Cap K - Mwefdasichigan7 2014

Capitalism Vs.
Racism
Lubricate the gears of capital. -Kenji Yeoh
***Capitalism***
Cap Links
Afropessimism
Afropessimism is not radical pessimism is a predictable
response to postmodern capitalism and is a crucial part of the
system
Eagleton 95 (Terry Eagleton Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University, Professor
of Cultural Theory at the National University of Ireland, In defense of history: Where do postmodernists come
from?, Monthly Review, vol. 3 no. 47 (July 1995), pp. 59-70 // JJ)
Imagine a radical movement that had suffered an emphatic defeat. So emphatic, in fact, that it seemed unlikely to
As time wore on, the beliefs of this movement

might begin to seem less false or ineffectual than simply irrelevant. For its opponents, it
would be less a matter of hotly contesting these doctrines than of contemplating
them with something of the mild antiquarian interest one might have previously reserved for
Ptolemaic cosmology or the scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas. Radicals might come to find
themselves less overwhelmed or out-argued than simply washed up , speaking a
resurface for the length of a lifetime, if at all.
language so quaintly out of tune with their era that, as with the language of Platonism or courtly love, nobody
even bothered any longer to ask whether it was true.
What would be the likely response of the left
to such a dire condition? Many, no doubt, would drift either cynically or sincerely to the right, regretting
their earlier views as infantile idealism. Others might keep the faith purely out of habit, anxiety, or nostalgia,
clinging to an imaginary identity and risking the neurosis that that may bring. A small clutch of left triumphalists,
incurably hopeful, would no doubt carry on detecting the stirrings of the revolution in the faintest flicker of
One can
imagine that the ruling assumption of this period would be that the system was, at
least for the moment, unbreachable; and a great many of the left's conclusions
could be seen to flow from this glum supposition. One might expect, for example, that there
would be an upsurge of interest in the margins and crevices of the system--in those
ambiguous, indeterminate places where its power seemed less secure. If the
system could not be breached, one might at least look to those forces which might
momentarily transgress, subvert, or give it the slip. There would be, one might predict, much
militancy. In others, the radical impulse would persist, but would be forced to migrate elsewhere.
celebration of the marginal--but this would be partly making a virtue out of necessity, since the left would itself
might thus come, conveniently enough, to

suspect all talk of centrality as suspect. At its crudest, this cult of marginality
have been rudely displaced from the mainstream, and
would come down to a simpleminded assumption that minorities were

positive and majorities oppressive . Just how minorities like fascist groups, Ulster Unionists, or
the international bourgeoisie fitted into this picture would not be entirely clear. Nor is it obvious how such a
position could cope with a previously marginal movement--the ANC, for example--becoming politically dominant,
The historical basis for this way

of thinking would be the fact that political movements that were at once mass,
central, and creative were by and large no longer in business. Indeed, the idea of a
given its formalist prejudice that dominance was undesirable as such.
movement that was at once central and subversive would now appear something of a contradiction in terms. It
would therefore seem natural to demonize the mass, dominant, and consensual, and romanticize whatever
happened to deviate from them. It would be, above all, the attitude of those younger dissidents who had nothing
much, politically speaking, to remember, who had no actual memory or experience of mass radical politics, but a
good deal of experience of drearily oppressive majorities. If the system really did seem to have canceled all
it would not be hard to generalize from this to the vaguely

anarchistic belief that system is oppressive as such. Since there were almost no examples of
attractive political systems around, the claim would seem distinctly plausible. The only
genuine criticism could be one launched from outside the system altogether; and
one would expect, therefore, a certain fetishizing of "otherness" in such a period.
There would be enormous interest in anything that seemed alien, deviant, exotic,
unincorporable, all the way from aardvarks to Alpha Centauri, a passion for whatever gave us a tantalizing
opposition to itself, then
this romantic ultra-leftism would

coexist, curiously enough, with a brittle pessimism--for the fact is that if the system is allglimpse of something beyond the logic of the system altogether. But
powerful, then there can be by definition nothing beyond it, any more than there can be anything beyond the
infinite curvature of cosmic space. If there were something outside the system, then it would be entirely
unknowable and thus incapable of saving us; but if we could draw it into the orbit of the system, so that it could
gain some effective foothold there, its otherness would be instantly contaminated and its subversive power would
thus dwindle to nothing. Whatever negates the system in theory would thus be logically incapable of doing so in
practice. Anything we can understand can by definition not be radical, since it must be within the system itself; but
Such
thinking has abandoned the whole notion of a system which is internally
contradictory--which has that installed at its heart which can potentially undo it. Instead, it thinks in
anything which escapes the system could be heard by us as no more than a mysterious murmur.
the rigid oppositions of "inside" and "outside," where to be on the inside

is to be complicit and to be on the outside is to be impotent . The typical
style of thought of such a period, then, might be described as libertarian
pessimism--libertarian, because one would not have given up on the dream of
something quite other than what we have; pessimism, because one would be much
too bleakly conscious of the omnipotence of law and power to believe that such a
dream could ever be realized. If one still believed in subversion, but not in the existence of any fleshand-blood agents of it, then it might be possible to imagine that the system in some way subverted itself,
deconstructed its own logic, which would then allow you to combine a certain radicalism with a certain skepticism.
If the system is everywhere, then it would seem, like the Almighty himself, to be visible at no particular point; and
it would therefore become possible to believe, paradoxically enough, that whatever was out there was not in fact
a system at all. It is only a short step from claiming that the system is too complex to be represented to declaring
In the period we are imagining, then, some would no doubt be

found clamoring against what they saw as the tyranny of a real social totality,
that it does not exist.
whereas others would be busy deconstructing the whole idea of totality and claiming that it existed only in our
minds. It would not be hard to see this as, at least in part, a compensation in theory for the fact that the social
totality was proving difficult to crack in practice. If no very ambitious form of political action seems for the
moment possible, if so-called micropolitics seem the order of the day, it is always tempting to convert this
necessity into a virtue--to console oneself with the thought that one's political limitations have a kind of objective
ground in reality, in the fact that social "totality" is in any case just an illusion. ("Metaphysical" illusion makes your
position sound rather more imposing.) It does not matter if there is no political agent at hand to transform the
whole, because there is in fact no whole to be transformed. It is as though, having mislaid the breadknife, one
declares the loaf to be already sliced. But totality might also seem something of an illusion because there would
be no very obvious political agent for whom society might present itself as a totality. There are those who need to
grasp how it stands with them in order to be free, and who find that they can do this only by grasping something of
the overall structure with which their own immediate situation intersects. Local and universal are not, here, simple
opposites or theoretical options, as they might be for those intellectuals who prefer to think big and those more
modest academics who like to keep it concrete. But if some of those traditional political agents are in trouble,
then so will be the concept of social totality, since it is those agents' need of it that gives it its force. Grasping a
complex totality involves some rigorous analysis; so it is not surprising that such strenuously systematic thought
should be out of fashion, dismissed as phallic, scientistic, or what have you, in the sort of period we are imagining.
When there is nothing in particular in it for you to find out how you stand--if
you are a professor in

Ithaca or Irvine, for example--you can afford to be ambiguous, elusive, deliciously
indeterminate. You are also quite likely, in such circumstances, to wax idealist-though
in some suitably new-fangled rather than tediously old-fashioned sense. For one primary way in which we know the
world is, of course, through practice; and if any very ambitious practice is denied us, it will not be long before we
catch ourselves wondering whether there is anything out there at all. One would expect, then, that in such an era
a belief in reality as something that resists us ("History is what hurts," as Fredric Jameson has put it) will give way
to a belief in the "constructed" nature of the world. This, in turn, would no doubt go hand in hand with a fullblooded "culturalism" which underestimated what men and women had in common as material human creatures,
It would tend not to realize that such

culturalism is just as reductive as, say, economism or biologism. Cognitive and realist
and suspected all talk of nature as an insidious mystification.
accounts of human consciousness would yield ground to various kinds of pragmatism and relativism, party
because there didn't any longer seem much politically at stake in knowing how it stood with you. Everything
would become an interpretation, including that statement itself. And what would also gradually implode, along
with reasonably certain knowledge, would be the idea of a human subject "centered" and unified enough to take
significant action. For such significant action would now seem in short supply; and the result, once more, would be
to make a virtue out of necessity by singing the praises of the diffuse, decentered, schizoid human subject--a
subject who might well not be "together" enough to topple a bottle off a wall, et alone bring down the sate, but
who could nevertheless be presented as hair-raisingly avant garde in contrast to the smugly centered subjects of
an older, more classical phase of capitalism. To put it another way: the subject as producer (coherent, disciplined,
self-determining) would have yielded ground to the subject as consumer (mobile, ephemeral, constituted by
insatiable desire). If the "left" orthodoxies of such a period were pragmatist, relativist, pluralistic, deconstructive,
then one might well see such thought-forms as dangerously radical. For does not capitalism need sure foundations,
stable identities, absolute authority, metaphysical certainties, in order to survive And wouldn't the kind of thought
we are imagining put the skids under all this The answer, feebly enough, is both yes and no. It is true that
capitalism, so far anyway, has felt the need to underpin its authority with unimpeachable moral foundations. Look,
for example, at the remarkable tenacity of religious belief in North America. On the other hand, look at the British,
who are a notably godless bunch. No British politician could cause anything other than acute embarrassment by
invoking the Supreme Being in public, and the British talk much less about metaphysical abstractions like Britain
than those in the United States do about something called the United States. It is not clear, in other words,
exactly how much metaphysical talk the advanced capitalist system really requires; and it is certainly true that its
It is clear,
however, that without pragmatism and plurality the system could not survive at all.
Difference, "hybridity," heterogeneity, restless mobility are native to the
relentlessly secularizing, rationalizing operations threaten to undercut its own metaphysical claims.
capitalist mode of production, and thus by no means inherently radical

phenomena. So if these ways of thinking put the skids under the system
at one level, they reproduce its logic at another. If an oppressive system seems to
regulate everything, then one will naturally look around for some enclave of which this is less true--some place
where a degree of freedom or randomness or pleasure still precariously survives. Perhaps you might call this
desire, or discourse, or the body, or the unconscious. One might predict in this period a quickening of interest in
psychoanalsis--for psychoanalysis is not only the thinking person's sensationalism, blending intellectual rigor with
the most lurid materials, but it exudes a general exciting air of radicalism without being particularly so politically.
If the more abstract questions of state, mode of production, and civil society seems for the moment too hard to
resolve, then one might shift one's political attention to something more intimate and immediate, more living and
fleshly, like the body. Conference papers entitled "Putting the Anus Back into Coriolanus" would attract eager
crowds who had never heard of the bourgeoisie but who knew all about buggery. This state of affairs would no
doubt be particularly marked in those societies which in any case lacked strong socialist traditions; indeed, one
could imagine much of the style of thought in question, for all its suspiciousness of the universal, as no more than
a spurious universalizing of such specific political conditions. Such a concern with bodiliness and sexuality would
represent, one imagines, an enormous political deepening and enrichment, at the same time as it would signify a
thoroughgoing displacement. And no doubt just the same could be said if one were to witness an increasing
obsession with language and culture--topics where the intellectual is in any case more likely to feel at home than in
One might expect that some, true to the pessimism of the

period, would stress how discourses are policed, regulated, heavy with power,
while others would proclaim in more libertarian spirit how the thrills and spills of
the signifier can give the slip to the system. Either way, one would no doubt witness an immense
the realm of material production.
linguistic inflation, as what appeared no longer conceivable in political reality was still just about possible in the
areas of discourse or signs or textuality. The freedom of text or language would come to compensate for the
unfreedom of the system as a whole. There would still be a kind of utopian vision, but its name now would be
increasingly poetry. And it would even be possible to imagine, in an "extremist" variant of this style of thought, that
the future was here and now--that utopia had already arrived in the shape of the pleasurable intensities, multiple
selfhoods, and exhilarating exchanges of the marketplace and the shopping mall. History would then most
certainly have come to an end--an end already implicit in the blocking of radical political action. For if no such
collective action seemed generally possible, then history would indeed appear as random and directionless, and
to claim that there was no longer any "grand narrative' would be among other things a way of saying that we no
longer knew how to construct one effectively in these conditions. For this kind of thought, history would have
ended because freedom would finally have been achieved; for Marxism, the achievement of freedom would be the
beginning of history and the end of all we have known to date: those boring prehistorical grand narratives which
are really just the same old recycled story of scarcity, suffering, and struggle.
Experience
Using experience as a starting point for social theory ignores
larger structures of capitalist development and exploitation
Scatamburlo-DAnnibale 3 (Valerie Scatamburlo-DAnnibale Professor at the University of Windsor,
The Strategic Centrality of Class in the Politics of Race and Difference, Cultural Studies Critical
Methodologies, vol. 3 no. 2 (2003), pp. 148-175 // JJ)
This framework must be further distinguished from those who invoke the terms classism and/or class elitism to
(ostensibly) foreground the idea that class matters (cf. hooks, 2000) because we agree with Gimenez (2001) that
class is not simply another ideology legitimating oppression (p. 24). Rather, class denotes exploitative relations
between people mediated by their relations to the means of production (p. 24). To marginalize such an
understanding of class is to conflate individuals objective locations in the intersection of structures of inequality
with individuals subjective understandings of how they are situated based on their experiences. 7 Another
caveat. We are not renouncing the concept of experience. On the contrary, we believe that it is imperative to
retain the category of lived experience as a reference point in light of misguided post-Marxist critiques that imply
We are not, however, advocating

the uncritical fetishization of experience that tends to assume that personal
experience somehow guarantees the authenticity of knowledge and that often
treats experience as self-explanatory, transparent, and solely individual. Rather, we
advance a framework that seeks to make connections between seemingly isolated
situations and/or particular experiences by exploring how they are constituted in,
and circumscribed by, broader historical and social conditions. They are linked, in other
words, by their internal relations (Ollman, 1993). Expe- riential understandings, in and of
themselves, are initially suspect because dia- lectically they constitute a unity of
opposites they are at once unique, specific, and personal but also
that all forms of Marxian class analysis are dismissive of subjectivity.
thoroughly partial, social, and the products of historical forces about

which individuals may know little or nothing. A rich description of immediate
experience can be an appropriate and indispensable point of departure, but such an
understanding can easily become an isolated difference prison unless it transcends
the immediate perceived point of oppression, confronts the social system in which
it is rooted, and expands into a complex and multifaceted analysis (of forms of social
mediation) that is capable of mapping out the general organization of social relations.
That, however, requires a broad class-based approach. Having a concept of
class helps us to see the network of social relations constituting an
overall social organization which both implicates and cuts through
racialization/ethnicization and gender . . . . [A] radical political economy [class] perspective
emphasizing exploitation, dispossession and survival takes the issues of . . . diversity [and difference] beyond
questions of conscious identity such as culture and ideology, or of a paradigm of homogeneity and
Various
culturalist perspectives seem to diminish the role of political economy and class
forces in shaping the edifice of the social including the shifting constellations and meanings of
difference. Furthermore, none of the differences valorized in culturalist narratives
alone, and certainly not race by itself, can explain the massive transformation of
the structure of capitalism in recent years. We agree with Meyerson (2000) that race is not an
heterogeneity . . . or of ethical imperatives with respect to the other. (Bannerji, 2000, pp. 7, 19)
adequate explanatory category on its own and that the use of race as a descriptive or analytical category has
The
category of racethe conceptual framework that the oppressed often employ to
interpret their experiences of inequalityoften clouds the concrete reality of class,
and blurs the actual structure of power and privilege; in this regard, race is all too
serious consequences for the way in which social life is presumed to be constituted and organized.
often a barrier to understanding the central role of class in shaping personal and
collective outcomes within a capitalist society (Marable, 1995, pp. 8, 226).
Information Sharing
Information sharing is a tool of the capitalist system and key to the
imperialist strategy
Cole 9 Research Professor in Education and Equality, Head of Research and Director of the Centre for Education for Social
Justice at Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln, UK (Mike, Critical Race Theory and Education A Marxist Response,
chapyer 6, pgs 102-103, 2009//SRSL)
Information warfare is a key imperialist strategy and modus operandi of capitalism; so is
'enfraudening the public sphere'. 'Enfraudening the public sphere' is a term coined by David
Geoffrey Smith (Smith, 2003, p. 488-489) to describe 'not just simple or single acts of deception, cheating
or misrepresentation' (which may be described as 'defrauding'), but rather 'a more generalized active
conditioning of the public sphere through systemized lying, deception and misrepresentation'.
The major strength of transmodernism, I would argue, lies in its argument that European philosophers still are not facing the historical responsibilities of their legacies (Smith, 2004, p. 644). As I argued elsewhere (Cole, 2008d), transmodernism
makes an important
contribution to an understanding of the legacy of the European invasion of the Americas
because it reveals how the imperialism in which contemporary U.S. foreign policy is currently
engaged has a specific and long-standing genealogy. Smith (2003, p. 489) argues that the Bush Administration's 'war on
terror' was used to veil long-standing, but now highly intensified, global imperial aims. Following McMurtry (1998, p. 192), he suggests that, under
these practices, knowledge becomes 'an absurd expression' (Smith, 2003, p. 489). Again, following McMurtry (2002, p. 55), Smith (2003, pp. 493-494)
argues that the corporate structure ofthe global economy (dominated by the United States, particularly through its petroleum corporations) 'has no life
co-ordinates in its regulating paradigm' and is structured to misrepresent its indifference to human life as "life-serving"'. T hus
we have terror
in the name of anti-terrorism; war in the name of peace seeking. Accordingly, U.S. secretary ofstate, Colin Powell
(2003) was able to declare with a straight face and in a matter-of-fact tone that the 'Millennium Challenge Account' ofthe Bush administration was to
install 'freely elected democracies' all over the world, under 'one standard for the world' which is 'the free market system...practiced correctly' (cited in
Smith, 2003, p. 494). This
provides the justification for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi
children since 1990 through NA TO bombing and the destruction of the public infrastructure
(water, healthcare, etc.). This slaughter has, of course, taken on a new dimension since the March 2003 invasion and occupation oflraq. Such
justification is also given for the destabilization of democratically elected governments throughout Latin America, Africa and Asia (Smith, 2003, p.
494). Smith (2003, p. 494) describes this rhetorical
process as enantiomorphic- whereby a claim is made to act

in a certain way, when one actually acts in the opposite way. Enantiomorphism reached its
zenith, I would argue, in the absurd claim nurtured by Bush and Blair that the invasion and
occupation of Iraq was necessary because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,
which he was going to use on the West. There were also reasonable claims made that he tortured his people and was antidemocratic. The Americans and their allies were going there, we were told, to find the weapons of
mass destruction, stop the people being tortured, and bring democracy. The reality is, of course, that not only
did Saddam have no weapons of mass destruction (it is the Americans who have such weapons, and remain the only country that has dropped atomic
bombs in warfare) but the Americans and the British have continued the torture (see later in this chapter); and upheld the lack of democracy.2
Information sharing is a tool of the capitalist system and key

to the imperialist strategy
Cole 9 Research Professor in Education and Equality, Head of Research and Director
of the Centre for Education for Social Justice at Bishop Grosseteste University
College Lincoln, UK (Mike, Critical Race Theory and Education A Marxist Response,
Information warfare is a key imperialist strategy and modus operandi of capitalism;
so is 'enfraudening the public sphere'. 'Enfraudening the public sphere' is a term
coined by David Geoffrey Smith (Smith, 2003, p. 488-489) to describe 'not just simple or
single acts of deception, cheating or misrepresentation ' (which may be described as 'defrauding'),
but rather 'a more generalized active conditioning of the public sphere through
systemized lying, deception and misrepresentation'. The major strength of transmodernism, I would
argue, lies in its argument that European philosophers still are not facing the historical responsibilities of their legacies (Smith,
transmodernism makes an important contribution

to an understanding of the legacy of the European invasion of the Americas
2004, p. 644). As I argued elsewhere (Cole, 2008d),
because it reveals how the imperialism in which contemporary U.S. foreign policy is
currently engaged has a specific and long-standing genealogy . Smith (2003, p. 489) argues that
the Bush Administration's 'war on terror' was used to veil long-standing, but now highly intensified, global imperial aims. Following
McMurtry (1998, p. 192), he suggests that, under these practices, knowledge becomes 'an absurd expression' (Smith, 2003, p. 489).
Again, following McMurtry (2002, p. 55), Smith (2003, pp. 493-494) argues that the corporate structure ofthe global economy
(dominated by the United States, particularly through its petroleum corporations) 'has no life co-ordinates in its regulating
paradigm' and is structured to misrepresent its indifference to human life as "life-serving"'. Thus
we have terror in the
name of anti-terrorism; war in the name of peace seeking.
Accordingly, U.S. secretary ofstate,

