Author’s Note – I wrote most of this in 2019 as a part of a larger post on Racism and Bullying in Schools which I have struggled to finish due to depression over the last few years, so I have decided to at least get this portion of that post out there for myself and for posterity. Hopefully, doing this might make eventually finishing the aforementioned post easier. I would love any feedback or updates to this post to improve its accuracy and usefulness.
If what you are studying about history is making you feel comfortable and prideful, then what you are studying is not history, it is propaganda. Human history, especially the history of the murderous white European mobs and their expansion throughout the whole world (and North America specifically) is brutal, genocidal, exploitive, classist, misogynist, racist, ableist, and absolutely destructive to the Natural World and the environment. If you take pride in that, then you best get yourself some serious therapy.
James O’Neill, FreeXenon.com
Racism is so American that when you protest it, people think you are protesting America.
First, as a country, we have to take responsibility for and accept that our country is systemically and structurally racist from even before its very inception. Racism is slathered into us through the vast layers of historical conditioning that we are faced with battling, which is also a large part of the driving force for racism within our schools and all other facets of American life. We cannot hope to address and eventually solve racism until we acknowledge the problem.
It is such a huge part of our country’s identity that many people think that by people protesting racism that we are protesting America itself… which is the actual and sad truth. I hate to agree with anything said by the right-wing Libertarian disinformation network of Prager U, but this is such a very real thing that even they got this right (unknowingly):
Young people are enamored with “anti-racist” rhetoric because they think they are fighting racist systems in America. The TRUTH is they are fighting America itself and the very values the country was founded on.
100% correct! A broken clock is right twice a day, right?
Racism is a part of our history. Racism is a part of our electoral system. Racism is a part of our politics. Racism is a part of our legal system. Racism is a part of our laws. Racism is a part of our economics. Racism is a part of our politics. Racism is a part of our educational systems. Racism is a part of our media, movies, and music. Racism is a part of our culture. Racism is a part of our families and our communities. Racism is a part of our government and law enforcement. Racism is a part of our domestic and foreignpolicies.
Racism is America.
You may not agree with what I said above, but in the next 4 sections I hope to start to make that case:
Quick History of Slavery and Racism
The History of Systemic and Structural Racism in the United States
Evidence of Systemic and Structural Racism
Monopoly Analogy from Kimberly Jones’ Full Speech “How can we win??”
I. Quick History of Slavery and Racism in the United States
“One of the problems is that slavery is taught as the history of Black people and not the history of White people.” @TweetsByBilal (Twitter, 6 Oct 2021)
A. Slavery was Created Primarily Due to Economic Pressures
Slavery in one form or another has been practiced by almost every single human culture all throughout history. But, why did it start in the first place? This is a huge topic that I am not going to get into, but, fundamentally, slavery and almost all violence and exploitation within Humanity started following the shift to agriculture 10,000+ years ago. The first consistent recorded instances of violence within the anthropological and archaeological record follow Humanity’s desperate drive to support our exploding Neolithic populations as we reached the limits of the technological efficiency of hunting and gathering. Prior to this there is basically no recorded instances of consistent violence or slavery.
Examples of historical societies practicing slavery would be:
the ancient Greeks and Romans
the Aztecs and Mayans
slavery within Africa by Africans
throughout ancient India; during colonial British rule
Amerindians in what is now northern California
as well as the entirety of contemporary Western Civilization (1600’s+)
Slavery was first used as an economic practice providing a large pool of cheap labor to be exploited with which to build and support society such as through: farming, other physically intensive labor, and domestic work. Secondly, slavery was used as punitive practice due to societies needing not only a method of punishment for those masses those that displease those in power, but specifically prisoners of war. Thirdly, it helped to keep the masses under control through fear of becoming a slave themselves. Lastly, slavery was used to support the lavish lives of those in power. These last two were was especially effective with the church preaching it, supporting it, and benefiting from it too.
Religion has historically been one the most powerful methods of societal control by those in power. I mean, how can you argue against the will of the gods, right? Do you want to be the one responsible for invoking the wrath of the gods upon our community? From the very beginning, religion has commonly merged itself with state and has been used as a tool of the state to manipulate and control the ignorant and powerless masses (which they worked to keep ignorant). Within these horrifically oppressive, exploitative, and destructive church-state tyrannies, the church-state supported and espoused the virtues of the othering of their own peoples as well as the many foreign peoples so that it would be culturally acceptable to inflict slavery, genocide, and war upon them for fun, resources, and profit.
