Racism and How To Fight It
| Revision History | ||
|---|---|---|
| • Fall/Winter 1994 | Newspaper: Funded by Syracuse University students. | |
| The Alternative Orange: Vol. 4, No. 1 (pp. 20). | ||
| • August 11, 2003 | Webpage:  . | |
| DocBook XML (DocBk XML V3.1.7) from original. | ||
The key to understanding capitalist society is that it is a system divided into exploited and exploiting classes.
Class is the fundamental social division because class power and class conflict shape the rest of society, and because the injustices of capitalism can only be ended by mobilizing the power of the working class to build a classless socialist society.
But this emphasis on class does not mean that socialists ignore other divisions in society, particularly those based on race.
Racism is a pervasive feature of modem society.
This is nowhere clearer than in the U.S. Consider the situation Black people face in this country, for instance:
Black people receive 20 percent less income than whites with the same education level.
Black unemployment is always at least twice as high as white unemployment.
Life expectancy for Blacks has been dropping since 1985. The life expectancy of Black men in Harlem is lower than that of men in Bangladesh.
In California, Black people go to state prison about 20 percent more often than whites arrested for the same crimes and serve sentences from one to two years longer.
How can racism be defeated? Socialists argue that racial oppression cannot be ended unless capitalism is also destroyed, because racism is integral to the system.
Modem racism was born with the emergence of capitalism, initially as a justification for slavery.
BIRTH OF CAPITALISM
Profits from the slave trade helped make possible the industrial revolution in Britain, and plantations using slave labor provided much of the wealth which financed the birth of capitalism in the U.S.
But racism survived the abolition of slavery—the capitalist ruling class came to see it as vital to its interests.
Just as capitalists fostered tribal divisions in their colonies to strengthen their control, they used racism as a divide-and-rule tactic against the working classes in their own countries.
What was true a hundred years ago in England is just as true today in the U.S.
Racism against Blacks, Latinos, and other minority groups is the central division in the American working class, seriously weakening its ability to fight collectively.
Against the view that racism is fundamentally a tool of ruling-class control, it is often argued that white workers benefit from racism.
But while it is true that, for example, the average wage for whites is higher than that for Blacks or Latinos, it does not follow that racism benefits white workers.
In fact, various studies have shown that as the level of racism increases, wages and benefits for all workers decrease.
The best example of this is the U.S. South, a region dominated by white supremacist ideology which has the lowest wages in the country.
Because workers are forced to compete for jobs, if wages are pushed down for Blacks, whites are also forced to accept lower wages.
As the Black leader W.E.B. Dubois put it, “So long as white labor must compete with Black labor, it must approximate Black labor conditions—long hours, small wages
BETTER CONDITIONS
Racism also undermines the organization and unity that is essential for workers to fight for better conditions, leaving all workers worse off.
Far from benefiting from racism, white workers have an interest in fighting it. As Marx noted, “Labor in white skin cannot emancipate itself where it is branded in Black skin."
Nor is the idea of white workers fighting racism simply an abstract possibility.
Although racism has often divided workers, there is also a rich history of multiracial struggle in the U.S. and else where.
In the 1930s, for example, white and Black sharecroppers in the South, and white and Black workers in the North, fought together as class allies.
During the Los Angeles rebellion of 1992, Blacks, whites and Latinos joined in an unorganized explosion of anger against the system.
As the Latino poet Lois Rodriguez noted, “Although 'race' continues to be rammed down our throats, the issue here is class."
The LA rebellion made clear that class divisions cut across racial groups.
THE STATUS QUO
It was Black Mayor Tom Bradley who defended the status quo by calling the National Guard to intervene.
Black workers have more in common with white workers than they do with middle-class blacks like Bradley or Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who have a stake in a system which depends on and perpetuates racial oppression.
The precondition for ending racism is the defeat of capitalism.
At the same time, the fight for socialism requires multiracial workers' unity which can only be built if socialists fight racism now.
As part of this fight, socialists defend the right of racially oppressed groups to organize as they choose, against the attacks of racists and right-wingers.
But we also argue that the only way to end racism is a united fight against capitalism.
Only the working class has the power to replace capitalism with socialism.
But only a working class that has overcome racial divisions can use its power to end capitalism and racism.
(Reprinted from Socialist Worker)
Socialist Worker; P.O. Box 16085; Chicago, IL 60616; $25 for 24 issues
| ★ |