Colin Powell (2003) was able to declare with a straight face and in a matter-of-fact tone that the 'Millennium Challenge Account'
ofthe Bush administration was to install 'freely elected democracies' all over the world, under 'one standard for the world' which is
This provides the justification for

the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children since 1990 through NA TO
bombing and the destruction of the public infrastructure (water, healthcare, etc.). This slaughter
'the free market system...practiced correctly' (cited in Smith, 2003, p. 494).
has, of course, taken on a new dimension since the March 2003 invasion and occupation oflraq. Such justification is also given for
the destabilization of democratically elected governments throughout Latin America, Africa and Asia (Smith, 2003, p. 494). Smith
rhetorical process as enantiomorphic- whereby a claim is made to

act in a certain way, when one actually acts in the opposite way. Enantiomorphism
reached its zenith, I would argue, in the absurd claim nurtured by Bush and Blair
that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was necessary because Saddam Hussein
had weapons of mass destruction, which he was going to use on the West. There were
also reasonable claims made that he tortured his people and was anti-democratic. The Americans and their allies
were going there, we were told, to find the weapons of mass destruction, stop the
people being tortured, and bring democracy . The reality is, of course, that not only did Saddam have no
(2003, p. 494) describes this
weapons of mass destruction (it is the Americans who have such weapons, and remain the only country that has dropped atomic
bombs in warfare) but the Americans and the British have continued the torture (see later in this chapter); and upheld the lack of
democracy.2
Nature
Capitalism penetrates nature for profit and the affirmative is no
different
The unrelenting abuse of nature, viewed as a resource to plunder by global neoliberal

capitalism, has had disastrous consequences. Millions of poor people have been driven off their land, while whole areas of agricultural land have been
damaged, and rain forests destroyed by mining, logging and oil companies . Our health is seriously at risk by the food we eat, genes are
being engineered and modified, and 'global warming' is threatening the survival of life on the
planet. Elsewhere (Cole, 2008d, pp. 90-96; see also Feldman and Lotz, 2004) I have dealt with the effects of environmental destruction under the following headings: Unhealthy Food; Genetic
Modification; the Destruction ofResources; and Climate Change. I have argued that the food that we eat in 'developed' countries is unhealthier than ever before, and that it is estimated that 70 percent of the 20
I further noted that the last

twenty-five years or so has seen a dramatic extension and deepening of global capitalism's
penetration of nature for profit. For example, genetic modification, having first occurred in 1973, is an unprecedented incursion. Moreover, this knowledge is being
privatized through patents on genes (Feldman and Lotz, 2004, p. ll8). Paul Gilroy (2004, p. 84) has described these developments as the 'corporate control
of the substance oflife itself', 'linking 'the colonization of territory and human beings with the
colonization of all life'. Jeremy Rifkin, 1999, cited in Feldman and Lotz, 2004, p. 137, has summed up the dangers of genetic engineering as
a whole, where: a] handful of corporations, research institutions and governments could hold
patents on virtually all 100,000 genes that make up the blueprint of the human race, as well as
the cells, organs, and tissues that comprise the human body. They may also own similar patents
on thousands of micro-organisms, plants and animals, allowing them unprecedented power to
dictate the terms by which we and future generations will live our lives With respect to the
destruction of resource, I pointed out how intensive farming in the last 60 years and the turn to
industrialized agriculture under current globalization have resulted in ecological catastrophe . Of
particular concern is the destruction of rainforests, home to more species of plants and animals
than the rest of the world put together. The drilling and production of oil is also a great threat
to large areas of rainforests. Burning oil and other fossil fuels pollutes the atmosphere, and contributes to global warming and climate change, one of the greatest threats to the
million global annual food advertising budget is used to promote (unhealthy) soft drinks, sweets and snacks (Feldman and Lotz, 2004, p. 129).
survival of the all the inhabitants, and indeed all living things on our planet. Glaciers in Greenland are slipping into the sea at a rate that doubled between 1996 and 2000, and the Antarctic ice cap, which holds
70 percent of the world's water, is now losing water at the same rate as Greenland (Ward, 2006, p. 12).
The causal role ofneoliberal global
capitalism in global warming is indisputable.
An annual growth rate (GNP) of 3 percent (the accepted rate for the developed world) means
'the
capitalist system ... is incapable of downsizing except by means of destructive slump or war'. As
argued earlier, capitalism is out of control 'set on a trajectory, the "trajectory of production" ...
powered not simply by value but by the "constant expansion of surplus value"' (Postone, 1996, p. 308, cited in
Rikowski, 2001, p. ll). (Rikowski's emphasis) Petroleum is the main fuel used by consumers . The connection between increased fossil fuel use and
imperialist adventures in oil-rich countries is an obvious one. One of the primary reasons for
U.S. imperial expansion is, of course, to control access to, and the marketing of oil (the other being U.S. capitalist
hegemony). This, in turn , creates further environmental degradation and destruction, both in
that production is doubled every 24 years, and there is a close correlation between GNP and the rate of increased fossil fuel use (Kinnear and Barlow, 2005). As Phil Ward (2005, p. 14) puts it,
the United States, and worldwide. I will now consider the role of the 'New
Imperialism' in the twenty-first century, and, in the last chapter of this volume,
will argue the case for a study ofimperialisms to be a central feature of the
curriculum . Ellen Meiksins Wood (2003, p. 134) has captured succinctly globalization's current imperialist manifestations: Actually existing globalization
.. . means the opening of subordinate economies and their vulnerability to imperial capital,
while the imperial economy remains sheltered as much as possible from the adverse effects.
Globalization has nothing to do with free trade. On the contrary, it is about the careful control of trading
conditions in the interest of imperial capital (cited in McLaren and Farahmandpur, 2005, p. 30) While globalization is used
to further the interests of capitalists and their supporters per se, it is often similarly used
ideologically to justify the New Imperial Project. On September 17, 2002, a document entitled National Security Strategy of the United States of America
(NSSUSA) was released which laid bare U.S. global strategy in the most startling terms (Smith, 2003, p. 491 ). As transmodernist, David Geoffrey Smith points out, the Report
heralds a 'single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy and free
enterprise'. Europe is to be kept subordinate to, and dependent on, U.S. power, NATO is to be
reshaped as a global interventionist force under U.S. leadership, and American national security
is claimed to be dependent on the absence ofany other great power. The Report also refers to 'information warfare', whereby
deliberate lies are spread as a weapon of war. Apparently, a secret army has been established to provoke terrorist attacks, which would then justify 'counter attack' by U.S. forces on countries that could be
announced as 'harboring terrorists' (The Research Unit for Political Economy (RUPE), 2003, pp. 67-78, cited in Smith, 2003, pp. 491-492). While the NSSUSA states that American diplomats are to be retrained
as 'viceroys' capable of governing client states ((RUPE), 2003 cited in Smith, 2003, p. 491), the New Imperialism, in reality, no longer seeks direct territorial control ofthe rest ofthe world, as did British
Imperialism for example, but instead relies on 'vassal regimes' (Bello, 2001, cited in Smith, 2003, p. 494) to do its bidding. This is because capital is now accumulated via the control of markets, rather than by
Writing from a liberal perspective
sovereignty over territories.

, Michael Lind (2004, p. 5) points out that this does not stop many neo-Conservatives in the United States
hanker- ing after British Imperialism (and in particular the young Winston Churchill) as their model. British neo-Conservative popular historian and TV presenter Niall Ferguson, for whom the British Empire was
relatively benevolent, has similar views. In a speech in 2004, he argued that the American Empire which 'has the potential to do great good' needs to learn from the lessons of the British Empire. First it needs to
export capital and to invest in its colonies; second, people from the United States need to settle permanently in its colonies; third, there must be a commitment to imperialism; fourth there must be collaboration
with local elites. Success can only come, he concludes ifthe Americans are prepared to stay (Ferguson, 2004). George Bush and Tony Blair were, of course, pivotal in extending and consolidating U. imperialism.
Ferguson (2005) argued that Bush is an 'idealist realist' who is 'clearly open to serious intellectual ideas'. Bush is a realist because he belieYeJ that power is 'far more important than law in the relations between
states. and an idealist because he wants to spread 'economic and political freedom around the world'. Bush, he goes on, has picked up two main ideas from the academy, namely that free markets accelerate
economic growth which make democracy more likely to succeed, and democracies are 'much less likely to make war than authoritarian regimes'. Ferguson then offers the President a further idea. It helps to think
The lesson to be learnt from that Empire is the need to

stay longer. 'Elections are not everything' and the danger posed to liberty in the United States,
and on the imperial front, he concludes, is less worrying than 'a decline in US power ... surely
something about which idealists and realists can agree'. Wall Street Journalist, Max Boot has gone so far as to state that 'Afghanistan and other
of the U.S. Empire (Ferguson's words not mine) 'as a kind ofsequel to the British Empire'.
troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets' (cited in Smith, 2003, p. 490) (see pp. 57-60 and p. llO of this
volume for a discussion of the imperialist views of Barack Obama; see also the Postscript to this volume).
The intrusion of EEzs is an example of postmodern imperialism

specifically the imperialism of neighbors approach
In Cole, 2008d, pp. 98-100, I also discussed the 'postmodern fantasy' of Robert Cooper (2002,
p. 5).3 Briefly, Cooper argues that postmodern imperialism takes two forms. The first is the
voluntary imperialism of the global economy, where institutions like the IMF and the World
Bank provide help to states 'wishing to find their way back into the global economy and into the
virtuous circle of investment and prosperity' (ibid.). If states wish to benefit, he goes on 'they
must open themselves up to the interference of international organizations and foreign states'
(ibid.) (my emphasis). Cooper (ibid.) refers to this as a new kind of imperialism, one which is
needed and is acceptable to what he refers to as 'a world of human rights and cosmopolitan
values': an imperialism 'which, like all imperialism, aims to bring order and organisation' [he
does not mention exploitation and oppression] 'but which rests today on the voluntary
principle'. While '[w]ithin the postmodern world, there are no security threats' ... 'that is to say,
its members do not consider invading each other' (p. 3), that world, according to Cooper has a
right to invade others. The 'postmodern world' has a right to pre-emptive attack, deception and
whatever else is necessary. The second form ofpostmodern imperialism Cooper calls 'the
imperialism ofneighbours' (Cooper has in mind the European Union), where instability 'in
your neighbourhood poses threats which no state can ignore'. It is not merely soldiers that come
from the international community; he argues, 'it is police, judges, prison officers, central
bankers and others' (my emphasis). Between 1999 and 2001, Cooper was Tony Blair's head of
the Defence and Overseas Secretariat, in the British Cabinet Office.
U.S.-centrism
U.S. cultural politics take an ivory tower approach to difference
and representation while ignoring the material violence of the
capitalist system they further
Scatamburlo-DAnnibale 3 (Valerie Scatamburlo-DAnnibale Professor at the University of Windsor,
The Strategic Centrality of Class in the Politics of Race and Difference, Cultural Studies Critical
Methodologies, vol. 3 no. 2 (2003), pp. 148-175 // JJ)
It is remarkable, in our opinion, that so much of contemporary social theory has

largely abandoned the problems of labor and class analysis at a time when
capitalism is becoming more universal, more ruthless, and more deadly. The metaphor
of a contemporary tower of Babel seems appropriate here academics striking radical poses in
seminar rooms while remaining oblivious to the possibility that their seemingly
radical discursive maneuvers do nothing to further the struggles against
oppression and exploitation which continue to be real, material and not merely
discursive problems of the contemporary world (Dirlik, 1997, p.176). Harvey (1998) has
indicted the new academic entrepreneurs, the masters of theory-in-and-for-itself whose discourse radicalism
has deftly sidestepped the enduring conundrums of class struggle and who have, against a sobering
background of cheapened discourse and opportunis- tic politics, been stripped of their self-advertised radicalism
(pp.29-31). For years, they contested socialism, ridiculed Marxists, and promoted their own alternative theories
of liberatory politics, but now they have largely been reduced to the role of supplicants in the most degraded
As they pursue the politics of difference, the

class war rages unabated, and they seem either unwilling or unable to focus on
the unprecedented economic carnage occurring around the globe (pp. 30-31). Harveys
form of pluralist poli- Tics imaginable (pp.30-31).
searing criticism suggests that post-Marxists have been busy fiddling while Rome burns, and his comments echo
those made by Marx (1978) in his critique of the Young Hegelians who were, in spite of their allegedly worldshattering statements, the staunchest conservatives (p. 149). Marx lamented that the Young Hegelians were
simply fighting phrases and that they failed to acknowledge that in offering only counterphrases, they were in
no way combating the real existing world but merely combating the phrases of the world. Taking a cue from Marx
the practitioners
of ludic difference politics who operate within exaggerated culturalist frameworks
that privilege the realm of representation as the primary arena of political struggle
question some discourses of power while legitimating others. 16 In their anath- ema
towards totalization and in their penchant for thematizing culture with a
particularizing impulse that domiciles class in the hinterland of a divertissement,
they reinscribe racial formations within the prevailing logic of capitalist social
relations. Moreover, because they generally lack a class perspective, their gestures of
radicalism are belied by their own class positions. We agree with Reed (2000) who contended
that cultural politics are class politics insofar as they are manifestations within the
political economy of academic life and the left-liberal public sphere of the petit
bourgeois, brokerage politics of interest-group pluralism (p. xxii). Regardless of the radicaland substituting phrases with discourses or resignifications, we would contend that
sounding patina that such theorizing attempts to lay over this all-too-familiar worldview and practice (p. xxii),
the paralysis and inconsequentiality of post- al, culturalist discourses in the face of globalized capitalism are
patently clear. As Ahmad (1997b) has contended, One may speak of any number of disorientations and even
oppressions, but one cultivates all kinds of politeness and indirection about the structure of capitalist class
relations in which those oppressions are embedded. To speak of any of that directly and simply is to be vulgar. In
this climate of Aesopian languages it is absolutely essential to reiterate that most things are a matter of class.
That kind of statement is . . . surprising only in a culture like that of the North
American university. . . . But it is precisely in that kind of culture that people need to hear such obvious
truths. (p. 104 Ahmads provocative observations imply that substantive analyses of globalized class
exploitation have, for the most part, been marginalized by the kind of radicalism that has been instituted among
although various post-Marxists

have invited us to join their euphoric celebrations honoring the decentering of
capitalism and the abandonment of class politics in favor of a post-al tomorrow
the academic Left in North Amer- ica. He has further suggested that
filled with the proliferation of more and more forms of difference, such formulations
will never be able to challenge let alone overturn capitalist universality (Ahmad,
1998, p. 22). Indeed, such gestures often result in a pragmatic fetishization of
particularity and difference that precludes systemic critique, a serious analysis of
capitalism, and coherent action. As such, Ahmad invited us to ask anew, the proverbial question, What
then, must be done? To this question, we offer no simple theoretical or political prescriptions. Yet we would argue
that if social change is the aim, as it has traditionally been for the Left, progressive educators and intellectuals
must cease in displacing class analysis with the politics of difference, they must resuscitate a sustained and
unrelenting interrogation of capitalism in its globalized forms, and they must overcome the corrosive skepticism
of those narratives that have rendered visions of social transformation hopelessly impractical or obsolete.
Fixation on the black-white binary and U.S. race relations

recreates colonialism and undermines resistance through
American exceptionalism
ODriscoll 13 (Dnal ODriscoll, Creating an Anarchist Theory of Privilege, Dysophia: Anarchist Debates on
Privilege, vol. 4 (November 2013), pp. 54-56 // JJ)
Sticking with skin-colour as a useful example for the moment, what we have is a
very simplistic view of race that is used in many circles to overlook other issues. For
instance, by focusing on skin colour, other forms of racism and ethnic struggle are
glossed over e.g. inter-'white' racism in Northern Ireland; or against travellers and Eastern Europeans
immigrants. The reliance on particular forms of anti-racism theory has meant 'White'
has become synonymous with the privileged / hegemonic group which has the
effect of creating the belief among some activists that because some groups are
white-skinned means they cannot know racism, so denying their experience. In a
similar process, this binary can treat all 'non-whites' as a homogenous
group whose experience is universal that is of being oppressed. Inter-group tensions
and racism are likewise ignored. It allows people to ignore how social class and
national culture affects experience of racism for different peoples. Just because
someone has an attribute that confers privilege in some contexts, there are other
factors which mean they don't get those benefits in others. Their experience is not so much
devalued as considered non-existent. This is something commonly seen in the way 'white male' is used as a set
phrase, yet also is played on in a classist way, for example in discussions of 'chavs'. Experiences of patriarchy and
economic powerlessness are relevant across all situations of concern in privilege politics, and are just as
destructive to people who fall into the broadly drawn 'oppressor' groups as they are to those in the oppressed
groups.
I believe
this is in danger of becoming a form of cultural / academic
imperialism centred on the US experience , and emphasises why we need to

develop our own anarchist theory and practice of privilege theory. In particular, the
notion of 'whiteness' is very much based on US racial laws and is not
applicable to the situation in other parts of the world.
It
is rarely asked if the
wholehearted application to Europe is actually appropriate. The irony is that, in the UK at least, it is an imposition
of identity by sections of the anti-racist Left on oppressed populations who do not see themselves in those terms.
Tariq Modood, in particular, points out how inappropriate the terminology of 'white' and 'black' as political terms
are for the experiences of Muslims and South Asians in Europe (albeit, he is a liberal intellectual who relies on laws
This simplistic approach of binaries also means that

individuals can focus on that aspect of their life where they experience membership
of an oppressed group and conveniently ignore all those other aspects in which
they experience privilege. Through our own political critiques, anarchists readily recognise the notion of
how different oppressions overlap ('intersectionality', in the jargon) and affect people. However, often this
intersectionality is only paid lip-service and anarchist are often equally as much at
fault as those with reformist / liberal politics when it comes to privilege. Instead, we
and states for solutions) 8 . (C) Status
find individuals, anarchists included, who seek to protect the advantages they have in life
by emphasising the particular oppressed group they belong to, even where they do
not suffer disadvantage. The differences between disrespect and oppression are blurred as it is ignored
that oppression is specifically about disadvantages. The result is those with the loudest voice claiming status in an
inverse hierarchy of oppression, while quieter ones often get ignored. Thus, for example, we see working class
carers being abused by middle class disabled employers. Or the needs of a person with a hidden disability being
ignored because their ethnicity is white or they are cis-male. Action ceases to be about revolutionary change, but
asserting that they are members of an oppressed group regardless of context. One effect of this is a tendency
It is worth citing at this point that obsession with identity is a

problem in itself. As an example, at the 2012 Kln- Dsseldorf No Borders camp, migrants complained that a
towards separatism.
section of the European activists were so focused on dealing with 'critical whiteness theory' that it came to
dominate the camp at the expense of the needs of the migrants, whom the camp was there to help. (D)
A side-effect of the influence of the middle-class liberal

approach is encouragement of victimhood and pacification of those suffering
oppression. By constantly emphasising that those oppressed are victims, they are
disempowered from action. Yet at the same time, the oppressed are expected to the
source of radical social change. This vicious circle maintains the status quo. And where oppressed
Victimhood and Pacification
groups have sought to break out of it, famously the Black Panthers or the militancy of the suffragist movement 9 ,
revolutionary history is denied or discretely written out of history. Expression and

definition is very much controlled by a middle-class narrative, and outbursts of
anger are neutered or discouraged as being counterproductive to the reformist
approaches that serve their needs. This 'pacification of the oppressed' aspect of the implementation
of privilege theory is pointed out in the article, Privilege Politics is Reformism , published by the Black
Orchid Collective. 10 They argue it is being applied in a way that does not challenge the
liberal-capitalist structure of society. The aspirations of oppressed groups ceases to
be to be about radical social change and a fair, just society, but about getting
access to the class ladder. A focus on the individual makes it easier to ignore the
wider impersonal social structures which are just as important sources of
oppression. So, apparently liberatory politics end up reinforcing the very
discriminations they want to challenge through poor application of the politics,
something that goes right back to anti-colonisation struggles. 11 Failure to recognise the
that
role of class politics in shaping the theory is undermining it and is what Audrey Lorde warned of when she famously
I see privilege theory

becoming a way of maintaining status in some activist circles, where advocates of
identity politics create in-groups based around a particular identity, rather than
perceiving a wider notion of solidarity (aka love & caring) or recognising contexts. In parallel
wrote The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. Sadly,
to what has happened with consensus decision making in many places, a particular form of the theory is being
taken up dogmatically and is being applied uncritically, undermining what it is seeking to achieve. We see implicit
hierarchies of oppression and a culture of seeing individuals as victims of oppression, thus denying them histories
of rebellion (many anarchist circles excepted) and even the ability to see themselves as agents of change. People
become entrenched in their positions and see those they are most naturally allied with as a threat, rather than
seeking to incorporate them in the solution. This is often closer to home than we like to admit how many working
class groups are focused around men, implicitly excluding women, arguing that class is more important than
gender in revolutionary change? And vice versa...
Impact
Root Cause
Slavery
Capitalism reconstitutes slavery
Philip McMichael 1/2/11 Springer Slavery in Capitalism: The Rise and Demise of the U. S. Ante-Bellum
Cotton Culture Pgs 321 324 http://www.jstor.org/stable/657556 (Cornell University) MG
U.S. ante-bellum slavery did not stand in such an "external"

relationship to capitalism. The slave South had a distinctive politics, but a politics
increasingly implicated in a broader social current as industrialism encompassed the
slave plantation.2 However, the relation was not simply one of political effects. It was
also a question of the changing social organization of cotton production. Slave
plantations assumed a new intensity in scale and management , referred to by DuBois as a
shift "from a family institution to an industrial system ."3 And slave labor itself
assumed a new meaning as planters acquired slaves less for social status, and
more as commodity- producing labor. In this movement slave labor became a
phenomenal form of value-producing labor. As value-producing labor, ante-bellum
slavery was "internal" to world capitalism . This is not to say that colonial slavery was not related to
My argument in this essay is that
European capitalism, rather it is to emphasize that capitalism itself was qualitatively different in the nineteenth
century.
Industrial capitalism transformed the content of world-market relations .4

