Chapter 2 — Capitalism, Racism, and Domination

What’s past is prologue. William Shakespeare, The Tempest

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. General Smedley Butler, U.S. Marines

The historical versions that have prevailed in Puerto Rico and the United States are plagued with omissions. Since they are incomplete, they are also fallacious. By not allowing us to understand the past, these versions obscure the present; and an unintelligible present does not give way to explanations. Nor does it make it possible to imagine futures that are rooted in realism –in a full understanding of human reality, regardless of the circumstances and the place in question.

The historical evolution of the United States should be of interest to Puerto Ricans, for obvious reasons: Having as broad an understanding as possible of American history closes gaps toward comprehending that country’s culture and its domination over Puerto Rico. We have refused to acquire that understanding, which has also contributed to the longevity of our political and material subordination to a country whose governments and businessmen have seen and treated us as pawns on their chessboard.

This chapter provides an overview of the factors that shaped the country whose government and capitalism have dominated Puerto Ricans since 1898. In the final section of the chapter, I offer my assessment of the state of American society today, while exploring whether capitalism proved to be incompatible with democracy.

Some Constants of American Culture

In England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Protestantism, nationalism, and capitalism “shaped the English economy and society.”[1] That culture was transplanted to the thirteen colonies.[2] The English of that time were already boasting of their supposed exceptionality, and of being superior to the Spaniards and Portuguese, who, as their rhetoric went, lacked the vocation for freedom found in Shakespeare’s compatriots. [3] According to them, their expansion in the Americas would be benign, very different from Portuguese and Spanish oppression, since they would bring “English freedom” to the rest of the planet. [4] Of course, they offered the same barbarities as the Iberians: slavery, oppression, exploitation and extermination.

The colonists who settled in Jamestown, in what would become the colony of Virginia, had no pretensions other than to make wealth, for which they found it necessary to displace and kill the natives or “Indians,” and to import European indentured servants and African slaves.[5] For their part, the English colonists who arrived in Plymouth articulated notions of exceptionalism, immersed in their religiosity and the idea that they were called to be the “redeemers” of humanity.[6] Those settlers in New England and the rest of the “Northern” colonies would also displace and kill the continent’s native “inferiors” or “savages” [7] and own slaves. The now Virginians and New Englanders brought something else with them: racial prejudice. [8]

From the 17th century onwards, these colonies were stratified, with an upper class made up of landowners, merchants, religious ministers, and some professionals; another group composed of artisans, laborers, and small landowners. Down the pyramid were three strata: The descendants of Europeans who were poor; Europeans or their descendants who were indentured servants –“white” slaves for a limited time– ; and, in utter abjection, there were human beings kidnapped in Africa to create wealth as slaves in perpetuity, and their descendants. Economic inequality was always remarkable, although it never produced the degree of misery that existed in Europe at the time. [9] By far the most miserable were the slaves. The institution of slavery was more wretched than mere poverty, while slaves of African descent were eventually ignored by those who strove to liberate the colonies and establish a regime rooted in freedom. [10]

To illustrate, in the Boston of 1687, fifty individuals controlled a quarter of the wealth. That inequality deepened as wealth and population grew. By 1770, forty-four percent of the wealth was in the hands of the one percent at the top of the social pyramid. [11] A pattern of inequality was repeated in all the colonies and in the major cities. Over time, the elites would live in an opulence that tended toward ostentation, which added to the resentment of the rest of the population. [12]

The Colonial Roots of Exploitation and Racism

Class conflict began early in the colonial era, and much of the energies of the dominant groups and colonial governments were directed towards suppressing rebellions and attempted rebellions, or discontent in general, which took various forms. [13] The class consciousness that European servants and slaves began to develop would be neutralized by the deepening contrast between the conditions of one and the other. That contrast would be explained, rationalized and justified by racism. [14]

It turns out that, aside from the emphasis on its supposed exceptionalism and superiority, another constant in American history and culture is its particular version of the set of ideas, attitudes, and actions that we know as “racism.” [15] These ideas would be used as rationalization, explanation, and justification for domination over indigenous peoples, African Americans, immigrants from Asia and Latin America; and, eventually, over us Puerto Ricans as “colonial subjects,” who, by supposedly belonging to another among so many “inferior races,” are “incapacitated” to direct our destiny or to participate to some extent in the political processes of the nation whose government perceives and treats us in this way.

