Look, I don’t think we can rationally deny that black people are significantly poorer than the rest of the American population. I also don’t believe in the notion of racial realism, or the theory of scientific racism; race is a social construct. But despite claims of systemic racism, the answer is much more complex than white and black (not all of whom recently migrated from Africa, PC dipshits).

Old Money

Despite America’s bolstering about freedom and liberty all night and day like they invented the stuff (they didn’t), the USA has a number of family dynasties with their hands in a little bit of everything. The US is an oligarchy (they proved it with a study and everything)and it has been for a long time.

The thing about Capitalism is that it unequivocally favors the wealthy. Whoever owns the most stuff, has the most power. It’s just like medieval Europe with kingdoms and such, but with corporations occupying market space instead of physical space. Everyone is vying for the whole market, so capitalism naturally breeds monopolies. This is why everyone pays for comcast, despite everyone hating comcast.

Likewise, the laws of the United States have always favored the rich. America wasn’t just settled by the English, it was settled by the wealthy; the English companies which would become the colonies and shamelessly employ slave labor to expand their territories. Some argue that the wealth of the west is a direct result of the free labor slavery provided to the average wealthy landowner. But don’t mistake white for equaling wealthy, America became the melting pot it is because it took in numerous European immigrants as labor, entertainment, and servants both paid and non.

Cheap Labor

It’s a little cruel, but indentured servitude has been historically revised as if it weren’t also a form of slavery. I understand the differences between it and chattel slavery (thanks Internet), but being dehumanized and kept like a pet is still seriously shitty even if it’s for a little while. The point is, far from all white people were wealthy land owners. It was the workers to built America, but it was the wealthy who took credit for it.

So whether you were sold from your African leaders into slavery to the US and Britain, or you were enlisted as an indentured servant to escape famine, labor was especially cheap to free in the early US, and this meant that American companies automatically generated more profit because they didn’t have to pay their employees like other countries did.

Again, slavery favors the capitalists. Those with the most money can purchase people outright, providing for them pennies of sustenance compared to the fair wages of a regulated economy. Plantations weren’t picking cotton for the landowner’s giant sweater; slave labor wasn’t about oppressing people for the fuck of it, it was for human labor at rock bottom prices.

Forgetting your roots

American history gets a lot stranger if you tilt your head to the left and consider that the South consisted of a bunch of wealthy business owners trying to protect their horrible business practices. Don’t believe me? It’s true. We just don’t get taught it that way.

The divide of North and South was effectively one of worker’s rights, people earning the right to actually get paid and eventually get treated like a person. It was a deeply ugly time for human rights, but America has compartmentalized those decades in the wool of “racism” rather than “exploitative colonial capitalism”.

A lot of people were now entitled to pay, but how much was still pretty terrible. Another chapter of history modern capitalists will gloss over, America’s long history of violent labor disputes. Let’s also not forget that while slavery was abolished, child labor was still legal until World War II (less than 100 years ago).

And therein lies the beauty of the fundamental structure of capitalism. Success in the free market demands producing more product for less money, and the easiest place to cut money is by underpaying your labor. Seriously, it’s why wages have been stagnant for so long. Or as Chris Rock so eloquently put it, “Hey, if I could pay you less, I would”. But as we see in America, it doesn’t matter if you’re making minimum wage or 40k, the price of products have been inflating faster than wages too.

Racism is real, but Poverty is worse

Treating someone differently for how they biologically are, is shitty. Whether it’s gender, race, sexuality, or disability, no one deserves to be dehumanized for what they are. Who they are is another story, there are some rat fuck bastards out there. But the fact of the matter is, poverty impacts your life way more than modern racism.

Jim Crow racism was the evil fuck dehumanizing kind, rooted in scientific racist bullshit. That shit got into our government, and legally permitted all sorts of loopy racist segregation crap. But that’s illegal now. And, despite what Social Justice would have you believe, has actually been around since the 1960s. To give you a bit of context, India still has a fucking caste system! (complete with hiring quotas)

Seriously, if you experience racism in any professional capacity, that’s illegal. And if you experience racism in a personal capacity, then disassociate with that person because free speech permits that. Your freedom of expression and someone else’s freedom of expression don’t have to overlap, and if they’re trying to press the matter with stalking, then that’s illegal too.

The reason why black slaves didn’t recover from slavery as fast as white slaves, is because they were denied basic human rights for a long while after that. There was, without question, systemic and institutionalized racism in the US at one time, but it’s really the nature of our economy that ensures they have trouble catching up. You start the race late, you’re going to be stuck in that position unless you get a boost. Literally, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.

Spin Machine

All of these bits tie together rather nicely, but one must remain skeptical and ask why this hasn’t been pointed out before? Some rando asshat’s blog on Medium of all places is where “a grand capitalist conspiracy” is unfolding, yeah right!

Need a reminder that 90% of the media is controlled by only 6 companies? Much like America’s third party candidates, you’d be hard pressed to find coverage diverging from the carefully constructed narrative that modern media gatekeepers are enforcing. The standard of living in the US is declining, and no one really wants to talk about it because no one wants to be held responsible.

Conspiracy theories get a bad rap, but WikiLeaks has proven time and again that people in power conspire against the public kind of routinely. Perhaps for the same reason, talk about legitimate conspiracies in American politics are often forgotten by the media to maintain the perception of lunatic fringe to organized campaigns of deceit. Must we revisit Climate Change and the Sugar Scandal? Capitalism breeds conspiracy, because players are incentivized to take advantage of exploitable resources, be it labor or consumer trust.

False Flag

Quick, when’s the last time you heard a news story about wage stagnation on the news? Not counting my links, of course. I’m pretty sure you heard a story about someone being BLM more recently though. This is not to say that the media is orchestrating distractions, but they sure as hell choose what they run.

Pitting a populace against itself is brilliant, but it’s certainly not the first time it’s been done. It’s all political theater though, they give the spotlight to people and things who won’t actually disrupt the system. Occupy Wallstreet was great, but coverage dropped off pretty sharply after sympathetic protests broke out across the country. The Revolution will not be televised, the establishment doesn’t want you to know how things really are.

BLM is a Kafka trap. Black Lives Matter? Of course they do. All lives matter, or not, depending on your philosophy. But if only some lives matter, or some matter more than others, then maybe you’re a bigot. But more importantly, if you’re a “movement” without any clear goals or structure, you’re little more than a notion of impotent rage.

It’s a distraction. Studies show that kids that grow up poor, stay poor, no matter the race. In the grand scheme of things, more people die in the US to suicide than police brutality. Shouldn’t be focusing a little more on that disturbing fact? It’s only 42 times more deaths. I mean, if we’re actually having riots and shit about the poor treatment of American citizens, self harm being the 10th most common cause of death should probably be higher on the priority list.

Police aren’t keeping you down, the economy is, by design.