Elisabeth, would you consider a course correction? Instead of people, I encouraged you think of systems.
What kept racism alive for 400 years were the systems that made slavery legal in the first place. People who lived 400 years ago died, but the systems they created lived on. As the old saying goes, what goes in, must come out. Racism went in, and racism keeps coming out. At least, that’s how I understand systemic racism.
Systems are not human - they have no emotions, they do not think, speak, or converse. Systems are inherited one generation after another until a generation comes along and changes them. I was careful with my words, changing a system is productive, destroying a system can be destructive.
Unfortunately, we will never change a system, if we continue to think we can elect someone to do the work for us. This work belongs to us; it is our job as citizens to change the systems that are holding us down. Our job begins with deciding what we want. Interestingly enough, it is easy to decide what we do NOT want, but hard to decide what we DO want.
You write, “Who were the 1% that implemented this status quo on the rest of the white people in America during that time.” That is an excellent question, and I will focus on the land-use system that I think helps answer it.
How did our founding fathers get rich? Well, way back in the 1500s, European Kings gave land to “upper class Europeans” who were willing to come to America and help establish colonies. This land belonged the Native Americans, but Kings gave it to upper class people for free.
Instead of paying for the land, these upper-class people were expected to organize a workforce to work the land. By producing crops, felling trees, mining etc. the workers would be able to pay taxes to the King, settlers would engage in trade and the landowner would receive a percentage of their earnings.
Workers were indentured servants from Europe – desperately poor people who traded one to seven years of hard labor to board a ship and come to America. At the end of their labor contract indentured servants were set free – and given a suit of clothing, perhaps a little money and sometimes an acre of land to farm. The arrangement was not successful.
Life in the colonies was so hard, and so dangerous, a lot of people died soon after arriving. Indentured servants cost money. It cost money to bring them to America. If an indentured servant died, his owner lost money. It cost more money to feed, clothe and house servants, and when their contract ended, they had to be given some clothes, maybe a little money or land.
The colonists were failing faster by the day. They had more land than anyone had ever seen and not nearly enough people to work the land. Without men to cut trees, plow fields, dig wells, harvest crops, and mine the mountains, the richest land in the world was worthless.
In 1619, a ship arrived, with 20 some odd slaves on board. In slaves, the landed gentry saw an entirely different labor system. Slaves would require less expensive clothes, food and housing. They would work from birth to death for free and reproduce more slaves. Unlike indentured servants, slaves would not be set free, buy land and turn into competition. For a one-time purchase price, slaves meant free labor for generations to come. Not only could the landed gentry pass land and wealth to their sons, they could pass on labor to work the land. Slaves also meant capital, the landed gentry could borrow money to grow their land holdings. Slavery sickens us, but it excited the colony’s landed gentry.
Now back to our founding fathers. In 1674, John Washington was given 5,000 acres of free land. Over the next 347 years, Mildred, then Augustine, then Lawrence, then Sara, then Anne inherited that land. In 1761, the land was inherited by George Washington who would become the first American President. When Washington died, the land passed to Martha Washington, then Bushrod, then John Augustine, then Jane Charlotte, then John Augustine. In 1858, the Mount Vernon Ladies Society purchased the land and home and turned it into a memorial (that remains today).
In 1697, Thomas Jefferson the first, passed several thousand acres given him by the King, down to his son, who passed it to his son. Captain Thomas Jefferson II passed 3,000 acres of land, 52 slaves and crops to his son Peter Jefferson who added over 7,200 acres of land to the estate. In 1757, 24 year old Thomas Jefferson inherited 5,000 acres of land, 52 enslaved individuals, livestock, his father's notable library, and a gristmill. Thomas married Martha and inherited 35 more slaves from her dead husband and father. In 1862, Thomas Jefferson died and his daughter inherited 130 slaves (including her own relatives), 7,000 acres of land, and her parents debts of $107,000. (roughly $2-million in today’s dollars). I could go on and on, but two examples are enough to make the case.
Elisabeth, this is the history of the land-use system you and I inherited. That is the reason, white and black people live in different communities today. Destroying the land-use system will cause chaos. Cleaning the rotten thinking out of this system will do us all a world of good.
