‘Black America’: Amazon Alt-History Drama From Will Packer & Aaron McGruder Envisions Post-Reparations America https://t.co/WHs6wPups9 pic.twitter.com/N9KMoSn2EM
— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) August 1, 2017
Amazon looks to have a better grip on the zeitgeist than HBO:
… Another alternate history drama series, which has been in the works at Amazon for over a year, also paints a reality where southern states have left the Union but takes a very different approach. Titled Black America, the drama hails from top feature producer Will Packer (Ride Along, Think Like A Man franchises, Straight Outta Compton) and Peabody-winning The Boondocks creator and Black Jesus co-creator Aaron McGruder. It envisions an alternate history where newly freed African Americans have secured the Southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama post-Reconstruction as reparations for slavery, and with that land, the freedom to shape their own destiny. The sovereign nation they formed, New Colonia, has had a tumultuous and sometimes violent relationship with its looming “Big Neighbor,” both ally and foe, the United States. The past 150 years have been witness to military incursions, assassinations, regime change, coups, etc. Today, after two decades of peace with the U.S. and unprecedented growth, an ascendant New Colonia joins the ranks of major industrialized nations on the world stage as America slides into rapid decline. Inexorably tied together, the fate of two nations, indivisible, hangs in the balance…
As for the tone of the hourlong series, it’s “a drama, but it wouldn’t be Aaron McGruder without traces of his trademark sardonic wit,” Packer said.
Black America creates the kind of utopia that has been on the minds of generations of black Americans for whom the series may have a sense of wish-fulfillment.
“It was something that was personally intriguing for me as a black American,” Packer said. “You would be hard pressed to find many black Americans who have not thought about the concept of reparation, what would happen if reparations were actually given. As a content creator, the fact that that is something that has been discussed thoroughly throughout various demographics of people in this country but yet never been explored to my knowledge in any real way in long-form content, I thought it was a tremendous opportunity to delve into the story, to do it right.”…
He declined to comment directly on HBO’s Confederate, which Benioff and Weiss will be writing with Malcolm and Nichelle Tramble Spellman, out of respect to its creators because the series has not been made yet. On a personal level, “the fact that there is the contemplation of contemporary slavery makes it something that I would not be a part of producing nor consuming,” he said. “Slavery is far too real and far too painful, and we still see the manifestations of it today as a country for me to ever view that as a form of entertainment.”…
Apart from entertainment options, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Trentrunner
Fuck BJ ads that autoplay audio.
That is all.
Major Major Major Major
Now THAT I’ll watch!
@Trentrunner: use an ad blocker.
Amaranthine RBG
It’s an interesting concept but I don’t see how a show produced primarily by African Americans will be able to address the issue in a sensitive and balanced fashion.
jl
Sounds like an interesting idea. If the remaining part of the USA changes its name to TrumplandUS, that will be a hoot.
Edit “Doesn’t TrumplandUS have the best asphalt? The best asphalt in the world, believe me. The White House was a dump. We chopped and sent to that other place down South, where they are having problems, and they can use it for something. Big problems, believe me. I talked with their guy this morning. He loves me. He thinks they’re only gonna do 4 this year. Big problems. Believe me.”
And I got no autoplay on this blog when I open it up.
For that lack of service from this (supposedly) full service blog, I will throw in a bag of old beach towels I found this weekend for Cole’s new beach house.
lamh36
I recall reading about this last year. I’m betting the HBO crew heard of this and decided to come up with their own thing, and then decided to try to pre-empt Amazon but they completely fuq-ed up the PR roll out, and they underestimated or just outright ignored the long complaint about diversity from the GoT showrunners..
Amazon has had over a year to get it right, but I’m sure they learned a bit from the disaster that was HBO Confederate roll out.
lamh36
smh…annnnnd the Boys Scout…says “who dis”…
Major Major Major Major
@lamh36: well of course he made that up, it was classic bullshit bluster.
Steeplejack
@Amaranthine RBG:
Ha! Well played.
Mary G
I’ve never gotten an autoplay ad and as far as I know I don’t have an ad blocker. There used to be a video of Larry King talking to a blonde in the right sidebar, but it had no sound, so it didn’t bug.
dmsilev
@lamh36:
We need to boil this down to a keyboard macro, or perhaps a single emoji. Just to save time.
lamh36
Ok…you know what…someone make this happen…
Tituss Burgess Sings “Poor Unfortunate Souls” From “The Little Mermaid”: http://www.vulture.com/2017/05/see-tituss-burgess-sing-poor-unfortunate-souls.html
MomSense
Now this is a show I would watch.
TenguPhule
@Amaranthine RBG:
I will presume sarcasm here.
TenguPhule
@dmsilev:
I think monkey’s flinging poop works better as a GIF.
Just saying.
Major Major Major Major
@Steeplejack: @TenguPhule: I dunno, given the source…
Iowa Old Lady
@lamh36: Hee. I’ll bet they’re sorry they invited the fool.