If you want to learn more about my views on religion and its evolutionary origins read my post here: Religion, an Overview where I cover:
the evolutionary basis for religion
the historical evolution of religion
the harms of ignorance and conservatism within religion
the true evolutionary source of human morality
as well as a potential of a World Beyond Religion.
B. Racism was Created to Sustain Slavery
First page of an European slaves’ bible:
Select Parts of the Holy Bible for the Use of the Negro Slaves of the British West-India Islands.
London: Printed by Law and Gilbert, St. John’s Square, Clerkenwell. 1807
During slavery within colonial United States and the Global North, the African slaves would serve along side the white European indentured servants (who would serve for a period of about 7 – 10 years) and would sometimes marry and raise families together with the African slaves being that they both sat within a ‘similar‘ stratus of society (not at all suggesting that the suffering of the indentured was anywhere near what the slaves went through). This became even more problematic a situation as the supplies of white European indentured servants slowed down over time, because the indentured sometimes had families and social lives deeply entangled with the African slaves, and began to identify with them and their struggles. This over familiarity that the white European indentured servants had with the African slaves that they served with made the monied class really nervous.
Racism, as a social construct, at least in the US and Global North, was forged in this time where the slaves have lived long enough in slavery to be Christianized through the creating of cherry-picked slavery supporting Christian Slave Bibles with which to brainwash the slaves into servitude with which was, unequivocally, a form a cultural genocide. With the significant success of this brainwashing, the excuse that the slaves were uncivilized barbarians because they were not Christian began to lose credibility. Combine that with the sympathy created by the exploited classes of whites, especially the white indentured servants with their social familiarity with the African slaves, made the slavers and their pocket books get very creative.
Now, they needed a new excuse to validate the reasons for maintaining slavery and their economic power if it was not because the Africans were non-Christian heathens. Their answer was found in the creation of racism – Black people were inherently less than white people because of the color of their skin which was powerfully support by Christian Churches through such rhetoric as referring to the African slaves as the Marked Children of Cain, the Mark of Cain, The Mark of Ham, and so on. This reasoning along with the policies and laws that were used to then support it also gave the white exploited classes and the indentured white servants a psychological sense of value and superiority above the African slaves. This also provided a reason for the white exploited class to continue to look down upon the African slaves and to NOT desire an end to slavery which would potentially end their superior position above the slaves. This also created the psychological need to look down upon the African slaves and to support the system out of fear, lest the white exploited class eventually become slaves themselves.
C. Three Final Notes
Racism was created because the primary religious reasoning supporting the institution of slavery (Africans were not Christian) was losing hold and they needed something else, so they chose another identifier – skin color – with which to validate their claims that Africans deserved to be enslaved and that the slavers deserved to benefit economically from their enslavement.
Also, as an important historical cause-and-effect note: because slavery preceded racism, racism cannot be the cause of slavery.
Colonialism and the institution of Slavery formed the foundation of the US and the Global North’s global domination which completely devastated the Global South, which is something that is still happening to this day.
II. History of Slavery and Racism in the United States of America
Trans Atlantic Slave Trade (1600+) which established political, social, cultural, media, and legal support for slavery (and racism) in the Americas. The New York Times’ 1619 Project goes into some considerable detail on this. Beware of paywall. =(
slave patrols (militias) which then formed the beginnings of the police as we know it today (1704)
B. American Revolution (1765 to 1791)
In 1772, a judge sitting in the High Court in London declared slavery “so odious” that it could not exist at common law and set the conditions which would consequently result in the freedom of the 15,000 slaves living in England. News of this decision eventually reached the American colonies, which were subject to British law. This terrified the colonial slaveholders. The predominantly southern slave-owners feared that this decision would cause the emancipation of their slaves. It did result in some slaves freeing themselves.
To ensure the preservation of slavery, the southern colonies joined the northerners in their fight for “freedom” and their rebellion against England. In 1774, at the First Continental Congress John Adams promised southern leaders to support their right to maintain slavery. As Eleanor Holmes Norton explains in her introduction, “The price of freedom from England was bondage for African slaves in America. America would be a slave nation.” (Slave Nation: How Slavery United the Colonies & Sparked the American Revolution, Zinn Education Project)
Many colonists pointed out the obvious hypocrisy between the Revolutionary rhetoric of advocating liberty and owning slaves. In 1774 Abigail Adams (wife of John Adams) wrote, “it always appeared a most iniquitious scheme to me to fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have.”.
