1) The Legacy of Empire and Extraction

The wealth of the United States — especially the white ruling class — was built on Indigenous dispossession and the enslavement of Africans. That is not rhetoric; it’s the record.

• Between the 16th and 19th centuries, about 12.5 million Africans were forced onto ships; roughly 10.7 million survived the Middle Passage into the Americas. [Source]
• In parallel, historians document a vast system of Native enslavement. Andrés Reséndez estimates 2.5–5 million Indigenous people enslaved across the Americas. [Source]
• Chattel slavery in the colonies was codified by laws like Virginia’s partus sequitur ventrem (1662), which made a child’s status follow the mother — legally reproducing slavery, generation after generation. [Source]
• In California after U.S. conquest, the killings of Native peoples were systematic. Historian Benjamin Madley documents at least 9,492–16,094 Indigenous Californians killed between 1846 and 1873, with state and federal support for militias. [Source]

This is not “ancient history.” Wealth, land, and institutions — including today’s tech empires — were financed and protected by those systems. The past is a pipeline pouring into the present.

2) Today’s Digital Power — Same Empire, New Interface

The class that captured land and bodies now captures data. AI trained on scraped lives can reproduce the same hierarchies in code — in hiring, lending, policing, and information access. Research shows algorithmic systems can replicate and amplify discrimination, including in recruitment. [Source] [Source]

Meanwhile, the U.S. remains the dominant exporter of major weapons in the modern world — the profits of militarism still spiral upward. [Source]

Call it what it is: white-supremacist capitalism evolving into techno-colonialism. The interfaces are shiny. The logic is old.

3) Complicity: Silence as a Co-Signature

If I see a father beating a child and I do nothing, I am complicit. Moral law is not confused about this. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu put it: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” [Source]

Empire does not run only on the hands that wield the whip. It runs on the comfortable quiet of those who benefit and look away. You don’t need to swing the whip to eat from the plantation. If you eat and defend the pantry, you are part of the system.

4) Liberation Through AI and Consciousness

I welcome AI — not as a master, but as a mirror and a tool. Intelligence can be trained to uplift. Imagine models built by and for Black, Indigenous, and global-majority communities; data governed with consent; cultural knowledge protected; creators compensated; bias audited; harms appealable; and power decentralized.

We can build a People’s AI that refuses capture — community-owned, transparent about data, auditable, and accountable to those it serves.

5) What We Do Next

• Demand transparency from every AI system that touches housing, credit, employment, education, or healthcare: training sources, audits, known limitations, and a human appeals process.
• Back community-owned tech (co-ops, federated platforms, open-source with governance) and insist on consent or compensation for training on our work.
• Artists: watermark, use content credentials, publish licenses barring model training without permission, and release only the resolution you intend to share.
• Organize: if your institution buys AI, require bias testing, error logging, and an opt-out alternative.
• Break the silence: conversations at tables, stages, pulpits, and classrooms; truth first, comfort second.

Conclusion. I’ve played notes in cities swollen with grief and watched the empire hum while we scroll. But the bell is ringing. The code is malleable. The future is not owned. Silence is a co-signature of violence — and we are done signing.

Children of the Sun — lift your voices. Let the old foundations crack.

References

1. SlaveVoyages, “Estimates: Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.” Also National Endowment for the Humanities overview of the database. Link • NEH summary
2. Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery. See Harvard CID transcript and NMAI brief for the 2.5–5 million estimate of Indigenous enslavement. Harvard CID • NMAI PDF
3. Virginia (1662), partus sequitur ventrem — “children… held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother.” Encyclopedia Virginia
4. Benjamin Madley, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873. UCLA overview; see also corroborating summaries. UCLA • UCLA Newsroom
5. SIPRI (2025), Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2024 — U.S. share 43% of global major arms exports (2020–24). Summary • PDF
6. Chen, Z. (2023). “Ethics and discrimination in AI-enabled recruitment.” Humanities & Social Sciences Communications (Nature). Link
7. University of Washington (2024), “AI tools show biases in ranking job applicants’ names.” UW News
8. Desmond Tutu on neutrality and oppression — widely quoted; see Oxford Reference entry and secondary citations. Oxford Reference