That show sounds really interesting.
lamh36
This will surprise NO ONE!!!
This is why the KKKlebler Elf won’t resign…he’s got things to do…BASTARD!
eclare
That does sound interesting.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt here.
TenguPhule
@lamh36:
Make it stop.
Just please make it all stop already.
Schlemazel
@Major Major Major Major:
I use an ad blocker & I also blackholed ora.tv and I still get video of the cryptkeeper interviewing some woman and another of Jackass Ventura from “The Command Center”. the only good thing is no sound
Major Major Major Major
@Schlemazel: you have to specifically block the enclosing div with some blockers.
lamh36
@lamh36: This is why the KKKleebler Elf won’t resign…he needs the power of the DOJ to roll back all “dem there” Civil Rights laws…
lgerard
@lamh36:
Maybe he is confusing it with the reception of his speech to the CIA
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@Mary G:
Shhh! Ssshhh- oh, crap. Now you’ve gone and woken him up.
Felonius Monk
@lamh36:
Trump is too clueless for this to be his idea. I see the fingerprints of the KKKeebler Elf & Racist Garden Gnome all over this.
Schlemazel
@Major Major Major Major:
Thats a new one to me, I have no idea what that means.
Schlemazel
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
the cryptkeeper never sleeps
eclare
@Felonius Monk: Agreed.
Mnemosyne
I’m slightly confused by the premise. So the assumption is that Reconstruction was still a failure and the rest of American history proceeds as normal, except for this bit of land that was somehow allowed to secede even though the US had just fought a huge, divisive battle over that exact question?
I’m gonna need to see a Story Bible on this.
mike in dc
@lamh36:
Just put on the brown shirts and white hoods and remove all pretense already. Christ.
Hal
@lamh36: Damn. The Onion nailed this one a week ago.
http://www.theonion.com/amp/56489
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@mike in dc: Totally ignorant and sincere (and likely stupid) question: did they wear brown shirts under the white hoods, or are you being figurative? What did/do Klan f*ckers wear under the sheets? I’m at work and seriously don’t want to google “KKK uniform” or the like.
Baud
@lamh36:
Hillary said “super predators” once. #NoDifference
MomSense
An intern leaked a recording of Kushner to Wired. Holy crap, he’s 40 years and some dementia away from sounding like his FIL.
lamh36
@Mnemosyne: really… seems simple and intriguing enough for me…
Freed slaves given the Southern states as reparations. Those states become a new country within US, called New Colonia…the show is about 150 after those reparations and the interaction between Big US and New Colonia…
Doesn’t seem that confusing to me? Certainly LESS confusing than the mess that was the synopsis for Confederate
Yarrow
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: Brown shirts = Nazis. White hoods = Klan. I think.
Mike J
@dmsilev:
I was going to suggest ?, but it turns out it’s a fist, not a wanking symbol as I first thought.
Major Major Major Major
@Yarrow: we should just get them all some red shirts.
Schlemazel
I have never been much of a fan of the alternative-present fiction. I know it is my fault but I generally can’t suspend disbelief. The US would not have survived had the traitors won the Civil War, it would have suffered through 100 years of bloody warfare as every acre of the West was fought for. An all black colony would be worse off than Haiti as white robbed, raped and ravaged their way across it, making what we did to the native Americans look benevolent. I just can’t see any other outcome to those two scenarios and so I can’t get into the stories. I know it is me that is the issue because I have no problem with Sci-Fi in a fictional universe.
What is Caesar had machine guns? Hitler had developed atomic weapons? The American Revolution had failed? Interesting arguments but I just can’t bring myself to see Hollywood’s idea of the outcome.
lamh36
@lamh36: Tell me this isn’t just KKKleebler Elf getting back at “that King woman”…
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
Now this sounds really interesting. I think the possibilities for this universe’s history are really cool especially in regard to a cold war between the US and the SU (assuming it hasn’t been butterflied away). I’m sure either superpower would want a puppet in New Colonia; the SU would want a foothold in North America I’m sure.
Fair Economist
@Mnemosyne: The premise, I assume, is that Reconstruction consisted of giving the slaves compensation for slavery in the form of their own country. It’s actually not nuts as there were some proposals at the time to give the freed slaves large regions and even entire states to be under their own governments.
NotMax
@mike in dc
After Labor Day, switch over to ecru so as not to be gauche.
eclare
@lamh36: Or the scary woman Senator who rushed him and made him nervous.
Mnemosyne
@Hal:
It’s Catholics next.
My fellow Catholics forget at their peril that we’re towards the bottom of the list, but we’re still on the list.
Yarrow
@MomSense: In those remarks he made after his testimony in front of one of the committees he came across about as substantial as a piece of tissue paper in a rain storm. Voice quavering, nervous mannerisms, quaking body language. He looked as if he could be knocked over be someone sneezing half a mile away. There is no there there.
MomSense
@Yarrow:
He speaks in power pointese. It’s horrible.
