After a year of speculation, the United States treasury has finally released plans to remove Andrew Jackson from the face of the $20 bill and has decided that abolitionist Araminta Ross, a.k.a. Harriet Tubman, would now be the center of the bill. This is not phenomenal news.
Harriet "Moses" Tubman freed over 300 slaves from the South and had the potential to free so many more. She did this her entire life until she died of pneumonia on March 12, 1913. Andrew Jackson, the current face of the $20 bill, was responsible for the forced removal of Native Americans from their lands with the Indian (eye roll) Removal Act of 1830.
In addition, Jackson was a lover of slave-owning. Most of his wealth was built upon the backs of unpaid black slaves. He was a very profitable slave trader and often passed legislation that benefited the Southern states that participated in slavery.
Slavery and capitalism go hand-in-hand. Slaves are considered property that can be traded, sold, and bought. Money is also a key component of capitalism.
Isn't it a bit ironic that Harriet Tubman, someone who was against the trade, selling, and abuse of the black body is now being placed on the face of capitalism and free trade? Everything that she did in her entire lifetime was against slavery, capitalism and those who enforce it. If she were here today, I believe that she would be fighting to free the black men who are in prison for petty crimes that their white counterparts have committed, but have yet to face penalty. The prison industrial complex is arguably a form of modern day slavery.
Capitalism is also the same system that told black slaves that they would get their "forty acres and a mule." This saying is almost proverbial. For a long time, now, America has been against reparations for black people in this country. And in the few instances where reparations have been granted, the land is barren and unprofitable.
Putting Harriet on the $20 bill is disgraceful. It is amazing that a black woman is being put on currency, but I don't think that America is in the place, nor will ever be, to have a black woman on its currency. Capitalism, as well as America, is home to structural racism where black people are constantly being put down. Harriet on the twenty is a cop-out of apologizing for the most heinous crime in American history.
