> It still took nearly 100 years to abolish slavery, and even to this day, people still equate slavery with prosperity (as implied by that controversial 1612 Project article, for example).

The enslaved people sure as fuck aren't prospering in that situation, so the only way one could possibly equate slavery with economic prosperity is by simply not counting them as people at all.

> Another way to think about it, the South did not embrace slavery because it made them richer; the South embraced slavery because they opposed industrialization... and how hard regular (white) people had to work.

One way to think of slavery is that it's a far point on the continuum between equality and inequality. What they really hated was equality because that necessarily involves taking something away from them, the people who have the most.