Instead of being regulated within the mercantilist framework, commerce, now
globally Theory and Society 20: 321-349, 1991. ? 1991 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the
Netherlands. 322 organized, was driven by value relations . Under these new relations, combining
metropolitan wage labor and peripheral slave labor, the content of the latter changed while its form remained. The
central issue here, to be developed below, is that phenomenally slavery and wage
labor coexisted as distinct social forms of labor, and yet theoretically value relations
were their common determinant. Briefly, the reproduction of metropolitan wage
labor depended on the reorganization of global finance to expand and unify
commodity circuits. The cotton culture was a creature of this movement. Through
this mechanism slave labor was subordinated to the competitive requirements of
the regime of industrial capital. One expression of this shift was the adoption in plantation management
of a new bureaucratic regimen in the ante- bellum period, characterized by Thompson as "military agriculture."5
My argument depends fundamentally upon demonstrating that industrial capital

and its new global circuits reconstituted slavery in the ante- bellum period . The most
obvious change was the rise of the gang- system of slave labor in the South, associated not only with the cotton
crop in particular (rather than tobacco), but also with the concentration of planter capital in the ante-bellum period.
Gang labor proved to be the most efficient organization of agricultural labor in the
United States at the time, depending fundamentally upon the open Southwestern
frontier.6 Planter capital concentration was rooted in the development of a mobile
cotton culture, driven by an elaborate system of commercial advancing, where
cotton production, rather than a stable plantation culture, became the overriding
goal. Land and slaves became less a source of social status, and more the
ingredients of a specialized branch of commodity production stimulated by a global
financial "putting-out" system. The framing conception of this essay is the idea that ante-bellum slavery and its political system can be reinterpreted as increasingly subject to the forces of a wage-labor regime with
global dimensions. This approach is an attempt to resolve the problems inherent in, for example, Genovese's
essentialist conception of slavery on the one hand, and Wallerstein's undifferentiated conception of world capitalism, on the other. Genovese identifies the slave-labor relation as his analytical unit,7 as the basis of a distinct slave
mode of production in the Old South.8 But this reduces an already problematic concept of "mode of production" to
As a result, the
world-market context of the ante-bellum South remains external to the 323
specification of cotton slavery.9 And consequently the cotton-culture dynamics
reconstituting slavery are discounted. Genovese's abstract methodological individualism is matched
extant production relations devoid of the world-historical dimension of circulation relations.
The concept of the "world-system" tends to reduce differences among systems of commodity producing labor in a mutually determining
world economy to variations of capitalism. Arguing as he does that "the essence of
capitalism" lies simply in the "combination" of diverse relations of production ,
by Wallerstein's abstract generality.
Wallerstein forfeits the ability to give analytical priority to any one relationship, in particular, wage-labor.10 My
one can understand the specificity of nineteenth-century world

capitalism and slavery only by elaborating the global determinants and implications
of wage labor. The key to each was the ongoing development of global capital
circuits (money and commodities, including labor), and a state system within which
to anchor them." In the nineteenth century, a unified world market reducing the legitimacy and need for
formal mercantilist relationships emerged as the substantive foundation of British hegemony . Liberal
political-economy anchored new commercial circuits, integral to the "self propulsion
attained by industrial capital,"'2 and marking the establishment of a wage-labor
regime and its world economy. This regime extended and reformulated value
relations throughout the world, in particular expanding the industrial inputs (e.g.,
cotton) and wage foods'3 of the new metropolitan industrial culture . The master- slave
argument here is that
relation, once organized particularistically, was reorganized generally as a value relation through its contribution
I examine the trajectory of the "cotton

culture" as a consequence of the incorporation of Southern plantation slavery into
the global wage-labor regime. Incorporation transformed Southern slavery,
displacing its patriarchal form with an industrial form. Such transformation
generated contradictory social and political currents leading to the eventual political
demise of the Southern slave regime. The demise of ante-bellum slavery was not a
logical outcome of the confrontation of capitalist modernity with slavery , however.
to cheapening the costs of industrial capital. In this essay
Rather it derived from the intensification of slavery as it was fully incorporated within the regime of industrial
capital. Intensification encouraged Southern expansionism, in a proto-nationalist form, and this generated regimethreatening conflict from both within and without the region. 324 Wage-labor as a world-historical relation This
essay seeks to contribute to a growing body of literature concerned with locating the formation of moder regional
identities and local labor systems within larger, world-historical processes.14 The goal is two-fold: (1) to emphasize
to offer alternative
explanations of social change to those conventional linear accounts common to
both liberal and Marxist historiography .
the mutual conditioning of world- economic and local processes and actors; and (2)
Racism is a result of capitalism

Selfa 2
(Lance, writer for the International Socialist Review, International Socialist Review, Issue 26,
November-December 2002, http://www.isreview.org/issues/26/roots_of_racism.shtml, acc.
7/4/14, arh)
Racism is a particular form of oppression. It stems from discrimination against a group of
people based on the idea that some inherited characteristic, such as skin color, makes them
inferior to their oppressors. Yet the concepts of race and racism are modern inventions. They
arose and became part of the dominant ideology of society in the context of the African slave
trade at the dawn of capitalism in the 1500s and 1600s. Although it is a commonplace for
academics and opponents of socialism to claim that Karl Marx ignored racism, Marx in fact
described the processes that created modern racism. His explanation of the rise of capitalism
placed the African slave trade, the European extermination of indigenous people in the
Americas, and colonialism at its heart. In Capital, Marx writes: The discovery of gold and silver
in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the indigenous
population of the continent, the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of India, and the
conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of black skins are all things that
characterize the dawn of the era of capitalist production.2 Marx connected his explanation of the
role of the slave trade in the rise of capitalism to the social relations that produced racism
against Africans. In Wage Labor and Capital, written twelve years before the American Civil
War, he explains: What is a Negro slave? A man of the black race. The one explanation is as good
as the other. A Negro is a Negro. He only becomes a slave in certain relations. A cotton spinning
jenny is a machine for spinning cotton. It only becomes capital in certain relations. Torn away
from these conditions, it is as little capital as gold by itself is money, or as sugar is the price of
sugar.3 In this passage, Marx shows no prejudice to Blacks (a man of the black race, a Negro
is a Negro), but he mocks societys equation of Black and slave (one explanation is as good
as another). He shows how the economic and social relations of emerging capitalism thrust
Blacks into slavery (he only becomes a slave in certain relations), which produce the dominant
ideology that equates being African with being a slave. These fragments of Marxs writing give us
a good start in understanding the Marxist explanation of the origins of racism. As the
Trinidadian historian of slavery Eric Williams put it: Slavery was not born of racism:
rather, racism was the consequence of slavery .4 And, one should add, the consequence
of modern slavery at the dawn of capitalism. While slavery existed as an economic system for
thousands of years before the conquest of America, racism as we understand it today did not
exist.
The need to conquer through manifest destiny is the reason why

racism exists
Foster 4
(Gerald, American Slavery: the Complete Story, Cardozo Public Law, Policy, and Ethics
Journal, May, 2004, http://academic.udayton.edu/race/02rights/slavery06a.htm, acc. 7/4/14,
arh)
How did slavery and race become so patently intertwined as distinctly American phenomena?
Slavery in America was different from any other corner of the world primarily because in
America it was viewed early on as the primary foundation upon which an emerging republic
could solidify its economic primacy in the global commerce of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. Two hundred and twenty-eight years of free labor will assure business success
anywhere in the cosmos. However, the social and political dilemma for a new republic was how
to justify public professions of equality, individual rights and democracy while at the same time
holding fast to African captives who had been systematically and mentally dehumanized and
designated as personal property. Therein lay the challenge for the founding fathers and the
signers of the Declaration of Independence (1776) as well as the United States Constitution
(1787). This marked the beginning of contentious race relations in America that persist to this
day. False sciences and religious zealotry were the primary fervent justifications for how black
slaves were treated and for the terror and brutality that flourished well into the twentieth
century, decades after slavery was legally ended. Social and political illusionists who purveyed
racial inferiority, genetic deficiencies, primal instinct and infantile proclivities successfully
convinced a nation that it was in fact acceptable to treat blacks as property because it was
scientifically and religiously sanctioned and preordained. In reality, it was a perverted extension
of manifest destiny.
A combination of capitalism and colorism led to modern/postmodern slavery

Wilson 96 [Wilson, Carter A. Ph.D., M.A., B.A., Wayne State University in Public Policy, Civil Rights and Race
and Public Policy. 1996. Racism: from slavery to advanced capitalism. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications.]
l.gong
color of plantation laborers changed from white to black during the last quarter of
the 17th century and the first half of the 18th century. African slaves began to pour into southern colonies in large numbers,
The
throughout the late 17th and the 18th centuries. Between 1700 and 1750, roughly 45,000 African slaves were imported to Virginia
alone. The African population in this colony increased from about 9,000 to more than 100,000 (Morgan 1975, p. 301). In the
Carolinas, the African slave population equaled the European population by 1708 and exceeded this population by 1724. By 1765,
the African population was about 90,000 compared to a European population of about 40,000 (Franklin 1969, p. 79). In the first half
of the 18th century, the slave population increased dramatically in almost every colony, including northern ones. For example, the
African slave population in New York increased from 2,170 in 1698 to 6,171 in 1723, and to 19,883 by 1771, when blacks accounted
As the number of imported African slaves

increased, the number of imported indentured servants declined (Morgan 1975). A clear shift
occurred from a reliance on indentured servants to a dependency on black slave labor. Several factors contributed
to this shift. First, mortality rates declined, and life expectancy increased. This change made investment in slave
labor more attractive. Second, expanded agricultural production increased the demand
for labor at the very time the supply of indentured servants was declining. No doubt the
declining costs of transportation across the Atlantic , the growing unpopularity of
indentured servitude status, and the increase in the demand for unskilled labor in England's
for more than 10% of the colony's total population (Franklin, p. 90).
expanding industries all contributed to the decline in the supply of indentured servants. Moreover, capital accumulated in the
colonies during the 17th century provided resources to purchase large numbers of slaves. Third, r ebellion
and
discontent among freed indentured servants and the tendency of African slaves to
escape with indentured servants made social control in the racially mixed plantation
system problematic. Moreover, as more indentured servants completed their terms of service, more were freed. These
freed people expected land and a decent life in an area in which land ownership was concentrated in the hands of a few. This
concentration of land ownership, prevalent in the southern colonies, limited opportunities for freed servants to own land. Frustrated
and angry, these freed servants rebelled. The Bacon revolt in Virginia in 1676 was one of the largest such rebellions in colonial
Black slavery had advantages in the area of social control. Black

slaves were easier to identify, distinguishable especially by skin color. They were
unarmed and easily confined to a small area, the plantation. They were rendered
hopeless and had no expectations of freedom and land ownership (Morgan 1975, p. 309).
Finally, black slavery was more productive than indentured servitude . The system of slavery
allowed for much greater and more direct control over laborers. There was no limit to the amount of work
the master could extract from the slave, except the time necessary for the slave to eat and sleep (Morgan
1975, p. 309). Slavery was also more productive for demographic reasons . Under slavery, black
history (Morgan 1975, p. 308).
women and their children worked in the fields. Servant women rarely worked the fields and their children were free (Morgan, p. 310).
complexion and treatment of the lowest level of plantation labor

changed in the late 17th century. The black skin became the stigma of slavery and
wretchedness. The treatment of the slave degenerated to the lowest level of brutality.
The image of the African became associated with savagery, paganism, immorality,
ignorance, and primitiveness. In short, racism materialized. Slavery, Public Policies, and Racism
The change in the color of plantation labor did not magically cause racism to
appear. Rather, local public policies reflected and promoted this racism . Morgan (1975, p. 331)
For these reasons, the
maintained that Virginia's legislative body "deliberately did what it could to foster the contempt of whites for blacks and Indians." He
noted, "In 1680 it prescribed thirty lashes on the bare back 'if any negroe or other slave shall presume to lift up his hand in
opposition against any christian'" (p. 331). This law subordinated the black slave to the white Christian indentured servant. It
allowed the servant to harass or assault the slave with little fear of reprisal. A 1705 law mandated the dismemberment of unruly
slaves but, at the same time, prohibited masters from whipping white Christian servants naked, without a court order (Morgan 1975,
Laws protected the property of servants but denied slaves any right to
property. These laws made clear distinctions between the status of black slaves and
white servants. They made the black slave subordinate to the white servant. They denied all human rights to slaves placed
p. 331).
them in the lowest possible social position imaginable defined them as beasts of burden, pieces of property, owned totally and
absolutely by the master, and forced to do the most dreadful work in society. At the same time, these laws elevated indentured
servants, gave them some powers over black slaves, protected their property rights, recognized some of their human rights, and
Contempt for subordinated groups now focused on black

slaves. A deeper, more profound subordination produced a deeper and more profound level of contempt. Although the images of
afforded them some social privileges.
black slaves were similar to some of those of poor whites, the fear, contempt, and hatred for blacks was much deeper than anything
exhibited toward poor whites. This deeper contempt is reflected in laws enacted by the colonial legislatures mandating the
castration of slaves guilty of assaulting their masters or of habitually escaping. Of these laws, Jordan (1968, p. 155) said, It was
sometimes prescribed for such offenses as striking a white person or running away until 1722 South Carolina legally required
masters of slaves running away for the fourth time to have them castrated and in 1697 the Assembly ordered castration of three
Negros who had attempted to abscond to the Spanish in St. Page 54 Augustine. Until the 1760s, North Carolina paid jailers to
perform official castrations, reimbursing masters if their slave died (Jordan, p. 155). Statemandated castration of black slaves found
guilty of habitually running away or of striking a white person was one of the most powerful political expressions of the racism of this
era. This policy symbolized the absolute power of white masters over black slaves and the total emasculation of slaves. It
symbolized the slave's relegation to the level of the bull or workhorse, other animals that faced castration for the purpose of control.
It reflected a deep contempt and a controlled hatred for black slaves. It was one of the most sadistic and inhuman laws in world
Slavery did not cause racism. Rather, slavery

provided the material basis for racism. Several conscious human decisions helped
form and shape racism: the decision to shift from the use of European indentured
servants to African slaves the decision to increase the level of control and brutality
toward African slaves the decision to deny all rights to African slaves but grant
some rights to the lowest class of Europeans the decision to subordinate all
Africans to all Europeansall of these decisions contributed to a clear dichotomy, at
the lowest level of society, between black slaves and white free persons. The black
slave became the most undesirable thing to be . Even the lowest class worker was
better off than the black slaves. In fact, as Roediger (1991) demonstrated, European laborers developed their
history. Racism, Slavery, and Economic Determinism
identity as free white workers in contrast to black slaves. Even the Irish, who were once treated no differently than African slaves,
Black slavery made white liberty possible (Morgan 1975 Cooper 1983 Bell 1987).
whites, all of whom stood above the
slaves economically and socially, joined together in a hymn of liberty that gave
thanks for the enslaved blacks, who made white harmony and republicanism, thus
liberty possible." The social acceptance of Africans as belonging to the slave class
allowed for greater solidarity among other European classes. That is, black slavery
facilitated white unity. No matter how low their social rank, no matter how poverty Page 55 stricken they might be,
Europeans could always identify with other whites and stand above blacks. To be white is to be free. To be black
is to be a slave.
identified with white labor.
Cooper (1983, p. 38) made this point cogently when he said, " The
Slavery is a product of class- race is the accidental evil

associated with the cause of slavery
Maller 8 [Katharine Maller, A senior at Hunters College who wrote this piece
working with a PHD in African American Studies, 2008, Capitalism, Slavery, and the
Birth of Racism,
http://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/kmaller/writing/academic/capitalism-slaveryand-the-birth-of-racism/, MM]
In his book Mythologies, Roland Barthes asserts that myths persist through inoculationadmitting the accidental
evil of a class-bound institution, the better to conceal its principal evil (20). In other words, myth is carefully
A myth that has become fully naturalized, (Barthes,

integrated, in American society centers on its history of slavery . The prevailing
myth insists that the institution was rooted in racism that Europeans, from the
onset of imperialism, enslaved Africans because of their skin color . However,
historical documents and studies, including the slave narrative of Olaudah Equiano,
the poetry of Phyllis Wheatley, and Linebaugh and Redikers text The Many Headed
Hydra, show that early American and European slavery was justified not by
crafted to manipulate a societys view of history.
11) or
race, but by class. Racism is the accidental evil, the ruse that conceals the
motive of the myth; the preservation of capitalism, the principle evil.
What
is perhaps most important in examining the early history of British and American slavery is that the institution was
not limited to any one group of people. Religious
radicals, indigenous Americans, Africans,

commoners, sailors, and women (Linebaugh and Rediker, 66) were all equally abhorred by
the ruling class that developed in Britain in the 16th century. These were people of the lowest
classes, who had neither wealth nor property, and were therefore of no value to the
developing capitalist society. They were all thus enslaved or slaughtered, either
forced to serve the system of commerce that oppressed them or be killed by it.
Forced labor was used in conjunction with imprisonment and capital punishment to
control the peasantry, and thereby make the ruling classes richer and more
powerful. (Linebaugh and Rediker, 49) During the seventeenth century, some two hundred thousand [British,
Irish, and Scottish were shipped] to American shores (Linebaugh and Rediker, 58) to become servants or slaves in
The results of this system become clear in The Interesting Narrative of

the Life of Olaudah Equiano, in which Equiano, among other hardships experienced
as a slave, describes the Middle Passage between African and America. The absolutely
the new world.
pestilential (Equiano, 424) conditions in which the African slaves were kept were certainly inhumane, but the
cruelty of the white sailors exacerbated the misery. The slaves were not well fed, and when they sought their own
Given the myth that

slavery was always racialized, one would assume that this cruelty was the product
of the white sailors hatred of these black slaves. However, Equiano also describes
an incident in which the white sailors flogged [one of their own] unmercifully.
(Equiano, 425) This removes race as the motivation for cruelty. The inhumane treatment
means of sustenance, they suffered some very severe floggings. (Equiano, 425)
slaves were viewed as commodities instead of people. The

