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You're assuming that slavery ended with the Civil War. Not necessarily.

Back in the mid seventies, I worked part-time for Washington State Employment Security (what everyone else calls the Unemployment Office) in Seattle. While I was there, some of those in the office to part in a raid on a sub contractor making coats for Eddie Bauer, which was based at the time in Seattle. There had been rumors of employer misconduct including not paying their taxes, not paying minimum wages, and etc. Both state and federal agencies were involved in the raid.

The next day, all of us heard from those who took part in the raid the broad outline of what had been going on. It was true. They hadn't been paying the minimum wage. Actually, the factory had been in business for over four years and it had never paid its employees anything. Some of the employees (all of them illegal immigrants) had been with the company since it started and all they ever got were promises.

Not only that, the building had been leased, the equipment had been rented, and not one sous was in the cash register. And, of course, no one had any idea where the owners had gone.

The story lasted in the office for months. How could anyone be so stupid as to work for someone else for over four years and never get paid?

What we never realized was that we had an early taste of 21st Century slavery. Today, there are more slaves in the world than at any time in history. Some are sex slaves. The majority are work slaves. Every major city in the U.S. has slaves. For that matter, every large city in the world has slaves.

And, I'm not even speaking about those who live in the shadows. The status of illegals in the US are not so different from the usual slaves in ancient Rome. They work for less than minimum wages. They avoid our usual medical safety nets and they recycle our trash. And, they live every day in fear that they might be caught and returned to their old homes and their old miseries. The system is pervasive that the American black market is larger than the economies of most nations on the globe.

So, to answer your question, what would have happened if Africans had been the same color as Europeans, there still would have been slavery.

Blacks made excellent subjects for slavery because in a white society , they were instantly recognizable as slaves , just as whites slaves would have been in a black society .It is easier administratively when the slaves are obviously different from the non-slaves . It also requires a lesser degree of mental gymnastics to " justify" enslaving people who are obviously very different from ourselves .

The next time you buy a leather coat for an astonishingly good price, ask yourself was slavery involved? The next time you see a small army of people cleaning a Shopping Mall, as yourself if they are getting the minimum wage? The next time someone cleans your house or mows your lawn for a very reasonable price, ask yourself how much of that money goes to the person doing it? The tragedy of slavery today is that those in servitude look like everyone else. And, because they do few people recognize their plight.

And, I'm not even talking about sexual slavery which is ugly beyond belief. What happens in sexual slavery (especially to children) would have turned the stomach of Antebellum slave owners of the South, Like I said earlier, there are more slaves today than any time in human history.

I am just thinking about pre civil war america time.

Putting age and gender aside for a moment, I remember reading a theory along time ago about skin color effecting a persons position in society, regardless of race. The theory indicated the lighter the skin, the higher the status and opportunities. The darker skin was on the other end of the spectrum.

Many things have changed since I read that, but there are still signs of this selection process. Even in cultures that are dark skinned, there is a scale of darkness that is at play in who has more importance, and who is a slave. There appears to be slavery of the darkest by the dark, or lighter pigmented in some other countries.

People respond to different colors & values in different ways. An artist can use specific colors & values to draw out a certain emotional response from the viewers. Light tones tend to reflect a positive/good message, where dark tones communicate something negative/bad.

I wonder if there is some hot wiring in our brains. If you pay attention to this in your own surroundings, AND look at this in other parts of the world, it is an interesting phenomenon to observe.

Perhaps it is a remnant from our origins, to a time we may only have had a grayscale vision. Perhaps, our color vision came through some evolutionary process. I wonder. Of course, some people seem to see things in black and white, without an gradation in between, even today. ;-)

Colors have a huge influence in our lives. Most people never think of the significant effect created by the colors used in advertising, for example. Notice your reactions to light and dark shades. What do you feel? What emotions do they invoke? What does each color symbolize to you? What is the reaction they want to draw out from you.... sure, BUY, but there is more.

This is no justification for slavery. I am still fascinated by this process of determination in humankind. It leads me to a perpetual "Why".

color really was nit the issue for slavery...a large number of those enslaved were enslaved by other black africans...brokered thru arabs (brown ) and then to white owners but there were black ownerrs as well....but it did make it easier mentally to divorece oneself from the realization that the slave is a 'real' human being...since the difference can be pointedly referenced....and there are slaves coing out of africa and asia...latin america etc to this day....and we have wage slaves as well....

I think all of us should paint ourselves blue.

BarbinBend, that is interesting, but then someone would want another shade of blue, an on and on.

amond, I realize that there are many things that effect slavery, including capitalism, and the need to control and have power over others. I only spoke of one very basic tendency of human beings, maybe the first step, an unconscious preferential choice, that perhaps has a superiority aspect to it, the early pecking order.

Color & Slavery today is in part a remnant of all the has gone before, and a financial and power system that values only one thing...profit. How the profit is derive is not part of the equation, it is the only value.

Humans are the slaves of the profit system, and some are less equal than others in the profit slavery system. Some enjoy more of the benefits of productivity than others. Look at job categories from a human value perspective and you can see the skin color evident in who does what, and earns what.

It is my opinion that all we slaves participate in slavery in one way or another through aquiescence to the established systems that value only profit. Competition is the whip, productivity the means to profit.

Peacewithin , I think that the technological , military , and economic superiority of the whites came first and that the social gradations by skin tone in our society followed that . Before European whites gained their military dominance , they were frequently enslaved by Moslem pirates and raiders from North Africa . I have read estimates of as many as 5 million Europeans being put into slavery by Moslems during the roughly 1000 year period between the Hegira and Europe's rise to dominance .

read the dred scott supreme cout case that is a chiler about defing people