I would say they are destroying their chance to join that strong internal economy in favor of controlling the poor one. The North before the Civil War broke out had 80,000 factories, 5 times more than the South, a focus on industrial growth and positive management skills (as opposed to the whip), and valued education, being far more literate than even England. They had more than twice the per capita income, and black Americans there, though smaller in number, were freed and openly contributed, with most states in that region having abolished slavery or promising through legislation before the Constitution was even signed and ratified. Black Americans like Paul Cuff grew his shipping business from Boston during that time, upgrading his his ship three times, ending up with a ten man all black crew. He settled down in a small town and built a school when it didn’t have one. Freedom paid off as it did the mulatto soldier who fought in the Revolutionary War, born mixed race in Vermont, the first state to abolish slavery immediately, in 1777. He finished advance graduate studies and founded a church back home after the war. Examples of positive creativity abound, showing that liberation only breeds success and wealth, only grows and does not shrink or leave the pie the same that but with more people cutting smaller slices. The South after the Civil War hung on to power through repression, believing exploiting cheap sharecropping labor on farms would mean maintaining their white power and wealth. It did. But only for them. And over all Mississippi is still have the per capita income than Boston. They’ve gotten no where, because the whites maintain control still, through the supermajority they’ve always had, their energies turned toward the brutalities of repression and the restriction of others freedom instead of being unleashed on creative uplifting and the freedom of self expression. The gun versus the pen. One kills and delivers fear, the other can delight, draw new pictures of different realities, and line pages with words to inspire. Two nations still, represented by these two different tools as the representation of their foundational beliefs.