equally inhumane treatment of a white sailor would then confirm that the sailors,
too, were commodities in the capitalist system that they served. They, along with the
slaves they shipped, were the laboring subjects of the Atlantic economy, (Linebaugh and Rediker, 111 ) the
slaves that were essential to the rise of capitalism . (Linebaugh and Rediker, 28) This
is not to ignore the fact that Africans were enslaved, but rather to call into question the grounds on
which they were enslaved. The focus of European imperialists in Africa and the
Americas was not on the race of the inhabitants, but their uncivilized nature .
of slaves confirms that
Beginning with Columbus and spanning through centuries of literature written by explorers and colonists, natives in
the new territories were savages, but
skin color was not deemed the cause of their
savagery . They were instead chastised for their lack of civilization, specifically
their lack of Christian religion, and it became widely affirmed that all good Protestants in England had
an obligation to help convert the savages in America to Christianityall had a duty to extend English dominion.
(Linebaugh and Rediker, 15) Thus, colonization
and subsequent enslavement were deemed not
only a Christian duty, but also the only mode of salvation for African and American natives. This
rhetoric was so deeply engrained that even those enslaved were made to believe it; Phyllis Wheatley, an African
American poet and slave in the 18th century, says Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land (Wheatley, 505)
in her poem On Being Brought from Africa to America. While the superiority of American society is conveyed in
this poem, it is not a racial superiority. Rather, the supremecy lies in the knowledge That theres a god, that theres
a Saviour too. Wheatley also asserts that Negroes, black as Cain/May be refind and join th angelic train,
(Wheatley, 506) which clearly indicates that she was writing in a time before blacks were considered inferior
because of their race; through Christianity, those born in Pagan lands could become equal to Europeans. If slavery
was not always racialized, how and when did it become so? The seeds were planted towards the end of the 17th
The capitalists who profited from the slavery and indentured servitude of the
poorer classes quickly realized that those who served them vastly outnumbered
them. By collecting Irish, Scottish, and English peasants as servants and enslaving African natives like Olaudah
Equiano and Phyllis Wheatley, the slave and servant class became immense, which
facilitated new forms of self-organization among them, which was alarming to the
ruling class of the day. (Linebaugh and Rediker, 40, emphasis mine) The goal of the Parliamentarians and
century.
royalists, former antagonists in the English Revolution and civil wars (Linebaugh and Rediker, 132) was thence to
divide this mass, in order to prevent them from conspiring to overthrow their oppressors.
The most
efficient way to divide this class was along racial lines . Citing fear that [white] lives
will be as cheap as those negroes, (Linebaugh and Rediker, 134) white servants were granted rights
to protect them, while black slaves were defined by law as a form of property .
(Linebaugh and Rediker, 138) This divide would ensure that, like the sailors that abused Equiano, whites would
continue to exercise power over their black charges, rather than uniting with them
in resistance to the system that oppressed them both. According to Barthes, myth
deprives the object of which it speaks of all history. (21) Indeed, the perpetuation
of the myth that slavery was always a racialized institution deprives all
others who were enslaved of their history . But to what end? All myths are also motivated
what is the motivation behind the assertion that slavery was always motivated by
racial hatred? For the past century and a half, it has been accepted in American society that
slavery is an immoral institution, one that has no place in a country that cites
freedom as its most important principle. In order for slavery to be abolished,
the ideologies that supported it had to be condemned. But capitalism
could not be abolished, as America is as much rooted in capitalism as it is in
ideas of freedom. Thus, although American slavery was essential to the rise of
capitalism, (Linebaugh and Rediker, 28) it was not acknowledged as such . Myth gives
natural and eternal justification , (Barthes, 17), and the natural and eternal
justification given to slavery was race. Racism took capitalisms place as the
ideology to be disposed of along with slavery . This permits America to say, with
confidence, that slavery is an institution entirely in the past, despite the fact that
the roots of the system are still the roots of our existing society. T he
accidental evil is acknowledged as the whole evil, and reality is
understood more cheaply. (Barthes, 20-22) Capitalism, the principal evil, therefore
thrives.
Slavery was not based on racial antagonism, but economic

exploitation
Alexander 2010 (Michelle, associate professor of law, Ohio State University,
Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, former direct of ACLUS Racial
Justice Project, J.D., Stanford Law School) The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in
the Age of Colorblindness, The New Press 2010, pages 23-25, MM)
Only in the past few centuries, owing
largely to European imperialism, have the worlds people been classified along racial
lines. Here, in America, the idea of race emerged as a means of reconciling chattel
slaveryas well as the extermination of American Indianswith ideals of freedom
preached by whites in the new colonies. In the early colonial period, when settlements remained
relatively small, indentured servitude was the dominant means of securing cheap labor.
Under this system, whites and blacks struggled to survive against a common enemy , what
historian Lerone Bennett Jr. describes as the big planter apparatus and a social system that legalized
terror against black and white bondsmen. Initially, blacks brought to this country were not all
enslaved; many were treated as indentured servants. As plantation farming expanded, particular
tobacco and cotton farming, demand increased greatly for both labor and land. The demand
for land was met by invading and conquering larger and larger swaths of territory. American Indians
The concept of race is a relatively recent development.
became a growing impediment to white European progress, and during this period, the images of American
Indians promoted in books, newspapers, and magazines became increasingly negative. As sociologists Keith Kilty
and Eric Swank have observed, eliminating savages is less of a moral problem than eliminating human beings,
and therefore American Indians came to be understood as a lesser raceuncivilized savagesthus providing a
The growing demand for labor on plantations

was met through slavery. American Indians were considered unsuitable as slaves, largely
because native tribes were clearly in a position to fight back. The fear of raids by Indian
tribes led plantation owners to grasp for an alternative source of free labor. European
immigrants were also deemed poor candidates for slavery, not because of their race, but rather
because they were in short supply and enslavement would , quite naturally, interfere with
voluntary immigration to the new colonies. Plantation owners thus viewed African, who were relatively
powerless, as the ideal slaves. The systematic enslavement of Africans , and the rearing of their
justification for the extermination of a native peoples.
children under bondage,
emerged with all deliberate speed quickened by events such as Bacons
Rebellion. Nathaniel Bacon was a white property owner in Jamestown, Virginia, who managed to unite slaves,
indentured servants, and poor whites in a revolutionary effort to overthrow the planter elite. Although slaves clearly
occupied the lowest position in the social hierarchy and suffered the most under the plantation system, the
condition of indentured whites was barely better, and the majority of free whites lived in extreme poverty. As
explained by historian Edmund Morgan, in colonies like Virginia, the planter elite, with huge land grants, occupied a
vastly superior position to workers of all colors. Southern colonies did not hesitate to invent ways to extend the
terms of servitude, and the planter class accumulated uncultivated lands to restrict the options of free workers. The
simmering resentment against the planter class created conditions that were ripe for revolt. Varying accounts of
Bacons rebellion abound, but the basic facts are these: Bacon developed plans in 1675 to seize Native American
lands in order to acquire more property for himself and others and nullify the threat of Indian raids. When the
planter elite in Virginia refused to provide militia support for his scheme, Bacon retaliated, leading an attack on the
elite, their homes, and their property. He openly condemned the rich for their oppression of the poor and inspired an
alliance of white and black bond laborers, as well as slaves, who demanded an end to their servitude. The
attempted revolution was ended by force and false promises of amnesty. A number of people who participated in
the revolt were hanged. The events in Jamestown were alarming to the planter elite, who were deeply fearful of the
multiracial alliance of bond workers and slaves. Word of Bacons Rebellion spread far and wide, and several more
In an effort to protect their superior status and economic

position, the planters shifted their strategy for maintaining dominance. They abandon
uprisings of a similar type followed.
their heavy reliance on indentured servants in favor of the importation of more black slaves. Instead of importing
English-speaking slaves from the West Indies, who were more likely to be familiar with European language and
slaves were shipped directly from Africa. These slaves would be far
easier to control and far less likely to form alliances with poor whites. Fearful that
such measures might not be sufficient to protect their interests, the planter class took an
additional precautionary step, a step that would later become known as a racial bribe.
Deliberately and strategically, the planter class extended special privileges to poor
whites in an effort to drive a wedge between them and black slaves. White settlers
culture, many more
were allowed greater access to Native American lands, white servants were allowed to police slaves through slave
patrols and militias, and barriers were created so that free labor would not be placed in competition with slave
These measures effectively eliminated the risk of future alliances between

black slaves and poor whites. Poor whites suddenly had a direct, personal stake in
the existence of a race-based system of slavery. Their own plight had not improved
by much, but at least they were not slaves. Once the planter elite split the labor force,
poor whites responded to the logic of their situation and sought ways to expand their racially
privileged position.
labor.
Capitalism is the cause of slavery- the alternative is a classbased critique of the system which is the only way to
deconstruct racism
McLaren 4, Distinguished Fellow Critical Studies @ Chapman U and UCLA urban
schooling prof, and Scatamburlo-DAnnibale, associate professor of Communication
U Windsor, 4
(Peter and Valerie, Class Dismissed? Historical materialism and the politics of
difference, Educational Philosophy and Theory Vol. 36, Issue 2, p. 183-199, MM)
For well over two decades we have witnessed the jubilant liberal and conservative pronouncements of the demise
history's presumed failure to defang existing capitalist relations

has been read by many self-identified radicals as an advertisement for capitalism's
inevitability. As a result, the chorus refrain There Is No Alternative , sung by liberals and
conservatives, has been buttressed by the symphony of post-Marxist voices
recommending that we give socialism a decent burial and move on. Within this context, to
of socialism. Concomitantly,
speak of the promise of Marx and socialism may appear anachronistic, even nave, especially since the post-al
intellectual vanguard has presumably demonstrated the folly of doing so. Yet we stubbornly believe that the chants
Leftists should
refuse to accept namely the triumph of capitalism and its political bedfellow neo-
of T.I.N.A. must be combated for they offer as a fait accompli, something which progressive
liberalism, which have worked together to naturalize suffering, undermine collective

struggle, and obliterate hope. We concur with Amin (1998), who claims that such chants must be
defied and revealed as absurd and criminal, and who puts the challenge we face in no uncertain terms:
humanity may let itself be led by capitalism's logic to a fate of collective suicide
or it may pave the way for an alternative humanist project of global socialism. The
grosteque conditions that inspired Marx to pen his original critique of capitalism are present and
flourishing. The inequalities of wealth and the gross imbalances of power that exist today are leading
to abuses that exceed those encountered in Marx's day (Greider, 1998, p. 39). Global
capitalism has paved the way for the obscene concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands and
created a world increasingly divided between those who enjoy opulent affluence and those who
languish in dehumanizing conditions and economic misery. In every corner of the globe, we are
witnessing social disintegration as revealed by a rise in abject poverty and inequality. At the
current historical juncture, the combined assets of the 225 richest people is roughly equal to the annual income of
the poorest 47 percent of the world's population, while the combined assets of the three richest people exceed the
2.8 billion peoplealmost half of

in desperation to live on less than two dollars a day
(McQuaig, 2001, p. 27). As many as 250 million children are wage slaves and there are over a
billion workers who are either un- or under-employed. These are the concrete realities of
our timerealities that require a vigorous class analysis , an unrelenting critique of
capitalism and an oppositional politics capable of confronting what Ahmad (1998, p. 2) refers
to as capitalist universality. They are realities that require something more than that which is offered by
combined GDP of the 48 poorest nations (CCPA, 2002, p. 3). Approximately
the world's populationstruggle
the prophets of difference and post-Marxists who would have us relegate socialism to the scrapheap of history and
Never before has a Marxian analysis of capitalism

been so desperately needed. That is not to say that everything Marx said or anticipated
has come true, for that is clearly not the case. Many critiques of Marx focus on his strategy for
moving toward socialism, and with ample justification; nonetheless Marx did provide
us with fundamental insights into class society that have held true to this day. Marx's
mummify Marxism along with Lenin's corpse.
and class rule
enduring relevance lies in his indictment of capitalism which continues to wreak havoc in the lives of most. While
capitalism's cheerleaders have attempted to hide its sordid underbelly, Marx's description of capitalism as the
Rather than
jettisoning Marx, decentering the role of capitalism, and discrediting class analysis,
radical educators must continue to engage Marx's oeuvre and extrapolate from it that
which is useful pedagogically, theoretically, and , most importantly, politically in light
of the challenges that confront us. The urgency which animates Amin's call for a collective socialist
vision necessitates, as we have argued, moving beyond the particularism and liberal pluralism
that informs the politics of difference. It also requires challenging the
sorcerer's dark power is even more apt in light of contemporary historical and economic conditions.
questionable assumptions that have come to constitute the core of

contemporary radical theory, pedagogy
and politics.
In terms of effecting change, what
is needed is a cogent understanding of the systemic nature of exploitation and

oppression based on the precepts of a radical political economy approach (outlined above)
and one that incorporates Marx's notion of unity in difference in which people share widely common material
Such an understanding extends far beyond the realm of theory , for the manner in
which we choose to interpret and explore the social world, the concepts and frameworks we use
to express our sociopolitical understandings, are more than just abstract categories.
They imply intentions, organizational practices, and political agendas. Identifying
class analysis as the basis for our understandings and class struggle as the basis for political
transformation implies something quite different than constructing a sense of political
agency around issues of race, ethnicity, gender, etc. Contrary to Shakespeare's assertion that a
interests.
rose by any other name would smell as sweet, it should be clear that this is not the case in political matters.
in politics the essence of the flower lies in the name by which it is called (Bannerji,
2000, p. 41). The task for progressives today is to seize the moment and plant the seeds
for a political agenda that is grounded in historical possibilities and informed by a vision
committed to overcoming exploitative conditions. These seeds, we would argue, must be derived from
the tree of radical political economy. For the vast majority of people todaypeople of all racial
classifications or identities, all genders and sexual orientationsthe common frame
of reference arcing across difference, the concerns and aspirations that are most widely shared are those
that are rooted in the common experience of everyday life shaped and constrained by
political economy (Reed, 2000, p. xxvii). While post-Marxist advocates of the politics of
difference suggest that such a stance is outdated, we would argue that the categories
which they have employed to analyze the social are now losing their usefulness, particularly in
light of actual contemporary social movements. All over the globe, there are large anti-capitalist
movements afoot. In February 2002, chants of Another World Is Possible became the theme of protests in
Porto Allegre. It seems that those people struggling in the streets havent read about T.I.N.A.,
the end of grand narratives of emancipation, or the decentering of capitalism. It seems
Rather,
as though the struggle for basic survival and some semblance of human dignity in the mean streets of the
dystopian metropoles doesnt permit much time or opportunity to read the heady proclamations emanating from
seminar rooms. As E. P. Thompson (1978, p. 11) once remarked, sometimes experience walks in without knocking
at the door, and announces deaths, crises of subsistence, trench warfare, unemployment, inflation, genocide.
This, of course, does not mean that socialism will inevitably come about, yet a sense of
its nascent promise animates current social movements. Indeed, noted historian Howard Zinn
(2000, p. 20) recently pointed out that after years of single-issue organizing (i.e. the politics of
difference), the WTO and other anti-corporate capitalist protests signaled a turning
point in the history of movements of recent decades, for it was the issue of class that
more than anything bound everyone together. History, to paraphrase Thompson (1978, p. 25) doesnt
seem to be following Theory's script. Our vision is informed by Marx's historical materialism and his revolutionary
a
socialist humanist vision remains crucial, whose fundamental features include the
creative potential of people to challenge collectively the circumstances that they
inherit. This variant of humanism seeks to give expression to the pain, sorrow and degradation of the oppressed,
socialist humanism, which must not be conflated with liberal humanism. For left politics and pedagogy,
those who labor under the ominous and ghastly cloak of globalized capital. It calls for the transformation of those
It vests its hope for

change in the development of critical consciousness and social agents who make
history, although not always in conditions of their choosing. The political goal of socialist humanism is, however,
conditions that have prevented the bulk of humankind from fulfilling its potential.
not a resting in difference but rather the emancipation of difference at the level of human mutuality and
reciprocity. This would be a step forward for the discovery or creation of our real differences which can only in the
the enduring relevance of a

radical socialist pedagogy and politics is the centrality it accords to the
interrogation of capitalism. We can no longer afford to remain indifferent to the horror and savagery
committed by capitalist's barbaric machinations. We need to recognize that capitalist democracy
is unrescuably contradictory in its own self-constitution. Capitalism and democracy cannot be
translated into one another without profound efforts at manufacturing empty idealism. Committed Leftists
must unrelentingly cultivate a democratic socialist vision that refuses to forget the wretched
end be explored in reciprocal ways (Eagleton, 1996, p. 120). Above all else,
of the earth, the children of the damned and the victims of the culture of silencea task which requires more than
abstruse convolutions and striking ironic poses in the agnostic arena of signifying practices.
Leftists must
challenge the
illuminate the little shops of horror that lurk beneath globalizations shiny faade; they must
true evils that are manifest in the tentacles of global capitalism's reach. And, more than this,
Leftists must search for the cracks in the edifice of globalized capitalism and shine
light on those fissures that give birth to alternatives. Socialism today, undoubtedly,
runs against the grain of received wisdom, but its vision of a vastly improved and
freer arrangement of social relations beckons on the horizon. Its unwritten text is
nascent in the present even as it exists among the fragments of history and the shards of distant
memories. Its potential remains untapped and its promise needs to be redeemed.
Capitalism led the material realities of slavery

Donegan 13, MA Geography U British Columbia, 13
(Connor McElwee, Incarceration and State Terror: Racial Capitalism in the American
South, 1865-1945, Masters Thesis, August, MM)
Chapter One explores this history in broad strokes in order to approximate the social relations that constituted
plantation
slavery, but it does seek to address recurring theoretical shortcomings found in Marxist scholarship. Too often
such studies have erred by holding out an ideal-type definition of capitalism and
comparing it to the plantation in order to declare it to be capitalist or not. I strive to
avoid any such declaration for its own sake and, instead, attempt to construct an historical
plantation slavery. This chapter cannot begin to synthesize the enormous amount of scholarship on
analysis that may enrich our understanding of the social relations of power that
constituted plantation slavery while establishing the necessary historical context for
my subsequent analysis of postbellum racial capitalism. American plantation slavery was an
amalgamation of mutually constituting forms of domination-- slavery, capitalist production, patriarchy, and white
the Atlantic slave trade enabled the slave-relation to flourish to its

because the trade rendered enslaved
Africans fully alienable commodities within a rapidly expanding international
market. While being held captive by traders and merchants, the condition of enslavement meant above all
supremacy in particular. If
fullest and most gruesome expression this was in large part
human commodification. No other social ties, demands, or obligations--such as those of kinship or community--were
The experience of
enslavement was thus one of complete social death or, to distinguish Atlantic slavery from less
extreme variants, "social annihilation."4 On the plantation, slavery and the terroristic violence that served
as its guarantor proved ideal for creating a highly regimented, disciplined army of
labourers. At the same time, enslavement and the commodification of labour enabled
planters to intervene in and even " capitalize " the most intimate elements of life , in
particular sex and social reproduction. Invested capital fused with patriarchal power (not to be
confused with "paternalism") in order to express the planter's full domination over slave life, to
ensure the reproduction of the labour force, and expand his capital. While
powerful enough to compete with the potential exchange-value embodied in the slave.
slavery proved incredibly useful and fruitful for capital in these ways, it also locked the plantation system into
labour-intensive production methods (with the notable exception of the capital-intensive, industrial sugar estates), a
It was through this extended process of

commodification and enslavement that the complete devaluation of black life
emerged as the legally and symbolically codified precondition for "the profit of the Master, his
point that I return to in the second chapter.
security, and the public safety."5 With an eye for the continuity amongst historical change, we can say in summary
that
plantation slaves were incarcerated proletarians in a state of social death.
Capitalism predates the middle passage and it fostered the

ideologies that led to slavery
Schmidt-Nowara, professor of history Fordham University, 2
(Christopher, Big Questions and Answers: Three Histories of Slavery, the Slave
Trade and the Atlantic World, Social History, Vol. 27, No. 2, p. 210-217, MM)
This reader found the volume's most controversial thesis, that
the use of African slavery was an uneconomic decision guided by European racial and gender
ideologies, particularly weak in its demonstration. Eltis wants to show that the social and institutional factors that
Bold, but not always convincing.
would have permitted widespread European enslavement were in place in the early modern period (57-84). In doing so, he marshals
impressive evidence about the various forms of coercive labour existing in early modern western Europe, such as indenture and
convict labour. Given the prevalence of overt coercion in Europe, he asks, why did European elites not take the next step and
enslave and transport Europeans in vast numbers? In doing so, he also examines and finds wanting explanations for African slavery
based on epidemiological and economic assumptions. Europeans adapted as well as Africans to New World climates, while the
shipping costs from Europe would have been cheaper than those from Africa. For Eltis, the explanation for this uneconomic
behaviour lies in the realm of cultural values that bound all Europeans regardless of their class position: What seems incontestable is
that in regard to slavery the sense of the appropriate was shared across social divisions and cannot easily be explained by
ideological differences or power relationships among classes. Outrage at the treatment of Africans was rarely expressed at any level
of society before the late eighteenth century. . . . For elite and non-elite alike enslavement remained a fate for which only nonEuropeans were qualified. (83-4) Eltis's conclusion regarding a shared European racial identity and sense of racial supremacy is
what this account lacks is sustained

