Racism is inextricably intertwined in capitalism. And capitalism is inextricably intertwined with racism. Racism is so deeply embedded in corporate capitalism that anti-racism measures by corporations today are a mere ruse. It’s for public consumption not to change the status quo. Corporate culpability for racism exists today.
Slavery is the foundational institution of American capitalism. Walter Johnson explained the guiding concept of “racial capitalism”: racism as a technique for exploiting black people and for fomenting the hostility of working-class whites toward blacks, to enable white capitalists to extract value from everyone else.
Professor Angela Davis recently said, “we can’t eradicate racism without eradicating racial capitalism “. Racial capitalists conquered the West; racial capitalists waged the Civil War; racial capitalists industrialized St. Louis, at every step exploiting black people just as brutally as slaveholders did.
The bulldozing of black neighborhoods that looked to whites like slums and their partial replacement by high-rise public-housing projects, aggressive policing, mass incarceration, and the use of business-friendly, community-unfriendly tax abatements to revitalize older cities— was pioneered in St Louis and copied throughout the nation.
Abraham Lincoln was a complex being. He began his career as a “settler militiaman,” and, for the rest of his life, “remained committed to ethnic cleansing.” Lincoln’s first priority was to deliver a whites-only frontier, to the “white supremacist, imperialist, and removalist” Republican base.
He hated native American Indians because they killed his grandfather, Abraham, in front of his dad and uncles. He was not an abolitionist. He was not for slavery or the abolition of slavery. His wife Mary Todd came from a wealthy slave-owning family.
He openly supported Henry Clay and the American colonization Society which sent 18,000 slaves to a colony in Liberia, West Africa. He was complicit in the attempted genocide of Native Americans. As the United States grew west and conquered more territory, President Lincoln was afraid of the slaveocracy.
Abe and other non-abolitionist northerners were afraid of the slave-owning class and their power. They were systematically seizing Control of the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court, as well as state and local governments. This was an existential threat to the Republicans. They were afraid that rich slave owners would move into new territory, use their cash to buy up all the good lands, and then use their slaves to work the lands for free which would only expand their wealth. and power.
He said in his first inaugural address on March 4, 1861 “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
Yet, one month later when confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter President Lincoln started the Civil war. And he refused to accept anything less than a complete and unconditional surrender.
He won, he preserved the union, and he abolished slavery. He also started the federal tax system. Plus, the modern-day banking system. And he instrumented the birth of capitalism as we know it today.
Abe was a proponent of the Free Soil doctrine which is a cornerstone of republicanism. Pre-Civil War he believed that the people in each territory with sovereigns and therefore should determine the status of slavery by their representatives.
This became known as popular sovereignty also known today as states’ rights. The idea of local self-determination was the premise. This was manifested by the consent of the governed to be represented by leaders who would implement policies favorable and advantageous to their constituents in theory.
In practice, the Iron Triangle prevents this from happening in actuality. Central to the concept of the Iron Triangle is the assumption that bureaucratic agencies as political entities seek to create and consolidate their power base. It’s a massive quid pro quo scheme. You do something for me, and I’ll do something for you.
The Iron Triangle comprises the policy-making relationship among congressional committees, the bureaucracy, and special interest groups. The result is a three-way stable alliance, that sometimes is called a sub government, because of its durability, impregnability, and the power to determine policy.
At one corner of the triangle are interest groups (constituencies). These are the powerful interest groups that influence Congressional votes in their favor and can sufficiently influence the re-election of a member of Congress in return for support of their programs. At another corner sit members of Congress who also seek to align themselves with a constituency for political and electoral support.
These congressional members support legislation that advances an interest group’s agenda. Occupying the third corner of the triangle are bureaucrats, who often are pressured by the same powerful interest groups their agency is designated to regulate, and in some cases have close ties to the regulated industry.
So popular sovereignty is a myth. The system is not designed for our elected leaders to serve the interests or the will of the people. Many elected officials are subservient to the will of their corporate backers, donors, and special interest groups who support them. This has led to an economic system called crony capitalism.
