6 Facts about Racial Justice that Will Change the Way You Think about America

Episode 1: In some history textbooks, slavery has been made to sound like an unfortunate, isolated mistake Americans made a long time ago that was quickly fixed by the Civil War. The truth is that America was built on slavery—America depended on slavery. The US became one of the richest countries in the history of the world because of it. Were you taught in school that there were breeding farms for enslaved people in the South? Or that Virginia’s main export wasn’t tobacco, but human beings? Well, it’s true: Selling people powered Virginia’s economy. And what happened in Virginia had a huge influence over the rest of the country… because four out of our first five presidents came from Virginia.

Episode 2: The Electoral College was created by the Founding Fathers to strengthen and sustain white supremacy. Thanks to the unpaid labor of a huge population of enslaved people, the South was rich and powerful. After the Revolutionary War, Southern states wanted to stay that way, which meant figuring out how to benefit politically from enslaved people without having to give them any rights. Their solution was the three-fifths compromise. Because five Southern states had 93% of the country’s total enslaved population, this compromise increased their representation by 42%. The Founders built the Electoral College upon this racist foundation, guaranteeing that a relatively small number of wealthy white men would have significantly more power than everybody else in the country.

Episode 3: OK, who here knows the third verse of the “Star-Spangled Banner.” No one? That’s not super surprising. It’s not performed very often… and this might be why:

No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave

And the star spangled banner in triumph, doth wave,

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Those words were written during the War of 1812, when the British were promising freedom to enslaved people to entice them to join in the fight against the US. This verse was basically a warning that America would hunt down any enslaved person who tried to escape. But that’s not the only message this verse conveys. Controlling Black bodies has been part of America since before we were a country. Here in “the land of the free,” the first organized police forces were slave patrols, focused solely on “slave catching and union busting.” From their founding, police departments have been the enforcers and guardians of white supremacy. That message comes through loud and clear in the national anthem.

Episode 4: One of the founding myths of America is that anybody can make it here if they’re willing to work hard and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. This country celebrates everyone who goes it alone and strikes it rich—unless they’re Black. Do all that while Black, and white people might resent you. Maybe even kill you. Want proof? Take a look at the 1919 Elaine, Arkansas, massacre. Black sharecroppers who wanted better pay were attacked by a white mob, and at least 200 people (men, women, and children) were killed. The perpetrators went unpunished, but some of the surviving victims were put on trial. That’s just one example. Unfortunately, there are plenty more, like the Tulsa, OK, race massacre, where white mobs burned down the district known as “Black Wall Street,” destroying 35 blocks of thriving Black businesses and killing 300 people. White supremacy and structural racism remain barriers to Black wealth-building to this very day.

Episode 5: The American healthcare system is racist and always has been—and the racism starts at birth.

• Black women in America are three to four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women.

• In New York, it’s even worse: they’re eight times more likely.

What’s behind this lethal racial disparity? According to a Florida study, Black newborns are more likely to survive birth if they’re cared for by Black doctors. Recent research suggests that only 5% of all active physicians identify as Black. Clearly, racism in healthcare is putting Black people in danger.

Episode 6: Everybody knows that slavery ended with the passage of the 13th Amendment, right? Ummm... Let’s take a closer look at the fine print: The 13th Amendment abolished slavery “except as a punishment for crime.” That gaping loophole led to the passage of “Black codes” throughout the South, racist laws that concocted all sorts of racist reasons to lock up Black people and continue slavery by another name. America’s criminal legal system still incarcerates Black people at alarmingly disproportionate rates, making it incredibly difficult for Black people to build wealth and denying them full citizenship when they return from prison. Some might say that’s evidence of a broken system. But we think it’s working exactly as its founders intended. It’s written right into the Constitution—and it has to change.