Comment by intuitionist
16 days ago
It’s racist to break out statistics along what was literally the single most determinative factor for life outcomes in antebellum America?
16 days ago
It’s racist to break out statistics along what was literally the single most determinative factor for life outcomes in antebellum America?
No its racist to claim that literacy rates in the States were the highest in the world.
As long as you ignore all those pesky non-whites.
Unless the original commenters sneak-edited their comment, they included the word "whites" specifically to not ignore the non-whites and point out that universal literacy was not "universal" in the early US.
> > 150 years ago, the average person was illiterate
> Not true in the case of the US, which famously adopted a culture of universal literacy earlier than the rest of the world.
Later on the a small caviet about it being for whites only, but then goes back to ignoring it by saying
> It may or may not be relevant to your point, but at least in the US the idea that the average person was illiterate is ahistorical. They were the best read population in the world 150 years ago, and took some pride in that.
The average person had a 20% chance of being enslaved and illiterate. Of the remaining ~80% there was high rates, but there was absolutely not universal literacy when there were strict laws in place to prevent it.