Gravenstone
@Major Major Major Major: Exactly. Occam’s Razor suggests assholery.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@Schlemazel:
I have the same issue. Call it “near-future” with no discernible technological difference from the present and I’m fine with it, but otherwise you’re requiring most or all of the historical personages and socio-cultural groups to act out of character based on some difference in events. Same issue with fictionalized history, à la Elizabeth: I know enough of the history and personalities of those real people to be unable to suppress my “hey, that’s not true!” reaction. My fault, no doubt.
schrodingers_cat
@Schlemazel: I am with you. I find all these alternate histories and SF dsytopias to be derivative and depressing.
Yarrow
@MomSense: Sounds awful. He’s a fake White House adviser. There is nothing to him. No experience. No intelligence. No training. No charisma. Nothing.
schrodingers_cat
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: I had the same problem with Indian Summers on PBS. And the younger Indian actors seemed totally implausible.
Major Major Major Major
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: wow, you must hate Doctor Who!
Trentrunner
@Major Major Major Major: No.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@Major Major Major Major:
And brown pants.
Fair Economist
@Schlemazel: Well, the idea with New Colonia is that individual whites wouldn’t have been able to wreak havoc, because the Colonians would have had their own government, police, etc. Of course there would have been trouble if the US government decided to create some, but I’m willing to accept the premise that the US government would at least have been decent enough not to re-colonize.
I read a few blurbs and the premise includes New Colonia going through about a century of internal trouble, much as many African ex-colonies have had, but that New Colonia eventually got its act together and is now supposed to doing well. It sounds like they’re being fairly serious about the alternate history in terms of both good and bad things that could have happened from the change.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@Major Major Major Major: I’ve never seen more than a minute or two of it. No aversion to trying it – I just don’t watch much TV, other than sports.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Schlemazel:
Honestly, the US probably would have been fine if the CSA won. The CSA would have likely collapsed within 50 years
Mnemosyne
@lamh36:
That’s the ahistorical part, for me. The United States just fought a huge, costly, painful war over whether or not states should be allowed to leave the Union, but when the Black states want to leave, they’re just like, “Okay, see ya later”?
I assume the writers are thinking of the sad history of Oklahoma, which was well on its way to becoming a majority Black state until racist assholes broke it up, but they were still remaining a state, not breaking off into their own country.
And as far as having all the Black people move into one area and told they could be an independent nation, well, that’s what American Indians were told, too.
Major Major Major Major
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: oh, lots of traveling back in time to meet person x…
@Trentrunner: ok.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
I would love to know how exactly the borders were enforced.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
By “fine,” I’m assuming you mean “fine, except for the millions of people who would have continued to suffer and die during those 50 or so years”? Soviet Russia’s and China’s experiments in collectivization and cultural revolution come to mind.
Schlemazel
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: @schrodingers_cat:
Thats good to know, I thought it was just me
Ajabu
@lamh36:
Well, why else would they have needed all those HWCUs we see everywhere.
Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc…
Not to mention “Liberty” University and other similar institutions.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
First discovery of exploitable resources on their land and it would be lynching time.
Baud
@Mnemosyne: I don’t see how the U.S. gives New Colonia control of the Mississippi.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Please note exhibit A: Somalia, for what happens when government collapses.
Or the African failed state of your choice.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Do Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama have a lot of natural resources? Is it viable that those three states form a world power while the remaining 47 fall to shit? I’ll have to watch to see if it grabs and isn’t reductionist. Maybe it’ll be great.
Mnemosyne
@Fair Economist:
Hmm. Well, maybe. Though most of those schemes involved moving Black people out of the US entirely.
It still seems a little odd to me because there’s a reason it never happened in the first place (i.e. wanting to keep the Union together after fighting a whole war over that question), but I guess we’ll wait and see how it turns out.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Oil, fish, and timber? Empires have been built on less.
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: Time travel is the laziest trope evah.
TenguPhule
@Schlemazel:
We might all be better off considering the alternative.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat:
Reincarnation in another world with present day memories retained would like a moment of your time.
BlueDWarrior
@Mnemosyne: That’s generally my policy with alt-history stories. You have to accept the premise on face value for it to even work in the first place, so you might as well see if it can internally justify itself and execute on said premise before you say anything else.
Mnemosyne
@Baud:
That, too. I assume the writers are thinking of those as traditionally “Black” states, but I do wonder how they work around that whole issue. The Mississippi is still a major transportation corridor for goods to this day, and it was far more important in the 1860s.
There’s a reason the Native Americans got shoved into shitholes like the Dakotas that didn’t have any resources to speak of (at least not until oil came along).
Amaranthine RBG
@TenguPhule:
Also, McGruder is a 9/11 truther and his attitudes towards the trans community are, at best, problematic.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
@lamh36:
The storyline is reminiscent of
Terry Bisson’s Fire On The Mountain.
Harriet Tubman and John Brown lead an army of escaped slaves who set up their own nation in the Appalachians.
It has been a while since I read it.
