We live in a world where propaganda is pervasive and influential. Many of us are vulnerable and succumb to its influence. A common misconception is that wealthy people have all the power, which is a lie. The power belongs to the people, but they are tricked into thinking that they do not have power. The wealthy use various strategies to manipulate us and maintain their dominance, such as creating inflation, discouraging labor unions, and creating division among the lower and middle classes by forcing them to compete for resources that the wealthy control. The main instrument they employ to achieve this is capitalism. Capitalism is a zero-sum game, where someone has to lose for someone else to win.

Many of us, the majority of us, are drawn into the capitalist system because we have been taught that we can succeed with hard work. However, the capitalist system as a whole is rigged against us. Moreover, we are taught that other economic systems are doomed to fail because they are prone to corruption when the truth is that all economic systems have the potential for corruption, especially capitalism. We are immersed in a sea of corruption that people and corporations have caused in the capitalist system. And even though the corruption is evident, they tell us that other economic systems would be worse. We are fed with the positive aspects of capitalism and blinded to or given excuses for the inequalities that exist in the capitalist structure. They are quick to blame people with low incomes for being poor. When Ronald Reagan wanted to turn us against people with low incomes, he presented us with the image of the “welfare queen.” It was not a coincidence that the person was black and a woman. It was a deliberate choice. And most of us fell for it hook, line, and sinker. While not informing most of us that the vast majority of people on welfare are white. The federal government in the Jim Crow era could not explicitly exclude black people from welfare programs. They had to devise clever ways to keep the welfare program out of as many black hands as possible.

They accomplished this in many ways, such as:

• The Social Security Act of 1935 excluded agricultural workers and domestic servants, who were predominantly Black, from old-age insurance and unemployment insurance benefits.
• The Aid to Dependent Children (later renamed Aid to Families with Dependent Children) program gave states broad discretion in determining eligibility and benefit levels, which allowed Southern states to exclude or limit assistance to Black families.
• The Federal Emergency Relief Administration, which provided relief funds to states during the Great Depression, allocated more money per capita to white families than Black families and often denied relief to Black families altogether.
• The Works Progress Administration, which created jobs for unemployed workers, segregated its projects by race and paid Black workers lower wages than white workers.
• The Public Works Administration and the Federal Housing Administration, which subsidized housing construction and mortgages, enforced racial segregation and redlining policies that prevented Black families from accessing affordable and quality housing.

These structural systems were built into the government to make it seem like they were playing fair, but they were not. They had developed a system in which they would try to hide their racism. Many of these same structures still exist or have created new ones to replace older ways of systemic racism.

Ronald Reagan and other Republicans since have used these racist cloaks to fit their narrative and reinforce the stereotype that black people are lazy and always take advantage of a system meant to help people. Meanwhile, we ignore or justify the expl

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