Curriculum unit
The Anti-Greed Gospel: The Economics of Racism
Following historian Malcolm Foley, students test the argument that the love of money — not an ancient hatred — is the root of American racism.
Students evaluate the thesis that greed drove the invention of race, trace its expression across slavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration, and assess the evidence and counter-arguments.
- Lesson 1 · 1 class period
Greed before race
ObjectivesArticulate Foley's thesis that economic interest, not ancient hatred, produced racial categories.
MaterialsThe Greed — The Root theme; Malcolm Foley, "The Anti-Greed Gospel."
Introduce the central claim: a fluid colonial servitude hardened into race-based slavery because it was profitable, and "race" was invented to defend that profit.
Teach from these moments- August 20, 1619· debated"20 and odd" Africans arrive at Point Comfort
An English privateer trades roughly two dozen captive Angolans to Virginia colonists at Old Point Comfort — a foundational moment whose exact legal status (enslaved vs. indentured) historians still debate.
- December 1662Virginia makes slavery hereditary
Virginia law declares that a child's status follows the mother, making slavery inheritable and permanent.
Discussion questionsWhich came first — race or the profit it justified? What evidence supports each view?
- Lesson 2 · 1–2 class periods
Slavery as a business
ObjectivesAnalyze slavery and the slave trade as an economic system that built American wealth.
MaterialsTimeline entries below; "The Half Has Never Been Told"; "Empire of Cotton."
Examine the cotton economy, the domestic slave trade, and the financial web that made enslaved people the largest single asset in the antebellum economy.
Teach from these momentsDiscussion questionsHow did slavery finance banks, insurers, and industry North and South? Who profited?
- Lesson 3 · 1–2 class periods
Re-monetizing freedom
ObjectivesTrace how, after emancipation, new systems re-extracted Black labor and wealth.
MaterialsTimeline entries below; the Convict Leasing, Redlining, and Mass Incarceration themes.
Connect the Black Codes, convict leasing, redlining, and the carceral economy as successive machines for extracting Black labor and wealth — and read Tulsa and Wilmington as attacks on Black prosperity.
Teach from these moments- November 1865The Black Codes
Southern states pass laws to control freedpeople and force them back into labor.
- May 18, 1896Plessy v. Ferguson
The Supreme Court blesses "separate but equal," constitutionalizing Jim Crow for half a century.
- November 10, 1898The Wilmington coup of 1898
White supremacists violently overthrow a multiracial elected government in North Carolina.
- May 31, 1921The Tulsa Race Massacre
A white mob destroys the prosperous "Black Wall Street" of Greenwood, killing hundreds.
Discussion questionsHow do Black Codes, convict leasing, sharecropping, redlining, and the prison boom rhyme with what came before?