consideration of alternative types of sources and historical approaches that might reinforce
or modify it. Eltis makes an inelegant leap from his counter-factual of mass European
enslavement to his explanation of why it did not take place; his claim of
homogeneity of racial values reads more like an assertion than a proof . For instance,
there is little effort to flesh out the values he attributes to Europeans of the period, largely
because his study is short on the types of sources that historians employ to plumb
the beliefs of human cultures, such as pamphlets, broadsheets, autobiographies and memoirs, philosophical tracts
evocative and cannot be dismissed easily, if at all. But
or records of political and religious rituals. It would be foolish to demand of Eltis that he use these sources himself after such
meticulous research into economic history. But it is quite reasonable to expect a more sophisticated engagement with historians who
have reached alternative conclusions about early modern European culture through different sources and methods. Readers of E. P.
Thompson, Natalie Zemon Davis or Carlo Ginzburg will be surprised to learn that early modern European society was so cohesive
and homogenous in its values. They will also be dismayed by the indifference Eltis displays towards questions of resistance and
agency and his glib dismissal of class conflict and consciousness as useful analytical categories (84). Historians working in the
Drescher, who
sees class conflict in the industrialization process as a major factor in the rise of
British anti-slavery. Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker have expanded the temporal and spatial dimensions of that
broader field of Atlantic history have also tended to see Europe as a contentious society, most notably Seymour
conflict in their recent account of popular anti-slavery sentiment and cross-racial alliances against slavery in the early modern
Atlantic.5 This is not to say categorically that these scholars are correct and Eltis wrong. Rather, to make his argument more robust
and persuasive, Eltis needs to engage, not sidestep, the important scholarly literature that belies his conclusions. Any explanation of
the absence of European enslavement and the apparent indifference towards African slavery must take into account the balance of
political and social forces that produced some semblance of autonomy and liberty among the European working classes as well as
cultural assumptions about race and gender. Eltis s instinct about the cultural origins of African slavery in the Americas is plausible
but, given the narrow perspective from which he addresses the issue, his conclusion is not. Robin Blackburn's The Making of New
World Slavery is more varied in its approach and interpretation. While insisting, unlike Eltis, upon the driving force of 'civil society' in
the construction of the plantation complex (6-12), Blackburn none the less handles questions of ideology and politics with great care
and insight. This multipronged explanatory method was also evident in his earlier volume, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 17761848, which today reads as perhaps the most cogent narrative of the forces at work in the Atlantic world's 'age of revolution'. One of
the qualities that makes The Overthrow so attractive is the intermixture of a trenchant analysis of the political economy of war,
empire, decolonization, abolitionism and slave rebellion with the invocation of a 'usable past' with which Blackburn introduces the
volume: Despite the mixed results of anti-slavery in this period the sacrifices of slave rebels, of radical abolitionists and of
revolutionary democrats were not in vain. They show how it was possible to challenge, and sometimes defeat, the oppression which
grew as the horrible obverse of the growth of human social capacities and powers in the Atlantic world of the early modern period.
More generally they are of interest in illuminating the ways in which, however incompletely or imperfectly, emancipatory interests
can prevail against ancient law and custom and the spirit of ruthless accumulation.6 The task of the present volume is to explain the
construction of the powerful political and economic complex that was undone in the nineteenth century. Like Eltis, Blackburn
emphasizes European actions and decision-making in the process. The book's first section is tided 'The Selection of New World
Slavery' and ranges from medieval Europe to the eighteenth-century Caribbean. It follows the tracks of the Iberian conquerors and
their northern European imitators and inheritors, thus cutting effectively across the different European empires (the same is true of
The selection of
African slavery in the Americas was a tortuous process which involved experiments
with indentured European labour and Indian slavery. Numerous factors made these
alternatives unsatisfactory for the various European colonizers. Spain found a viable labour
source in Indian waged labour and forms of coercion associated with the mita, encomienda and repartimiento in its
imperial core, the mining centres of Peru and Mexico. Given the emphasis on bullion, rather than sugar,
Spain found less use for African slave labour than did the other European colonizers (though African slavery
was important in virtually every branch of the Spanish colonial economy). Not until the Cuban plantation
economy took off in the later eighteenth century did the Spanish empire see the intensive use
of slave labour for sugar cultivation that was the magnet for the Atlantic slave trade.8 The Portuguese, Dutch,
the works of Eltis and Thornton), unlike many Atlantic histories which exclude Iberia and Latin America.7
English and French American colonies, in contrast, came to be based on the sugar plantation from north-eastern Brazil to the
these powers tested European and

Indian labour before turning full-force to the African slave trade . Blackburn coincides with
Caribbean. From the later sixteenth through the later seventeenth centuries
Eltis in that he acknowledges important ideological motives in the selection of African slavery, finding precedents for European
practices in Roman law and Europeans' early association of Africans with slavery and servitude (31-93). Also, like Eltis, he notes the
virtual absence of European criticism of African slavery, figures like the Spanish clerics Bartolome de las Casas and Alonso de
places more explanatory power in existing

economic and political forces. Not only was slavery entrenched in West Africa (as
Thornton carefully discusses), but the development of class relations in late medieval and early
modern western Europe precluded the mass enslavement and especially the
hereditary enslavement - of Europeans , an explanation that Blackburn synchronizes with the arguments of
Sandoval being few and far between. However, he
Edmund Morgan, Richard Dunn and K. G. Davies.9 Blackburn sees ideas regarding race, or what Eltis calls 'cultural values', in
Racism was a cause of the

But
it was not the primary one. For Blackburn, the explanations of the rise of slavery by
historians like Morgan, Davies and Dunn, who emphasize economic, political and institutional
factors, are more convincing than Eltiss depiction of racism as the motive force behind
Weberian terms as '"switchmen", selecting different paths of historical development' (357).
implantation of African slavery in the Americas and, therefore, more than an epiphenomenon of the master-slave relationship.
American slavery, a thesis Blackburn rebuts at length and counters with his own counter-factual construction of an Atlantic system
built on free, instead of bonded, labour (350-63).10 Blackburn's discussion of the selection of African slavery is wide-ranging and
comprehensive. It is surely the single best place to read about the early phase of African slavery in the Americas. Many of his
conclusions in this section will be familiar to scholars of slavery and colonialism, something Blackburn himself acknowledges through
references to the works of Morgan and Dunn and his own reworking of the FreyreTannenbaum thesis regarding the differences
between Iberian and northern European, especially English, slave societies. The former Blackburn calls 'baroque','an alternative
modernity to that associated with the Puritan ethic' (20-1). This modernity was more inclusive (though hierarchical and exploitative)
than the British and French plantation colonies, where slaves were not treated as members of a stratified yet organic community
beholden to Crown and Church, but as mere factors of production in a ruthlessly capitalistic vision of modernity.11 The latter,
however, won out, as Blackburn argues in the second half of the book, 'Slavery and Accumulation'. Barbados, Jamaica and St
Domingue were the pinnacle of the early modern Atlantic plantation complex, importing hundreds of thousands of slaves and
exporting vast quantities of sugar in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. England, in particular, emerged triumphant, in part
because of the victorious slaves of St Domingue/Haiti who overthrew their bondage at the end of the eighteenth century, but also
because England settled on a more successful colonial policy that encouraged investment and innovation both in the metropolis and
the colonies. In Blackburn's characterization, English colonialism was 'orchestrated by an inverted mercantilism - that is to say, not
by financiers and merchants serving raison d'etat but by the state serving capitalist purposes. . . . The colonial and Adantic regime
of extended primitive accumulation allowed metropolitan accumulation to break out of its agrarian and national limits and discover
an industrial and global destiny' (515). In the chapter entided 'New World slavery, primitive accumulation and British
industrialization', Blackburn takes the exact opposite position from Eltis, arguing that colonial slavery was the foundation of
England's industrial revolution, a labyrinthine account that takes him through the works of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Eric Hobsbawm,
Charles Kindelberger, Paul Bairoch and Stanley Engerman, among others (510-80). The length and care of that chapter indicates one
of the major purposes of The Making of New World Slavery. This work is not just about the rise of African slavery in the Americas; it is
also about the rise of the 'West'. How and why did Europe emerge as the world's dominant power? For Blackburn, Europe's
ascendancy led directly through the early modern Atlantic world. Indeed, while his two volumes have come to occupy centre stage
in the historiography of the rise and fall of Atlantic slavery, his work must also be seen in relationship to the recent revisions in
British sociology of the ideas of Marx and Weber concerning the origins and nature of capitalist modernity and the nation-state.
Michael Mann, Perry Anderson, Ernest Gellner, John Hall and Anthony Giddens - as much as C. L. R. James and Fernando Ortiz - are
his peers.12 The most comparable figure is Paul Gilroy. Like Gilroy's The Black Atlantic, The Making of New World Slavery seeks to
demonstrate that the Atlantic slave complex was the wheelhouse and slaughterhouse - of modernity. Whereas Gilroy focuses on
the Black experience of modernity forged in the Atlantic world and Black reflections on that experience, Blackburn approaches the
slave complex as the pivot of European industrialization and state formation. Though his work builds up to an evaluation of
European modernity, it would be a gross simplification to call the work of Blackburn, or Eltis, Eurocentric. However, it is correct to
say that the two works do focus on European actions, interests and decisions and conclude with incisive arguments about the
impact of slavery on European economic, political and social development. Just such a focus John Thornton seeks to displace by
emphasizing the actions, interests and decisions of Africans in the making of the Atlantic world. How Africans influenced the origins
and management of the Atlantic slave trade and how Africans affected the culture of the New World colonies are his major concerns.
A reader like myself who works on Europe and the Americas will find this work indispensable both as a conceptual tool and as an
introduction to various historiographies pertaining to Africa and to Africans in the Americas. The book's most provocative and
counter-intuitive section,' Africans in Africa', discusses the origins and development of the slave trade and is most comparable to the
Thornton makes a strong case that the decisive players in the

process were not Europeans but Africans . He constructs his argument through various considerations.
Slavery was a fundamental institution in most West African societies , though it differed
greatly from the plantation slavery of the Americas. Slaves in West Africa, usually captured in the
endemic wars among the myriad polities of the region, fulfilled a wide variety of
roles, from menial labour to administrative and military leadership. Slavery was not necessarily associated with a society's most
debased tasks, as it was in the American plantation zone. It was not based on colour, nor was it
hereditary, the most pernicious of changes in slavery as it crossed the Atlantic (72-97). Moreover, Thornton takes great pains
to show that the European presence on the west coast of Africa , with the possible exception of the
Portuguese in Angola, was weak and completely dependent on the interests and goodwill of
African states and merchants. These latter were the true masters of the slave trade. In making this argument,
other works discussed here.
Thornton is consciously inverting the terms of dependency theory explanations of the origins and impact of the slave trade. Pointing
specifically to the work of Walter Rodney (43), Thornton disputes the view that the origins of the slave trade lay in European military
and commercial superiority, that the immediate consequences of the European presence were an escalation of African warfare, and
that the longer term consequences were a drain on African human capital and the bending of the African economy to European
interests (a description captured in the title of Rodney's influential work How Europe Underdeveloped Africa).,3 Thornton, in contrast,
Africans held the upper hand. Different African states possessed

sophisticated naval technologies well adapted to the coastal environment that
made effective penetration impossible for the Europeans . European efforts to subdue African
argues that
kingdoms through force of arms met with repeated failure. Confronted with a military and naval foe of equal or greater strength,
Europeans had no choice but to establish small trading forts on islands off the coast of Africa. Such a weak presence, Thornton
holds, had very little effect on the nature of African politics. The same was true of Europe's economic impact on the region. In the
lengthy chapter 'The process of enslavement and the slave trade', Thornton argues that it was not the temptation of European
war among African states

responded more frequently to internal political pressures, while African slave traders
had various markets open to them, so that selling to Europeans was only one option
among others. Economic decisions regarding the pace and volume of the slave
trade were made by Africans. Europeans, therefore, and not Africans, were in a dependent position: 'African
commodities such as guns that stoked the slave trade and African warfare. Rather,
participation in the slave trade was voluntary and under the control of African decision makers. This was not just at the surface level
of daily exchange but even at deeper levels. Europeans possessed no means, either economic or military, to compel African leaders
to sell slaves' (125). Thornton bases his arguments on an extensive scholarly literature and on close readings of primary sources.
Those sources were produced almost exclusively by Europeans in European languages. This situation thus opens an intriguing
question that Thornton does not directly address: what does it mean that an argument about African primacy in military and
economic encounters with Europeans relies heavily on the European perspective? Thornton's method of interpreting documents
relevant to the slave trade and to African cultures in the Americas is familiar: frequently he checks them against contemporary
anthropological studies of African cultures and societies and reads those back into the historical sources. Such a method is generally
convincing, but it also implies a historical hierarchy. In the written record, Europeans are the active agents, Africans their objects of
description and contemplation. The prevalence of the European perspective in the writing of the history of the slave trade thus led
this reader to puzzle over Thornton's virtual effacement of colonialism from his explanation of Atlantic slavery's rise (and of the
legacies of colonialism in the writing of history). His argument about African autonomy and agency is forceful and persuasive, and
he demonstrates spectacularly that the history of Atlantic slavery is not only the history of the rise of the West. But by inverting the
terms of the dependency theory approach of Rodney and others, Thornton eclipses Europe's role in the making of both the Atlantic
slave trade and the American plantation, without which the slave trade would never have existed. Should he have presented a more
balanced account? Maybe not; balance is not necessarily the only virtue of the Atlantic historian. To argue with rigour, imagination
and over a broad canvas are the marks of the great histories of Atlantic slavery. Thornton, Blackburn and Eltis are squarely in that
tradition and, like C. L. R. James, Fernando Ortiz, David Brion Davis, Seymour Drescher and others before them, they have produced
works that incite the reader to ask big questions and reach for big answers about a history whose legacies continue to shape the
Atlantic world.
Exploitation
Capitalism and systemic racism are closely intertwined,
capitalism contributes to racism
Joe 11/6/11 Racism Review Does Capitalism = Systemic Racism? http://www.racismreview.com/blog/2011/11/06/doescapitalism-systemic-racism/ (contributor to Racism Review)
Over at the Village Voice website the provocative African American critical theorist and savvy analyst of U.S. society, Greg Tate,
offers Top 10 Reasons Why So Few Black Folk Appear Down To Occupy Wall Street, a humorous and sarcastic take on this issue.
Most of the Occupy movements do appear to

have been disproportionately white. One barbed reason Tate offers is that African
Americans want to see the OWS movement stay alive . If it got to be known as a
Black Thing, then white officials like Mike Bloomberg and Ray Kelly would feel compelled to set
more upon the movement than decrepit desk sergeants with pepper spray . Another point
(See other comments on Tates piece here and here.)
is that African Americans already have a radical heart, which has been shown many times. They are certainly not afraid to
participate: Protest history shows our folk couldnt be turned around by deputized terrorists armed with dynamite, firebombs, C4,
Stop-and-frisk has
prepped most brothers to anticipate a cell block visit just for being Slewfoot While
Black. That is, African Americans have never shown they were scared of fighting
societal oppression. Two of his reasons get seriously at the core issue of the relationships of contemporary capitalism and
systemic racism. One more reason is that African Americans have long ago realized something that
the OWS folks seem to be late in coming to understandthat is, that American elites
never signed the social contract and will sell the people out for a fat cats dime hey,
no news flash over here. Black folk got wise to the game back in 1865 when we realized
neither 40 acres nor a mule would be forthcoming . Then Tates number one reason gets even deeper
into this issue. Capitalism, as usually framed in OWS discussion, is often of less
immediate concern to black Americans than systemic racism: Experience shows
that racism can trump even greed in Amerikkkaespecially in the workplace . White
dudes with prison records get hired over more qualified bloods with not even
jaywalking citations. You dont have to be as high up the food chain as banker-scum
to benefit from white supremacy or profit sideways from the mass povertization of
the Negro. Tates points about the need to consider the relationships of actual capitalism and racism brought to my mind just
how Western capitalism got its first huge surges of capital and wealth, in the process
Karl Marx called primitive accumulation. Recall this famous passage from Das Kapital: The
discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and
entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest
and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial
hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.
These idyllic proceedings are the chief moments of primitive accumulation . . . . [They all]
tanks, AKs, machine guns, fixed bayonets, billy clubs, K-9 corps, truncheons, or water hoses.
depend in part on brute force, e.g., the colonial system. But, they all employ the power of the State, the concentrated and organised
force of society, to hasten, hot-house fashion, the process of transformation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist
[C]apital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and
dirt. Western capitalistic wealth and production thus began with the violent looting
of resources and forcible enslavement of numerous populations . All these chief
moments of early capitalistic wealth accumulation involve non-Europeans
indigenous peoples, Africans, Asians, and Latin Americansthose racialized as not
white in the dominant racial framing of white Americans ever since. Capitalism is
so intertwined with systemic racism in its distant historical origins and
contemporary history that it has been a mistake for analysts and activists to try to
separate them. To the present day. Capital today still often comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood
mode . . . .
and dirt.
Capitalism root cause commodification and abuse

Maller No date (post 2011)
(Katherine, William Macauly University,

http://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/kmaller/writing/academic/capitalism-slavery-and-thebirth-of-racism/, Post 2011, acc. 7/4/14, arh)
The results of this system become clear in The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah
Equiano, in which Equiano, among other hardships experienced as a slave, describes the Middle
Passage between African and America. The absolutely pestilential (Equiano, 424) conditions
in which the African slaves were kept were certainly inhumane, but the cruelty of the white
sailors exacerbated the misery. The slaves were not well fed, and when they sought their own
means of sustenance, they suffered some very severe floggings. (Equiano, 425) Given the
myth that slavery was always racialized , one would assume that this cruelty was the
product of the white sailors hatred of these black slaves. However, Equiano also describes an
incident in which the white sailors flogged [one of their own] unmercifully. (Equiano, 425)
This removes race as the motivation for cruelty. The inhumane treatment of slaves confirms that
slaves were viewed as commodities instead of people. The equally inhumane treatment of
a white sailor would then confirm that the sailors, too, were commodities in the
capitalist system that they served . They, along with the slaves they shipped, were the
laboring subjects of the Atlantic economy, (Linebaugh and Rediker, 111) the slaves that were
essential to the rise of capitalism. (Linebaugh and Rediker, 28)
Cap sustains the modern day systemic oppression of racism

