This was such a great Q&A with @CC_Rosenthal about an area of tension and at times vicious disagreement amongst economists and economic historians— particularly NHC scholars — that the #1619Project perhaps naively stepped right into. economic-historian.com/2020/08/slaver…
I used to be perplexed when people would come in my timeline arguing that slavery *cannot* of been foundational to US economy because free labor systems could have been just as or more profitable. I didn’t get this, as my interest is what DID happen, not what could’ve happened. 
I also didn’t understand that economists and economic historians were using different vocabulary and different understandings and I learned that the hard way.
And this, that in a country built on chattel slavery, the goal can’t just be economic growth but must be economic justice, how power dynamics negate the ability for markets to be truly free, I guess I felt and understood intrinsically even as economists dismissed and attacked.
Last, and this is the damn killer, we know in this racialized “free” market, Black people pay higher for nearly all consumer goods/services, from groceries,loans, insurance to housing, but I’d never thought abt that this began w Black people paying over market for *themselves.*
There can be no free markets in a country that built economies literally upon people being unfree, bought and traded like commodities and unable to access open free markets even in purchasing their own freedom.