The need for social control stemmed from a perennial fear of rebellion. Colonial elites also feared the resentment of “poor whites,” in societies with limited social mobility, and with a wealthy class in each colony that possessed the means and will to hoard wealth. [16] The aforementioned “white” slavery, systemically less cruel than African slavery, was also of limited duration –up to 7 years. Africans would be slaves as long as they lived, as would their offspring. That difference would be explained and justified by the explicit articulation of the idea that human beings are classified and divided on the basis of their “race.”

Eventually, white serfdom would disappear –in 1787, the Constitution that emerged from Philadelphia still recognizes its existence– but that doesn’t mean that these European-born humans did well in the colonies. Their treatment was also vile, and based on the desire to exploit their labor and bodies at the lowest possible cost to the “masters.” [17] It is no less true, however, that from the beginning of the colonial period, African slaves were treated differently –worse, in what turned out to be one of the strategies of domination to keep these groups divided. [18]

It is also known that the plantation economy of the southern colonies required a greater number of slaves than that of the northern colonies.[19] Thus began differences which, from the very 18th century, would cause difficulties for the new nation in its efforts to unite into, and keep intact, a political entity. The difficulties would reach their climax with the tensions that led to the Civil War of 1861–1865. But it should not be forgotten that slavery was good business for southern plantation owners, as well as for merchants, bankers, lawyers, artisans, manufacturers, and shipbuilders in the northern states. [20]

Racism is based on the conviction that there is such a thing as “races,” and that the “white race” is superior to all others. The color of the skin –the greater or lesser presence of the pigments we know as melanin– became the visible criterion of these “differences,” which in turn translate into supposed variations in intellect, goodness, capacity for freedom and full citizenship, and for self-government. That is to say, by nature, some races are destined to dominate, others to a subordinate status. That is a vile and specious ideology. [21]

One should not overlook the irony –even the tragedy– that the idea of “race” is based on falsehoods, on notions that have no connection to the biological, moral, intellectual and creative reality of human beings. There is only one species of homo sapiens, a single human species. The differences between the so-called human “groups” are superficial, the product of geographical isolation and environmental differences that did not produce different species of humans. [22] That is why it is common to find people who have a genetic sequence more similar to a person of another “race” than to someone of their own or even a family member. [23]

That idea of race is, therefore, an arbitrary and deceptive construct. Its effectiveness is due, among other factors, to the fact that it has been used to simplify the complexity of human reality; to satisfy the strange desire to make intelligible what is complicated, even if the explanations that emerge are wrong. It is also a powerful invention, because it has been used to rationalize and justify the oppression and exploitation of some human beings by others; [24] and because, in the search for identity, it has given millions a reason to feel superior to other humans, even if they do not share in the wealth, power, and domination of those who benefit most from keeping people divided into tribes or “races.” Popper put it this way: “To tell men that they are equal has a certain sentimental appeal. But this appeal is small compared with that made by a propaganda that tells them that they are superior to others, and that others are inferior to them.” [25]

The men of the American Revolution were aware of the problem of slavery. That problem was none other than the contradiction between owning human beings as slaves and the creed of the equality of all “men”. They knew that the only way to eliminate the contradiction was by abolishing slavery, which they did not do for reasons of economic and political expediency. Some chose to rest on the convenient notion that slavery would gradually and inevitably disappear in a relatively short time. [26]

One of the confrontations at the 1787 convention in Philadelphia was between what Fehrenbacher calls “an interest in slavery and an anti-slavery sentiment.” [27] This author states that interest in slavery was “concentrated, persistent, practical, and irritably defensive.” On the other hand, anti-slavery sentiment “tended to be diffuse, sporadic, moralistic, and tentative.” [28] It was, therefore, an asymmetry of power and conviction between the two sides, which partly explains why the sector that advocated for the perpetuation of slavery prevailed. It is also true that the gradual abolition of slavery in the northern states was one of the consequences of the revolution. But the “peculiar institution” was consolidated and expanded in the agricultural states of the South. Near the end of his life, slaveowner Thomas Jefferson wrote of his fear that slavery would trigger a fratricidal war. Four decades later, the states of the confederacy declared their secession and attacked Fort Sumter.

