Picking cotton from a field that a white man own

from Kendrick Lamar – Vanity Slaves Part 1 Lyrics on Rap Genius

He is referring to the days of slavery from the 1500s to late 1800s in America. The slave masters who “owned” slaves, had them pick cotton from their field, so that they could make profit for free. This is undeniably the way America acquired wealth through their system of capitalism in very little time, catapulting the society as the most powerful on Earth (at one time).

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