The Declaration of Independence promised liberty for all men but failed to put an end to slavery, and, although the slaves had proved themselves in battle, the Continental Congress adopted a policy of excluding black soldiers from the army.
Eventually, the American Revolution itself still sacrificed slaves for the benefit of white society: black slaves were given as draftees to the American military directly for ‘enlistment bounties‘ or in place of draft requirements for white sons.
These Founding Fathers owned slaves at one point or another:
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
Button Gwinnett
Charles Carroll
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney
Edward Rutledge
George Washington
James Madison
John Jay
John Hancock
Patrick Henry
Richard Henry Lee
Samuel Chase
Thomas Jefferson
C. The Founding Father’s Efforts to Preserve Slavery within US Constitution (1787+)
Electoral College
3/5ths compromise
The 2nd Amendment (1791) was enacted to preserve slavery in the South. The word ‘militia’ was the contemporary term for slave patrols which were maintained to put down slave revolts and to hunt down and either kill or return escaped slaves.
Full Text of the Second Amendment – A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
as a note: only white (racist) land owning/tax paying (classist) males (patriarchal and misogynist) could vote (~20% of the population) at the very beginning of the United States
D. Slavery through the Civil War (1800 to 1865)
$1200 to $1250 dollars! For negroes!! The undersigned wishes to purchase a large lot of negroes for New Orleans market. I will pay $1200 to $1250 for No. 1 young men, and $850 to $1000 for No.1 young women. In fact, I will pay more for likely negroes, than any other trader in Kentucky. My office is adjoining the Broadway Hotel, on Broadway, Lexington, KY., where I or my agent can always be found. WM. F Talbott Lexington, July 2, 1853
The Underground Railroad (1800 – 1865)
Convict Leasing (1844+) – started in 1844, but reached its heights post civil war (1865 – 1877), but it is still a problem today. Effective slavery.
Drapetomania (1851) – In 1851, an American physician named Samuel A. Cartwright proposed a mental illness as the cause of enslaved Africans fleeing captivity. Since slavery was such an improvement upon the lives of slaves that only those suffering from some form of mental illness would wish to escape.
Supreme Court Decision in 1857 – Dred Scott in 1857 – slaves have no rights because they are not citizens, and therefore Dredd Scott cannot sue for freedom.
John Brown Execution (Dec 1859) – On 2 Dec 1859, the first person executed for Treason in the US was the radical abolitionist, John Brown. [Virginia vs John Brown (Wikipedia)]
The 1860 census shows that in the states that would soon secede from the Union, an average of more than 32 percent of white families owned enslaved people. [Slavery Myths Debunked (Slate, Sep 2015)]
Some states had far more slave owners than others:
46 percent of families in South Carolina
49 percent in Mississippi
while some had far fewer: 20 percent of families in Arkansas
The Civil War (1861-1865)
Confiscation Act of 1861 – viewing slaves escaping from the south as captured enemy property or contraband of war
Homestead Act of 1862
Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 – freed the slaves, and allowed black people to enlist in the Union’s army
Special Field Order 15 of 1865 – gave freed slaves 40 acres of abandoned land along the Georgia coast and a mule
Klu Klux Clan (1865)
Lincoln’s Assassination (April 1865)
Lincoln suggested that freedmen have the right to vote which prompted his assassination in 1865.
Andrew Johnson, who was a raging racist, became president and confiscated the “40 acres”.
E. Civil Right’s Movement (1865 to 1969)
The Black Codes (1865-1866)
13th Amendment (Dec 1865)
Civil Rights Act of 1866 – which was to make slaves citizens, but president Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill because he was a raging racist, but his veto was overridden by Congress.
Civil Rights Act of 1866 – which was to make slaves citizens, but president Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill because he was a raging racist, but his veto was overridden by Congress.
Civil Rights Act of 1866 – which was to make slaves citizens, but president Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill because he was a raging racist, but his veto was overridden by Congress.
Reconstruction Act of 1867 – which posted military troops throughout the south (many of which were former slaves). President Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill because he was a raging racist, but his veto was overridden by Congress.
14th Amendment of 1868
15th Amendment of 1870
Jim Crow Laws and Segregation (1877 to 1950)
Black Codes (1877+) followed the removal of federal troops from the south following the compromise of 1877. In this era, Black Codes are laws that were “meant to apply to everyone” such as vagrancy, gambling, drinking, obscene or offensive language (“Karens” anyone?), carrying a concealed weapon, breaking “Labor Contracts”, or working in an industry that was something other than appropriate for slaves which were only applied to freed slaves. Pig Laws which elevated a misdemeanor into a felony. Ya know, the systemic and structural racism we keep talking about.
