No, Jemele Hill, capitalism isn’t racist — people are

Jemele Hill’s recent argument that capitalism is tied to racism and white supremacy raises a bigger question than whether capitalism works.It raises a question about human nature.Hill is right about one thing: Capitalism has been used to commit racial injustice. American slavery, segregation, and discriminatory housing and employment policies caused enormous harm. Economic institutions were sometimes used to exclude and exploit black Americans. WHITE GUILT IS DEAD — AND WE KILLED ITBut there is a difference between saying people have used capitalism to commit racist acts and saying racism is intrinsic to capitalism.That distinction matters.An institution can be corrupted without the corruption being the institution itself. Human beings have used government, religion, science, and democracy to justify terrible things. We would not conclude from that that those institutions are inherently evil.Why should capitalism be held to a different standard?Capitalism, at its core, allows people to own property, exchange goods and services, and profit from creating something other people value. None of those principles requires racism.In fact, there is something morally important about the way capitalism can allow a person to prosper: You can make money by serving your fellow man.You can build a business. Create a product. Provide a service. Employ someone. Solve a problem. If people voluntarily choose to give you their money because what you offer makes their lives better, your success does not require their subjugation.That doesn’t mean capitalism is perfect. It isn’t. Markets can be distorted by monopolies, government favoritism, discrimination, and concentrated economic power. Businesses can exploit workers and consumers.Those are legitimate criticisms.But they do not prove that capitalism is inherently racist.And this is where Hill’s argument creates an even bigger problem.If capitalism is intrinsically tied to racism because people have used it to advance racism, why would socialism be immune from the same human weakness?A racist does not stop being racist because he changes his economic philosophy.Human beings bring their ambitions, prejudices, greed, and capacity for domination into whatever institutions they create. Changing the economic system does not change the people operating it.That is why the history of slavery matters not to minimize the transatlantic slave trade, but to understand the deeper problem. Slavery is an ancient institution that existed long before modern capitalism. Human beings enslaved, conquered, and exploited one another across civilizations and thousands of years.Capitalism did not invent humanity’s capacity to exploit other human beings.Human beings did.That doesn’t excuse the injustices committed under capitalism. It puts them in the proper context.And there is another fact worth remembering: Market-oriented economies have produced enormous increases in wealth and helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty. The World Bank says global extreme poverty has fallen dramatically over the past several decades, driven in large part by economic growth. We should be honest about capitalism’s failures without becoming blind to its successes.The conservative case for capitalism shouldn’t be that it is flawless. It should be that no economic system can eliminate human sin, so we should be cautious about giving even more power to political institutions in the hope that a new system will make people virtuous.Capitalism doesn’t make human beings good.Socialism doesn’t make them good either.No economic system can.The better goal is to build institutions that limit concentrated power, reward productive behavior, and give ordinary people the freedom to improve their own lives.Hill’s problem isn’t that she recognizes the injustices that have occurred under capitalism. We should recognize them.Her problem is assuming those injustices tell us what capitalism inherently is.TAXPAYERS ARE FUNDING ‘WHITES NEED NOT APPLY’ CHARITY GRANTS. THE IRS MUST STOP ITThey may tell us something more fundamental about ourselves.Human beings have always had the capacity to exploit one another. The real challenge is building a society that gives us more opportunities to serve one another than to dominate one another.David Sypher Jr. is a writer and political commentator.