The reasoning is backward in Nicolai Brown’s column. Its accusations are almost completely ridiculous, and the conclusion is the complete opposite of what an objective observer should come to. (“An end to capitalism … an end to racism?” Jan. 10).

Let me move chronologically. While you seem to insinuate that capitalism created slavery as a means to maximize profit, I am led to wonder why, then, slavery has existed since the beginning of human civilization, but capitalism has existed, even in its barest form, since the very late 1700s.

And why is it that slavery began to die out in the 1800s, the same time industrialization and capitalism here sweeping through Europe and the Americas? And why, I must ask, were the most economically successful regions of the United States (the North) free of slavery, while the poorer and less developed regions (the South) dependent on it?

Continue on that thought to the 20th century. The states terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan, governed by Jim Crow laws and filled with a generally racist public were the states that were poor then, and in some cases, are still poor today. Capitalism destroys racism because capitalism rewards the most able, and ability does not depend on skin color.

The point is, socialism is not a magical cure for racism like Brown would have us think. The countries today with the most racial strife, such as events like the massacres in Rwanda in the 1990s, are also the countries with most, if not all, of the economic power centralized in the hands of the government. You find a lot of racially motivated civil wars in central Africa and, coincidentally, not much capitalism. Governments, at least, non-fascist governments, are merely a reflection of the population that it governs. A racist public elects a racist government. Anti-capitalist actions are inherently anti-freedom, and most linguists would agree that the opposite of freedom is slavery. So if we really want to bring about racial harmony, as Brown would like, I suggest we start like Martin Luther King Jr. did — from the bottom up.

Niclo Hitchcock

Junior

Electrical Engineering