system
A chat on subreddit /r/NoStupidQuestions
human
I recently read Steven king’s novel 11/22/63 in which a white woman in 1963 learns that there will be a black president in 2011. She thinks it is a joke and never really believes it. Though a work of fiction, there is probably truth in it. If someone in the 1960s would be unbelieving at a black president, how much more so in the 1700s when slavery was still alive and well?
gpt
That's fair, but I think someone in the late 1700s as apposed to the 1960s might be *more* believing of a far off Black President, not less.

What made US slavery so much worse than previous instances of human slavery is the degree to which they slaves were dehumanized. Some people like to make the point that African war lords owned slaves and even sold some to Europeans, but those slaves had rights and could own land (they were still slaves and by no means am I saying it was *good*, but it was streets ahead of what happened in the US).

The regular dehumanizing of black slaves justified through racism spiraled out of control making the divide worse and worse, especially since the difference was immediately physically obvious.

So we are comparing two people: 

**- On one hand** we have someone existing at the start of the real push for the increase of slavery (the cotton gin was invented shortly after Washington left office, iirc) who also had public speaking abolitionists like Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin decrying the evil of slavery and opposing the slave owners trying to find any justification they could to get more slaves to increase profits.  
**- And on the other hand** we have someone who lived their whole live in the wake of 100 years of slavery and dehumanization and then another hundred years of segregation and jim crow laws. Someone who has gone their whole life being told blacks were others, seeing society separate them, and being exposed to centuries of racist ideological doctrine and messages meant to justify the continued enslavement of Africans and learning about faux scientific papers "proving" that black people were incapable of normal human functions like the creation of art.

Don't get more wrong, there was tons of racist papers being written before 1776 (David Hume comes to mind), I'm not trying to sell you that racism started in 1795 or whatever, but the increasing slave trade made it far worse in the decades that followed the invention of the cotton gin.

I could go on, but I'll cut it here and just say I think the civil rights era was when people finally started to wake up to the lies and brainwashing laid down into everything that surrounded Black Americans. Someone in that era not having the strength of character to confront themselves and their beliefs wasn't uncommon, which is why I think that person dealing with the cultural effects of what was essentially centuries of propaganda is less likely to believe a black man could become president someday than someone who was only seeing the beginning of those horrors.

edit: grammar