Driving force · 1526–now
Greed — The Root
The argument, drawn from historian Malcolm Foley's "The Anti-Greed Gospel," that the love of money — not an ancient, free-floating hatred — is the root of American racism. Greed built the systems; race was invented to justify them.
Pull on almost any thread of this history and you reach the same root: money.
In The Anti-Greed Gospel (Brazos Press, 2025), the historian Malcolm Foley makes the case directly — that the love of money is the root of racism. On this view, racial categories were not the starting point but the justification. A fluid colonial servitude was hardened into lifelong, hereditary, race-based slavery because it was profitable, and the idea of race was invented and elaborated to defend that profit. Greed came first; race came second, to protect it.
Seen this way, the systems catalogued on this site stop looking like separate evils and start looking like one machine, retooled across centuries to keep extracting Black labor and wealth:
- the transatlantic-slave-trade turned human beings into cargo and credit;
- chattel-slavery and the slave-law that codified it protected human "property";
- after emancipation, convict-leasing, sharecropping, and jim-crow re-monetized Black labor;
- redlining and discriminatory lending extracted wealth from Black neighborhoods;
- the war-on-drugs and mass-incarceration built a profitable carceral economy.
Ida B. Wells reached the same conclusion more than a century ago: she documented that lynching was often a weapon against Black economic success — racial terror in the service of greed. Naming greed as the root, Foley argues, is also the key to resistance — economic solidarity and justice, not merely changed hearts.
This is a lens, not the last word. But it is the thread that ties the whole web together.
On the timeline
- 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.
- January 16, 1865Special Field Order No. 15 — "40 acres"
Sherman sets aside coastal land for freed families — a promise soon revoked.
- November 1865The Black Codes
Southern states pass laws to control freedpeople and force them back into labor.
- March 2, 1877The Compromise of 1877 ends Reconstruction
Federal troops withdraw from the South, abandoning Black citizens to white-supremacist "Redeemer" governments.
- 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.
Resources
Heirs' property — the legal mechanism behind a staggering loss of Black-owned land.
The book this site's organizing lens is drawn from: a Black Christian historian's argument that greed, not ancient hatred, is the root of racism.
A landmark investigation documenting the theft of Black-owned land through violence and fraud.
How plantation accounting shaped modern American capitalism.
An accessible overview of Malcolm Foley's thesis connecting greed to racial violence.
Argues that slave labor and forced migration were the engine of American capitalism.
The web
Connections to other moments, systems, and investigations — the links rarely drawn together.
- documented by·PersonIda B. Wells
Ida B. Wells showed that lynching often targeted Black economic success — proof that racial terror served greed.
- connects to (incoming)·PersonMartin Luther King Jr.
By 1968 King had turned to economic justice — the Poor People's Campaign — arguing civil rights without economic power were hollow.
- responded to (incoming)·EventThe Poor People's Campaign
King's final campaign confronted poverty itself — the economics beneath racism.
- responded to (incoming)·ThreadBlack Business & Wealth
Black-owned banks, papers, and enterprises were built to create wealth in an economy designed to extract it.
- caused·EventThe Tulsa Race Massacre
Greenwood — "Black Wall Street" — was destroyed precisely because it was prosperous.
- responded to (incoming)·ThreadThe Great Migration
The Migration was, in part, Black Southerners voting with their feet against the sharecropping economy and racial terror.
- caused·ThreadSharecropping & Tenant Farming
Sharecropping re-created slavery's economics so planters could keep extracting cheap Black labor.
- caused·ThreadDebt Peonage
Manufactured debt was a tool to force people to work for free.
- caused·ThreadRedlining & Housing Discrimination
Redlining and discriminatory lending systematically extracted wealth from Black neighborhoods.
- caused·EventThe Black Codes
The moment slavery ended, the Black Codes moved to force freedpeople back into cheap, controlled labor.
- caused·ThreadMass Incarceration
A carceral economy turned policing and prisons into a source of cheap labor and private profit.
- caused·ThreadChattel Slavery
Slavery in America was, at root, a labor system built to maximize wealth from unpaid Black labor.
- connects to·ThreadRacial Capitalism (Profit)
Racial capitalism is greed institutionalized — an economy that assigns value, and extracts it, by race.
- caused·ThreadWhite-Supremacist Ideology
Foley's core claim: the idea of race was invented to justify and protect economic exploitation. Greed came first.
- caused·ThreadConvict Leasing & Debt Peonage
After emancipation, convict leasing re-monetized Black bodies by renting prisoners as forced labor.
- caused·ThreadThe Transatlantic Slave Trade
The Atlantic trade existed to turn human beings into profit; it was a business before it was anything else.
- caused·ThreadThe Making of Slave Law
Slave codes were written to define and protect human beings as profitable "property."
- caused·ThreadPolitical Disenfranchisement
Stripping Black Americans of the vote protected the economic order that the vote could have changed.
- caused·EventThe Wilmington coup of 1898
A thriving biracial government and Black middle class were overthrown to restore white economic and political control.
- contradicts·EventSpecial Field Order No. 15 — "40 acres"
The broken promise of "40 acres" shows what greed refused to give up: a real economic foundation for the freed.
- caused·ThreadJim Crow
Segregation protected white economic advantage as much as it enforced a racial hierarchy.
- led to·ThreadThe War on Drugs
The drug war fed an incarceration economy while devastating Black communities.
- connects to·ThreadImperialism & Colonialism
The same hunger for land, labor, and markets drove both empire abroad and racial exploitation at home.
- caused·Event"20 and odd" Africans arrive at Point Comfort
The first Africans were sold into a Virginia economy hungry for cheap tobacco labor.
- responded to (incoming)·PersonRobert Sengstacke Abbott
Abbott's Defender urged Black Southerners north, helping spark the Great Migration away from sharecropping and terror.
- connects to (incoming)·ThreadMedical Racism
Unconsented research and the HeLa line turned Black bodies into uncompensated profit.
- part of (incoming)·EventAfrican rice knowledge builds Carolina
The Lowcountry's rice fortune was built on stolen African expertise and labor.
- documented by (incoming)·PersonPaul Robeson
Robeson's blacklisting shows how political and economic power were used to silence Black dissent.