Why do We Keep Having this Debate?
Jun 26, 2025Commentary by Floyd Webb
How is it we keep having these lame conversations about which party was the party of slavery?
No political party can claim the moral high ground when it comes to the history of slavery in America. Forced labor and human trafficking—immoral and illegal by any standard—were upheld, justified, and economically exploited by institutions across the political spectrum. Complicity was not partisan; it was systemic.
Slavery in the United States was not merely a regional crime or a political misstep—it was a national economy, a moral failure, and a foundational violence. And every white person, regardless of political affiliation, religion, or geographic location, benefited from that system—directly or indirectly.
It’s convenient for some to distance themselves from the horrors of slavery by claiming their ancestors didn’t own slaves or that their families came to America “after it was over.” But the wealth generated by slavery built banks, railroads, universities, and industries that enriched white society as a whole. That system of forced labor and human trafficking created generational advantages still felt today.
The end of legal slavery did not dismantle the racial caste system it upheld. It simply evolved—into sharecropping, convict leasing, redlining, segregated schools, discriminatory policing, mass incarceration, and voter suppression. The brutality of racism continued to shape every sector of American life.
To this day, Black communities are still paying the compounded interest on a debt they never owed, while white communities still benefit from the unearned dividends of stolen labor. To pretend otherwise is a form of historical denial—and a continuation of the injustice.
Whether you acknowledge it or not, the legacy of slavery lives in our institutions, our neighborhoods, our schools, and our silence. You don’t have to have owned a plantation to be shaped by its shadow.
The stain of slavery is not just in our past. It’s in our present—and demands reckoning, not retreat.
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