Kindle Notes & Highlights
We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism. -Huey Newton
What is not explained about capitalism is that, in order for this system to work, you need poverty. Poverty is not a failure of capitalism, but its backbone. Because of the system of inflation, poverty keeps prices, and wages, down.
Capitalism needs poverty in order to maintain itself.
You cannot get rich working for someone else. You can only hope to survive.
In a system of oppression—which is what racism is—the oppressed people are denied access to the majority of resources, so they are less likely to have the ability to create or own successful businesses in order to generate wealth for their communities. Money bounces back six to eight times as fast if you own your own business.
In a system of racism, people who are identified as black are victimized by the capitalist system.
“Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery.”
The image of the African had to be degraded and reduced to a savage. Lies were used as mental conditioning to sell the citizens of the world that the African was a primitive savage, a godless being, who needed to be saved. Slavers would tell slave buyers that they could give slaves purpose by giving them Christianity and a labor skill.
What made this form of slavery unique is that it was the first time an entire race of people was dehumanized on a global scale as well as subjugated to generational slavery, meaning that not only would an African be a slave, but his children and his children’s children will also be slaves.
Bacon’s Rebellion (1676 to 1677) was significant because indentured servants, black and white, came together to fight the elite class.
The colonial elite wanted a system in which the labor was controlled, and there could be no unity among the poor to achieve a common goal at the expense of the rich.
The Civil War was fought because slavery was hurting capitalism in the North.
Abraham Lincoln recognized that slavery (not racism) was hurting capitalism in the North, so he wanted to end slavery. The South refused and said they would leave the Union and start their own country. That’s what started the Civil War.
The term Jim Crow actually comes from a white actor by the name of Thomas Dartmouth Rice who was famous for performing a minstrel show playing a stereotypical character called Jim Crow. Therefore, the phrase Jim Crow is actually synonymous with a stereotypical black person.
they wanted the money from the same people who were being oppressed by it. In their eyes, the money was equal; the people were not.
A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots. -Marcus Garvey
From an economic standpoint after integration, black business started to die out because black people wanted to express their newfound rights and shop at the white stores.
Black people let their economic base slip away from them by giving money to the same people who were telling them that they were second-class citizens as soon as they were allowed.
In a capitalistic system, if you do not have economic power in the proper areas of political and social arenas, then you are merely a consumer, and consumers have no power. They just purchase what they are given.
Some of these private prisons have contracts that require 90 to 100 percent prison occupancy.
True revolution would occur if no black person bought the next new smartphone or the next pair of Jordan brand shoes, not just for a day or a week, but until true change has come.
There is only true power through unity,
You cannot depend on your oppressor to get you out of the position he put you
in.
