Recently on CNN, fitness personality Jillian Michaels said, “Do you realize that only less than 2 percent of white Americans owned slaves? Do you realize that slavery is thousands of years old? Do you know who the first race to try to end slavery? She then pivoted to say that slavery involved “more than just Black people.”
Michaels’ statement at best, is misleading and, at worst, minimizes the specific historical reality of African-American enslavement. Hence, Michaels’ framing leaves out a critical truth that in the very heart of the slaveholding South, the numbers tell a far different story.
The Numbers Jillian Michaels Left Out
In 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, over 20 percent of White households in the South owned enslaved Black people.
“1% of white southern families owned 200 or more human beings, but in states of the Confederacy, at least 20% owned at least one, and in MS and SC ran as high as fifty percent,” according to Duke professor William Sandy Darity.
In places like Mississippi and South Carolina, nearly half of all White families owned enslaved people. This wasn’t just social dominance — it was white economic power. Cotton picked by Black enslaved hands made up nearly 60% of America’s exports on the eve of the Civil War, driving the nation’s growth and enriching the white Southern population.
Nationally, the percentage of all white people who owned slaves was smaller, yes. But to hide behind that number is to ignore the ways slavery shaped the entire American economy and entrenched white supremacy, enriching millions who never personally “held title” to another human being. Cotton, sugar, and tobacco profits fueled by Black enslaved labor lined the pockets of bankers, merchants, and industrialists from Boston to London.
And when we talk about American chattel slavery, we’re talking about the enslavement of Africans and their Black descendants. In 1860, about 87 percent of all Black people in America were enslaved. Any other group does not match that staggering figure in the United States’ history of slavery.
President Donald Trump and voices like Jillian Michaels are trying to minimize Black history in America. Support The Black Wall Street Times so we can keep defending history with facts, context, and courage.
When Minimization Becomes Historical Revisionism
Jillian Michaels tried to shrink the entirety of Black America’s experience into the false narrative that fewer than 2% of white people owned Black human beings.
While other groups experienced oppression and unfree labor, African Americans endured centuries-long, race-based system woven into the nation’s laws, culture, and economy — a reality Michaels left out, whether by omission or ignorance.
Statements like Michaels’ aren’t harmless slips. They feed into a long tradition of historical revisionism designed to dilute White culpability and blur the unique horrors of Black enslavement, which is what President Donald Trump is seeking to do to the Smithsonian Museum and American history.
“We want the museums to talk about the history of our country in a fair manner, not in a woke manner or in a racist manner, which is what many of them are doing,” President Donald Trump said in the Oval Office of the White House in a press gathering on Wednesday.
Michaels and Trump need to understand that telling America’s story is not about stoking white guilt; it’s about confronting the truth.
The legacy of slavery should not be an abstract debate. It’s the reason racial inequities in wealth, housing, education, and criminal justice persist to this day. We can’t address the consequences if we distort the cause.
History deserves honesty, not minimization. When public figures use national platforms like CNN or museums to get the facts wrong, intentionally or not, they cause real harm to the Black community.
President Donald Trump and voices like Jillian Michaels are trying to minimize Black history in America. Support The Black Wall Street Times so we can keep defending history with facts, context, and courage.