The Afterbirth of a Nation

A New American Revolution

Since the beginning of America’s independence, the issue of slavery has been used as a political tool to leverage white colonial progress. While many people can identify race as playing a huge factor in the American Civil War, only a few remember how the birth of our nation was founded on fears of racial integration and black freedom @onmanybacks.

Let us travel back to colonial America, where white aristocratic farmers and imported African slaves created one of the most successful economies in the world. Much of America's early wealth came from exploiting natural resources including lumber, tobacco, and cotton. Between 1650 and 1770, the GNP multiplied 25 times leading to an unprecedented standard of living in the New World. However, it’s important to acknowledge the distribution of wealth at this pivotal time in our country's history. Though products were harvested using slave labor, it is primarily the white land-owning class which hoarded much of the country’s profits. These white aristocrats would then spend their new wealth on vain material items to reinforce their class status and maintain a cultural connection to Europe @image. In just 100 years, the per capita debt of Virginia nearly doubled. In an age of unparalleled economic growth, America’s growing aristocracy began to slip into a sea of gluttony and foreign debt.

The accumulated debt of white colonialists was a cause for concern, but not nearly as much as the issue of their rapidly changing racial population. By the 1730’s, more slaves were being born than imported into the United States. Nearly half of all Virginia natives owned two slaves, with the wealthiest landowners owning much more. As American demographics began to diversify and the nation began to slip into economic instability, slave-owners became concerned with the threat of both slave and Native American uprisings. White colonialists became worried that if they didn’t act quickly to secure independence, all the power and money that they had stolen from forced black labor would be lost.

With a narrow window of opportunity, white American elites crafted a new revolutionary rhetoric that could relieve their debt, exploit the region’s vast natural resources, and protect against any future competition.

On December 16, 1773 these “sons of liberty” boarded three British tea ships and dumped over 300 barrels of tea into the water—an event more commonly referred to as “The Boston Tea Party” @btp. While heroic in theory, these rebellious white colonists held little integrity. Instead, they disguised themselves as Mohawk Indians in order to defect blame and shield themselves from any real repercussions to their actions. However, the British caught on and quickly responded with more taxation, which began to expose the fragility of early American economics.

In response to Britain’s “Intolerable Acts,” white American elites gathered together in 1774 to form the First Continental Congress. In this meeting they drafted “The Articles of Association of the Congress” or a set of British imported items to boycott. Among these items was that of slaves, whose populations were already threatening the dominant rule of white colonists. This was the first time that the American people had ever formally gathered and signed their name to a piece of legislation against the British crown. America’s revolutionary war was as much about political freedom as it was about white economic self-preservation.

From the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, the issue of slavery has been used as a tool for economic prosperity and as justification for secession. The fear of economic integration has long been ingrained in the American psyche. Terms like “life” “liberty” and “the pursuit of happiness” have been used as a front to pacify the masses and justify initial wealth gained by whites through land grabs and the exploitation of slavery. This is the unspoken platform on which we began to create the identity that is modern day America.

The United States of America has always been built on the backs of those whose stories are lost to history@legacy. Indeed, since its modern formation America has become a symbol for rebirth around the world. A place where immigrants can leave their customs, their past, and their responsibilities behind in the face of opportunity and self-actualization@why.

The irony of our current cultural predicament is that many of the white fears of economic integration and subsequent retribution are still embedded in our nation’s institutions. Current immigration policies simultaneously proclaim that immigrants are stealing “our'' [white] jobs, while also claiming that these “shithole” immigrants cost us the most in welfare benefits. The common thread that binds our revolutionary history and modern reality together is the zero-sum white mentality of distribution. But if we are to begin tackling issues of justice and equality, we must first unravel our many romanticized interpretations of the past. We can no longer remain passive to America’s many stories of omission. To become real American revolutionaries, we must dig through rhetoric which claims absolute loyalty to find the often uncomfortable histories of truth which lie underneath.