alternatehistory.com

There is a great saying about black America, power and the moral high ground--black folks only problem with slavery is that they were the slaves.
- Ta-Nehisi Coates in the Atlantic

The above quote crystallized a thought I'd been having after watching the series Rome: what if the indentured servitude system in colonial America (where white convicts or debtors worked without pay for white masters, although their status wasn't heritable) hadn't been replaced by race-based slavery, or had continued alongside it? That is, both whites and blacks, and any other ethnic group that pops up in America, would be equally liable to forced servitude.

Would slavery have ended sooner, later, or not at all? What might modern America look like? The question, I think, turns on how/why the race system overtook the class/criminal system in the first place, so any light that anyone might add on that score is welcome.
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