So who do we blame racism on?

[BlindBoo]

Great points. The skills that blacks learned as slaves allowed them to gain productive employment almost immediately after they were freed. Many were actually employed and paid by their previous owners.

A short period that was. Followed by the post Reconstruction, 1877 and on, violence and a return to power of the former slave holding class. Jim crow laws and tenant farming as they resorted to their version of the Northern model, the "Company Store". Racism persisted, but not quite as bad a before.