l.gong
Economic factors play a primary role in producing and sustaining racism . These factors
include the accumulation process, private property, and modes of production . the
Accumulation Process Page 17 Racism appeared after fundamental changes occurred in the
economies of Western Europe. It emerged with a postfeudal economy, undergirded
by a drive to accumulate wealth. This drive developed in stages, characterized by different ways of
producing wealth or different modes of production. The most primitive stage involved brute force,
conquest, and plunder. This is the era when the Portuguese plundered the coastal cities of
Africa for their riches and the Spaniards destroyed civilizations in the Americas for
their gold. This period of plunder was primitive because those seeking wealth destroyed
the source of wealth upon acquiring it. They destroyed the cities, the civilizations, and
the people that produced the wealth. Subsequent stages involved seizing land and forcing
people to continuously extract wealth from the land . This required more than brute
force. It required special ways of controlling the use of land and of organizing and
sustaining labor. It required the development of special economic arrangements. Thus
the perpetuation of the accumulation process and the maintenance of racial oppression required a
particular economic structure. Force, Accumulation, and Economic Structure Friedrich Engels ([1877]
1975) made this point in his critique of Herr Duhring in AntiDuhring. Duhring had argued that oppression was a
function of direct force, as slaves were coerced into servitude. He used the example of Robinson Crusoe enslaving
Friday. In this example, Crusoe, with sword in hand, enslaves Friday. Engels asked where did Crusoe get the sword?
He argued that the presence of the sword presupposes a particular level of production and technology. Why doesn't
Friday run away when Crusoe looks the other way? Engels maintained that Friday's state of servitude must be
based on an arrangement in which Crusoe controls productive land, instruments of labor, and surplus resources.
Engels's point is that oppression is sustained by more than force it is perpetuated within the context of an
oppressive economic structure. Engels claimed that there are a number of economic prerequisites for the
maintenance of slavery and other forms of oppression. He argued that the subjugation of a man or group is
perpetuated only within an economic context with specific characteristics. Engels (1975, p. 192 ) said,In
order
to be able to make use of a slave, one must possess two kinds of things: first, the
instruments and material for his slave's labor and second, the means of bare
subsistence for him. Therefore, before slavery becomes possible, certain levels of
production must already have been reached and a certain inequality of distribution must already have
The subjugation of a man to make him do servile work, in all its forms,
presupposes that the subjugator has at his disposal the instruments of labor with
the help of which alone he is able to employ the person placed in bondage, and in
the case of slavery, in addition, the means of subsistence which enables him to keep his slave alive. In all
cases, therefore, it presupposes the possession of a certain amount of property , in excess of
the average. Private Property Engels ([1877] 1975) added that private property is also required to
sustain exploitative relations. He argued that in primitive societies based on common ownership of the
land, ''slavery either did not exist at all or played only a very subordinate role " (p. 193).
According to Engels, slavery arose in the Greek and Roman societies when land
ownership became concentrated in the hands of a small class of rich proprietors. In
appeared. . . .
some areas of the ancient world, the slave population outnumbered freemen by a ratio of 10 to 1, Engels claimed.
This oppressive system was not maintained by simple force, although force was
involved. It was sustained within the context of an economic structure in which land
ownership was concentrated in the hands of a few and in which society accepted
the legitimacy of this arrangement. Not only are oppression and accumulation
sustained within an economic structure, this struct ure provides the skeletal frame
for the form of that oppression. In other words, as this structure changes, so does the
form of oppression. This structure consists of the dominant mode of production, the
level of technology, and the sum total of relations of production (Marx [1859] 1959b, p. 42).
The dominant mode of production plays the most important role in shaping the form
of oppression. Mode of Production and Exploitation Gough (1985, p. 18) defined mode of production as " the
way production is organized and the means by which the production and extraction
of the surplus labor or surplus product takes place ." We add that modes of production
are distinguishable by the way production is organized, the manner in which wealth is created
and labor exploited, and the dominant way in which goods are produced . Marx ([1859]
1959b) suggested that since ancient times, the organization of production has involved a division between two
Exploitation
occurs when the dominant group appropriates surplus value from the subordinate
class. This appropriation occurs, according to Gough (1985, p. 18), when the subordinate class produces
a social product, part and only part of which is returned to or retained by that class
in the form of consumption goods (food, shelter, clothing, fuel, etc.). . . . The remainder is
appropriated by the dominant class whose members or agents may use it for a
variety of purposes: enlarging the stock of means of production, building lavish temples,
churches, or mansions, engaging in luxury consumption, furnishing large armies, or whatever. Thus
different modes of production are distinguishable by different ways the dominant class exploits the
subordinate classes and accumulates wealth . Different modes of production are also identifiable by
differences in the predominant type of productive activity. These modes of production shape forms of
oppression. This proposition can easily be demonstrated by examining the eras of slavery and Jim
Crow. The eras of industrial capitalism and late capitalism are more complicated and
require more elaboration. In the era of slavery, the predominant productive activity
was agricultural production. A dominant class not only owned the means of productionland it owned
groups: a dominant class that owns the means of production and a subordinate class that does not.
and controlled the bodies of the slave laborers who worked on the land. This mode of production created the
In the period of Jim Crow

segregation, agricultural production continued as the major economic activity, with
industrial production emerging to overtake farming . Land ownership remained
concentrated in a dominant class, but this class exploited labor in a different
manner. The dominant class used tenant farmers and sharecroppers, who labored under threat of starvation, to
arrangement of direct domination that characterizes this form of oppression.
Because rent and debt

absorbed maintenance production, this process of exploitation perpetuated and
exacerbated the poverty and misery of the subordinate clas s. It also contributed to a
hierarchy of poverty and status, with black sharecroppers on the bottom and white
landowners at the top. The lowest class, blacks, were segregated from the other classes in a system of caste
and class stratification. Thus this type of exploitation provided the framework for the Jim
Crow form of racial oppression. These examples demonstrate two points: 1. Racial oppression is
grounded in exploitative and oppressive economic structures , in which a dominant
class privately owns the means of production and in which wealth is concentrated in
this class. 2. The form of racial oppression varies with modes of production.
produce for their own maintenance (necessary labor) and for rent (surplus labor).
Modern racism was enabled by both capitalism and racism

l.gong
modern historical phenomenon, grounded in

alienating, exploitative, and oppressive economic arrangements . It arose in a
particular stage in history, after the dissolution of feudalism, after the Protestant Reformation,
and with the rise of a new economic order undergirded by an intense drive to accumulate wealth.
This drive was both a creative and a liberating force. At the same time , it was destructive,
dehumanizing, and exploitative. On the one hand, it contributed to the growth of Western
culture and civilization. On the other, it fueled the genocide against Native Americans
and propelled the Atlantic slave trade. Modern racism emerged out of slavery and
colonialism. These economic institutions created clear demarcation lines between the
oppressed and the oppressor, which overlapped with color lines . The oppressed were not
only separated from the oppressors, the oppressed were primarily people of color . The notion that
people of color were of a different species and were inferior to the oppressors
functions to legitimize the
The Historical Origins of Racism Racism is a
Gender
Cap is the root cause of gender and race
Zhang 12 Environment/Energy Reporter Content Marketing intern at PRE Brands, Intern reporter at Circle of Blue, Reporter
at Medill News Service Washington Bureau, Master of Science i... Education Northwestern University, Xi'an International Studies
University (LinYi, MeDill, LGBT activists link homophobia to capitalism, MAY 31, 2012,
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=206330 //SRSL)
Danelle Wylder is a college student in Chicago. She is an activist for queers. She was also among thousands of protesters during
last weeks NATO summit. When she wore her rainbow-colored wings and appeared in the crowds that
converged near Millennium Park, she defined it as a battle against capitalism. Look around
you, the majority of the world is suffering, Wylder said. LGBT community is as oppressed as other
communities. She said, like racism, homophobia was created by capitalism, adding that the
wealthy use the economic system to divide people and prevent them from forming alliances . And
she attributed LGBT issues such as homophobia to capitalism. Like racism,
homophobia was created by capitalism, Wylder said, because they [the rich] use
these tools [capitalism] to separate people from each other, from coming together
to actually fight against who is really oppressing them . Wylder said some and a small portion of
people who oppose gay marriages say they are concerned that it will affect heterosexual lifestyles. were trying to get support by
saying that queer people wanting to get married will affect their marriages, just like how they used racism to justify slavery. Using
the analogy of racism and slavery, she added that Because of the separation, transgender people are being killed, and the majority of
hate crime deaths is involve transgender women, she added. Even though With the LGBT community gaineding support from a
small portion of the one 1 percent a term that describes the rich -- on the gay marriage, social acceptance still remains an issue as
evidenced by. Homophobia-caused statistics showing that hate crimes rosedid not diminish but rise last year. The National
Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs report showed reported that anti-LGBTQH hate violence increased 13 percent from 2009 to
2010. Anti-LGBTQ murders increased 23 percent from 22 murders in 2009 to 27 murders in 2010. Among the violence, transgender
women were disproportionately targeted, according to the report. We are not just LGBTQ people, Wylder said. We are also
workers, women and immigrants. We have all the same root cause, which is capitalism. Supporting Wylders position, Ryne
Poelker, 21, who studies at a University of Illinois at Chicago student, agrees with Wylder. He said that the sexual oppression is the
outcome of the norms that are set by a class society. Referring to the recent NATO summit in Chicago, Darrell Moore, associate
sociology professor at DePaul University expressed argued that homophobia is associated with capitalism. What I would argue is
that sexuality is absolutely crucial to the functioning of a nation because [in this case] NATO is about opposing a certain way of being
a citizen in a certain form of the nation states, Moore said. If we look at the larger picture, homophobia is connected to class.
Moore said that LGBT activists are using homophobia as a rallying cry against capitalists to Moore said another reason that LGBT
activists blame homophobia for capitalism is that they are trying to forge alliances with people who are concerned with other social
issues. and gain support from them. However, he added said that there are different ways of being forms of capitalism. Moore
added toTo those NATO protesters it was capitalism, but it was also militarism, which is also a side of homophobia. Capitalism
is just one side among many, Moore said. And it gets really complicated because its an irony .
Moore said some LGBT people are feel satisfied in workplace and at home, adding that in that case capitalism is working for some. .
In that case, capitalism is working out great for the version of being queers. I would argue against the idea that it is the side
because sometimes it is in the space of capitalism that one can find a way to be gay, he said. The solution is by no means simple,
Moore said, but he said he believes that progress can be made as the more people become informed and who are informed and
involved. in the discussion like the conversation with the government during NATO summit, the more just the outcome will be.
We are just fighting for a new world, for something that works for everyone, not just for the
few, Wylder said.
Racism
Capitalism is the reason other forms of exclusion exist the
alternative is a prerequisite to effectuating change
Kovel 2 (Joel, Professor of Social Studies at Bard College, The Enemy of Nature, p. 122-24, ,
2002, arh)
Unlike gender, class
is grounded not in physical difference or biological plan, but in the

formalization of the productive core of human being. Since the free exercise of transformative
power expresses human nature, class is a violation of human nature, and with it, of nature itself,
even if it is not grounded in the physical body. But class relationships never appear in pure, unadulterated form, however, as
the splits they impose would tear society apart. They occur, rather, embedded in a further institutional turn,
which emerges and takes the form of the state. It is the class/state nexus that comprises the decisive leap between
archaic society and what we call civilization. With this, history as such begins, and the cyclical, differentiated time of original society
is transformed according to the hierarchical ground plan of class. Now society has a controlling agency to tell its story to itself a
story, however, given over to conflict because of the institutionalization of class. States impose writing, through their cadres of
technicians; they impose universalizing religions such as Christianity through their cadres of priests; and they impose laws through
their judges and courts; they impose violence and conquest with their armies, and also the legitimation of violence and conquest.
Everything thereafter is marked with contradiction, stemming from the states original dilemma, that it stands over the whole of
society but is for societys ruling classes. States carry forth all those notions we call progress. They also,
however, implement the domination of nature, in all the forms taken by nature women certainly but
also the other peoples conquered by those states which achieve imperial status. As enslaved and dominated peoples
become incorporated into the domain, they acquire the status of Other barbarians, savages,
human animals, and eventually (with the growth of science), ethnicities and races all of which
categories cluster with the female at the nature end of the bifurcation within humanity This discussion may help clarify
a vexing issue on the left as to the priority of different categories of what might be called
dominative splitting chiefly, those of gender, class, race, ethnic and national exclusion, and,
with the ecological crisis, species. Here we must ask, priority in relation to what? If we intend
prior in time, then gender holds the laurel and, considering how history always adds to the past rather than
replacing it, would appear as at least a trace in all further dominations. If we intend prior in existential significance, then that would
apply to whichever of the categories was put forward by immediate historical forces as these are lived by masses of people: thus to a
Jew living in Germany in the 1930s, anti-Semitism would have been searingly prior, just as anti-Arab racism would be to a
Palestinian living under Israeli domination today, or a ruthless, aggravated sexism would be to women living in, say, Afghanistan. As
to which is politically prior, in the sense of being that which whose transformation is practically more urgent, that depends upon the
preceding, but also upon the deployment of all the forces active in a concrete situation; we shall address this in the last section of this
work, when we deal with the politics of overcoming the crisis. If, however we ask the question of efficacy, that is,
which split sets the others into motion, then priority would have to be given to class, for the
plain reason that class relations entail the state as an instrument of enforce ment and control,
and it is the state that shapes and organizes the splits that appear in human ecosystems. Thus
class is both logically and historically distinct from other forms of exclusion (hence we should not talk of
classism to go along with sexism and racism, and species-ism). This is, first of all, because class is an essentially man-made
category, without root in even a mystified biology. We cannot imagine a human world without gender distinctions although we can
imagine a world without domination by gender. But
a world without class is eminently imaginable
indeed, such was the human world for the great majority of our species time on
earth, during all of which considerable fuss was made over gender. Historically,
the difference arises because class signifies one side of a larger figure that
includes a state apparatus whose conquests and regulations create races and
shape gender relations. Thus there will be no true resolution of racism so long as
class society stands, inasmuch as a racially oppressed society implies the activities
of a class-defending state.0 Nor can gender inequality be enacted away so long as
class society, with its state, demands the super-exploitation of womans labour.
Class society continually generates gender, racial, ethnic oppressions and the like, which take on a life of their own, as well as
profoundly affecting the concrete relations of class itself. It follows that class
politics must be fought out in terms of

all the active forms of social splitting. It is the management of these divisions that keeps state
society functional. Thus though each person in a class society is reduced from what s/he can become, the varied reductions
can be combined into the great stratified regimes of history this one becoming a fierce warrior, that one a routine-loving clerk,
another a submissive seamstress, and so on, until we reach todays personifications of capital and captains of industry. Yet no
matter how functional a class society, the profundity of its ecological violence ensures a basic
antagonism which drives history onward. History is the history of class society because no matter how modified, so
powerful a schism is bound to work itself through to the surface, provoke resistance (class struggle), and lead to the succession of
powers. The relation of class can be mystified without end only consider the extent to which religion exists for just this purpose, or
watch a show glorifying the police on television yet so long as we have any respect for human nature, we must recognize that so
fundamental an antagonism as would steal the vital force of one person for the enrichment of another cannot be conjured away.
Capitalism perpetuates racism through its unequal division of labor

and resources empirical examples
Brodkin 05 (Karen, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at UCLA, Xenophobia, the State, and Capitalism, American
Ethnologist Vol. 32, No. 4, Nov. 2005, pg. 519-520,
arh)
In the United States, and in the global economy, more broadly, racism's resonance rests on
institutionalized and persistent racial and ethnic segregation in the labor force, in
neighborhoods, and in public space (Brodkin 2000). This segregation of some into the worst
jobs, schools, and neighborhoods is the foundation for institutionalized racialization projects,
whereby new groups of immigrants become racial Others. White Americans have limited
interaction with new immigrants and experience them as a shadowy population of aliens. The
Bush administration has rivaled European governments in Islamophobic state policies and
discourse, yet Muslims are not the primary focus of popular xenophobia in the United States.
Certainly, a virulent niche market exists for Islamophobia in the United States among an
unsavory coalition of the political and religious Right, including a Jewish Right. Still, many
more Americans stereotype Mexican and Central American immigrants for taking U.S. jobs and
taking advantage of U.S. public services, in much the same way that Western Europeans blame
Turks and other Muslims. I suspect that popular resonance of state-promoted Islamophobia in
Western Europe rests on earlier decades of immigration of workers from the Middle East.
Much of the working class for Europe's post-World War II rebuilding and reindustrialization
came from Turkey and former North African colonies. These "guest workers," like
undocumented immigrants in the United States, were vulnerable to exploitation because of
state-imposed restrictions on work allowed and conditions of residence, more generally. To
better understand why Islamophobia strikes a popular chord in Europe today, one might ask
about the ethnic composition of the late 20th-century European working class, about the
patterns of occupational and residential segregation, about state policies toward immigrant
workers, and about whether unions and progressive political forces represented their interests
in the fifties, sixties, and seventies. Was there a discourse of domestic antiracism on the
European left? Anti-guest worker sentiments may well have been antecedents and foundations
of today's discourses about "unassimilable" Muslims destroying European civilization. The
particular hostility toward Turkey and Islam extends outward to "the Balkans" and is part of a
longer pattern in prosperous northern and western Europe that views its southern and eastern
neighbors, who come as job seekers more than as investors, as unassimilable Others. In other
words, to Bunzl's argument about the role of the state-superstate, I would add that
anthropologists seeking to understand the bases of widespread embrace or not of racist policies
also look to the ways capitalism joins governments in organizing the daily life of work and social
space.
Capitalism is the root cause of the degradation of people of color

based on the structural tendency built into the marketplace
Kurukshetra 14 (Kurukshetra,Environmental Racism as a Systemic Tendency of Capitalism March 20 2014,
http://kurukshetra1.wordpress.com/2014/03/20/environmental-racism-as-a-systemic-tendency-of-capitalism/ /SRSL)
The disproportionate impacts of pollution and other forms of environmental degradation on

people of color is not the result of scheming racists in power, so much as a structural tendency
built into the dynamics of the marketplace. Environmental justicethe movement that seeks to
fight against ecological problems that fall along lines of class and raceis a relatively new
movement in the realm of environmentalism. This appears to be mostly due to the persistent hegemony of
conservation-based movements, which mostly consist of old White liberals who see the idea of environmentalism as a
strict delineation between humans and nature. Environmental justice movements, on the other hand, seek to fight against ecological externalities that
directly and disproportionately affect working class and people of color communitiesand increasingly advocate for the complete overthrow of modern systems of power. The Structural
Drive to Exploit Whats fundamentally important to understand is that more often than not,
environmental racism is an objective function of capitalism . The term objective here does not
refer to some kind of absolute Truth, but rather to the fact that there is no subjective, individual
actor behind environmental racism and the impoverishing effects of capitalismon the other
hand, it is a consequence of the historical development of market structures, and the dynamics
that emerge from the structure of capitalism and the unequal distribution of wealth and the
means of production. The structural disadvantage that poor communities have with regards to
dealing with environmental externalities lies in capitals structural drive to maximize profits. The
companies that have the most profits in any given sector can use their economic advantage to place themselves in an even better position relative to other companies, by investing in new technologies, expanding
production and increasing market share, etc. They are then able to accumulate even more profits, which allows them to further solidify their place in the market, and so on. On the other hand, companies that do
not increase their rate of capital accumulation risk going bankrupt, seeing their stock prices fall (if they are publicly traded), or getting acquired by larger companies, more profitable companies. In the ecological
context, this pressure to maximize profits means that companies that can successfully externalize the damage they do to the environment (i.e. dumping waste products into a nearby river) are at an advantage in
the marketplace relative to firms that may seek to take the moral high ground and properly deal with waste streams. The extra profits polluting firms accumulate means that they can potentially out-maneuver
clean firms, and if the profit differential is large enough then clean firms might even be systematically bankrupted or bought out by dirty firms. This means that on the macroscopic scale, capitalism creates a
downward pressure on the ability of organizations to engage in ecologically sustainable practices. Parallels with the Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis Another excellent example to illustrate the structural creation of
exploitation by capitalism is the situation that lead up to the global financial crisis of 2008. In this clip (4:55-7:34) from a talk by the communist philosopher Slavoj Zizek sponsored by the Dutch public
broadcasting company, a young woman explains how her small, family-owned bank was affected by the sub-prime mortgage crisis. During the run-up to 2008, while the bigger banks were giving out loans to lowincome people (and then selling off those loans to unwitting investors and institutions), her bank refused to deal with such unethical practices. However, the bank banks which were engaged in sub-prime lending
were making far larger profits than the family-owned bankprompting the majority share-holders to question the leadership of the young woman and her family, and eventually selling the bank off to people who
would engage in sub-prime lending. As the woman succinctly puts it at the end: Its incredibly difficult to operate ethically in the pressure thats been created over the past 10 years or so to make massive amounts
of money. Youre trying to do itand then you just get sold. Of course, it shouldnt be controversial to carry this observation further, and say that the drive to make massive amounts of money is not a recent
tendency, but has in fact been at the very core of capitalist logic for the past 500 years. But the young family banker does identify a key point: that while there may be individual actors who are guided by moral
instincts, the dynamics of the system means that these instincts are more or less irrelevant. There is an objective, structural drive for different firms and different industries to externalize as many costs as
possibleand put in the environmental context, there is a structural drive to pollute and not have to pay the costs of environmental degradation that results from a companys activities. Marginalized Populations:
Capitals Path of Least Resistance The question, then, is that if the company doesnt bear the costs of environmental degradation, who does? Just like there is a systemic tendency for firms to externalize costs, so
too is there a systemic tendency for poor, marginalized populations to be forced to bear these costs. From a firms point of view, externalizing costs isnt necessarily a frictionless processthey can easily get pushback from local populations, government regulators, and other entities that arent bound by the rules and dynamics of the marketplace. The profit-maximizing process must account for this potential friction, and
find ways or avenues by which this friction is reduced or eliminated entirely. Poor populations, by definition, lack economic resources; and this economic marginalization almost always translates into political
marginalization, since it requires a not insignificant amount of time, energy, and resources to engage with and have power with modern political institutions. Thus, from the firms point of view, such regions offer
the path of least resistance in terms of finding ways to externalize environmental externalities. A working-class community of color will (typically) be able to resist far, far less than a wealthy White community,
. This tendency can also be