Fair Economist
@Mnemosyne: There were a lot of segregationists at the time who thought that blacks and whites couldn’t live together as equals (and the later history of Jim Crow and such shows they weren’t entirely wrong.) There had long been an idea of sending the freed slaves back to Africa, but by the time of the Civil War it was pretty obvious how insanely unworkable and cruel that would be, and so a lot of people thought the black should have their own areas/states/countries instead. It’s not that the black states would have wanted to leave, but more that they would be kicked out. Yes, it requires that the US leave them alone afterwards which it wasn’t very good at with the Native Americans but I think it’s at least plausible that a horror about re-creating slavery might be enough to keep the US on (relatively) good behavior. Also, due to a vastly larger population, New Colonia would have been a much more substantial opponent than the Native Americans, and it would have had clearer boundaries.
lamh36
@Baud: @TenguPhule:
See already, this premise is more intriguing than that of Confederate…the South is heavily populated by African Americans anyway, and I read an article last year I believe that said more AA were moving South, in part thanks to the large AA populations, and family history and experiences.
Also too, It’s a more intriguing premise than having slavery continued for 150+ years…
schrodingers_cat
@TenguPhule: Can you elaborate, I don’t think I am catching your drift.
Mnemosyne
@BlueDWarrior:
Now that Fair Economist reminded me of that other bit of history about plans to carve out a new country for freed slaves as reparations, it makes more sense. Not much (see Baud’s comment about control of the country’s major waterway), but a little more.
Schlemazel
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
had they continued to sell cotton money would not have been a problem. There were bastards that took slaves to California and made them mine for gold so there would have been no limits on products. That would have led to endless battles all over the West like Bloody Kansas and it would have continued. The only thing that would have brought it to an end would be the inevitable moment when there were more slaves than armed masters and all hell broke loose. the US would be a third world country and a pariah.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: Yeah. It not have been fun for anyone, even the aristocrats after a certain point. At minimum you’re looking at numerous revolts and revolutions, both slave and poor white as the southern economy goes to shit around the 1880s thanks to the boil weavel (and the British Raj) or so and the central government is unable to make internal improvements because of its constitution.
lamh36
TenguPhule
Judging by past performance, we’re attacking North Korea soon.
I suspect the bombs start dropping before Christmas.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: eh, doctor who’s been doing it since 11/22/63, it gets a pass.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Schlemazel:
I’m assuming a scenario with CSA somehow becoming independent. The US would likely be fine while not exactly the power it was even as early as the late 19th century, while the CSA declines into a banana republic until it collapses due to its own internal contradictions and structural problems. I would imagine that anti-Yankee culture would prevent serious industrialization
Mike J
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: How about good soil and the introduction of machines to replace stolen human labor?
Baud
@lamh36: It was a rhetorical question.
Mnemosyne
@lamh36:
Fair Economist is starting to talk me into it, but Baud has a good point about control of the Mississippi.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat:
Its another trope. And if you thought time travel was an overly abused trope….
Fair Economist
I think the reason large-scale separation of blacks and whites wasn’t tried was mostly that although it’s not quite as insane as sending them back to Africa, ethnically cleansing multiple states is still pretty insane.
I agree – no way the US would have let them have the Mississippi. One bank – maybe. New Orleans? No.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
I still think the CSA could become a dictatorship, possibly with Nathan Bedford Forrest at the helm.
schrodingers_cat
@TenguPhule: I find the reincarnation sagas pretty boring too.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
That whole border problem would have been fatal to both in time.
JPL
Once again Luckovich nails it
https://cmgajcluckovich.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/lk080217_color.jpg
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Not enough manpower, bad terrain for enforcing order and a culture of “murder is the best solution” would make that difficult at best.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
describing Robert Meuller’s latest hire, one Mr Greg Andres
also, too…
asset forfeiture, as in ill-gotten gains from say, the sale of a white elephant mega-McMansion at a ridiculously inflated price with knowledge of money laundering? vs the Jefferson Beauregard Sessions kind?
Steeplejack
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
And jazz music.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: my scientist friends seem to enjoy Primer as a “realistic” time travel movie.
BlueDWarrior
@Fair Economist: Hrm, if you had asked me to write a one-page feeler for a studio about a series like this, I would have gone with “Several majority black small cities along major rivers, acting as analogues to already established river-port cities.”
Like Baton Rouge maybe becomes overwhelmingly-Black and the LA capital is placed at Alexandria in response, maybe another city near Memphis and St. Louis. But these cities would be mostly along the southern Mississippi and the Ohio-Miss./Missouri-Miss. junctions
Lurking Canadian
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Definitely sounds like a witch hunt. Yep. Nothing to see at all. Just Democratic sore losers.
rikyrah
@lamh36:
and this is why the KKKEEBLER ELF WILL NEVER RESIGN
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
Even worse, I think the USA-CSA relationship could be analogous to North and South Korea. A failed state on its doorstep would be a major headache not to mention existential threat to the Union. You might see some Confederate border states trying seek readmittance to the Union.
