Of course, the video is an oversimplification. It is hardly trying to be more than that. This is some guy's YouTube channel, not The Journal of Political Opinion, and while the guy is definitely pushing an opinion, he's hardly acting like he's Noam effing Chomsky. He's definitely not telling everyone watching this video to go out and buy his colorful propaganda to hang around your cities and to donate to his cause. The comparison is dishonest.

It seems like everyone whose jimmies were rustled by this video had a particularly bad time with his simplified class notions of black people, poor whites, and masters. It's not that complicated of a simplification, and it's really just talk of class:

Black people = Lower Class, riddled with minorities. Poor whites = Middle Class, a more diverse group. Masters = The Upper Class

If you look at it this way, it's not that controversial. It's not like the guy thinks there's no Hispanics, Asians, etc in the country. I don't think it's meant to be literal or academic.

Nowhere in his video does the guy say the "masters" come together at this hotel every last Tuesday in May to plot how to keep everyone down. It's pretty much the implied argument me and deanSolecki have already gone over. The upper classes act in their own interests, with more access to power centers and influential people, benefiting themselves and creating inequality. He brings up the consolidation of media and growing inequality to show how the upper classes have gotten more entrenched and powerful, nothing more.

He does say that the powerful enacted Jim Crow with specific intentions, but, hey, the powerful in the South DID enact Jim Crow with specific intentions of keeping black people down and unequal. And his assertions about the "caste" system seem to be how society became organized so that black slaves were worse off than poor whites, hardly a controversial claim. He says the system benefited the "masters," not that they created it in their basements to harm black people specifically because they thought the color of their skin was icky.

What does slavery committed by Africans have to do with anything? No one says slavery is inherently a racist institution, but slavery as it was practiced in the United States became a racist institution. That's the reality. And you can't deny there were feelings of supremacy against Africans. Look at White Man's Burden. Look at the colonization of Africa in general. Look at the arguments for slavery but slaveholding Southerners.

What does the universality of societal prejudice against minorities have to do with anything? The reality is that the US has racial problems. Being the "melting pot" doesn't give the country a pass. It's quite ridiculous to even contend that it should be given one.

Black people in this country are the minority so people should point out how they are disadvantaged. It doesn't matter if, hypothetically, they would be the oppressors in bizarro world where they are the majority. The reality is they aren't, and this is how it affects them. Jim Crow targeted black people because it promoted racist institutions. The War on Drugs disproportionately targets minorities because it's a racist institution. And it is. I never worried about police rolling through when I wanted weed.

He's hardly focusing only on how problems affect the black community, as well. He talks about the indentured servitude of white people as you say, he talks about how there are more in prison than ever before, and he talks about how poverty affects the white people. His overall point was how "poor whites" and black people should ally and work for their interests against the upper classes.

Also, I've never read A People's History, but if you're referring to this chapter, I'd say your characterization of what Zinn said was quite disingenuous. He never calls him an Uncle Tom or House Negroe. He does put forth the case that MLK was favored by the establishment, and that nonviolence worked only to a point. But that's a bout a thousand times more nuanced than what you said.

The guy brought up a bunch of factoids in the middle of the video. You admit they're mostly correct. That's the most important part of the video.