Just found out the origin of “grandfathered in”.
What else has a problematic history you didn’t realize until later?
All due respect, but I think that explanation is a cop out (whatever that means). It was a miniscule percentage that owned slaves. The same type as the 0.1% in most third world kleptocracies. Soulless, despicable opportunists. To say that they were doing it to protect themselves is misguided apologetics. They were doing it to enrich themselves.
It’s described in every anti-colonial text. A select and usually tiny number of the existing ruling class or groups chosen to be the ruling class of the colonized people are elevated to the local bourgeoisie to legitimize the colonial regime but also individual opportunists who get elevated to “preferred subjects” and act on behalf of the metropole, won’t be at the wrong end of the colonizer’s gun (at least initially). They also see their special status as a means to gain and control wealth and consolidate power locally even though they as a class will never attain parity with the colonizers.