Brown vs Board of Education (1954)
The Civil Rights Movement (1954 to 1968)
The assassinations of Malcom X (1965), Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1968), and Fred Hampton (1969) by the US government
The Tuskegee Study (1932-1972) – Syphilis
F. Post Civil Rights Movement (1970 to present)
Race Riots All Throughout US History – Which were typically proceeded by the cold-blooded murder of a Person of Color by the police. There is A LOT more than these few I have listed.
The Red Summer (1919) – riots and protests from racial violence due to black soldiers returning from WWI exacerbating work competition
Black Wall Street Massacre (Tulsa, Oklahoma; 1921) – This event is considered one of the single worst incidents of racial violence in American history. White mobs burned and destroyed more than 35 square blocks of one of the wealthiest Black communities in the United States at the time.
The Razing of Rosewood (Florida, 1923) – a self-sufficient primarily black town destroyed by white mobs.
The Long Hot Summer of 1967 – preceded by police murdering a black man (see my post on the Kerner Commission Report from 1968 for more info)
Increase in officers (Bill Clinton/Joe Biden , 90’s+)
Stop and Frisk (2000’s, New York City)
Prison Privatization (2000’s+)
School to Prison Pipeline (2000’s+)
Modern Prison Labor
General Police Brutality Against People of Color
white supremacy and neo-Nazis movements infecting our law enforcement and political structures. Well, this is foundational and continuing history from the 1600’s slave patrols.
The cold-blooded murder of George Floyd by 4 police officers in 2020, as well as all of the murders of other People of Color that preceded it:
G. But Wait!! There is still so much more to this gallery of American genocidal horrors!
1. Indigenous Genocide
Time Lapse of North American Indigenous Land Loss
I could throw a whole section of this same size just listing the genocidal policies and actions inflicted upon the First Peoples (Native American Indians) here as well, so this is really just a taste of the horrors of American genocide of the First Peoples. I found a Time Lapse of North American Indigenous Land Loss to get your brain started. Am I starting to make you uncomfortable yet?
Also, keep in mind that the above list only covers those events which happened within the continental US and primarily focused on African Americans. These do NOT cover the horrors of global imperialism and colonialism inflicted upon the Global South which allowed slavery to even be at thing in the US and the Global North. That could have been another major section of examples of murder and destruction wrought by blood thirsty white European mobs.
3. Also, Many Americans Supported Hitler =(
On the evening of 20 Feb 1939, 20,000 people came together in what was called the “Pro-American Rally” held in Madison Square Gardens in New York City to listen to and celebrate anti-Semitic nationalistic and Nazi values.
The Crowd’s Nazi Salute at the Nazi Gathering in Madison Square Garden in 1939Showing the Crowd’s Nazi Salute Towards the Nazi’s Swastica The Crowd’s Nazi Salute at the Nazi Gathering in Madison Square Garden in 1939Showing 20,000 People Crowd and the Stage at the Nazi Gathering in Madison Square Garden in 1939
Please take the time to watch this very sobering 7 minute Academy Award nominated video of rally footage titled A Night a the Garden.
It is also fairly well know to historians that Hitler picked up some of his values and techniques from watching the United States in their fight against the Civil Rights movement and racial inequality, especially our Jim Crowe Laws and the eugenics movement.
Around this same time of this “Pro-American Rally”, Hitler was finishing construction of his sixth concentration camp. And, seven months later the Nazis invaded Poland.
First, the previous section is also one giant historical list of the racial violence inherent to the system and this country. The evidence in this section is primarily focused on contemporary and primarily economic evidence Most of this amazing list was brought to you by Dan Price on Twitter. A bunch of this is locked behind paywalls, so please forgive me. I feel the rage too. =( You can use a browser extension like the NoScript for Chrome to attempt to bypass the paywalls if you like. Also, keep in mind this section is only talking about African Americans in the US. Again, we could add whole other sections about Native Americans (the First Peoples) and other People of Color, and the horrors of colonialism globally too.
So, you start to understand the depths of denial present in this country, here is a recent quote (Dec 2022) from Florida governor Ron DeSantis who said the following when asked to define “woke” during a lawsuit against a Florida attorney:
It would be the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on 2 Dec 2022
A broken clock is right at least twice a day, right?
Corporate stock buybacks/dividends in last 15 years benefited white people 72x more than Black people ?? (can someone find a link to the article which covers this?)