Something that might happen would be the US abandoning it’s taboo on a large standing army to defend the border from an independent CSA.
rikyrah
Chelsea ClintonVerified account @ChelseaClinton
Chelsea Clinton Retweeted Peter Alexander
Thank you to all the White House ushers, butlers, maids, chefs, florists, gardeners, plumbers, engineers & curators for all you do every day
debbie
@Schlemazel:
Depends on the writing. Philip Roth had Charles Linbergh defeating FDR. E.L. Doctorow rewrote Sherman’s March. I knew neither had actually happened, but the alternate versions were no less interesting than the facts.
Immanentize
@Mnemosyne: not Oklahoma — the idea of 40 acres and a mule was General Sherman’s idea. And when the union looked at this, they actually imagined a new black state from South Carolina to the Florida coast which would include the barrier islands and coastal lands. Of course, I think Ft Sumpter was involved. President Johnson vetoed the bill that wld have awarded ex slaves such reparations. So it could have happened….
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
But getting back to New Colonia, I have hard time believing that the North, while nowhere near as racist as the South was, was still pretty bad, wouldn’t try to puppet NC. I can’t imagine New Colonia being much more, at least at first, than an unstable banana republic (think Mexico or Haiti) that maybe becomes stable after much time.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: More fundamental: Would they have their own currency? How would they back it? Military forces? How would they arm them, from where?
The whole concept falls apart as an independent entity if you think about the fundamentals.
Amir Khalid
The Girl is now rocking a D’Addario khaki woven-nylon strap with Fender strap locks. Now I can play standing up! Still working on the rest of the major chords.
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule:
I guarantee this is true about a good amount of the fiction you like. The most oddly coherent show I can think of is futurama.
lamh36
lamh36
MomSense
@Amir Khalid:
Almost time to put our set list together!
glory b
Unfortunately, this does suck, Sessiosns’s “Cvil Rights” Division will start investigating and suing universities over affirmative action programs on the grounds they discriminate against white people.
They are soliciting resumes for attorneys who will work under the political appointees, not the career attorneys. As per joy Reid subbing for Rachel Maddow, it will be in tomorrow’s NYT.
Schlemazel
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
but the two would never be separated and bloody kansas would happen over and over. The traitors would have had plenty of economic might to start with, more than enough to compete with the US
@TenguPhule:
exactly
Baud
@lamh36: Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?
Brachiator
@Schlemazel:
Coming late to the thread. Sorry I missed the fun. I was talking about the proposed HBO series with a friend over lunch. I would watch both of these shows in a heartbeat.
Funny, there are a ton of alternative history novels and stories, some good, some bad. Oddly enough, one person I know acknowledged all the many alternative history novels, but still opposed a Confederate series because tv is more popular and would be seen by more people. This person felt that society needs to be protected from some bad ideas. I replied, it’s too late. Trump is already president.
And hell, we need more diverse utopias and dystopias. It seems like a no brainer.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
I read romance for the humor and the plot, not the realism.
Fair Economist
@BlueDWarrior: Yeah, putting certain areas under black rule would have been doable while entire US states would not have been, even if the Radical Republicans had tried.
@TenguPhule: Well, if the blacks had been given control and ownership of entire states (or even regions) they’d have had the resources to arm themselves. Currencies were gold-based at the time so that would not have been much of an issue.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@TenguPhule: Well, the Union would presumably help protect them. New Colonia would probably become more important when the World Wars and the Cold War happen. Now that I think about it, it would be in the United States’ best interests to maintain stability in New Colonia by either nationbuilding or sending in the Marines like it has OTL.
Schlemazel
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
But there wasn’t A boarder so there would not be a line to defend, the bastards were spread across the country so more like Palestine today than the Koreas.
rikyrah
@reesetheone1
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Replying to @ReaganGomez
Free college won’t matter if you can’t get accepted.
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: right, so why should this be held to a higher standard?
TenguPhule
@Fair Economist:
With what gold reserves? It took decades for American dollars to become a player in the currency world, Confederate Script quickly became a joke. And who’d be willing to let military weapons through the borders to the blahs? Especially once white people started getting killed by them?
Fair Economist
@Immanentize:
I didn’t realize it actually got to a bill on the President’s desk. If only Lincoln had still been President…
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
Because there’s not enough bodice ripping to distract us from the obvious holes in the background.
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: you don’t know that.
ETA: besides, there might be enough of whatever non-you people look for to distract *them*.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Why? What benefit would it have had to the Union to arm and prop up their neighbor when it would be far easier and more profitable to make them a little version of Pre-Castro Cuba? Remember, this is back when the first robber barons were making rules.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
Sent you an email.
Immanentize
@MomSense: one song must be Too Many Creeps by the Bush Tetras.
Major Major Major Major
One of my friends has been bothered lately that there don’t seem to be any farms in Westeros.
Fair Economist
@TenguPhule: Even the Native Americans managed to get guns, and their resources were just a tiny sliver of what freed slaves with a state would have had. Would US whites have blown a fuse when white criminals got convicted and punished by black juries and judges in said states? Well, maybe, but for alternate history purposes I’m willing to spot them that.
