That's the biggest thing whenever someone tries to bring up the past persecution of ethnic groups that are now considered white: yes, indentured servitude was very bad, yes European catholics were subject to violence and persecution in the US before the concept of "white" was extended to include European catholics instead of just European protestants, yes some "white" ethnic groups in Europe have been the focus of all sorts of hairbrained phrenological and racial bullshit and suffered violence and persecution as a result (and hell, the oldest recorded example of a racist argument was some British noble arguing for the brutal subjugation of the Irish based on what would now be called racial grounds, some 500 years before "scientific racism" became a thing to justify continuing colonial violence against indigenous peoples that had converted to Christianity), but barring a few exceptions (like British colonial violence still being a matter of living memory for Ireland, Europeans in general often still being very racist against each other, etc) these are all things in the distant past whereas systemic violence against PoC is still the status quo.
Current and recent conditions mean a whole hell of a lot more than conditions a century ago, and that's where the distinction is: where previously persecuted white ethnic groups (particularly in the US) have been accepted and integrated into the system on more or less even footing, PoC have been systematically excluded and subject to terroristic violence for generations and largely still are.
On a related note, is anyone else frustrated when some lib responds to the topic of indentured servitude by downplaying it and trying to cast doubt as to whether or not forced labor is slavery at all, instead of focusing on how radically different the material conditions following the end of indentured servitude were from the ending of chattel slavery, namely that indentured servitude became racialized and turned into chattel slavery while white former indentured servants were able to integrate into society without being subject to terroristic violence, while chattel slavery was replaced with prison and debt/rent slavery and former slaves were kept subjugated, disenfranchised, and hyper-exploited through prison slavery and sharecropping and then subject to over 150 years of exclusion and terroristic violence from both the state and private militias. It both serves to whitewash the idea of any forced labor that isn't explicitly chattel slavery while also shifting the entire topic onto wrongs committed in the distant past, thus hiding the fact that the violence and hyper-exploitation of chattel slavery never really went away at all, it just changed its form and systems a little.
deleted by creator
That's the biggest thing whenever someone tries to bring up the past persecution of ethnic groups that are now considered white: yes, indentured servitude was very bad, yes European catholics were subject to violence and persecution in the US before the concept of "white" was extended to include European catholics instead of just European protestants, yes some "white" ethnic groups in Europe have been the focus of all sorts of hairbrained phrenological and racial bullshit and suffered violence and persecution as a result (and hell, the oldest recorded example of a racist argument was some British noble arguing for the brutal subjugation of the Irish based on what would now be called racial grounds, some 500 years before "scientific racism" became a thing to justify continuing colonial violence against indigenous peoples that had converted to Christianity), but barring a few exceptions (like British colonial violence still being a matter of living memory for Ireland, Europeans in general often still being very racist against each other, etc) these are all things in the distant past whereas systemic violence against PoC is still the status quo.
Current and recent conditions mean a whole hell of a lot more than conditions a century ago, and that's where the distinction is: where previously persecuted white ethnic groups (particularly in the US) have been accepted and integrated into the system on more or less even footing, PoC have been systematically excluded and subject to terroristic violence for generations and largely still are.
On a related note, is anyone else frustrated when some lib responds to the topic of indentured servitude by downplaying it and trying to cast doubt as to whether or not forced labor is slavery at all, instead of focusing on how radically different the material conditions following the end of indentured servitude were from the ending of chattel slavery, namely that indentured servitude became racialized and turned into chattel slavery while white former indentured servants were able to integrate into society without being subject to terroristic violence, while chattel slavery was replaced with prison and debt/rent slavery and former slaves were kept subjugated, disenfranchised, and hyper-exploited through prison slavery and sharecropping and then subject to over 150 years of exclusion and terroristic violence from both the state and private militias. It both serves to whitewash the idea of any forced labor that isn't explicitly chattel slavery while also shifting the entire topic onto wrongs committed in the distant past, thus hiding the fact that the violence and hyper-exploitation of chattel slavery never really went away at all, it just changed its form and systems a little.
MY PEOPLE WERE INDENTURED SERVANTS THATS LIKE WORSE THAN SLAVERY — every dumb Irish bastard after saying some racist garbage about black people