The major problem with crony capitalism is that businesses thrive not as a result of risks they take by investing, good products, or good services that they provide. They make money through the close affiliation with the political class. Corporate welfare, bailouts, favorable monetary policy from the Federal Reserve are some of our government’s decisions, that favor cronies of government officials.
We have seen in the last few months with the coronavirus pandemic, that Congress has given $2 trillion to help people and small businesses stay afloat. However, they have given more than $6 trillion to corporations, industries, and cronies of Trump. Some of these were bailouts for industries like the Cruise line industry, who don’t have any corporate headquarters in the United States. Therefore, they don’t pay any US taxes. Furthermore, many others were given low interest or no-interest, forgivable loans which they don’t have to be paid back.
Another problem with capitalism is its instability. Capitalism produces a downturn every 8 to 10 years on average. Capitalism could never end the cyclical downturns and the awful effects.
Capitalists recognized that when large numbers of people suddenly lose their jobs, many businesses die, production shrinks, and governments lose tax revenues, the results can and often do threaten the entire economic system. Capitalism’s cyclical crises could potentially turn their victims against it.
So for capitalism to survive they had to make it socially tolerable and they did that by the reproduction of systemic racism. They used minorities, immigrants, indigenous people, poor white people, and married women as “shock absorbers” for the system and its negative effects.
U.S. capitalism solved its instability problem by making cyclical downturns afflict chiefly a minority subpart of the whole working class. The “shock absorbers” bore the brunt of each cycle and suffer its damages disproportionally.
They were repeatedly drawn into and then thrown out of jobs as the cycle dictated. Any savings accumulated when working would be lost when unemployed. Repeated firings precluded them from enjoying the benefits of job longevity (seniority, promotion, household stability, etc.). Poverty, disrupted households and families, unaffordable housing, education, and medical care would haunt them as well.
Capitalists use the police and prisons to “keep the lid on”, “tame”, or “patrol and control” the restive portions of the “shock absorbers” community, to prevent any disruptive behavior or protests. The collateral damage of capitalism is a long, tragic record of police violence, excessive use of force, mass incarceration, cruelty and violence in the prison system, and the killing of many black Americans.
Racial capitalism uses the banks to redline districts from minorities, refuse small business loans, and prevent access to venture capital.
Banks use discriminatory lending practices and complex credit instruments to control the accumulation of black wealth.
They also use local bureaucrats who use zoning, building permits, and other restrictive policies and ordinances to keep communities segregated. They also have designed many restrictive housing contracts targeted at minorities.
Capitalism began with slavery by using the unfree labor of slaves, indentured servants, prisoners, and other coerced people who were considered capital. Capitalism is therefore racist. Many religions are opposed to specific elements of capitalism. Traditional Judaism, Christianity, and Islam forbid lending money at interest. Catholic scholars and clergy have often criticized capitalism because it disenfranchised the poor.
They oppose it because American capitalists have institutionalized racism as part of their business model which began with slavery. Institutional racism is where race causes a different level of access to goods, services, and opportunities in society.
Institutional racism is embedded as a normal practice within society, businesses, and many organizations both academic and professional. It is the primary and most prevalent cause of discrimination in criminal justice, employment, housing, health care, political power, and education, among other venues.
Stokely Carmichael wrote, that while individual racism is often identifiable because of its overt nature, institutional racism is less perceptible because of its “less overt, far more subtle” nature. Institutional racism “originates in the operation of established and respected forces in the society, and thus receives far less public condemnation than [individual racism]”.
According to Immanuel Wallerstein, institutional racism has been “one of the most significant pillars” of the capitalist system and serves as “the ideological justification for the hierarchization of the work-force and its highly unequal distributions of reward”. The salaries of corporate CEOs have risen exponentially in the last 30 years. Conversely, the salary of the Frontline workers has decreased.
The hierarchization of the workforce compels competition among the rank-and-file. It also allows employers to exploit racial differences and use racism as a tool to maintain dis-unity and the status quo.
