@em1913:
No, capitalism doesn’t “use” racism. Capitalism is a system of private property and free voluntary exchange, it doesn’t “use” racism in any way. You cite many examples of racism, and all are true. No debate there. And those examples are historical, no debate. But you seem to completely and utter misapply them to an economic system, and then conclude the most ironic things.
For example, you cite the “black codes”. You could have just as easily cited the Jim Crow south too. These things actually happened, and they were horrible. But they were laws enacted by government. The black codes were a set of *laws*. That has absolutely nothing to do with capitalism. Those are good examples of racist individuals grabbing the power in government to force their racist conception of the world onto everyone. A good question to ask is: why did they feel they needed to enact laws to accomplish their goals if in fact the racism was already “baked in” to the economic system? In reality, markets tend to beat away racists, as they quickly become economic losers.
What about slavery? Slaves were used, for all sorts of things, before it was abolished - all true. But it wasn’t because it’s baked into capitalism itself. These were people that thought less of other races independent of the economic system. How do we know? Because we see slavery under all sort of economic structures.
And that, is the great irony here. The greatest fundamental principle of capitalism is private property rights. You own yourself and your labor. It was this very principle that pushed for the ultimate abolition of slavery. And yet... yet... you advocate for the system that would give ultimate power to a centralized authority, a system that you have shown by your own examples to give you the exact result you reject!
A few words about economics and faith: I believe here you also mischaracterize the situation. If you advocate for a general theory of something - that is you claim you figured out how something works and you have a universal principle worked out, and then someone comes along and thinks for a few minutes and starts listing ways your principle fails, it has nothing to do with faith. It is simply someone being shown to be incorrect.