Alls I have to say to this is wow, thats some insight; unfortunatly its not really true, but before I begin and am labled a biggot son of a slave owner I just need to add that my family was still living in Europe at the time of the civil war, and would not make it to this country until the turn of the 20th century so my realtives had nothing to do with this whole bloody affair (and I am the first person to live in a southern state, having moved to Virgina just this year.)
Ok, history lesson: the civil war ended in the year 1865. At that time America was an afterthought on world politics, and had only recently aquired the present day 48 states by hook or by crook via buyouts and wars. While the South had relied entirely on slave labor to produce its cotton trade, there was the other half of the economy, the free north where the industrial revolution was taking hold. The reason that the South lost the civil war, mainly was due to a lack of resoures, the north simply had more economic might then then the south (which had better military leaders and eaisier war aims.) After the war, despite vast swaths of the south laying in ruin (and thus incapable of being farmed) the country didnt colapse so clearly even back then the US did not have to rely on southern cotton, ergo your claim is BS from the get go, the American economy was running on factories and freeing the slaves did nothing to hurt their growth after the civil war, ergo slave labor was not needed to drive the primary engine of the American economy at that time. When America did finally become a world power, during the early 20th century it was again achived via economic might of the great American factory.
And now on to my pet peeve, with all due respect, why the hell do you need to constantly bring up the civil war and act like it hasnt been over despite the fact it ended allmost 150 years ago; do you have any idea what kind of company you are putting yourself in using that as a crutch? The only other people who use that as a sourse of all their woes are the good ol boys with the confederate flag still hanging on their rusty pick-up trucks! At this point no one you know was alive during that time and all most everyone you know wasnt even alive when people who lived during the civil war were alive. Granted, the 13-15th amendments were never fully followed until the 1960s, but you werent alive to experience that either (and neither were any of your classmates.)
Your arguement about URMs being equally qualified, but still needing special assistance is a circular, illogical arguement. You are either equal, or you are inferior and need extra help in order to achive equality. You cant have your cake and eat it too, pick one! Its high time we changed racial AA to economic AA and focus on the people who truely need the break to get out of poverty.