Since colonial times, Benjamin Franklin, James Otis, among others, urged the British government to eliminate government controls on business activity. Franklin relied on economic arguments, now familiar from the mouths of neoliberals. With the language of “rights,” Otis made use of “libertarian” arguments, which became one of the pillars of capitalism’s discourse and of its ally, the constitutional state, i.e., the “liberal democracies.” Otis was the first to articulate legal arguments similar to those used a century and a half later to invalidate laws that sought to protect from extreme exploitation the most vulnerable, including children and women who labored in horrible sweatshops in the 19th century and early 20th century.[29]

The colonial elites who declared independence in 1776 had, as reasons for separating, the desire to make more wealth and to protect what they had already acquired. There were several important triggers that contributed to precipitating the independence movement. The English parliament was not only legislating new taxes, but also trade and production restrictions, all designed to protect the financial and capitalist interests of Britain’s elites and the interests of the empire. [30] Other factors included Britain’s 1763 agreement with tribes west of Appalachia, which limited land grabs occupied by Indians, which was not well received by the colonists. [31]

In addition, the colonists feared that Parliament would eventually legislate to abolish slavery, a fear catalyzed by Lord Mansfield’s decision in Somerset v. Stewart.[32] Charles Stewart, a customs clerk from Virginia, traveled to London with his slave James Somerset. Once in the English capital, Somerset escaped, but was captured. In reaction to the affront of escaping, Stewart sold his slave, but, before transporting Somerset to Jamaica, English abolitionists filed a writ of habeas corpus on his behalf. The central proposition was that Somerset’s presence in England had made him a free man, since slavery was not recognized there. Mansfield held that the act of recapturing Somerset, then selling him and deporting him to Jamaica, was extreme enough to offend English notions of human liberty.

The judge did not declare that slavery was abolished in England, much less throughout the empire. Mansfield did state that slavery can only exist if it is sanctioned by law, while reaffirming the notion of the supremacy of the British Parliament over the colonies.[33] Indeed, despite the fact that the inhabitants of the colonies had no representation in London, Mansfield claimed from his seat at the House of Lords that Parliament had the same authority over them that it possessed over the inhabitants of Great Britain (whether or not they voted to send representatives to Parliament), and over those of the rest of the empire. [34]

The Somerset decision was perceived in the colonies, especially in the south, as a bad omen. [35] Above all, because Mansfield’s expressions sent the message that the British Parliament could abolish slavery in the colonies at any time. Mansfield’s doctrine would be countered, not only by the colonial slogan of no taxation without representation, but by the notion that the colonists should decide on their economic life, not a distant parliament to which they did not send representatives. Beyond maxims, colonial elites would mobilize to protect themselves from what they perceived as threats to their interests and way of life.

All this brings me to another constant that explains the United States: the desire for economic or “capitalist” expansion, which until the beginning of the 20th century went hand in hand with territorial expansion. The expansion agenda, dictated by the wealthy bourgeoisie, required and used the power and violence of the State to remove obstacles to obtaining new sources of investment and wealth. This has been accompanied by the tension between economic activity and its regulation by the state (including resistance to the requirement of contributions to the state treasury through taxes).

In addition to the central role of individualism, the notion of exceptionality and of being a chosen people, as well as capitalism and racism, there are other important constants that remain in force in the 21st century. These include some form of class conflict, as well as wealth inequality, the fear of the ruling classes that the masses will revolt or otherwise hinder the capitalist machine, and the awareness of many in the subordinate classes of the hoarding and overpowering of the rich and powerful, as well as their corruption and that of the politicians at their service.

