On Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill

I find this to be an abomination and a total affront to Tubman’s legacy of upending white supremacy and capitalism. Under these systems black people were literally units of capital, and her work as an abolitionist was centered around ABOLISHING these systems by liberating and saving black people. Like seriously. And now she is being made one of the faces of the same American capitalism that she subverted and a symbol of American empire as well, since the $20 is one of the most circulated US bills.

I just find it all so sickening and disturbing. An abolitionist who fought to dismantle these systems from the root being co-opted by this same system on its currency of all things. This is par for course for AmeriKKKa, taking radical figures and attempting to maintain the empire by erasing their radical legacies and making them a benign figure that supports the perpetuation of the empire. Look what white people did with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela- rewriting history to make subversive radical figures into teddy bears that do not affront or damage the empire. But when you read the history you know the truth. You know that Nelson Mandela led an armed struggle against white domination in South Africa and that Martin Luther King Jr was also staunchly anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist.

I see this same erasure and co-opting happening here with Harriet Tubman. Tubman was a radical. She was an abolitionist. She worked to destroy slavery and in turn upend the entire capitalistic system based around the exploitation of the black body. Because remember that modern capitalism was literally founded on slavery. These are the same systems continuing to exploit, maim and kill black and brown people in the US and across the world. The ones that are leading to the gentrification of black and brown communities in Brooklyn, to the dumping of environmental waste in indigenous communities and the environmental devastation of the Niger Delta by Western oil companies. All of this is connected and is rooted in white supremacy and capitalism, which Tubman worked so hard to destroy.

And now they are making her the symbol of those systems and the American empire and co-opting her radical legacy by putting her on the $20 and making her the symbol of American capital. Her face will be on the currency being used to buy out black communities and push them from their homes. Her face will be on the currency used to pay private prison companies. Her face will be on the currency paid to charter schools lowering educational standards in black and brown communities. Her face will be on the currency paid to maintain these systems and the American empire as a whole.
Is this not just fucking absurd?

I cannot. This is not giving homage to someone, this is erasure of a radical legacy and co-opting said radical to make them the face of the same systems she fought against. I’m disgusted.