I've heard many different things regarding just how bad slavery in the U.S. really was. The one thing I don't listen to is "It wasn't that bad." But I've been doing a lot of research lately and one thing I've come across is the idea that it truly was one of the worst forms of slavery ever to exist. Granted, this is from far-left people. And obviously, chattel slavery in and of itself is pretty bad. But was it significantly worse than other chattel slaveries?
I've thought about it. The U.S. is really one of the only countries in the Americas where the people did not mix. They did a bit, obviously, but when you go to Latin America, most people are some mixture of black, white, and Native, despite slavery being even bigger in Latin America than it was in the States. Not all, but I'd bet the majority are mixed. In the U.S., people generally bred with their own race.
What I've read is that slavery was especially bad in the U.S. because the racism incorporated into it truly made it out as though blacks were subhuman. Black babies were used as alligator bait (if the cost of feeding another mouth outweighed the revenue the baby would provide), families were broken up, there was frequent rape, it was illegal to teach slaves to read/write, etc. So obviously it was bad, but was it straight up one of the worst forms of slavery ever?
Thanks
The fact that no comments have yet been made would imply to me that everyone else is tossing aside their ten-foot poles and backing slowly away from this subject, so I will try to answer respectfully to all involved.
Yes, everyone agrees that slavery existed long before the U.S. and in forms just as horrible (forced concubinage, the eunuch slaves of the Middle East, the straight-up rape that accompanies basically any form of slavery anywhere in any time) as what you saw in the worst excesses of slavery in the U.S. There was certainly a lower death rate among slaves in the antebellum U.S. as compared to, say, the Caribbean or Central America at the height of the slave trade but this was almost certainly driven by economics rather than compassion. (the US outlawed importation of new slaves in 1807, greatly increasing the cost to replace a slave who was worked to death) The lifespan of an African slave in the Cuban sugar plantations was about the same as that of an indigenous Central American slave in the Spanish-run silver mines, or that of a Germanic slave in the Roman-run gold mines of Dacia. Any time a culture makes slavery part of their social order, you see some pretty horrible abuses of power by those who hold it.
The short answer is "Yes, slavery was as bad as you've heard, because slavery of any sort inevitably leads to horrific crimes against humanity." Part of the the reason American slavery draws so much ire is because it was at least tacitly endorsed by a nation that touted "freedom above all else."
The racism inherent to American slavery was another problem, yes. Again, every culture that practiced slavery would have some racism baked into it, but a Greek or Anatolian slave in Roman times wouldn't stand out as so incredibly "other" to the similar Mediterranean-complected people around him. The ease of ongoing discrimination is certainly a problem in the case of African slaves transported to Americas- simply because of the radically different appearance, they continue to be "other" to Caucasians even after many generations of intermarriage in way that a Slavic person in a Turkic area would not be.
The sheer proximity of American slavery is another problem- it was only 150 years ago that enslaved Africans were declared to be free American citizens, and for the next century the former slave states (and even some of the free ones) codified very real methods of marginalizing the black population, which only became explicitly illegal about fifty years ago.
The worst stories about American slavery that you have heard are probably true at one point or another, and furthermore they probably weren't the first time that happened in history between a slave and master. You also hear stories about Southern US slaves being treated better than Northern Factory workers, but you see a notable lack of poor Northern whites lining up for cotton plantation jobs!
Your contrast to Latin America is an apt one; the Spanish colonies down there tended to have a lot more single men and a lot fewer families than the English colonies, so out of necessity the former took wives from the indigenous peoples or even from imported slaves. Non-consensual unions in Latin America would have also been much more likely to involve non-white women due to these demographics, and this racial mixing is very likely to have created a less racially-charged society today, even though the forms of slavery practiced in the sugar plantations and silver mines of the Caribbean and Central America were pretty much as bad as it got.