Perhaps the fact that there are some who command and others who obey is the fundamental corruption of the complex communities that we frame in the term “civilization.” This “corruption” is possible because most of us do not want to rule, or to exercise the dreaded freedom. We prefer to be told what to do, how to think, what to believe. The specific corrupt acts committed by politicians and the rich would be possible due to that fundamental reality.

Democratic principles and their non-compliance

Those who need to mobilize the masses make use of the ideas available in their socio-cultural milieu, in the hope of turning them into motivation, into inspiration, into something that is perceived as greater than the immediacy of the daily routine or of individual destinies. Those who gathered in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776 bet that their denunciation of British tyranny, embedded in the Enlightenment rhetoric of the inalienable rights of human beings, would provide the flame to ignite and sustain the enthusiasm of the population at large, and in particular of those who were already fighting and dying on the battlefields under the command of the richest man in the colonies, George Washington. Rogers M. Smith describes this political-pragmatic aspect: “The needs of the revolutionary leaders to win support for their dangerous war undeniably formed the immediate cause of the America’s advocacy of comparatively radical versions of the rights of man and republicanism.” [36]

One of the paradoxes, and ironies, of American history –and of human history in general– is that the elite who articulated these principles did not fully put them into practice. According to Peter Irons, the “white” and “proprietary” men who drafted and signed the Declaration of Independence did not internalize that the inalienable rights and equality they claimed for themselves sheltered those who were “not like them.” When “another group of white men of property met in Philadelphia in 1787 to draft a constitution for the United States, they brought to this task the same lack of comprehension.” [37] Was it a lack of comprehension, or simple convenience? Kendi and Waldstreicher, among others, argue persuasively that it was a matter of expediency. [38]

The economic and class interests of the colonial elite always took precedence over all other considerations –as they still do today. In addition, since colonial times, a worldview has been developed, which is characterized by resisting or being impervious to the fairest and most humane treatment possible for all. That way of relating to reality has been shaped by history and the culture resulting from that history, and has been reproduced to this day. [39] With important exceptions, the descendants of the founding fathers have proved equally incapable of living up to the ideals expressed in the Declaration of 1776. Inequity and oppression are historical, cultural, and structural.

The promise of substantial democracy remains unfulfilled, although it has had the effect of inspiring and legitimizing demands in that direction on the part of the marginalized, the discriminated against, the oppressed, the forgotten, not only in U.S. society, but on the entire planet. But, for those who are defined by the drive for profit, or a visceral resistance to the broader substantive democracy, aspirations of justice and dignity never come into prominence. That was true in the 18th century, and it is true in the 21st century.

The Business of America [Has Always Been] Business: The Capitalist Constitution

Notwithstanding the mythologies, apologies and praises around and about the Constitution that came out of Philadelphia in 1787, [40] one of the main purposes behind the drafting of that document was facilitating economic expansion –today we call it “capitalist expansion.” [41]Through the new federal government, the elites assumed exclusive control of territorial expansion, which included turning or not turning new territories into provinces (“states”); as well as of domestic and foreign trade, currency, banking, bankruptcies, patents, foreign relations, and treaty-making power –among other neuralgic prerogatives to be exclusive of the new federal government.

That Constitution gave substantial power to Southern plantation slaveholders, counting 60 percent of the enslaved human beings living in each state to determine representation in the House of Representatives; [42] and provided for assistance in the recovery of runaway slaves. [43] It also federalized the suppression of slave rebellions, authorizing Congress to mobilize the militia in such cases. [44]

All of this, and more, was established to provide peace of mind to the elites of the North and South, and to give free rein to the desire of consolidating and increasing their wealth. On slavery and its role in the production and consolidation of wealth –which in the United States always translates into a political role– Waldstreicher’s conclusion seems to be inescapable: “[S]lavery was as important to the making of the Constitution as the Constitution was to the survival of slavery.”[45] But, beyond consolidating slavery, from which a large part of the population and businessmen then lived, both in the North and in the South, the Constitution established the institutional framework for the economic and territorial expansion that continued between 1788 and 1898.

