“Well, that’s not the crazy thing. After slavery ended, all these guys needed new jobs, so they just moved into the banking sector, even founding some of them. Like you know Veritas Bank? Started by a Brooklyn-Dutch former slave master. You told me before that the banks were all tied up in slavery, when you talked about that crash, but it’s like all these guys never gave up much power, they just . . .” I struggle to find the right way to say this, the right words to convey how royally fucked this is. “They just put on a different suit. Things didn’t change that much. They were still
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This is frighteningly true. I read The Color of Law in grad school and learned all about how racism is codified into laws in this country, some only recently abolished and others still in effect. The government came up with scary but stealthy ways to keep Black people from owning property or gaining wealth.
