Critics Misinterpreted 'Quality' of Slaves

The New York Times 1619 Project focused almost exclusively on demonstrating the link between slavery and white supremacy today. Historically, however, the “legacy of slavery” almost always related to how contemporary black behaviors were linked to the slave past. This essay will identify the misrepresentation of the behaviors of enslaved blacks by those who overstated the harshness of their treatment and its adverse ramifications on assessments of black Americans after emancipation.
One stream of thought suggested by Matthew Desmond's essay was that slavery was a vicious system of exploitation that previewed the dynamics of early US capitalism.