Unlimited Expansion Demands Unchecked Power

The U.S. is probably the most capitalist of the capitalist countries. In contrast to Europe, in the U.S. the capitalists –the rich, the propertied class, the slaveholders, the merchants, and the industrialists– have been part of the ruling elite from the outset, even before they won the war of independence. That’s why, from its inception, the U.S. sought to expand: The Northwest Territories; the Louisiana Purchase; other treaties acquiring new lands; annexations through wars against Mexico and native nations or “tribes.” [46]

When continental expansion concluded, American capitalism –like European capitalism– was still gripped by cycles of depression and slowdown, financial scams and stock market crashes. The acquisition in 1898 of Puerto Rico and other “overseas territories” is intelligible as a new stage of U.S. capitalist expansion, driven by what Arendt called “economic necessity.” [47] Capitalism demands unlimited expansion, and the territory of the nation-state proved to be too limited, its population insufficient, for such a monster. [48]

Cyclical crises led capitalists and politicians to embark on territorial and economic expansion beyond the geographical boundaries of the nation-state, the kind of expansion known as “imperialism.” Exactly the same dynamic was taking place in Europe, and the response was also the same: imperialist domination to make capitalist expansion possible, in that case towards Africa and Asia. Meanwhile, in the 1890s, when the “border had already been closed,” American capitalists were stunned by the depression of 1893.

Thus, at the end of the 19th century, with developments on both sides of the Atlantic, the era of globalized capitalism began, under which we still live. [49] That is to say, once the United States closed its border, completely subjugating the native nations of the continent, the American capitalists bet on the same solution to their problems that the Europeans were implementing: extraterritorial expansion, since the American population could not absorb industrial and agricultural production; nor make rich those who were not yet wealthy; nor richer those who were already rich.

Besides seeking to strengthen American military capabilities, the Spanish-American War was the product of the interest and need of U.S. capitalists and financiers to have access to “new markets” and new opportunities for expansion. The dislocations that the Europeans and Americans caused in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the abuses and massacres, would only compete with the carnage of the two world wars that devastated Europe itself, both products of that competition of the capitalists for control of resources, markets, raw materials and cheap and disposable labor.

Rivera Ramos makes the pertinent caveat that the acquisition of colonies is not a requirement for such expansion. But in the debate that took place in the United States, the “imperialist” side prevailed, and they acquired the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico as colonies, while annexing Hawaii after overthrowing its government. [50]

Coda: Capitalism vs. Democracy

It is essential to reflect on whether the logic of capitalism, with its perennial drive for expansion, is antithetical to democracy and incongruent with the geographical and human limits of the nation-state. According to Arendt, such an antithesis is inevitable. She argued that the nation-state is not fit for imperialism –for extraterritorial expansion and subjugation of other peoples– because it is based on “an active consent to government by a homogeneous population.” [51]

The acquisition and colonization of foreign lands and populations would have to rely on, or impose, consent and thus obviate justice; that is, “degenerate into tyranny.” [52] After all, genuine consent “cannot be extended indefinitely, and it is rarely, and with difficulty, obtained from conquered peoples.” [53]

In short, the wealthy and those aspiring to wealth saw the geographical, economic, and political limits of the nation-state as obstacles to overcome, while using its military and bureaucratic capabilities to facilitate their prized global expansion. Today it seems clear that capitalism turned out to be incompatible with democracy. We are living under a totalitarian plutocracy, because “only the unlimited accumulation of power could generate the unlimited accumulation of wealth.” [54] It is the end of the possibility of doing politics, insofar as politics requires more than the consent of the governed: Politics occurs when there is self-government, which includes participating in the task of governing; in turn requiring deliberation and persuasion in pursuit of the common good.

The rapacity of the capitalists knows no bounds. Hence, the same forces that tyrannize over other peoples to facilitate capitalist expansion turn against the very population of the imperial nation. That is what is happening today in the United States, where what exists is a plutocracy: a phantom government of a wealthy few, as they control the state and federal governments with their lobbyists, with contributions to partisan campaigns, and other corrupt schemes. Money is king.