Institutional racism is distinguished from racial bigotry by the existence of institutional systemic policies, practices, and economic and political structures that place minority racial and ethnic groups at a disadvantage concerning an institution’s racial or ethnic majority.
One example of the difference is public school budgets in the U.S. and the quality of teachers, which are often correlated with property values: rich neighborhoods are more likely to be more ‘white’ and to have better teachers and more money for education, even in public schools. Other examples are racial profiling by security guards and police, use of stereotyped racial caricatures, the under- and misrepresentation of certain racial groups in mainstream media, TV, Movies, Sports’ Management, and other race-based barriers to gainful employment and professional advancement.
Professor James M. Jones theorized three major types of racism: personally mediated, internalized, and institutionalized.
Personally mediated racism includes the deliberate specific social attitudes to racially prejudiced action with bigoted differential assumptions about abilities, motives, and the intentions of others according to their race), discrimination (the differential actions and behaviors towards others according to their race), stereotyping, commission, and omission (disrespect, suspicion, devaluation, and dehumanization).
Internalized racism is the acceptance, by members of the racially stigmatized people, of negative perceptions about their abilities and intrinsic worth, characterized by low self-esteem, and low esteem of others like them. This racism can be manifested through embracing “whiteness” (e.g. stratification by skin color in non-white communities), self-devaluation (e.g., racial slurs, nicknames, rejection of ancestral culture, etc.), and resignation, helplessness, and hopelessness (e.g., dropping out of school, failing to vote, engaging in health-risk practices, joining gangs, or other illegal behavior like using or selling drugs and prostitution or online sex work.
Institutional racism is different from bigotry or white supremacy as explained above. It’s clear to see the enormous damage done by racial capitalism to our great nation.
Because of racial capitalism crime is an inevitable option for minorities. There is no way out or up. Many suffer from discouragement, hopelessness, low self-esteem, anger, hate, depression, physical, mental, or sexual abuse. And they live with lifelong scars, from childhood trauma, of their living conditions and their place in society, which has been predetermined before their birth by capitalism.
Prisons are capitalistic tools used to mass incarcerate minorities to prevent their education and upward mobility. Domestic violence laws are designed to dismantle traditional family households. By removing the male breadwinner from the household, hence, forcing the female to resort to welfare, food stamps, and public housing. This also leaves no positive black male role models in the community.
Institutional racism is so subtle that many white people are unaware that they are propagating racism just by going about their everyday lives and following corporate, government, societal policies, and norms.
Being a majority stakeholder in a racist capitalist system doesn’t make you a racist. It makes you an unwitting partner in the crimes of racism against minorities. But now you know. If you share the gains, then you share the blame.
Capitalism is no doubt racist. Capitalism is designed to acquire as much wealth as possible. That’s why we have billionaires, trying to become trillionaires. Capitalism is a flawed system because of the continuous need for aggressive profits. Even in good times, there are layoffs, restructuring, and downsizing, to increase productivity from a smaller workforce.
Massive corporate tax evasion by offshoring entities, thereby depriving local and state governments of maintaining or improving infrastructure, education, healthcare, and social services. They also extort multi-decade tax abatements from states just to provide jobs. This leads to further demise and malaise in our communities.
Capitalism exacerbates poverty income inequality prevention of a working minimum-wage and wealth gap. It’s abundantly apparent that trickle-down economics is as real as unicorns. So it’s up to the people to change this racist capitalist system before we all become slaves.
President Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery. But he allowed capitalists to continue to use blacks for cheap labor and unfree labor. It took 100 years to get civil rights. Yet, we are still waiting for the equal rights, privileges, and liberties that our white neighbors enjoy.
Racial capitalism is alive and well today. Their many crimes are unpunished, unabated, and without mercy. And the biggest crime of all is the dependence and the exploitation of racial differences in America to facilitate the status quo. You can either be part of the problem or part of the solution. The choice is yours.
by TOMTHUNKIT™