Immanentize
@Fair Economist: Or.Grant. He would have signed in a nano second.
MomSense
@Immanentize:
Perfect!
Mnemosyne
@Immanentize:
Right, but that sounds like they were contemplating a majority-Black state that would be part of the Union, not a whole separate country.
I think it’s the “independent country that lasts for over 150 years” part that I’m having a hard time with. Majority Black states that are still part of the Union, no problem, especially since it was tried several times.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Schlemazel: The CSA winning the ACW is unlikely, yes, but not impossible. The South had to either win early and decisively or wear down the North in a long war and hope they would give up in exhaustion. In the second scenario, both would be exhausted, the CSA more so than the Union. In the first, the South would be stronger but would be fundamentally weaker than the North.
The North was always more industrialized than the South and this only became worse as the war went on. The North had better factory production and logistics. It also had a more resillant political system. The CSA had to resort to internal passports and was a police state during the war. It’s also unlikely the South would have significantly industrialized due its culture and constiutional prohibition on internal improvements.
By the 1880s, the CSA would be entering near its final period of decline both because of the boll weevil destroying it’s cotton crop and the India producing more cotton.
No doubt there would have been more proxy wars between the North and South, but I don’t think it would have been able to expand much further than Texas.
Immanentize
@Major Major Major Major: This is similar to my friend’s question: in all these post apacolyptic movies, why is everyone wearing leather when there don’t seem to be any cows?
Immanentize
@MomSense: my estimation of you just soared. ?
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
Great! I’ll check when I get home — I’m having dinner at the fancy IKEA right now.
Brachiator
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Interesting bit of alternative history. People who write stuff like this always ignore or discount the lives of black people in the South. Another generation of slavery. No problem. Had the South “collapsed,” would there have been some magical granting of full civil rights to black people, or worse atrocities?
This is one of the reasons I would welcome both proposed shows, and more.
Miss Bianca
@Major Major Major Major: Yeah, see…I agree with you about this one!
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
It went out and wasn’t rejected so I probably got the address right.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
I see that as the mostly likely possibility. Perhaps America would try to fix its mistakes with NC during the Cold War to better it’s global image. Or just install a puppet dictator like it usually did.
Immanentize
@Mnemosyne: meatballs? Shrimp toast?
eclare
@Mnemosyne: Are you still around? Idris Elba on Seth Meyers tonight.
Mnemosyne
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
I seriously doubt that chattel slavery in the CSA would have survived the turn of the century. It simply would have become economically unsustainable, plus the CSA would have been pariahs in Europe.
If the US had split, that’s where I could see little countries like New Colonia springing up. Neither the CSA nor the Union would have had the strength to prevent it, and I’m sure that Europe would have been thrilled to meddle and destabilize the whole region even more.
Mnemosyne
@Immanentize:
Artichoke chicken with a side of meatballs. Because you have to get meatballs at IKEA.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Brachiator:
To the first? Well, the slave population would have grown post-ACW, creating a greater disparity between white and black populations in the CSA. I’ve mentioned the boll weevel in 1880s destroying the cotton crop and India. The economy would nose drive and white laborers would be pissed off due to not having much work. Slave revolts would become much more common and the confederates would try to violently suppress strikes and revolts. It would ultimately fail. Perhaps small Af-Am republics would spring up all over the Confederacy.
Inventor
One thing to remember that would affect both of these scenarios: The southern states were an economic shithole before the War. Alex de Tocqueville wrote about how lazy white people in the South were vs. the North. Slavery had a corrupting influence on everybody. Almost all labor unskilled and skilled was done by slaves. One of the problems the CSA had with arming was almost every gunsmith was a slave. Many were hired out to factories to make the weapons of war. There are stories of worker sabotage similar to those about Czech workers in Nazi factories in WWII.
A victorious CSA would have been hemmed in as ceding the West to the US would have been an absolute condition. With cotton depleting the soil and the ruling whites entirely dependent on black slaves for everything, the CSA would have dissolved into a morass of poverty and blood. A successful slave rebellion in time would not have been out of the question.
Steeplejack
@Amir Khalid:
Be careful your belt buckle (if any) doesn’t scratch and mar the back of your girl.
Ithink
@lamh36:
What I’m loving & deeply distressed about living in Trump’s America is they’re not even TRY-ing to hide the fact they’re full-on white nationalists anymore. This is distressing being a minority myself but at least I’m always sure of who my enemy is!
Miss Bianca
@Inventor:
Err…the winning side is giving up a vast amount of disputed territory to the losing side? How do ye figure that, laddie?…
Ithink
@lamh36: @? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
From my relatively extensive reading of African-American and indeed American political history in general, I cannot imagine a scenario where those former slaves were granted full civil rights or even partially without an incredible amount of violence & cultural turmoil accompanying it; if the 3/5’s clause had never been instituted @ the Constitutional Convention, thats another story!