That is why Congress does not respond to the majority of the population; that is why polls and studies show that policies favored by the majority of the population are not implemented, as the oligarchs have other agendas. In the post-war United States (after 1945), the aspiration for democracy was met with the obstacles of that oligarchy which, in collusion with the rulers, increased public spending for perennial war. Recall that, in his last message to the nation before President Kennedy’s inauguration, President Eisenhower warned of the threat posed by the “military-industrial complex.” Never, particularly since 1941, has America been at peace. War is big business, subsidized by public debt and the tax dollars of those who less benefit of it.

Aside from abuses abroad, in the U.S. they decimated unions, froze wages, changed banking rules, and lowered taxes on the wealthy and their corporations. These and other measures produced a flight of money “upwards,” impoverishing the majority. That is the agenda of the current “Reagan era,” the era of neoliberalism: a capitalism with few checks and balances, but one that demands, and obtains, government bailouts when it messes up. The reaction of a substantial part of the population to this reality has been to revive old prejudices and create new ones. Demagogues have exploited the historical weaknesses of American culture, knowing that it is not immigrants, minorities, gays, or “liberals” who are responsible for making people poorer. The culture wars are an excellent distraction, favoring the criminals responsible for the current debacle.

In sum, the tyranny suffered by the peoples who have been victims of imperialism –including Puerto Rico– has also always manifested itself in the United States. The bells always toll for each one of us.

[1] Kermit Hall & Peter Karsten, The Magic Mirror: Law in American History 28 (2nd ed. 2009).

[2] Id. These authors emphasize a difference with England: The colonies had no feudal past. “The colonists matured their legal tradition under this unique circumstance. The substantive body of law that pour forth from early American legal institutions promoted both a more open society and one in which individuals could experience greater economic opportunity than existed in the mother country. Yet among the early settlers were losers as well as winners, and decisions about how to treat the poor, punish the deviant, and enforce economic obligations touched some persons more than others.” Id.

[3] Cottrol, infra note 14, at 87–88; Morgan, infra note 14, at 6–9; Smith, infra note 14, at 48–49.

[4] Morgan, infra note 14, at 15–16; Waldstreicher, infra note 14, at 22.

[5] Kendi, infra note 14, at 35–38.

[6] Smith, infra note 14, at 71; Kendi, infra note 14, at 16.

[7] Irons, infra note 14, at 14–16; Zinn, Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States 13–17 (2003); Smith, infra note 14, at 59–63; Kendi, infra note 14, at 18–19.

[8] Kendi, infra note 14, chapters 1–6, at 15–75.

[9] According to Arendt, this difference was decisive in the divergent directions of the two revolutions of the 18th century: the Revolution of the British colonies, and the French Revolution. Hannah Arendt, On Revolution 23–24; 60–63; 66–70 (1963).

[10] Arendt, supra note 9, at 71.

[11] Zinn, supra note 7, at 49; 65. Beginning in the 1730s, Boston was the scene of several riots and other violent incidents, in reaction to abuses by the city’s wealthy class. Zinn, at 51.

[12] Zinn, at 48; 51. “New York in the colonial period was like a feudal kingdom.” Zinn, at 48.

[13] Zinn, supra note 7, at 39–42; 45–52. This turned into an advantage: By the 1760s, at the beginning of the revolutionary crisis, “the wealthy elite that controlled the British colonies on the American mainland had 150 years of experience, had learned certain things about how to rule. They had various fears, but also had developed tactics to deal with what they feared.” Zinn, at 53.

