This is an awesome exchange from the ST episode "Bread And Circuses"

Roddenberry extrapolates the mainstreaming and institutionalization of slavery, but, the best part - he nails what is to be the template for a standard internet flamewar almost 30 years before they were real:

KIRK: But if there have been slaves for over 2,000 years, hasn't there always been discontent, runaways?
FLAVIUS: Long ago there were rebellions, but they were suppressed. And with each century, the slaves acquired more rights under the law. They received rights to medicine, the right to government payments in their old age, and they slowly learned to be content.
SPOCK: Even more fascinating. Slavery evolving into an institution with guaranteed medical payments, old-age pensions.
MCCOY: Quite logical, I'd say, Mister Spock. Just as it's logical that twentieth-century Rome would use television to show its gladiator contests or name a new car the Jupiter Eight.
SPOCK: Doctor, if I were able to show emotion, your new infatuation with that term would begin to annoy me.
MCCOY: What term? Logic? Medical men are trained in logic, Mister Spock.
SPOCK: Really, Doctor, I had no idea they were trained. Watching you, I assumed it was trial and error.
FLAVIUS: Are they enemies, Captain?

I can't wait until we've finally erased any evidence that slavery ever existed in the United States, that way we can ensure it will never happen again.

Is there a +1 sarcasm mod?

Didn't Harry Turtledove do a multi-book alternative history series on this subject?

The concept is not exactly new in the annals of alternative history fiction.

I would greatly enjoy a TV adaptation of Turtledove's 'Guns of the South.' Definitely some room for interpretation on why the south still lost even with time travelling help.

I don't see the issue with this. Do people have the same issues with Man in the High Castle? I don't remember any outrage about Germany and Japan taking over the U.S.. Alternative history is fun. I say let's see what it turns into.

Man in the High Castle is an amazing show. The difference is it is history that can be explored in uniformly accepted values in Western culture. We know who the bad guys were. The subplots (like of euthanasia) are instances we can all agree are bad but may have persisted.

The difference is that this is divisive and antagonistic against a large swath of America and considering that Brazil was the last Western country to outlaw slavery in 1888 it is very hard to see it really carrying forward into the 20th or 21st century.

it was a better short story

I think the biggest problem this thing is going to face is underestimating just how much slavery as a modern institution would change the world - the industrial revolution started in Britain and was driven in large part by the desire to mechanise and lower costs, but with slavery there is little need to innovate to save money. Much as the Greeks had the knowledge to develop steam power, but used it solely for entertainment as they had slaves to do all the work that steam engines would do later, the US is unlikely to have the impetus to develop it's industrial economy if it's wealth is in the land and the slaves. So the Second Industrial Revolution is likely to look very very different.

In my above point, where the last Western nation abolished it in 1888, it is plausible that it would have delayed historic events for a few decades. The case could even be made that the Civil Rights era of the 1960s in the Southern States could have taken til the current year to become forefront. Setting the Civil Rights struggle in modern day would be intriguing.

But that's not what this is going to be (intriguing). If you just read the end of that vanity fair article, to the point where the interviewee was left speechless by the other's tirade, it's clear this is going to be written to spew as much anti-white hate as the platform will allow.

You can't really 'delay' historical events. It's not a set path we walk at whatever pace, it's a series of things that just happen one after the other based on a bunch of things. There's no way that history would be the same, just later, if slavery continued into the modern era in a country (and that's a big question, too, Brazil was a under huge pressure that just wouldn't be there anymore, so it's unlikely to have given up slavery).

Counterfactual history can be interesting, but I think this show is going to be far too narrow to really explore it. I think it's going to be more like "Hey, everything's the same, but slavery" rather than getting into the way race-based chattel slavery would change the economics and innovation and science and everything else. It's going to, I suspect, both put a huge amount of emphasis on how slavery changes people (identity issues, etc) but miss entirely the way slavery changes industry and economics. And that's before we even get into how having race-based slavery in a large country would impact on the independence movements of the colonies and how the European powers came to terms with the loss of Empire.

Really, you're linking Return of Kings? That site is the central hub for toxic whining masculinity and the author throws anti-semitic scare quotes around in the first sentence. You may as well link stuff from The Crusader.