The United States is often celebrated as a beacon of democracy, liberty, and innovation. Yet behind this luminous façade lurks a powerful, enduring force: the invisible hand of colonialism. Far from being a relic of distant lands and bygone eras, colonialism remains deeply embedded in American institutions—shaping education, law, economy, and culture in ways that persistently influence contemporary life. Understanding this hidden legacy is not merely an academic exercise; it is essential to comprehending the unfinished business of freedom in America.
The Colonial Roots of American Democracy
Aziz Rana’s incisive work, The Two Faces of American Freedom (2020), confronts a foundational paradox: American freedom emerged not despite colonialism, but through it. Settler colonialism enabled a select few to enjoy autonomy and governance, while systematically dispossessing indigenous peoples and enslaving Africans (Rana, 2020). Freedom and domination were, from the beginning, co-constitutive. This duality etched itself into American legal and political frameworks, establishing a democracy that paradoxically relied on subjugation to sustain itself.
Adom Getachew’s Worldmaking after Empire (2019) complements Rana’s thesis by demonstrating how American and European imperial projects created the very conditions against which later movements for self-determination rebelled (Getachew, 2019). America’s institutions were not born in isolation; they were, and remain, artifacts of a global imperial order.
Education: Gatekeepers of Colonial Power
Higher education institutions, long considered pillars of enlightenment, were deeply implicated in the colonial enterprise. In Ebony and Ivy (2020), Craig Steven Wilder unveils the profound entanglements between American universities and the economies of slavery and indigenous dispossession (Wilder, 2020). Harvard, Yale, and Princeton were not merely passive beneficiaries; they actively profited from and rationalized racialized exploitation.
The consequences of these origins are not confined to history. Angel L. Harris and Paula D. McClain, in their comprehensive study Colonial Roots and Contemporary Racial Inequality in Higher Education (2020), reveal how today’s racial disparities in university admissions and outcomes are direct inheritances of these colonial structures (Harris & McClain, 2020). Janelle Wang’s Colonial Shadows (2021) further shows that even well-intentioned diversity initiatives often leave intact the colonial assumptions embedded within curricula and institutional cultures (Wang, 2021).
Knowledge itself has been colonized. Nelson Maldonado-Torres’ Decolonizing the University (2020) critiques the “coloniality of knowledge”—the monopolization of legitimate inquiry by Eurocentric frameworks (Maldonado-Torres, 2020). Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies (2021) calls for a radical rethinking of research practices that continue to marginalize indigenous and non-Western epistemologies (Smith, 2021). As Gurminder Bhambra emphasizes in Colonial Histories and the Epistemologies of the Present (2021), these exclusions are not incidental but central to the way Western institutions have historically constructed, and continue to construct—knowledge (Bhambra, 2021).
Law and Economy: Colonialism Rebranded
The legal and economic systems of the United States similarly bear the indelible marks of colonialism. Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments (2019) captures how newly emancipated African Americans found themselves hemmed in by legal structures designed to manage and marginalize Black life (Hartman, 2019). Freedom, once attained, was immediately constrained by laws and policies that echoed colonial forms of control.
This dynamic persists. In her reflection The History of White People (2020), Nell Irvin Painter illustrates how legal definitions of whiteness were weaponized to exclude and subordinate, rooted in colonial systems of racial categorization (Painter, 2020). Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s Race for Profit (2021) exposes how systemic discrimination in real estate and finance ensured that Black families remained economically marginalized, revealing how colonial extraction patterns were repurposed for the modern capitalist state (Taylor, 2021).
The legal academy itself has been complicit. Ariela Gross’s research, illuminated through Amanda Austin’s Reckoning with Slavery’s Legacy in American Law Schools (2022), details how law schools actively participated in crafting the legal justifications for slavery and segregation (Austin, 2022). As J. Sexton’s The Velocities of Change (2020) asserts, racial capitalism is the afterlife of colonialism, morphing into new forms while retaining its essential character of hierarchical exploitation (Sexton, 2020).
Read also: Exposing Western Grip On Africa’s Neo-Colonialism
Cultural Institutions: The Struggle for Liberation
Colonial legacies are also deeply woven into America’s cultural and intellectual institutions. In Teaching to Transgress (2020), bell hooks offers a powerful vision of education as a practice of freedom, urging a pedagogy that dismantles colonial power dynamics rather than reproducing them (hooks, 2020). The classroom, she insists, must be a site of liberation, not indoctrination.
