It was here, however, that employers intervened; not because of any moral obliquity but because’ the Industrial Revolution, based upon the crops raised by slave labor in the Caribbean and in the southern United
Reminds me of MLK's 1966 statement about capitalism and racism being inseparable in the U.S.:
“You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism.”
Challenging racism is so dangerous because the U.S. would not have been such an economic powerhouse without the exploitation of millions of African slaves. Thus, when one engages in a fight with racism, they are inevitably also fighting capitalism.