Lex Fridman: belief

Transcript context

…No. A tiny percentage of people saw that. There’s a notion that’s very common that somehow the white North turned its back on Black people after the war, and it should’ve tried harder during Reconstruction to force the white South to convey full equal rights to Black people. The assumption there is simply flawed. Most white people in the North didn’t believe that… They believed first save the Union, and yes, we’ll need to kill slavery as well. Those are the two things on the list. Check, check, we’ve done those. Full equal rights for Black people is not on their list. That it… And they were not willing to do the things that it would’ve taken to do that, including the white soldiers in uniforms who wanted out of the army after the Confederates surrendered and said, “Well, now we need the army to make the white South do the right thing vis-à-vis Black people.” They would’ve said, “What are you talking about?” “I signed on to do this. We did it. Send us home right now.” I think that’s one of the lessons you learn from human history across the different places where slavery was abolished, is abolishing slavery is not the end of a journey. It’s the beginning of a journey. It’s the beginning.…

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