This is Just to Say...

He’s actually intelligent, writing-wise. So, not your normal troll. Currently he’s arguing that before the states came in an took away their rights, in colonial VA and NC blacks had upward mobility through the free market.

“Like I said, blacks in pre-revolutionary Virginia (and I’m presuming in all of the other colonies too) were working their way up the social ladder. Sometimes they would have parcels of land on the larger pieces of land they were working, and many times these plots were more productive per acre than the larger plots.
I believe there were some in Virginia and NC that were particularly successful in tobacco, which was also being used as currency, so they were gaining a lot of power:
The point is that the free market allowed black people to start accumulating their own power through wealth, then the state came in and prohibited them from using the means to get power.”

I don’t even know where to go. I’ll start with the fact that the pre-state government of VA (House of Burgesses?) changed the citizenship laws from coming from one’s father to one’s mother, simply so slave-owners didn’t ahve to take responsibility for all the mixed-race illegitimate children they fathered, and they could still profit from their labor. But, I don’t think that’s related. How am I supposed to argue with someone who is using as their prime example a tiny tiny percentage of a larger group’s experience? 

I know this is what smart people who have dumb (unpopular) views on things often do. Any guidance?