IV. Monopoly Analogy from Kimberly Jones’ Full Speech “How can we win??”
Kimberly Jones – Author and Activist from her speech “How can we win”?
Here is a powerful quote from Kimberly Jones’ speech titled “How can we win??” talking about the systemic and structural racism that built the United States and why black people are so angry and behind in almost everyway in this country by using the game Monopoly to make her powerful point:
Now, if I’m right now, if I right now decided that I wanted to play Monopoly with you and for 400 rounds of playing monopoly I didn’t allow you to have any money. I didn’t allow you to have anything on the board. I didn’t allow for you to have anything and then we played another 50 rounds of who not believe and everything that you gained and you earned while you were playing that round of Monopoly was taken from you. That was Tulsa. That was Rosewood. Those are places where we built black economic wealth where we were self-sufficient where we owned our stores, where we owned our property, and they burned them to the ground.
So, that’s four hundred and fifty years. So, for 400 rounds of Monopoly you don’t get to play at all. Not only do you not get to play, you have to play on the behalf of the person that you’re playing against. You have to play and make money and earn wealth for them and then you have to turn it over to them. So, then for 50 years you finally get a little bit and you’re allowed to play. And every time that they don’t like the way that you’re playing or that you’re catching up or that you’re doing something to be self-sufficient they burn your game. They burn your cards. They burn your monopoly money. And then finally, at the release and the onset of that, they allow you to play and they say “OK, now you catch up.”. Now, at this point the only way you’re gonna catch up in the game is that the person shares the wealth correct? But, what if every time you share the wealth then there’s psychological warfare against you to say “Oh, you’re an equal-opportunity hire.”.
So, if I played 400 rounds of Monopoly with you and I had to play and give you every dime that I made, and then for 50 years every time that I played I, if you didn’t like what I did you got to burn it like they did in Tulsa and like they did in Rosewood. How can you win? How can you win? You can’t win. The game is fixed.
So, when they say “Why do you burn down the community? Why do you burn down your own neighborhood?” It’s not ours. We don’t own anything. We don’t own anything. There is -Trevor Noah said it so beautifully last night “There’s a social contract that we all have. That if you steal or if I steal then the person who is the authority comes in and they fix the situation. But the person who fixes the situation is killing us. So, the social contract is broken. And if the social contract is broken why the fuck do I give a shit about burning them fucking Football Hall of Fame, about burning a fucking Target.
You broke the contract when you killed us in the streets and didn’t give a fuck! You broke the contract where for 400 years we played your game and built your wealth. You broke the contract when we built our wealth again on our own by our bootstraps in Tulsa and you dropped bombs on us. When we built it in Rosewood and you came in and you slaughtered us. You broke the contract.
So, fuck your Target. Fuck your Hall of Fame. Far as I’m concerned I could burn this bitch to the ground and it still wouldn’t be enough. And they are lucky that what black people are looking for is equality and not revenge.
Excerpt from Kimberly Jones’ speech titled “How can we win??”
Conclusion
Malcolm X Poster by Michael OCHS Archives – Getty Images
If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out that’s not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven’t even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won’t even admit the knife is there.
Malcolm X (TV interview after 90-day moratorium, March 1964)
Now, for those of you who already understand that America, as a collective entity, is racist to its core, but have not delved too deeply into this topic you may be surprised by the amount of what I have posted here. For those of you who are against this very topic to start with, you may end up doing everything you can to explain away the cognitive dissonance crashing against your world view. Embrace it and start questioning things. For only then can things change. If you cannot even admit that America is racist or that there is at least some significant problems that we have to deal with, then no conversation or progress can be had, because you are denying an absolute reality of the everyday life of People of Color within America.
The last thing I want to leave you with is this question about teach children about racism by late night talk show host Stephen Colbert and Ibram Akendi‘s response (Facebook):
Stephen Colbert: “One argument against teaching young children about racism is, ‘You’re going to make white kids feel bad about being white.’ What’s your response to that?”
Ibram X. Kendi: “Those people are most concerned about our teaching of slavery, so let’s iust talk about slavery. If we teach white kids about slavery, we’re going to teach them that there were white people who enslaved people, that there were Black people who were enslaved, and we’re also going to teach them that there were white people and Black people who challenged and fought against slavery. And so my question back to them would be: Why can’t we allow white children to identify with white abolitionists?”
[loud clapping and hooting]
And, you know and also, it demonstrates to me that these folks recognize that kids are not color blind. And that how way we shape the curriculum impacts our children. So, then why aren’t they concerned about how Black kids feel when they are not represented in the curriculum.
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