…nce had — once you go beyond the comfortable sentiments of the “land of the free” — went like this. They’ll do all the work, and we’ll take all the gains. The labour was to be done by black people, especially the hardest and most risky, and the winnings were to be taken by whites, whether in the North or South. That was America’s social contract, for generation upon generation. The central idea was: we will exploit each other, to get rich.
