By Edrea Davis – America was built on racism through stolen labor, stolen land, and stolen opportunity. Enslaved Black people built wealth they were never allowed to share. They cleared land, raised crops, built institutions, created commerce, and laid the foundation for an economy that enriched others while denying them wages, safety, family stability, education, ownership, and citizenship. Native people were displaced to expand land and markets.
When slavery ended, America never made Black people whole.
There was no true repair. No meaningful national compensation. No level playing field. No serious effort to restore what had been stolen across generations. Instead, the country told formerly enslaved people and their descendants to “lift themselves up” while keeping one hand and one foot tied. Black Americans were expected to catch up while facing Jim Crow, racial terror, segregated schools, housing discrimination, employment discrimination, police profiling, and voter suppression.
Even when Black Americans paid into the system, they were often denied equal access to what that system promised. During the Jim Crow era, Black families paid taxes while being shut out of quality public schools, public services, fair housing, equal protection, and government benefits. Black veterans served this country, returned home, and were often blocked from using GI Bill benefits because banks, universities, and local officials used discrimination to deny them access to home loans, higher education, and the wealth-building opportunities White veterans received.
And it did not stop there.
Every time Black Americans push forward, another barrier appears. If it is not slavery, it is Jim Crow. it is redlining, it is police violence, it is mass incarceration, it is attacks on voting rights, school curricula, diversity programs, and representation itself. The form changes, but the resistance to Black equality remains constant. Then, after generations of struggle to secure voting rights, the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder weakened key protections of the Voting Rights Act, opening the door for new waves of voter suppression, redistricting battles, polling place closures, purges, and laws that make it harder for people — especially Black and brown voters — to exercise political power.
The same racism that helped build America’s wealth is now being used to protect that wealth. It tells poor White people that Black people are the problem. It tells Black people that immigrants are the problem. It tells everybody to fear somebody poorer, darker, newer, or different — while the people with real power keep getting richer. That is how racism tears a country down. It keeps the people divided, keeps power protected, and keeps the truth out of reach.
Racist politics does not stop at rhetoric. It becomes policy, and those policies often hurt the very people they were designed to divide. When polling locations are closed in a county, it is not only Black voters who may struggle to get there. Poor and working-class White voters may also lack reliable transportation, flexible work schedules, childcare, or the time to stand in long lines. When stricter ID requirements are imposed, Black and brown voters are often targeted, but poor White voters may also lack birth certificates, updated licenses, transportation to government offices, or the money and time required to gather documents.
The same is true beyond voting. When lawmakers take money from public schools, poor and working-class White children suffer too. When they sabotage access to affordable healthcare, everyday White families lose coverage, delay care, or drown in medical debt. When tax cuts are written to benefit the wealthy more than working people, White workers do not become richer because Black people or immigrants are pushed further down. They are simply left struggling alongside the very people they were told to resent.
That is the brilliance and cruelty of racism as a political strategy. It convinces people to defend policies that hurt them, as long as they believe those policies hurt someone else more. It teaches poor White people to fear Black power, Black people to fear immigrant labor, and immigrants to fear everyone around them — while the wealthy consolidate power, resources, and influence.
Poor White people are told that Black people are criminals, taking their jobs, living off welfare, or getting special treatment. Black people are told that immigrants are criminals, taking their jobs, threatening their communities, or even doing absurd and dehumanizing things like eating people’s pets. The target changes, but the strategy stays the same: keep ordinary people suspicious of each other so they never unite around the real issue — who controls the wealth, who writes the laws, and who benefits from the division.
At some point, Americans have to decide whether they will keep turning on each other or finally turn toward each other. Dr. King warned that “we must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” That warning still applies. A multiracial democracy cannot survive if working people are trained to see one another as enemies while those with wealth and power write the rules. America’s future depends on whether ordinary people can recognize the trap, reject the scapegoating, and understand that the fight is not poor against poor, Black against White, citizen against immigrant. The fight is democracy against division.