We hear a lot about "white privilege" -- and I think it's worth taking a deeper dive. What does it really mean, and why is it intellectually dishonest when people say, "America has laws that apply equally to people of all races."

History is a real motherfucker. That's why.

America was built upon a simple idea -- the world's oldest business model: People, selling people, to other people.

It has a name. Slavery.

The first version of America, as we know it, really started around 1690. America was (mostly) built by slaves.

By the time the United States was finding its footing as a nation, almost a century later, we couldn't quite find the value of what a black person was worth. So a bunch of white guys said, "How about 3/5ths of a person?"

(*Which means some people in the room were saying 2/5ths.)

The United States held onto slavery a lot longer than other countries. England and France abolished slavery in the 1830s and 1840s.

Thus, the Civil War began, because Southern states REALLY liked whipping black people.

"But Shane, the Civil War wasn't about slavery. That was only a piece of it." No, fuckhead. Go listen to professor Blight's lectures about The Civil War and Reconstruction. All 30+ hours. Then come back and talk to me.

It was about slavery. Period.

"...the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." - VP Stephens

In 1862, the Homestead Act Began. Any man or woman, including freed slaves, could go stake his or her claim to 160 acres of the west.

There was just one problem: Black people couldn't participate in the great land giveaway. Why? They were literally shackled in the South.

We all agree that land has value, and it's worth a great deal of money. In the greatest government giveaway in the history of our nation, black people received 0.7% of the land claimed. White people took all the land.

This has been the foundation of our nation's inequality.

Reconstruction after the Civil War was supposed to help black Americans and white American heal our divide, but that wasn't going to happen. Immediately afterwards, a new set of laws sprung up, disenfranchising black voters, and creating economic slavery - sharecropping.

Moving through the late 1800s in to the early 1900s, black people didn't have the same opportunities.

Black people weren't eligible for bank loans. (Well... they were, but good luck getting a loan.) Black people were stuck in a cycle of renting, rather than owning.

The "Roaring 20s" were roaring... if you were white, but black America largely lived in poverty. White people were given priorities for jobs. Black schools were under-funded. Black people could only attend a limited number of black colleges.

Black people were locked out.

The Great Depression dealt a crushing blow to white communities, but it was even more depressing if you were black. Black unemployment topped 60%.

New Deal jobs under FDR were given to white people as a priority. White people were bailed out. Black people were not.

Black soldiers fought with white soldiers during World War II, giving their lives for a country that didn't value them. We had heroes like the Tuskegee Airmen, the 332nd Fighter Group.

When they returned home, they didn't receive the same help that white soldiers received.

Every soldier who fought during WWII was given the Montgomery GI Bill -- free college. There was just one problem. Schools were segregated, and there weren't enough black colleges to serve our vets.

Less than 10% of black WWII veterans received their free college education.

There are black people walking around with you today who went to segregated schools. Brown vs. Board of Education wasn't heard until 1954.

Some of your black grandmothers and grandfathers attended schools before we healed that wound.

Eisenhower's Civil Rights Act of 1957 (finally) restored voting rights to black Americans, who had been effectively blocked from voting through a series of racist laws.

There are people alive today who remember those days. It's not that far behind us.

It was Johnson's Civil Right Act of 1964 that finally gave black people freedom from segregation, and discrimination.

But that wasn't the end of the road. Segregated rears its ugly head in many forms. Laws don't change behavior, and it takes action to break those behaviors.

The fact of the matter is this: Black people in America were given a losing hand from the very beginning. We live in a capitalist society, where wealth is power, and our wealth was systematically distributed to white people for almost the entire history of our nation.

Every time a college was built using state funding, like with the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 -- and black people couldn't attend those schools, that's white people taking money, and rewarding themselves, leaving black people behind.

Education has value.

Today, when school districts are creatively drawn to remove poorer minority communities from the resources of wealthier, whiter schools -- that's modern racism, locking black people out of the same education that white children can receive.

When black men and women are stuck in a cash bail system, designed to lock them up in private prisons for minor offenses, owned by wealthy white men -- keeping them as lines items on accounts receivable... that's modern racism, written into law.

Every time we see politicians strip away social safety nets, calling poor minority communities "takers" for having the audacity to feed their children with SNAP funding, that's white wealth, taking away the promise of black children, before they ever had a chance to be succesful.

Racism doesn't just happen when a black police officer shoots a handcuffed man in the back, or strangles him to death by putting a knee on his neck for nine minutes.

Racism happens every time we wake up and pretend a hashtag is going to change a goddamn thing.

The wealthy white people in power are glad you take to Twitter with hashtag activism, because hashtag outrage won't disrupt their income streams.

So I say this: Burn their institutions to the fucking ground. When they complain, burn more. Riot. Loot. Rebel.

John Brown led the raid on Harper's Ferry with force and violence, because he believed in the rights of black Americans. He believed in their freedom. He didn't write a polite letter.

He showed up armed, with spears -- ready to literally put heads on spikes.

To the rioters: Keep going. Don't back down for a moment. Exercise your constitutional right to defend yourselves with firearms. When the police shoot at you, shoot back at them.

There are more of you than there are of them. You will win.

I say this to my black brothers and sisters: You tried peacefully protesting. You tried kneeling. You tried activism. You tried writing letters and making phone calls -- and nothing changed.

If white men in power won't give you change, take it from them. I'll stand with you.