[14] For both the history of racism, and its impact on the sociopolitical development of the United States and of the peoples and human beings under its domination, see, e.g., Roberto Ariel Fernández, Racism, Culture, Law, and the Judicial Rhetoric Sanctioning Inequality and Colonial Rule, 53 Rev. Jur. U.I.P.R. 609 (2019); Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (2017); Robert J. Cottrol, The Long, Lingering Shadow: Slavery, Race, and Law in the American Hemisphere (2013); David Waldstreicher, Slavery’s Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification (2009); Mark S. Weiner, Americans Without Law: The Racial Boundaries of Citizenship (2006); The Louisiana Purchase and American Expansion (Sanford Levinson and Bartholomew H. Sparrow, eds. 2005); Foreign in a Domestic Sense, Puerto Rico, American Expansion and the Constitution (Christina Duffy Burnett & Burke Marshall, eds. 2001); Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (2000); Peter Irons, A People’s History of the Supreme Court (1999); Pedro A. Cabán, Constructing a colonial people: Puerto Rico and the United States. 1898–1932 (1999); Rogers M. Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (1997); Judith Shklar, American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion (1997); Ivan Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the West (1996); Ronald Fernandez, The Disenchanted Island: Puerto Rico and the United States in the Twentieth Century (1992); Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom (1975); Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro. 1550–1812 (1968).

[15] As I discussed in Chapter 1, ideas shape and determine human cultures. Ideas are nothing more than information, which is transmitted from brain to brain through its manifestation in actions, omissions, verbalizations, and attitudes, which in turn are adopted and manifested by other human beings. See David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World 369–397 (2011).

[16] Zinn, supra note 7, at 47–48; 56. Hall & Karsten, supra note 1, at 28–30.

[17] Zinn, supra note 7, at 42–46.

[18] Morgan, supra note 14, at 327–337; 344–345; Smith, supra note 14, at 66; 287–288; Zinn, supra note 7, at 37–38; Cottrol, supra note 14, at 88.

[19] Irons, supra note 14, at 13.

[20] Waldstreicher, supra note 14, at 17–18.

[21] Zinn uses the term “racial feeling” to refer to the presence of one or more of the following: hatred, contempt, pity, or condescension, that “combination of inferior status and derogatory thought we call racism.” Zinn, supra note 7, at 24. It is a historical fact that “the notion of racial superiority had been present in American life since colonial times.” Efrén Rivera Ramos, The Legal Construction of Identity: The Judicial and Social Legacy of American Colonialism in Puerto Rico 37 (2001).

[22] See, e.g., Jared Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal 64; 112–117 (1992).

[23] See Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction 8–9 (2012). See also Saint Francis College v. Al-Khazraji, 481 U.S. 604, 610 n.4 (1987).

[24] See, e.g., Kendi, supra note 14, at 99: So long as there was slavery, there would be racist ideas justifying it.

[25] Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies 92 (1945).

[26] See Gordon S. Wood, Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution 110 (2021).

[27] Don E. Fehrenbacher, Slavery, Law, and Politics: The Dred Scott Case in Historical Perspective 15 (1981).

[28] Id.

[29] Waldstreicher, supra note 14, at 25–28; 30–31; Smith, supra, note 14, at 70–71 (the colonists used “liberal” (freedom to do business as they pleased) and “republican” (no taxation without representation) arguments to persuade the British authorities to untie the knot of restrictions and taxes). See, e.g., Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905).

[30] Waldstreicher, supra note 14, at 25–26; 29–31; Smith, supra note 14, at 44; Kendi, supra note 14, at 99 (many rich men in the colonies … were reeling from British debt, taxes, and mandates to trade within the empire. They had the most to gain in independence and the most to lose under British colonialism. … Financially, they could not help but salivate over all those non-British markets for their goods, and all those non-British products they could consume, like the world-renowned sugar that French enslavers forced Africans to grow in what is now Haiti).

[31] See Jean Edward Smith, John Marshall: Definer of a Nation 38 (1996); Zinn, supra note 7, at 87. Independence would mean total freedom to subjugate the natives and take away their lands. Zinn, at 86.

[32] 98 Eng. Rep. 499 (1772).

[33] In the most famous passage of the decision, Mansfield stated: The state of slavery is of such nature, that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral and political, but only by positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory. It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law. 98 Eng. Rep., pág. 510. Mansfield ordered Somerset to be freed. See Roberto Ariel Fernández, Race, Culture, Law, supra note 14, at 643–645.

[34] Waldstreicher, supra note 14, at 34. Mansfield was consistent with nearly two centuries of judicial pronouncements emphasizing the loyalty of those who lived under the protection of a monarch, regardless of geographical considerations or cultural or linguistic particularities. The principle is the same, even if “king” is replaced by “parliament”. See Smith, supra note 14, at 40–41.

