Probing the incentives and institutions that kept slavery alive can help us value what freedom means.
Juneteenth marks emancipation, yet debate still rages over how to teach slavery, why it arose and persisted, and what place it holds in America’s self-image.
Two projects set the poles. The New York Times’s “1619 Project” recasts the nation’s origin story, focusing on slavery and discrimination rather than the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Woodson Center’s “1776 Unites” argues that the Revolution’s democratic ideals, imperfectly realized at the founding, launched a long arc of progress, visible from the Civil War through the civil-rights era and beyond.
Historians, sociologists and journalists have shaped much of today’s debate about slavery, but economists deserve a seat at the table too. Our comparative advantage is cutting through complexity to expose the incentives that drive behavior. An economic approach, sometimes uncomfortably clinical, focuses on profitability, capital formation and allocation, and long-run development. These seemingly mercenary measures can illuminate the issue’s profound moral stakes.
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Roland G. Fryer, Jr., a John A. Paulson Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is Professor of Economics at Harvard University, an entrepreneur, and co-founder of Equal Opportunity Ventures.
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