What does it mean to be American?

“To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.” The best part about the way of government in our country is the endless possibilities (or so we are told) that every single American has. Great Expectations is a prime example of this opportunity that I speak of. However for Du Bois, this was an unavailable opportunity. He was able to recognize this aspect early on in his life but not experience its blessing but feel the pain the system can inflict. While reading this text I could not help but ask myself, why did this happen? How could this happen? The sad realization is that this pain or exploitation is cyclic in occurrence throughout American history.
What does it really mean for us to be American some could say? What really differentiates me from John Doe and why is there not a consistent form of equality in this country during the era of Du Bois or even today? I think to myself that I am proud to be American but when I read about the truth put by a man who was exploited by our system a part of me feels lost. History as we know tends to repeat itself, first it started off with discrimination towards Native Americans, and then the new target becomes African Americans. All of this information gathered from various readings and in depth views into our past seems to only ignite this fire within me that feels that over and over the constant theme of capitalism is exploitation. We exploited the Indians out of their land.
With the African Americans comes a similar story of exploitation which is what I plan to go more in depth with now. The first round of exploitation starts with the induction of African Americans into a system of slavery. To fuel the capitalist machine they are subject to labor, they produce an item or service and are not paid for the labor they invested. This accounts for a huge increase in flow in money to the slave master who does not exchange fixed labor returns such as monetary compensation but offers exchange for this labor in the form than housing, clothing, and food. It is basically no cost to the master to have extra slaves because the cost is so minute to the gain and this realization is what made capitalism so strong. Slavery is a strong component to speedy production but there is a certain point where the worker should not be exploited further and that is a point when capitalism comes to a halt because of political dilemma.
In the time of American history and what Du Bois started off conveying was the civil war. The way this part is conveyed is that the North needed more soldiers to fight off the South so they offered emancipation to African Americans to help end the war so that capitalism can go on as usual. It was a change in common feeling at the time but the way Du Bois sets the mood for this it feels like this was just another ghost-like manipulation and exploitation. It is to the “benefit” of the North to offer this opportunity however we see that this was not clearly thought out before enacted because after the civil war ended there was still turmoil being felt by African Americans. What the capitalist machine thought would ease the worker that was being exploited was this opportunity for so called freedom. However this was not so simple as thought. So the government created a group to help alleviate this stress.
Now back to the essential question I ask and to make it more clear: How does a system that is based off of a so called exploitation differentiate between who to exploit whether it is by race, religion, or sexuality? It seems to me that capitalism is such an elaborate system that it has many security precautions in place to make minor substitutions for the general populace and in situations of increased duress has the ability the completely adapt. So what really makes us human? Could it be that we do have a set of predefined characteristics that do make us all alike and that our ideology or the ideology of the leading group chooses a new target to exploit and then absorb into the populace? I wouldn't like to think so however that is the big thing that hit me when reading this text. When Du Bois says, “what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.” I feel that Du Bois came to this conclusion on capitalism later on in his life and that is probably why he was a self proclaimed socialist.