Debating Slavery

My granddaughter is ten. In her classroom, the teacher, well intended, divided the children into two groups to debate the pros and cons of slavery. This was apparently an attempt to bring history to life and to teach children how to structure an argument. My granddaughter, however, objected that there was no pro side to argue in favor of slavery. She had a point. Arguing the pros and cons of slavery or of the Holocaust is not for ten-year-olds. 

These might be topics for adults interested in mental pathologies. The strange ability of some people in the American South to defend slavery and later to defend Jim Crow and the New Jim Crow and today to defend the disenfranchisement of people of color is interesting. The warping of brains needed to defend bigotry probably carries over into other areas. That's why the South can accept a man who assaults women as President and reject global warming no matter what science tells them. The paths of electricity in their brains keep doubling back and flipping around in their heads like stranded fish.