Capitalism Racist?

That is the question posed in a New Yorker review of Walter Johnson's The Broken Heart of Ameria: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States. In his review, Nicholas Lemann writes: "Once slavery is positioned as the foundational institution of American capitalism, the country’s subsequent history can be depicted as an extension of this basic dynamic. This is what Walter Johnson does in his new book, The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States (Basic). The study demonstrates both the power of the model and its limitations."

Lemann and Johnson hit the mark, as I have noted in my "For a Dignity Deserved: Notes from Bubba." America's rise as an agricultural and industrial power during the 19th century was fueled by slavery and injected with additional juice with the share cropping and Jim Crow (in the South by law and in the North by practice) systems that remained an integral part of the American economic system well past the middle of the 20th Century. Economically, every American--poor and rich alike--stand on the backs of the women and men exploited during the first 400 years on this continent.

You may claim that your family never owned a slave. Mine didn't. You may assert that the American system exploited your ancestors, making them slaves or denying them the same economic opportunities granted others. Those statements are true. Yet, the system we will share today--the American economy--would be much different--probably smaller but far better--if slavery was never introduced. And one way or another and to varying degrees of wealth, we all have shared in the fruit of the American economy.

This is not a justification for the cruelty done. It is a debt notice. All Americans, particularly white Americans, owe a debt to millions who slaved and died so the world could have inexpensive cotton, tobacco, indigo, rice, and sugar--whose trade fueled the finance, shipping, and insurance industries of the North. It's a notice to the hypocrisy of America's past and the denial of it in the present.

We,  meaning Americans, all American, candy-coat our history, in effect erasing the past, disconnecting from the events of yesteryear as if the waves of their consequences don't roll to the shores of today. They don't crash on the beach of now. They ripple onto the sand, almost gently, without notice. Regardless how softly they roll, they erode the beach just as the rolling waves of the American past erodes the American now.

It's time we wash away the candy. It's time we ask for absolution. It's time we recognize our fault. It's time that we dig out the festering remains of our past.

And by the way, capitalism is not racist. It's a thing, a concept, a philosophy imagined by Adam Smith in 1776 when he published The Wealth of Nations. His point was simple: Competition fosters economic development. Racism actually is anti-capitalistic because it eliminates competition from the people enslaved or held back by artificial concepts such as the laws and practice of segregation. In other words, people are racist. They made American capitalism racist. Racism evolved not from capitalism, but from America's forefathers desire to cut corners in the name of power and greed. The corner they cut: The lives of millions.