seen in recent empirical studies. A recent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report found
that in California, Blacks and Latin@s are disproportionately affected by pollution. And given
the analysis above, this shouldnt be surprisingas of 2010, Blacks and Latin@s have a median
income around 50% less than Whites, and are more than twice as likely to be under the poverty
line than Whites. Again, it should be emphasized that the racial disparities behind environmental externalities arent so much the result of some Rich White Man sitting in a skyscraper,
and thus the former will find themselves dealing with polluted water supplies and toxins in their neighborhood air far more often than the latter
cackling as he decides to invest in a coal plant in the middle of a predominantly Black community; rather, it is the result of historic economic marginalization, and the lack of resources that communities of color
have to organize and resist environmental exploitation. The need to focus on the class disparities, as well as racial disparities, is confirmed by looking at another good case study: that of China. This article from
The Guardian points out that protests by middle class urbanites in China are far more likely to have an effect on industrial projects than protests by poor rural folks: The middle class protest against PX in Dalian
this week was, in many ways, a re-run of a similarly successful demonstration against the same compound in Xiamen four years ago. In both cities, average annual incomes are now well above the $6,000 level at
which citizens in developed countries started demanding more political rights and cleaner environments. PX may not be a deadly poison, but it is now a proven irritant for these influential white collar workers.
Meanwhile in the countryside, chemical plants dealing with far deadlier toxins such as cyanide, mercury, cadmium, sodium dichromate and yellow phosporus will continue to stir up local unease, spark
violence and generate the occasional headline, but their cases are unlikely to gain anything like the same political traction. Even in communist countries like China, economic disparitieswhich themselves are
the result of uneven development by capitalist institutionsare an excellent indicator of which populations are likely to bear the brunt of ecological degradation. The Need for Revolutionary Redistribution of
Wealth and Power In response to all this, it may be tempting for liberal and progressive-minded folks to advocate for reforms, and call for stronger regulations and more environmentally-minded politicians. But
such a call would ignore the entirety of this analysis. If the reason why certain communities are disproportionately impacted by degradation is because they lack economic resources, then the only real solution is
to redistribute wealth, and the ownership of wealth-generating assets. This is because, as the analysis above implies, wealth is power, and disparities in wealth equates to disparities in powerand the ability of
powerful (wealthy) people to exploit weak (poor) people. This is most directly argued in the classical Marxist analysis of how capitalists exploit powerless workers, but it also has a clear application to the realm of
environmental justice. The implication, then, is that it is not enough to focus on trying to pass reforms and legislation; if the root cause of exploitation is economic disparity, then the only real solution is to attack
this problem head on. Rather than trying to emphasize all organizational efforts on making policy and campaigning for politicians, labor should be put into the building of strong, community-based organizations
and institutions that empower them independently of political organizations, political parties, and for-profit institutions. Groups like the Black Panthers recognized this, and (despite their eventual collapse) put
the bulk of their organizing efforts into the creation of free health clinics, transportation services, community schools, breakfast programs, and so onand all for the rationale of strengthening communities and
This isnt to say that reformist and legislative methods cannot be

usefuljust that they are insufficient for stable, long-term efforts to battle environmental racism and
other systems of exploitation. As Lucy Parsons, the revolutionary anarcho-communist and
feminist said: Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.
building power for the revolutionary overthrow of class society.
State and economic power are means by which the dominant class enforces racism
l.gong
Economic Base and Political and Cultural Superstructures We have drawn from a broad literature in an attempt to
build a model for explaining the formation and perpetuation of racism in the United States. We construct our model
the historical materialist framework. That is, we reject the idealist notion that racism
and racial differences are merely attitudes or images that are voluntarily created by
the mind. We eschew the materialist view that racism is caused by inexorable
economic forces. Our historical materialist framework is based on the assumption that racism emerged
during a particular stage in history, under particular material conditions, and in
dynamic ways. We focus on the economic base of racial Page 33 oppression, which
contributes directly to political and cultural aspects of racism . We see the relationship
between base and superstructure as dynamic and interactive . Moreover, we see politics
as an indeterminate factor. In developing this eclectic model, we combine several
in
different but complementary perspectives. Each perspective focuses on different aspects of the relationship
between base and superstructure. These perspectives include the MarxistGramscian, the radical psychoanalytical,
MarxistGramscian Approach Economic base is a broad Marxist term that

relations of production, the
way in which people are treated in the process of producing goods and services, the
and the neoWeberian models.
refers to the primary mode of production, instruments of production, s ocial
manner in which wealth is generated and distributed, and other economic processes and arrangements. In a racially
Wealth, concentrated in
the hands of a few 2. Private ownership of the primary means of production 3. An
exploitative accumulation process 4. Alienating and dehumanizing modes of
production 5. Hierarchical relations in production In this model, racial oppression is
understood as arising out of an exploitative accumulation process in which wealth is
concentrated in the hands of a few. Racial oppression is grounded in this economic base,
which in turn sustains racial oppression. This economic base, with its concentrated
wealth, produces a dominant class that maintains its hegemony and protects these
oppressive arrangements in several ways. It captures or pressures the state to use state power to
protect these arrangements. It creates a racial ideology to convince members of all classes
oppressive society the important elements of this base include the following: 1.
that these arrangements are legitimate and natural and that more equitable arrangements will be disastrous.
Persuading members of other classes to accept inequitable and oppressive

arrangements is a more powerful way of sustaining oppression than the use of state
power. This persuasion occurs more readily with the construction of racist culture. Page 34 Although culture is
constructed in many ways and on both individual and social levels , the dominant
class plays a major role in the initial construction of racist culture . Members of this
class generate racist discourse in their everyday conversations about the
oppressed. This process was most evident in the antebellum South, as planters talked about their slaves and
the legitimacy of slavery. This culture arises as members of this dominant class become active socially and
politically.
Members of the dominant class are disproportionately represented among

political leaders. They are in key positions to disseminate their ideas. Their worldview
becomes well known throughout society as they or their sympathizers articulate it in state
legislatures, in the U.S. Congress, in courtrooms, in administrative offices, on political campaign trailstrain stops,
Members
of this class often own local newspapers or are able to influence the editorial boards, especially when
newspapers depend on advertising revenues from this class . Members of the dominant class have
the resources and the connections to make their views known to a wide audience .
They make substantial contributions to major universities. They often influence universities
that train people for other institutions, such as schools, churches, courts, businesses, and industries. Once
racist culture is established and permeates the major institutions of society , it functions
to perpetuate racial oppression. It influences people of all classes, including white workers,
to accept racially oppressive arrangements as natural, rational, and legitimate.
convention halls, and so onand in the newspapers, magazines, theaters, and other media sources.
Gramsci's (1980) model of the relationship between economic base and politics and culture is dynamic in the
sense that it accounts for political conflict. This model considers the possibility of social movements. In these
movements, efficacious oppressed groups are able to capture parts of the state for use in ameliorating oppressive
conditions and challenging racist culture by underscoring its irrational and oppressive features and by articulating
The possibility of social movements makes the outcome of

political struggles uncertain and indeterminate. It makes the construction and
reconstruction of culture dynamic.
an alternative worldview.
Racialization exists in the political economy of capitalismwe control

the root cause
chapter 2, pgs 43-44, 2009//SRSL)
With respect to the United States, Manning Marable (2004) has used the concept of
racialization to connect to modes of production there. He has described the current
era in the United States as 'The New Racial Domain' (NRD ). This New Racial Domain, he argues, is
'different from other earlier forms ofracial domination, such as slavery, Jim Crow
segregation, and ghettoization, or strict residential segregation, in several critical
respects' (ibid.). These early forms of racialization , he goes on, were based primarily, if not
exclusively, in the political economy of U.S. capitalism. 'Meaningful social reforms such as the Civil Rights Act of
1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were debated almost entirely within the context of America's expanding, domestic economy, and a background ofKeynesian, welfare
The political economy of the 'New Racial Domain', on the other hand,
is driven and largely determined by the forces of transnational capitalism, and the
public policies of state neoliberalism, which rests on an unholy trinity, or deadly
triad, of structural barriers to a decent life (ibid.). 'These oppressive structures', he argues,
'are mass unemployment, mass incarceration; and mass disfranchisement', with
each factor directly feeding and accelerating the others, 'creating an everwidening circle of social disadvantage, poverty, and civil death, touching the lives of
tens of millions of U.S. people' (ibid.). For Marable, adopting a Marxist perspective, '[t]he process begins at the point of production. For
decades, U.S. corporations have been outsourcing millions of better-paying jobs
outside the country. The class warfare against unions has led to a steep decline in
the percentage of U.S. workers' (ibid.). As Marable concludes: Within whole U.S. urban neighborhoods losing virtually their entire ecostate public policies' (ibid.).
nomic manufacturing and industrial employment, and with neoliberal social policies in place cutting job training programs, welfare, and public housing, millions of Americans
now exist in conditions that exceed the devastation of the Great Depression of the 1930s. In 2004, in New York's Central Harlem community, 50 percent of all black male adults
were currently unemployed. When one considers that this figure does not count those black males who are in the military, or inside prisons, its truly amazing and depressing
the new jobs being generated for the most part lack the health benefits,
pensions, and wages that manufacturing and industrial employment once offered
(ibid.).Moreover,
(ibid.). Connecting to capitalist modes of production, for Marxists, is not as Mills (forthcoming, 2009) claims 'a manifestation ofdogma', but a serious attempt to understand
In making connections with modes of

production, the Marxist concept of racialization, I must conclude, provides a more
convincing account ofracism in capitalist societies than do CRT emphases on
'white supremacy' on the one hand, and 'race' rather than class on the other.
racism's interconnections with capitalism historically and contemporaneously.
AT: Cap cant address Racism

Racism is an issue of classthe K is able to best answer the questions
of racism
Red Critique 2 "Race is Class" The Red Critique, November/December 2002,
http://www.redcritique.org/NovDec02/raceisclass.htm, acc. 7/13/14, arh)
This is because, despite the desperate singularity of the media's focus on Trent Lott, the issue is
not whether or not certain politicians are racists; racism is not a matter of people's ideas. Even
Republican Governor George Ryan has recognized this fact when, in an attempt to repair the
public face of the party in the wake of the scandal caused by Lott's remarks, he commuted all
death penalty cases in Illinois on the basis of their racist determination stating that, "While we
are not in a civil war now, we are facing what is shaping up to be one of the great civil rights
struggles of our time". Trent Lott and the rest of Bush's racist cabal are symptoms of a deeper
truth that is at the core of both parties' (one overt, one silent) defense of a growing U.S.
segregationism. The issue, in short, is that despite whatever people think or say about racism in
the United States the ruling party is racist in practice. It is the political economy of racism that is
the issue not cultural differences. The politics of racist segregation are, in other words, the direct
product of U.S. capitalism. Recent statistics demonstrate the actual fact that while segregation
might have been made "illegal" before the courts (a point which the Bush administration is
trying to change), in practice segregationist policies are one of the main tools of capitalist bosses
to divide the working class along racial lines while driving down wages, by eliminating necessary
public services such as health care and education that affect all workers, for example. While the
capitalist bosses enjoy the full benefits of their workers' labor and live a life without fear of not
being able to afford basic necessities, 22% of African-American workers and 34% of Latino
workers do not have access to health care and 27% of both African-American and Latino workers
live below the poverty line. At the same time, the U.S. capitalist class is trying to extend the
policing tactics it has used against the African-American members of the working classfor
instance, while African-Americans constitute roughly 13% of the population in the United States,
they represent almost half (48%) of all prison inmates and half of all death-row convictions in
what has become a form of "legal lynching"by criminalizing all people of color as part of their
"war on terror". INS lock-ups, draconian immigration laws that are going to require all working
people to carry ID cards, and Ashcroft's on-going policy of detainment without trial are all
aimed at dividing the working class and ensuring that a segment of the population forever
remains available as a "cheaper" source of labor (and a "scapegoat" when crisis emerges). While
Lott's comments have made all of this (momentarily) "visible" in the mainstream press, the
unfolding cultural commentary has trivialized the issue by focusing on the personalities and
speculating about whether the American people are ready to accept a racist message from their
leaders. In other words, the corporate media does what it always does and turns what
should be an occasion for investigating the social effects created by the powers
that be, which should be the role of the press in a democracy, into a cultural
debate about people's "values" that silently normalizes the rule of the powerful
whose material interests in fact dictate what counts as public opinion because in
actuality they own and control the culture industry and government. The political
economy of race, in short, is systematically suppressed by the ruling ideology. The common
sense of "race" trivializes it as a cultural "stigma" that blocks the free play of market forces and
produces unfair "discrimination" in the job market that, if left to itself, gives all an "equal
opportunity". By turning racism from an economic to a cultural matter, the common-sense view
of race diffuses the issue into a private matter of individualsthat is, there is racial
discrimination because there are racist people; a circular logic that fails to explain what it claims
to. This privatized view of race as discriminatory ideas, however, reflects the rule of a society
that enshrines private property as the motor of economic life and normalizes the exploitation of
the majority who are therefore forced to produce profit for the few just in order to survive. In
other words, the common-sense of race in capitalism silently accepts and normalizes the
unequal class relations that systematically contradict the ideal of "equal opportunity" and
produce racism today: in an economy based on private control of the social means of
production, competition is the rule and racism is a tool for increasing profits because it justifies
unequal wages and undermines the unity of workers in the face of their exploiters. This classconsciousness of race is suppressed under the false consciousness that if left to itself the market
frees the people from discriminatory ideas and gives everyone a chance to benefit equally: i.e.,
that the market is "colorblind". The common-sense that race is a matter of ideas that contradict
the principles of the free market is a not so subtle ruse to deflect attention from the socioeconomic causes of racism in capitalism onto its cultural effects and serves the interests of the
few who alone actually benefit from racism in the world of wage-labor and capital. The cultural
debate over the racism of the Republicans, the speculation of whether such and such politician is
or is not racist, makes racism a matter of the ideas and beliefs of individuals so as to instill faith
in the underlying class relations that systematically breed racism today.
We access the root cause economic disparity has the greatest

explanatory power
While for Critical Race Theorists 'white supremacy' primarily describes the structural
dimension of 'white power', 'white privilege' mainly refers to the day-to-day
practices that arise directly or indirectly from 'white supremacy' . However, both interact
with each other (Delgado, personal correspondence, 2008), and both have structural and day-to-daypractical
implications. Thus immigration restrictions would be part of the structural
dimension of the 'white supremacist' state (ibid.), but with obvious day-to-day practical
manifestations. From a Marxist perspective, it is, ofcourse, the poor and dispossessed
rather than the rich and powerful, whose entry into other (richer) countries is restricted
(although this exclusion is dependent on capitalists' relative need for cheap labor).
Delgado (ibid.) gives an example of the practical nature of 'white privilege' when 'store clerks
put change directly in the upraised palms of white customers but lay the coins down
on the counter for blacks or Latinos/ Latinas'. For Critical Race Theorists, such
practices are also enshrined structurally in 'white supremacist' societies. For
Marxists, the class element is crucial. Rich people of color are less likely to get their
change thrust on the counter. Moreover, well-off people of color will tend to shop in more
'up- market' stores, and will be more disposed to the use of plastic as a form of
payment. Critical Race Theorists believe that all white people are beneficiaries of
'white supremacy' and 'white privilege'. Gillborn (2008, p. 34) states that while they are not all active in identical ways, and do not all draw similar
advantages, '[a]ll White-identified people are implicated in ... [relations of shared power and dominance]- ... they do all benefit, whether they like it or not'. Sabina E. Vaught and Angelina E. Castagno (2008, p.
99) would appear to hold similar views and refer to 'the ways in which power over others ... benefits Whites individually and collectively' (p. 99), and specifically emphasize white privilege's 'structural nature' (p.
100). They argue (2008, p. 96) that 'Whiteness as property is a concept that reflects the conflation ofWhiteness with the exclusive rights to freedom, to the enjoy- ment ofcertain privileges, and l:o the ability to
Whiteness was the

characteristic, the attribute, the property of free human beings'. 'In this way',
Vaught and Castagno (2008, p. 96) continue, 'individual White persons came to
exercise, benefit from, and mutually create and recreate a larger structural system
of collective, institutional White privilege' (ibid.). Again, following Harris (1993, p. 1762), they refer to 'the continued right to determine meaning'
(Vaught and Castagno, 2008, p. 101), and make reference to Peggy Mcintosh's (1988) notion of systemic 'arbitrarily-awarded' privilege (Vaught and Castagno, 2008, p. 99). They conclude
that the societal systems 'that sustain the reign of White race privilege are peopled
and the concurrent, interactive acts of individuals and systems inexorably
draw advantage from these rights'. Following Cheryl Harris (1993, p. 1721) they state that 'to be identified as white' was 'to have the property of being white.
reinforce and entrench pervasive racial power across institutions, sites and events' (p.
96). 'White racial power', they claim, 'permeates every institution' (p. 101). When Gillborn makes reference to
Mcintosh's 'famously listed 50 privileges' (Gillborn, 2008, p. 35), and describes them as 'privileges that accrue from being
identified as White', he has seriously misunderstood Mcintosh's list. In merely
describing the privileges as accruing from being identified as white, he
decontextualizes and dehistoricizes her analysis . In actual fact, Mcintosh contextualizes white privilege with respect to her social class position as a white academic with respect to her 'Afro-American co-workers, friends, and acquaintances' with whom she comes into 'daily or frequent con tact in this particular time, place, and line ofwork' (p. 293).4
Homogenizing the social relations of all white people ignores, of course, this crucial social class dimension of privilege and power. Mills (1997, p. 37) acknowledges that not 'all whites are better off than all
nonwhites, but [argues that] ... as a statistical generalization, the objective life chances of whites are significantly better'. While this is, of course, true, we should not lose sight of the life chances of millions of
To take poverty as one example, in the United States, while it is the case
that the number of black people living below the poverty line is some three times
that of whites, this still leaves over 16 million 'white but not Hispanic' people living
in poverty in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau, 2007). This is indicative ofa society predicated on racialized capitalism, rather than indicative of a white
working class white people.
supremacist society. While the United States is witnessing the effects ofthe New Racial Domain (Marable, 2004-see below) with massively disproportionate effects on black people and other people of color, white
people are also affected. In the United Kingdom, there are similar indicators of a society underpinned by rampant racism, with black people currently twice as poor as whites, and those of Pakistani and
Bangladeshi origin over three times as poor as whites (Platt, 2007).5 Once again, however, this still leaves some 12 million poor white people in the United Kingdom, who are, like their American counterparts, on
the receiving end of global neoliberal capitalism. The devastating effects ofsocial class exploitation and oppression are masked by CRT blanket asser tions of 'white supremacy' and 'white privilege'. There are
further problems with the homogenization of all whites. First it masks essential power relations in capitalist societies. For Marxists, the ruling class are by definition those with power since it is they who own the
means of production, and the working class, in having to sell their labor power in order to survive, are (also by definition) the class largely without power. The manifestations of this major power imbalance in the
capital/ labor relation massively affects relative degrees of privilege in capitalist, the aforementioned rates of poverty being just one. Lack of power for the working class is particularly evident in countries like the
United States and the United Kingdom where that class has been successfully interpellated (Althusser's concept of interpellation, outlined in chapter 1 of this volume). Moreover, some of the very privileges that
poor white people possess are in a very real sense compensatory privileges. For example, Delgado (2008, personal correspondence) has introduced the concept of 'paltry privileges' to describe those 'privileges'
that whites enjoy that compensate for the fact that they are living ii). impoverished conditions with low paid jobs, unpaid bills and poor life chances. Alpesh Maisuria and I (Cole and Maisuria, 2008) made a
similar point when referring to the success ofsoccer in keeping white workers in line: Ruling class success in maintaining hegemony in the light of the disparity of wealth and the imperial quest was displayed in
England during the 2006 World Cup by the number of St. George flags signifying a solid patriotism in run-down (white) working class estates, on white vans, on dated cars exhibiting a 'proud to be British'
display. In addition, as economically active migrant workers from Eastern Europe enter the UK (a great benefit for capital, and for the middle strata who want their homes cleaned or renovated cheaply), the
(white) working class, who spontaneously resist neo-liberalism by resisting working for low wages that will increase their immiseration, need to be assured that they 'still count'. Hence the ruse ofcapital is to open
the markets, and the role ofsections ofthe tabloid media is to racialize migrant workers to keep the (white) working class happy with their lot with the mindset that 'at least we are not Polish or Asian or black, and
we've got our flag and, despite everything, our brave boys in Iraq did us proud. In Althusser's words, their response is: 'That's obvious! That's right! That's true!' (Althusser, 1971, p. 173). In this case the
homogenization ofall whites obfuscates the ideological element of the capital/labor relation. While it is undoubtedly true that racism and xeno-racism (see below) have penetrated large sections of the white
working class, resulting in racist practices that contribute to the hegemony of whites, and while it is clearly the case that members ofthe (predominantly though not exclusively) white ruling class are the
beneficiaries of this, it is certainly not white people as a whole who hold such power (Cole and Maisuria, 2008). For example, sections of the white working class in England have voted for the fascist British
There are thus a number of

