Slavery

Highlights from Pacific Standard's coverage of racial inequality and the state of reparations in America.

New research finds that white Americans are more likely to hold unconscious biases against black Americans if their home region was once heavily dependent on slavery.

Communities made up of fugitive slave descendants have been forced from their lands and denied their rights, a situation that may only get worse under newly elected president Jair Bolsonaro.

Stephen E. Maizlish's new book discusses a time much like our own, when radicals in Congress hurled insults while moderates bemoaned a lack of civility.

On the labor issues connected with using inmates as extremely low-paid workers in state and federal prisons.

Este artículo explica los problemas laborales relacionados con el uso de presos como trabajadores extremadamente mal pagados en las prisiones estatales y federales.

Historian Liam Hogan has spent the last six years debunking the Irish slave myth.

Setting the record straight on the abolitionist's 200th birthday.

From pirates to abolitionist dwarves, Marcus Rediker's research tends to unearth radical and oppositional communities.

A portrait of George Washington as slave master.

By minimizing how we talk about slavery, we ignore its profound impact on the development of the American economy.

Widespread sexual exploitation before the Civil War strongly influenced the genetic make-up of essentially all African Americans alive today.

Not the slavery you learned about in high school.

In 'The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry,' Ned and Constance Sublette offer a radical re-interpretation of American history. It’s brutal and uncompromising, and, for better or worse, it’s how we should understand the country.

The racial empathy gap, then and now.

Race is more social than biological.

Could the brutality of slavery still have an effect on the health of African Americans, who continue to live shorter lives, on average, than whites?

A pair of economists seek to reconcile two conflicting schools of thought in order to predict what sort of environments increase incentives for labor coercion.

Two European researchers find a link between county-level slavery in 1860 and economic inequality today.

As part of its reparations demands, the Caribbean Community is seeking money for cultural organizations that examine the history of slavery. Here’s why the U.S. should construct similar institutions to memorialize our peculiar institution.

Human trafficking isn’t a relic of history.

Brutalism on screen—and its moral repercussions.

At its essence, American food began as a cuisine of survival free from the burdens of tradition and elitism. Little has changed.

As you watch 12 Years a Slave recall that the market in humanity really was a market—with dizzying asset price changes, speculative bubbles, and a fear of volatility greater than a fear of civil war.