The woke crowd has argued, from its inception, that America is racist at its very core and foundation, marking the country's inception at 1619, when the first imported slave was brought to shore, instead of at 1776, the year the Declaration of Independence was written.

Dan Carlin is a popular history podcaster who has what he calls a unique "Martian" perspective on history and current events. He used to do current events podcasts but quit a few years ago. His audience is generally right leaning and in his political podcasts, back when he used to do them, he usually tried to avoid American racial politics as much as humanly possible.

He tackled it with his "Human Resources" podcast, which clocks in at over 5 hours. Whether seeking to do it or not, by portraying the scale of slave labor in building America, Carlin makes the case that the Americas were built on racial subjugation much, much more strongly than anyone seeking out to do such a thing. At one point, he unearths a letter by an enslaver (a word that he notes has replaced "slaveowner" in modern history books) back to business partners in Europe where it's said that without slave labor, they won't be able to settle North America at all.

If true, then it is clear why slavery is such a nagging historical question for the United States even centuries after it was abolished. Would there even have been a United States if the original founders had tried to have it function the way it does now? In Italy, African slaves are utilized right now at this very moment - that is European subjugation of African labor right there in the twenty first century. However, so much history exists for Italy that few would make the case that Italy would be non-existent without slave labor. (Although the case could be made because it was very much a thing in ancient Rome.)

It is what it is. Wokeism wouldn't have gotten as far as it has if there weren't some truth and validity to their claims, and the general conservative tendency to deny and sidestep these questions makes it worse.