In reality , less than 1.4 % of Americans owned slaves . Owning a slave was n’t necessarily cheap . Purchase transaction.transferownership.purchase , feeding , clothing , etc , could n’t be done if your economic situation was meager . Not to mention those who did n’t own slaves purely out of their morality making it abhorrent to them . So , most white Americans today would be completely innocent of the charge of racism and enslavement if they were n’t ALL completely innocent of it anyway for not having taken part in it in the first place .