We still are, though. Economic imperialism is just subtler. See also: British West India Company.

Were you kidding about China? Our military is running out of people, and extra-eager manpower would be just what we need... I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see this tactic used.

It was actually a response to ThePyg's argument, what I meant to say is that the US has never been fundamentally imperialistic. It doesn't have much to do with immigration, and it wasn't meant to.

FTA: "Here at home, the war on drugs has been a war on poor people. Particularly poor, urban, African-American men and women. It's well documented that police enforcement of the new, harsh drug laws have been focused on low- level dealers in communities of color. Arrests of African-Americans have been about five times higher than arrests of whites, although whites and African- Americans use drugs at about the same rate. And, African-Americans have been imprisoned in numbers even more disproportionate than their relative arrest rates. It is estimated that in 1994, on any given day, one out of every 128 U.S. adults was incarcerated, while one out of every 17 African-American adult males was incarcerated.

The differential in sentencing for powder and crack cocaine is one glaring example of institutionalized racism. About 90% of crack arrests are of African-Americans, while 75% of powder cocaine arrests are of whites. Under federal law, it takes only five grams of crack cocaine to trigger a five-year mandatory minimum sentence. But it takes 500 grams of powder cocaine â€" 100 times as much â€" to trigger this same sentence. This flagrant injustice was highlighted by a 1996 nationwide federal prison rebellion when Congress refused to enact changes in sentencing laws that would equalize penalties. "

This doesn't even get into the revolving-door effect: try getting a job after you've been convicted. This keeps blacks poor, and therefore ghetto-raised and uneducated, so it can begin again. Try keeping your behavior illegal when your demographic has about a 50% chance of graduating high school. Try staying out of prison as a black male if you have a 33% change of going, usually for the use of one of the most common and harmless drugs on Earth. Drug use is most common in middle- to upper-class white males, yet the majority of enforcement is directed at lower-class black males.

So no, the government doesn't hate blacks because so many are criminals. It's the other way around.