re: #170 Blind Frog Belly White

Sure, but we’re talking about slavery in the USA.

The sugar and rum trade was still part of American commerce. The only reason I can see that hereditary white slavery for Irish Catholics never got a foot hold in America is that it was simply too easy for a white slave to vanish and go to another colony where he or she would not be known. Indeed, white indentured servants did it all the time, and numerous newspaper and broadside prints still exist of wanted ads for indentured runaways (who in some ways had it worse then chattel slaves, since the “master” had little reason to actually keep them alive. Slaves were a long term investment. Servants…well, who cares? Lots of horrifying forensic evidence coming out of colonial Jamestown on malnutritian, beatings and murder of indentured youths.)

In any event, the (white)descendents of Irish slaves* still living on Barbados suffer from severe inbreeding, mental illness and poverty and are largely excluded from the rest of the island society.

*Almost all of the people on Barbados have some degree of Irish ancestry at this point.