238 Years of Racism In America

(2 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”

~Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852~

Racism and white supremacy in America has existed since this country was founded, even to the extent that it was enshrined in the Constitution itself and declared every 5 slaves be counted as 3 people in terms of apportionment for the House of Representatives. With the  abolition of slavery and the Thirteenth Amendment, new ways of discrimination arose with Jim Crow laws in the Soutn and relining in the North.

In a six part series at Real News Network “Reality Assets Itself“, African American historian and author Gerald Horne discusses the history of racial discrimination and its impact on the national psyche and politics today. This is the first three parts.