Just found out the origin of "grandfathered in".

The term originated in late nineteenth-century legislation and constitutional amendments passed by a number of U.S. Southern states, which created new requirements for literacy tests, payment of poll taxes, and/or residency and property restrictions to register to vote. States in some cases exempted those whose ancestors (grandfathers) had the right to vote before the American Civil War, or as of a particular date, from such requirements. The intent and effect of such rules was to prevent African-American former slaves and their descendants from voting, but without denying poor and illiterate whites the right to vote. Although these original grandfather clauses were eventually ruled unconstitutional, the terms grandfather clause and grandfather have been adapted to other uses.

What else has a problematic history you didn't realize until later?

  • Tupamaros [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    All due respect, but I think that explanation is a cop out (whatever that means). It was a miniscule percentage that owned slaves. The same type as the 0.1% in most third world kleptocracies. Soulless, despicable opportunists. To say that they were doing it to protect themselves is misguided apologetics. They were doing it to enrich themselves.

      • FloridaBoi [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        It's described in every anti-colonial text. A select and usually tiny number of the existing ruling class or groups chosen to be the ruling class of the colonized people are elevated to the local bourgeoisie to legitimize the colonial regime but also individual opportunists who get elevated to "preferred subjects" and act on behalf of the metropole, won't be at the wrong end of the colonizer's gun (at least initially). They also see their special status as a means to gain and control wealth and consolidate power locally even though they as a class will never attain parity with the colonizers.

          • FloridaBoi [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            I was totally agreeing with you that it is both to varying degrees. So given the material reality and power structures, it's not that surprising that Indigenous people owned African slaves.