This country’s wealth was built on exploitation and violence, and those who worked hardest to build it were not empowered or enriched by its successes—they were enslaved people, migrant laborers, and domestic workers. Much of this country’s early infrastructure, for example, was built with slave labor, and then with grotesquely underpaid immigrant labor and prison labor. Many of our business and political leaders were freed to dedicate their time and energy to their professional success by the unpaid labor of wives and mothers and the underpaid labor of nannies and housekeepers.
