Why U.S. Capitalism is So Brutal

Cliff Notes on the 1619 Project #2 — Capitalism

Photo by author outside her front door

Back in July 2020, when U.S. Senator Tom Cotton made news by saying that slavery was a “necessary evil” on which the United States was built, I learned a number of things they never taught me in school — mostly via The 1619 Project, the collection of scholarly essays that Cotton was trying to smear.

From Nikole Hannah-Jones — the Project’s founding mother, New York Times journalist, and Pulitzer Prize winner — I learned that Black people have done more to realize the ideals of this nation than any other group.

Think about it.

Probably the most famous line in the U.S. Constitution is that “all men are created equal.” But when it was written, it didn’t apply to women. It didn’t apply to Blacks, or indigenous people, or people of color. And it didn’t apply to white men who didn’t own property or pay taxes. In fact, it only applied to about six percent of the population at the time. (This paragraph is from my first story on the 1619 Project.)

So how did the American ideal change from promising life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to just six percent of its people to all of them? In large part by Black people fighting for their human rights — repeatedly, forcefully, and bravely endangering their bodies and…