I keep finding that what we are talking about in this class relates to what I am reading about in my EAF 228 class. Today, I was reading about "Capitalism, Class, and the Matrix of Domination" in Allan G. Johnson's book Privilege, Power and Difference (2nd ed.). One of the opening sentences really caught my attention.
"White racism hasn't been around very long -- hardly more than several centuries and certainly not as long as peoples now considered 'white' have been aware of other 'races.' Its appearance in Europe and the Americas occurred right along with the expansion of capitalism as an economic system" (Johnson 41).
After reading this, I suddenly realized why it is so hard to separate class and race; racial discrimination was created to preserve a class system as a part of the larger capitalist economy. The author goes on to explain why this is true by citing historical facts like the use of slave labor, low working wages, and creating divisions among the "masses." All of these things help the dominant, privileged (white) class to turn money into more money.
Have any of you ever realized this connection before? Do you agree with what this author thinks about the connection between racism and class? Why or why not? I'm really interested in what everyone thinks.
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This is an important connection and I hope some people will pick up on this post. Baldwin was trying to make some of the same points in his piece, "A Talk to Teachers," when he wrote that what our society really wants is not critical thinkers but people who follow orders, who fill the low-wage jobs, who grease the wheels that keeps the capitalist machinery running smoothly for those on top. And from the time this country was founded, those who have been pushed to the bottom of that machinery have been poor people and folks of color.
Black slavery, after all, wasn't just about instituting a racial caste system--it was about exploiting people for free labor, which benefitted European land owners (and their descendants, as Dalton Conley points out) by putting more money and accumulated wealth in their pockets. Capitalism may not have given birth to racism, but it has certainly encouraged it to fester.
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