Librarian
My problem with alternative history is that many people barely know the real history, so when they watch the alt history, they won’t know, or have difficulty telling, the difference between fact and fiction.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Mnemosyne:
It most certainly wouldn’t have, though not by choice on the Confederate’s parts. The CSA was a state founded on the “legitimacy” of slavery. It was illegal to outlaw slavery according to its constitution. And the South wasn’t going to industrialize. It was practically destined to fail. The US did them a favor by defeating them.
Hell, in that scenario, the Union themselves might try to prop up NC to fuck over the CSA.
Would make for an interesting 20th century. Do you think the Soviet Union would still form?
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Miss Bianca:
Western soil wouldn’t have been very useful for cotton plantations. And a victorious CSA would still be weaker than the USA. California and the Pacific Northwest would still be apart of the Union.
Inventor
@Miss Bianca: The only plausibly negotiated settlement meant that the North no longer wanted to spend resources conquering Confederate states and was willing to negotiate independence for the CSA. Any such plausible treaty would have included for Union states in the west. At most, the CSA would have had New Mexico and Arizona and only then if they held some major piece of Union territory to exchange. No chance that the treaty would allow Maryland, W.V., or Kentucky into an independent CSA.
The CSA would not have to conquer the U.S. in order to win independence just as the U.S. did not conquer Britain to obtain its independence. Ultimately Britain tired of it all and negotiated a peace. The U.S. did not get eastern Canada, even though they claimed it, the CSA would not have gained the west, even though they wanted it.
That’s how I figure it, lassie.
Brachiator
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Or, the South, having won, would make slavery more cruel. You would have had, for example, the forced return of black people who went North to support the Union. The South would have enforceable treaties with the North concerning fugitive slaves and the free travel of white people into the North with their property. The South would have had the right to negotiate for new territory and new slave states and might have expanded their economy. There were some wild plans to invade Mexico or Cuba. There might have been more cooperation with that other large pro slavery country, Brazil.
Meanwhile, having seen all their rhetoric about civil rights collapse, the North would be politically rudderless, and life for black people in the North would suffer. There would also be more intense efforts to make sure that free blacks could never provide any aid to blacks in the South. White women would get the vote, but black males would see more rights taken away, in part as a concession to the South. Later, laws would be passed to make political office and seats on the Supreme Court available only to someone born in the North.
Lots of ways to look at alternative history.
Miss Bianca
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Well, I don’t know. I’m not sure why the two armies were fighting west of the Mississippi if the South weren’t determined to push slavery into the Western Territories. heck, the fight over slavery expanding into the Western Territories was part of the reason for the war. John Brown was conducting raids in Kansas, so there was already slavery there. I don’t think it would have mattered what the soil was like – the South wanted the West, and they wanted it to be slave-holding territory. it was equally poor for grazing enormous herds of cattle, and that didn’t stop the cattle barons (many of whom seem to have migrated from the South, anyway).
Now interestingly….I could see New Colonia located just west of the Mississippi – Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma. A conscious decision being made to place the ex-slaves out among the displaced Native Americans.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Brachiator:
True. But I don’t see the CSA as a viable state. It wouldn’t have lasted more than a few decades, at most. The boll weevel would have decimated the cotton crops in the 1880s/1890s and the textile industry in Britain would have gotten cheaper cotton from India. Ultimately, besides King Cotton, what did the South have going for it? It could not do internal improvements and likely wouldn’t have industrialized to a significant degree. It would have grown unstable and probably have become a failed state. Not to mention being an international pariah.
Fair Economist
@Immanentize:
I’m remembering that one!
Brachiator
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
The boll weevil didn’t enter the South until 1892 and became a larger problem in the 1900s. This is more than a few decades. And who knows, the Confederacy might have expanded to include Oklahoma, parts of Mexico and Cuba, perhaps even Alaska and Hawaii. With Oklahoma and Texas, of course they would have had oil wealth.
So, your seeing the South as not viable is one possibility among many. The idea that there would be successful slave revolts is possible, but it is far more likely that a victorious South would ruthlessly suppress black people, and the North would not be of any assistance. And I don’t think that the North would support the emergence of any African republic emerging on former US territory.
Also, as I noted I think that the lives of black people in the North would suffer after the loss of the Civil War. Former abolitionists would be mocked and the civil rights movement would die.
You are trying to see the South losing the Civil War again, and are discounting the fear and hatred of blacks that even a weakened South would have. You also falsely assume that life for blacks in the North would continue as before.
Of course, we can’t really know for certain. But the post Reconstruction South and Jim Crow laws, and the history of suppression of slave revolts suggest that letting the South leave or not winning the Civil War would still have resulted in a nightmare for black people.
seaboogie
@Yarrow: That reminds me, when is the “Scion” sub-brand of Trump hotels supposed to roll out.?
NotMax
@Immanentize
Everyone clad in leather is why there aren’t any more cows.