[35] Waldstreicher, supra note 14, at 41–42; Smith, supra note 14, at 64; 67.

[36] Smith, supra note 14, at 87–88. See also 70–71. These separatists exposed a “rational liberalism without recognizing the threats to their sense of innate superiority that it represented.” Smith, at 83. Another author highlighted: “The Revolutionary leadership distrusted the mobs of poor. But they knew the Revolution had no appeal to slaves and Indians. They would have to woo the armed white population.” Zinn, supra note 7, at 77.

[37] Irons, supra note 14, at 16.

[38] Kendi, supra note 14, at 99; 105; 106. And he tops it off as follows: “No one had to tell them that their revolutionary avowals were leaking in contradictions. Nothing could persuade slaveholding American patriots to put an end to their inciting proclamations of British slavery, or to their enriching enslavement of African people. Forget contradictions. Both were in their political and economic self-interest.” Kendi, at 107.

[39] For a discussion of the events and ideas that produced racism, the ideology of “white supremacy,” and the development of a national identity around the idea of race, see Roberto Ariel Fernandez, supra note 14, at 609–611; 614–624; 627–636.

[40] Véase, e.g., Carl Van Doren, The Great Rehearsal: The story of making and ratifying the Constitution of the United States (1948).

[41] See, e.g., Hugh Evander Willis, Capitalism, the United States Constitution and the Supreme Court, 22 Ky. L.J. 343 (1934). It is not insignificant that Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations in 1776, the year of the Declaration of Independence.

[42] That was one of the ways in which the U.S. Constitution recognized that owning slaves was for their owners “a source of power and wealth.” Waldstreicher, supra note 14, at 5.

[43] That constitutional clause, included in Article IV, has antecedents in agreements between the colonies to extradite runaway slaves. Zinn, supra note 7, at 46.

[44] The Full Faith and Credit clause, also included in Article IV, was necessary for slaveholders, since it compelled states, even if they had abolished slavery, to recognize its legality in the states that maintained or established it. Waldstreicher, supra note 14, at 8.

[45] Waldstreicher, supra note 14, at 17.

[46] Rivera Ramos, supra note 21, at 27–28. “The United States of America was born and constituted through expansion.” Rivera Ramos, at 27. Interest in the Caribbean region dates back to colonial times. Moreover, five of the first six U.S. presidents (the exception was Washington) pondered the desirability of acquiring Cuba. Rivera Ramos, at 28. See also 1 José Trías Monge, Historia Constitucional de Puerto Rico 135–137 (1980); Cabán, supra note 14, at 17–18; César J. Ayala & Rafael Bernabe, Puerto Rico in the American Century: A History Since 1898 26 (2007).

[47] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism 126 (1951).

[48] In this regard, Pedro Cabán draws attention to “the economic dislocations and political disorders” that took place in the United States during the last decades of the 19th century. Cabán, supra note 14, at 15. See also Rivera Ramos, supra note 21, at 30.

[49] Between 1870 and 1900, Britain, France, and Germany each acquired millions of square miles in overseas territories: 4.7 million, 3.5 million, and 1 million respectively. Ayala & Bernabe, supra note 46, at 28–29.

[50] Rivera Ramos, at 30. Hawaii was taken from its original settlers, and its annexation was also consummated in 1898.

[51] Arendt, supra note 47, at 125. “Though challenges to its predominance abound, no form of political community is more widely favored today than the nation-state, conceived as a relatively large-scale, centralized political system governing a population whose members by and large believe that they form a distinct people, because of language, ethnicity, religion, culture, ideology, propaganda, or some other factor.” Smith, supra note 14, at 42. See also Benedict Anderson, Imagine Communities 5 (rev. ed. 2006), who pointed to the phenomenon of “[t]he ‘political’ power of nationalisms vs. their philosophical poverty and even incoherence.”

[52] Arendt, supra note 47, at 125.

[53] Arendt, at 126.

[54] Arendt, at 137.