn't to say there wasn't racism. The natives were enslaved and treated like shit for centuries, and in many cases still are, 5 hundred years after Columbus first plundered Hispanola.

Edit: and mestizos were definitely treated like lesser beings for a long time. So no, it's not really less racist.
 
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For a post-Civil War PoD, though swinging it would be tricky, have the "40 acres and a mule" policy be implemented for landless or subsistence-level whites and free Blacks by breaking up the big plantations. Creating a yeoman class of poor whites and ex-slaves who depend on the federal government for their property and share common economic interests of keeping the old plantation system dead and the planter class out of power would avert Jim Crow and make it possible for the US to reach a less racist place than it did OTL by 1900. It wouldn't be easy, quick, or clean but it would be a considerable improvement over OTL and eliminate the economic basis of the destitution and poverty common in Black America. That won't remove problems with anti-Native American policies, nativism, or anti-Chinese and East Asian racism but it will make it easier to tackle those problems by having anti-Black racism be far more reduced and the income curve leveled out.
 
Weren't the Spanish colonies, at least, much less racist than the American ones? Mixed-race marriages were much more common, for example.
Not less, just different. Purity of Blood was a major concern, and thus being able to track your ancestry to prove it was pure of taint (which could be Jewish, Moorish, African, heretic, criminal...).

Put it this way: the US worked under the "one drop" rule; any bit of African ancestry made you black. Spain worked under the fairly convoluted casta system, whereby the exact mix of European, African and Native ancestry determined your status (essentially, the more European the better, and Native was better than African, but there were dozens of different gradations). Casta paintings (paintings showing each of the various different mixtures, with a picture and a brief stereotype such as "hardworking" or "wild and uncontrollable) were well known souvenirs, to be collected in the same way as someone might collect postcards today.

Which is more racist? Hard to say, but both are inherently pretty racist.
 
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