“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States
which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons.”U.S. CONST. art. I, § 2. Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment eventually altered this language, but the document that U.S. culture celebrates as birthing democracy also created a racialized hierarchy that continued as Latino/a Americans and Asian Americans increasingly populated the United States.

First off, it’s not just U.S. culture that recognizes that the U.S. Constitution helped birth the spread of democracy in the world. Second, it did not create a racialized hierarchy. Such a thing already existed and was deeply entrenched. What it did do was recognize it and create something that did not previously exist; a method for changing it. Had there been no compromise and no establishment of the Constitution, there would likely have been two or more countries where the U.S. is now, and at least one of them would likely have had slavery for quite a few years after 1865. To say that the Constitution created something that had in fact existed for 100+ years before it was written shows a misunderstanding of either the Constitution and American culture or the English language.