Or naugas, for that matter. ;)
JAFD
A couple of points:
First, up until WWII over a third of US exports were raw cotton and (‘semiprocessed’) cotton thread, etc. Carnegie and Vanderbilt could borrow money in Europe to build American infrastructure because European investors knew that, whatever they were repaid with, they could use it to buy cotton for the mills of Manchester or Lille.
Second, to keep this chunk of the world economy going, you needed an ‘agricultural proletariat’, a workforce – slave or ‘free’ – that had no better alternative than planting and weeding (‘chopping’ cotton in the luxuriant weed growth of a Southern summer) and picking the cotton.
At the end of WWII, with herbicides and mechanical pickers and price supports (you’ve seen the famous chart, with the inverse peaks and valleys, of the world price of cotton and the number of US lynchings), this group of farm laborers, with no financial assets and little opportunity to get or appreciate education or nonsagricultural skills, were sent to the big cities to learn urban ways.
But ’twas also the era when opportunity for laborers with only a strong back was closing (tale my ancestors told of sign on Philadelphia dock “Welcome Polacks – “)
Third, ’twas a plank of the Communist Party USA platform in the ’30’s to give Alabama and Missisissippi to the Negroes (look, ‘Negroes’ was the Politically Correct form of speech at that time, I intend no disparagement to anyone). Most Black leaders said “Going to give up the two poorest of the 48 – SURE…”
Oneovdezedaze I’ve gotta get myself a television – I’m told they’re a truly marvelous invention.
Apologies if I’ve offended anyone. Past my bedtime. Back with you in the morn.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Brachiator:
I’ll be first to admit I’m not an expert on Civil War history. What you say may have been possible, given what I do know. The Confederates would have definitely have tried to suppress slave revolts. I just don’t think it would have been successful long term. I don’t see how the CSA would have gotten control of the Alaskan or Hawaii territories. The US would still have had a control of the West coast, unless the CSA won them in a future war.
As for the North, I can see that happening, just not in New England. That region was a hotbed of abolitionist activity and I doubt that would have went away even with a ACW loss.
Uncle Cosmo
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:Turtledove’s Southern Victory schema is a pretty good rebuttal to your scoffing. TL;DR version – McClellan never gets the Confederate order of battle for Antietam & is stomped, whereupon Britain & France recognize the CSA. Parallel to France swinging support to the rebels after Saratoga. (FWIW the conceptually interesting alt-history For Want Of A Nail takes off from Burgoyne winning at Saratoga & then crushing the revolt.)
Mnemosyne
@Uncle Cosmo:
I scoff back at Turtledove — confederacies are politically unstable, and the Confederate government had huge problems getting the member states to pay up for the war.
Even a huge surprise victory early on would not have fixed those inherent political problems with their chosen system of government. I suspect that they would have experienced a similar breakdown as the early US government that forced us to write the Constitution, only they would have had states break off and re-form their own “better” Confederacy until the whole thing collapsed.
It’s not just the system of chattel slavery that was unsustainable — it was the system of government that they chose. I don’t think there’s been any country that’s successfully functioned long-term as a confederacy.
Kayla Rudbek
This sounds like an interesting series. I’d personally love to see both this one and to have some other network/company pick up Eric Flint’s 1812 series (where the divergence point was Sam Houston not getting wounded at Horseshoe Bend in the War of 1812, which eventually winds up in a Black and Native American country forming in Arkansas in 1824)
JAFD
Woke up fretting. Was repeating arguments with RW relatives, four decades ago (Am 67, mayhaps you can cut an old codger a bit of slack…) making point that the cotton of Alabama made the steel mills of Pennsylvania possible (sign read “Welcome Polacks – Coal Mines This Way, Steel Mills That Way”)
(realized that I Cant Use Arrow Keys As Arrows, sorry)
Gotta get bac to sleep
Architeuthis
@Brachiator:
Harry Turtledove’s books didn’t ignore this; it was one of their main focal points. In his version- and the USA and CSA certainly did not peacefully coexist- slavery persisted for another generation or so, but was eventually ended due to the international pariah status it caused; it was replaced with something more akin to Apartheid and similar systems seen in colonial Africa- more acceptable to the international community. Revolts, bombings, sniping, and so forth from African-Americans (and white allies) in the CSA were commonplace, particularly during times of war with the USA, but led to greater atrocities- I’ll leave out further spoilers as it’s a long series. Meanwhile in the USA, a viable Socialist Party developed, constantly at odds with the capitalist Democrats, the Republican party never really getting off the ground. The focus is primarily the three other wars the two nations fought between 1863 and 1945, and cultural issues occurring during those times, though he spends several books on the inter-war period as well. It’s been ages since I read them, but I found most of it to be a rather thoughtful treatment, even if it gets rather obvious by the end.
Note: I’m referring to the series starting with How Few Remain, not the standalone Guns of the South, which is a silly time-travel story I read in high school. Suffice to say his books can be very hit-or-miss, and those are probably his best work (though I enjoyed Ruled, Brittania) but that’s probably the best treatment of the subject I’ve read. Certainly the lengthiest, and not written by a right-winger, which is a plus.