Similarly, Christopher Lebron’s The Making of Black Lives Matter (2019) situates contemporary movements for racial justice within a broader historical arc of resistance against colonial structures of domination (Lebron, 2019). Black Lives Matter is not simply a reaction to recent injustices; it is a long-delayed reckoning with the original sin of colonialism embedded in America’s founding.
Toward a Decolonial Future
Recognizing the colonial roots of American institutions compels action. As Linda Tuhiwai Smith reminds us, decolonization is not a metaphor—it demands a fundamental reordering of power, knowledge, and resources (Smith, 2021).
What might this look like?
- Universities must do more than diversify; they must deconstruct curricula that uphold colonial worldviews.
- Law schools must embed the histories of colonial violence into the heart of their pedagogy, not isolate them into electives.
- Economic reforms must address not just income disparities but the historical expropriations that created them.
- Cultural spaces must center indigenous, Black, and diasporic narratives as foundational, not supplementary.
Adom Getachew’s call for a renewed politics of self-determination (Getachew, 2019) offers a guiding light: liberation will not come from inclusion into colonial structures, but from reimagining and rebuilding institutions on truly egalitarian foundations.
Conclusion: Facing America’s Invisible Hand
America’s colonial inheritance is neither accidental nor peripheral—it is constitutive of its institutions. To ignore this reality is to participate in a grand erasure. To confront it is to open the door to transformation.
As we stand at a crossroads, the choice before America is stark: continue to mask the invisible hand of colonialism under myths of exceptionalism, or engage in the hard, necessary work of decolonization. Only through the latter can the nation begin to fulfill its highest ideals, not just for some, but for all.
References
Getachew, A., 2019. Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Available at: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691192720/worldmaking-after-empire [Accessed 27 April 2025].
Rana, A., 2020. The Two Faces of American Freedom. Harvard Law Review, 134(1). Available at: https://harvardlawreview.org/2020/11/the-two-faces-of-american-freedom/ [Accessed 27 April 2025].
Lebron, C.J., 2019. The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of an Idea. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available at: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-making-of-black-lives-matter-9780190872197 [Accessed 27 April 2025].
Wilder, C.S., 2020. Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Available at: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674066245 [Accessed 27 April 2025].
Harris, A.L. and McClain, P.D., 2020. Colonial Roots and Contemporary Racial Inequality in Higher Education. Annual Review of Sociology, 46, pp.297–316. Available at: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-soc-121919-054809 [Accessed 27 April 2025].
Sexton, J., 2020. The Velocities of Change: Racial Capitalism and the Afterlife of Colonialism. Critical Ethnic Studies, 6(2). Available at: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/709659 [Accessed 27 April 2025].
Wang, J., 2021. Colonial Shadows: Rethinking Race and Higher Education in the United States. Sociology of Education, 94(4), pp.287–306. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00380407211047615 [Accessed 27 April 2025].
Maldonado-Torres, N., 2020. Decolonizing the University: The Coloniality of Knowledge and Epistemic Freedom. Harvard International Review. Available at: https://hir.harvard.edu/decolonizing-the-university/ [Accessed 27 April 2025].
Smith, L.T., 2021. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. 3rd ed. London: Zed Books. Available at: https://www.zedbooks.net/shop/book/decolonizing-methodologies/ [Accessed 27 April 2025].
Bhambra, G.K., 2021. Colonial Histories and the Epistemologies of the Present. Theory, Culture & Society, 38(2), pp.89–112. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0263276420957705 [Accessed 27 April 2025].
Hartman, S., 2019. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Available at: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393357622 [Accessed 27 April 2025].
Austin, A., 2022. Reckoning with Slavery’s Legacy in American Law Schools. Harvard Law Review Blog. Available at: https://blog.harvardlawreview.org/reckoning-with-slaverys-legacy-in-american-law-schools/ [Accessed 27 April 2025].
Painter, N.I., 2020. The History of White People. Harvard Gazette. Available at: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/historians-on-white-supremacy-and-americas-founding/ [Accessed 27 April 2025].
Hooks, B., 2020. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Routledge Classics. Available at: https://www.routledge.com/Teaching-to-Transgress-Education-as-the-Practice-of-Freedom/Hooks/p/book/9780367902325 [Accessed 27 April 2025].
Taylor, K.-Y., 2021. Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Available at: https://uncpress.org/book/9781469653662/race-for-profit/ [Accessed 27 April 2025].