problems with homogenizing all white people. Attempts to do this ignore capitalist
social relations, which are infused with the crucial dimensions ofsocial class, power
and ideology.
National Party (BNP) at recent elections precisely because they feel that they are treated with less equality than others (Cruddas et al., 2005).
Racism is complex and changingthe only way to understand it is

through relating it to the development of capitalism
It should be clear from the above analysis that I favor a wide-ranging definition of racism and
racialization in order to account for changes in racism which accompany changes in the
capitalist mode of production. Shortly, I would like to offer my preferred definition of
racism. I should point out at this stage that this definition is different to that favored by a
number ofother Marxists who prefer the analysis of Robert Miles. Miles and his associates
are totally against inflation of the concept of racism. Miles (1989) argues against
inflating the concept of racism to include actions and processes as well as
discourses. Indeed, he argues that 'racism' should be used to refer exclusively to an
ideological phenomenon, and not to exclusionary practices. He gives three reasons for
this. First, exclusionary practice can result from both intentional and unintentional
actions (Miles, 1989, p. 78). I would argue, however, that the fact that racist discourse is
unintentional does not detract from its capacity to embody racism. For its recipients,
effect is more important than intention (see my definition of racism later in this chapter).
Second, such practices do not presuppose the nature of the determination, for
example, the disadvantaged position of black people is not necessarily the result of
racism (ibid.). However, the fact that the 'disadvantaged position of black people is not
necessarily the result of racism' is addressed by Miles' own theoretical approach, a
class-based analysis which also recognizes other bases of unequal treatment.
Therefore, I would argue, this recognition does not need the singling out that Miles
affords it. Miles' third reason for making racism exclusively ideological is that there
is a dialectical relationship between exclusion and inclusion: to exclude is

simultaneously to include and vice versa, for example the overrepresentation
ofAfrican-Caribbean children in 'special schools' for the 'educationally subnormal'
(ESN) in the 1960s involves both exclusion from 'normal schools' and inclusion in ESN schools
(ibid.). I do not see the purpose of this attempt to privilege inclusion. The
simultaneous inclusion of black people entailed by exclusion is, by and large, a
negative inclusion, as in the case of Miles' own example of ESN schools. There are,
ofcourse, situations where exclusion on account ofthe application of positive labels
leads to positive consequences for those thus labeled. The way monarchies and
aristocracies are perceived is an obvious example. They are excluded from everyday life but
included in very elite settings with multiple positive benefits. I fail to see how Miles'
observation about the dialectical relationship between exclusion and inclusion
informs an analysis of While I understand Miles' desire to retain a Marxist analysis,
and not to reify racism (since describing actions and processes as 'racist' may forestall an
analysis of various practices in different historical periods of capitalist development), it is my
view, as I attempted to demonstrate in this book, that it is precisely the Marxist
concept of racialization (and xeno-racialization) that enables, and indeed requires, a
persistent and constant analysis of the multiple manifestations ofracism in
different phases ofthe capitalist mode ofproduction in different historical periods.
Indeed, I try to show in this chapter racism. hat, contrary to Miles, not only should racism
be inflated to incorporate actions, processes and practices, but that it should, in
fact, be inflated considerably to include a wide range of actions, processes and
practices. Miles' position on not inflating the concept of racism retains a fervent following in
the Department of Sociology at the University of Glasgow where Miles first expounded his views
on racism and racialization. I attended a workshop there in 2006, entitled What can Marxism
teach Critical Race Theory about Racism (Centre for Research on Racism, Ethnicity and
Nationalism (CRREN) Department of Sociology, University of Glasgow). Some Marxist
sociologists who attended were quite insistent on defending Miles' position, and stressed the
need to use Marxist terminology rather than the concept of racism (though no such terminology
was generally forthcoming).17 One contributor went as far as to express the view that 'there is
not a lot ofracism out there'. Another, also following Miles, stated that racism should be narrowed down, and confined to the level of ideas, and that actions should not be described as
racist. The same delegate found the concept of racialization problematic, adding that people
'magically becoming racialized' is mean- ingless. Another delegate argued that, whereas once
people were sure what racism was; now both in the United Kingdom and globally, it is difficult
to understand what racism is. Miles and the Marxist defenders of his position are right to be
wary of any tendency to call everything 'racist' and thereby to foreclose discussion. However, in
my view, there are grounds for believing that if an action or process is perceived to
be racist then it probably is. Indeed this is enshrined in the excellent UK Race Relations
(Amendment) Act (2000). What I think should distinguish a Marxist analysis of racism is the
attempt to relate various instances of racism and (xeno-) racialization to different stages in
capitalist development (some examples are given later in this chapter), but also to relate them to
political and other ideological factors. This is not to say that all individual or institutional
instances ofracism and racialization are reducible to the economy (Miles acknowledges this as a
functionalist position), but that racism and racialization in capitalist countries needs to be
understood in terms of stages in capitalist development. I take the position that there are
striking similarities in actions and processes of racism and (xeno-) racialization directed against
different people in differing economic, political and ideological circumstances. This is notto
claim that racism is primary and that all else flows from it, which is the position of
Critical Race Theorists and was the fear of one delegate at the workshop, but to
stress the need for retaining the concept of racism, widening it and relating it to
developments in capitalism.
Racialization is in relation to capitalism and the appropriation of

labor power
racialization as an ideological21 process that accompanies the

appropriation oflabor power (the capacity to labor), where people are categorized
falsely into the scientifically defunct notion of distinct 'races' . As Miles puts it, the processes
are not explained by the fact of capitalist development (a functionalist position).
Racialization, like racism, is socially constructed. In Miles' (1989, p. 75) words, racialization refers to
'those instances where social relations between people have been structured . by the
signification of human biological characteristics [elsewhere in the same book, Miles (1989, p. 79) has added cultural characteristics] in such a way as to define and
construct differentiated social collectivities' (my emphasis). Consistent with my own
definition of racism I would want to add, in addition to 'the biological' and 'the
cultural', the other dimensions outlined above . '[T]he process of racialization', Miles states, 'cannot be adequately
Miles (1987) has defined
understood without a conception of, and explanation for the complex interplay of different modes of production and, in particular, of the social relations necessarily established
in the course of material production' (Miles, 1987, p. 7). It is this articulation with modes of production which makes the concepts ofracialization and xeno-racialization
inherently Marxist. 22
AT: Race Rt/C Slavery

The capitalist mindset enabled slavery
l.gong
The dissolution of feudalism and the rise of mercantilism and capitalism did two
things related to the rise of racism. First, these conditions generated a heightened
sense of human alienation from community, labor, production, and self. That is, the
new, postfeudal people became alienated from community, as they became
dislocated from the land and as people became more transient. They became
alienated from their own labor, as labor became a commodity to be sold on the
market. Labor alienation became more complete with industrial production as
workers lost control over the production process. That is, unlike artisans of the
feudal period, industrial workers neither designed nor produced the entire product.
They functioned as cogs in the larger machinery of production. They no longer
realized their human potential in the process of production. They became alienated
from their own potential, and thus, from themselves. This alienation made possible
deeper levels of dehumanization, a detachment from self and from others that
made it easier to eliminate other selves in wars of extermination. The move from
feudalism to mercantilism and capitalism also released new passions and new
drives: the passion for profit and the drive to dominate the world market. The desire
for profit is an insatiable form of greed. Kovel (1984) maintained that greed, which
has been around as long as man, is the desire to have the most or to take from
others. However, he added, "The desire for profit . . . is an extended form of greed,
a rationalized abstract pursuit which aims at the progressive accumulation of the
medium of exchange" (p. 114). Under feudalism, greed was constrained by a sense
of mutual obligation, by notions of community, by the social virtues of charity and
cooperation. With the fall of feudalism, Kovel (p. 114) observed, "Giving was no
longer proof of virtue taking became its replacement." What emerged with the new
order was an unrestrained desire for wealth. In greed, the desire was for the object
to be obtained and enjoyed. In the drive for profit, the passion was not for the object
but for the process itselfthe process of accumulating more and more wealth.
Arguing between the important of cap vs race is redundant and

unproductivethe struggle is against racialized capitalism
Social class, I would argue, albeit massively racialized (and gendered) is the system
upon which the maintenance of capitalism depends (Kelsh and Hill, 2006, Hill, 2007b, Hill, 2008b,
2009c). It is possible, though extremely difficult because of the multiple benefits
accruing to capital of racializing workers (not least forcing down labor costs), and
the unpaid and underpaid labor ofwomen as a whole, to imagine a capitalist world
of 'racial' (and gender) equality . It is not logically possible for capitalism to exhibit
social class equality (see Kelsh and Hill, 2006; see also Hill, 2007b; Hill et al., 2008; Kelsh et al., 2009 ). Without
the extraction ofsurplus value from the labor ofworkers, capitalism cannot exist
(Marx, 1887; see the appendix to chapter 8 ofthis volume). There are four caveats I need to add to this fore-fronting ofsocial class. of
'will:-= m a n ifes:.3 the con:::'. ism beccc (and ge:: First, I fully agree with Critical Race Theorists (e.g.,
Gotanda, 1995; Delgado and Stefancic, 2001, pp. 21-23)
that we should reject 'color blindness',14 the
belief that 'one should treat all persons equally, without regard to their race' (Delgado
and Stefancic, 2001, p. 144). As Delgado and Stefancic explain: Critical race theorists ... hold that color
blindness will allow us to redress only extremely egregious racial harms, ones that
everyone would notice and condemn. But if racism is embedded in our thought
processes and social structures as deeply as many crits believe, then the 'ordinary
business' ofsociety-the routines, practices, and institutions that we rely on to effect
the world's work- will keep minorities in subordinate positions. Only aggressive,
color-conscious efforts to change the way things are will do much to ameliorate
misery (Delgado and Stefancic, 2001, p. 22). Second, I agree with David Roediger (2006, p. 3) that Left
commentators are wrong to announce the end of Du Bois's 'century of the color line'
(e.g., Gilroy, 2000; Patterson, 2000, cited in Roediger, 2006, p. 4). Paul Gilroy (e.g., 2004) has more recently expressed a somewhat
over-optimistic in my view belief in multicultural 'conviviality'. As I will argue in

chapter 3 of this volume, one of CRT's strengths is its insistence of the all-pervasive
existence of racism in the world. Third, while I totally reject the views ofthose
contemporary Left theorists (e.g., Apple, 2005, 2006) which promote the idea that 'race' and
class are equivalent (for a Marxist critique, see, for example, Kelsh and Hill, 2006), I would insist that arguments made
that, because of the centrality of class, the Left should not concern itselfwith issues
ofracism are fundamentally flawed. Thus, I believe that Adolph Reed's arguments
that '[a]s a political strategy, exposing racism is wrongheaded, and at best an utter
waste of time', and that '[racism] is the political equivalent ofan appendix' to social
class (Reed, 2005a; see also Reed, 2005b) are extremely dangerous and not conducive to
progressive struggle. Fourth, my critique ofCRT accords with that ofDarder and Torres (2004) (misleadingly lumped
together with Reed by Roediger, 2006, p. 4) in two major respects. The first is that, as I indicated earlier in this chapter, it is
my view that 'race' is a social construct and has no scientific validity. The second, as I will argue later in this chapter, is that the Marxist concept ofracialization provides a more
convincing explanation of racism than CRT notions of 'white supremacy', and is
necessary in order to understand the multiple manifestations of racism and their
relat.ionship to modes of production. In the context of these multiple manifestations, the debate
between class or racism becomes redundant, in that for Marxists the struggle is
against racialized (and gendered) capitalism.
Scenarios
Exploitation
The economic drive in exploration is a pre-requisite to racial
subjugation, which leads to massacres, terrorism, and torture
l.gong
Western character was more alienated and more driven to

accumulate wealth. Both this alienation and this drive have been behind the tendency of
Western culture to reduce the entire world, including human beings, into lifeless
things to be used to create wealth, to be exchanged for wealth, or to be disposed of
if they stood in the way of acquiring wealth . This drive and this alienation were
behind the African slave trade, the rise of the plantation system, and the
extermination of Native Americans. Columbus expressed this drive for wealth and
contempt for man in his description of the Native Americans he encountered. He said, They
By the end of the 15th century, the
[Native Americans] are the best people in the world and above all the gentlestwithout knowledge of what is evil
nor do they murder or steal. They are very simple and honest . . . none of them refusing anything he may possess
They exhibit great love toward all others in preference to

themselves. They would make fine servants . With 50 men we could subjugate them
all and make them do whatever we want. (quoted in Phillips and Phillips 1992, p. 166) In pursuit of
wealth, Columbus and his men enslaved, tortured, mutilated, and massacred Native
Americans. In 1495, he and his forces captured 1,500 Native Americans, packing 500
of them on his ships to send to Spain for sale . Two hundred died en route (Zinn 1990, p. 4). On
Haiti, Columbus and his men forced natives to collect gold . Those who refused had
their hands cut off, and they bled to death . In 2 years, as a result of murder, massacre,
mutilation, or suicide, half the native population of Haiti was dead (Zinn, p. 4).
when he is asked for it.
Commenting on the depopulation of Haiti, Cuba, San Juan, and Jamaica, Father Bartholome De las Casas, an
eyewitness to the carnage, said, And Spaniards have behaved in no other way
during the past forty years, down to the present time, for they are still acting like
ravening beasts, killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing and destroying the native
peoples, doing all this with the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty,
never seen or heard of before , and to such a degree that this Island of Hispaniola, once so populous
(Having a population that I estimated to be more than three million), has now a population of barely two hundred
The island of Cuba is nearly as long as the distance between Valladolid and
Rome it is now almost completely depopulated. San Juan and Jamaica are two of the
largest, most productive, and attractive islands both are now deserted and
devastated. (quoted in Bradley 1991, p. xvii) Spanish explorers and conquerors, in their
passion for seizing wealth, decimated Native American populations and destroyed
whole civilizations. Most notable among the Spanish conquistadores were Cortez,
who massacred the Aztec in Mexico, destroying their civilization for their gold, and Pizarro, who
slaughtered natives in Peru for the same purposegold. After seizing land in the Americas,
Spanish conquerors and colonists needed labor to extract wealth from the land.
When they failed to attract sufficient numbers of European laborers and after they
decimated the Native American population with disease, overwork, and violence
they turned to the African slave trade, which had already begun on a small scale several years before
persons.
Columbus sailed to the Americas.
Capitalism is a system that allows for exploitation and a

soulless institution
Cole 9 Research Professor in Education and Equality, Head of Research and Director of the Centre for Education
for Social Justice at Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln, UK (Mike, Critical Race Theory and Education A
Marxist Response, chapyer 6, pgs 95-96, 2009//SRSL)
Capitalism is, from a Marxist perspective by definition, a system in which a minority (the capitalist class) exploits
the majority (the working class) by extracting surplus value from their labor power (this is
developed in the next chapter). It is a system without morality and without shame. It is a system
ofintense and relentless exploitation. As Michael Parenti (1998, pp. 84-85) has put it: Capitalism is a
system without a soul, without humanity. It tries to reduce every human activity to
market profitability. It has no loyalty to democracy, family values, culture, JudeoChristian ethics, ordinary folks, or any ofthe other shib- boleths mouthed by its
public relations representatives on special occasions. It has no loyalty to any nation;
its only loyalty is to its own system ofcapital accumulation. It is not dedicated to
'serving the community'; it serves only itself, extracting all it can from the many so
that it might give all it can to the few Capitalism has an inbuilt tendency to
constantly expand. Marx and Engels recognized its preeminent global character
over one hundred and fifty years ago. As they put it in The Communist Manifesto, when describing capitalism's
development: The markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising...The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry, the place of
the industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires ... Modern industry has established the world-market. The need ofa constantly expanding market for
its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions
everywhere . .. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. (Marx and Engels (1847) [1977a], pp. 37-39) Glenn Rikowski (2001, p. 21) has clarified
, a process which takes three main forms: first, spatial

(globalization), as capital occupies all known sociophysical space (including
outside the planet)- this is extension; second, capital expands as the differentiated
form of the commodity, creating new commodities-this is differentiation; third, it
expands through intensification ofits own production processes (Rikowski, 2001, p. 21).
Capitalism is thus a thoroughly dynamic system. In its inherent need to extract
more and more surplus value, capital is also out of control. As Rikowski has argued:
Capital moves, but not of its own accord: the mental and physical capabilities of
workers (labour-power) enable these movements through their expression in labour.
The social universe ofcapital then is a universe ofconstant movement; it
incorporates and generates a restlessness unparalleled in human history ... It is set
on a trajectory, the 'trajectory of production' . .. powered not simply by value but by
the 'constant expansion of surplus value' (Postone, 1996, p. 308 [Rikowski's emphasis]) ... It is a movement out of
what is entailed in this expansion
control. (Rikowski, 2001, p. 11) Chris Harman (2008, p. 11) has described twenty-first century global capitalism, which rests on the unplanned
interaction of thousands of multina- tionals and twenty or so nation states, as resembling 'a traffic system without lane markings, road signs, traffic lights,
speed restrictions or even a clear code that everyone has to drive on the same side of the road'.
Instability
The global economy forces an imperialism that justifies
invasion and leads to instability
Cole 9 Research Professor in Education and Equality, Head of Research and Director
of the Centre for Education for Social Justice at Bishop Grosseteste University
College Lincoln, UK (Mike, Critical Race Theory and Education A Marxist Response,
In Cole, 2008d, pp. 98-100, I also discussed the 'postmodern fantasy' of Robert
Cooper (2002, p. 5).3 Briefly, Cooper argues that postmodern imperialism takes
two forms. The first is the voluntary imperialism of the global economy, where
institutions like the IMF and the World Bank provide help to states 'wishing to find
their way back into the global economy and into the virtuous circle of investment
and prosperity' (ibid.). If states wish to benefit, he goes on 'they must open
themselves up to the interference of international organizations and foreign states'
(ibid.) (my emphasis). Cooper (ibid.) refers to this as a new kind of imperialism, one
which is needed and is acceptable to what he refers to as 'a world of human rights
and cosmopolitan values': an imperialism 'which, like all imperialism, aims to bring
order and organisation' [he does not mention exploitation and oppression] 'but
which rests today on the voluntary principle'. While '[w]ithin the postmodern
world, there are no security threats' ... 'that is to say, its members do not consider
invading each other' (p. 3), that world, according to Cooper has a right to invade
others. The 'postmodern world' has a right to pre-emptive attack, deception and
whatever else is necessary. The second form ofpostmodern imperialism Cooper
calls 'the imperialism ofneighbours' (Cooper has in mind the European Union),
where instability 'in your neighbourhood poses threats which no state can ignore'.
It is not merely soldiers that come from the international community; he argues, 'it
is police, judges, prison officers, central bankers and others' (my emphasis).
Between 1999 and 2001, Cooper was Tony Blair's head of the Defence and Overseas
Secretariat, in the British Cabinet Office.
Slavery
The drive to accumulate wealth resulted in the genocides and
enslavement of Africans
Wilson 96 [Wilson, Carter A. Ph.D., M.A., B.A., Wayne State University in Public
Policy, Civil Rights and Race and Public Policy. 1996. Racism: from slavery to
advanced capitalism. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications.] l.gong
The passion to accumulate wealth and a deep sense of human alienation were
behind the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans . These
passions emerged out of changes that occurred in Western Europe's economic structure, social organizations,
As feudalism gave way to mercantilism and

capitalism, the social chains of feudalismwith their social and community
obligationswere broken, thus creating a greater sense of alienation and releasing new social classes with an
unrestrained passion to accumulate wealth. These changes in Western Europe did not cause
racism. Rather, they provided the fertile ground out of which racism grew . These
were the seeds of racism: slavery and colonialism, drawn along a color line, with an
uncommonly high level of brutality and exploitation . The passion for wealth drove
particular European nations to subjugate and enslave people of other worlds . Racism
emerged with the brutal and dehumanizing treatment of people of color. This racism
was not present at the beginning of the age of exploration. It emerged with the
African slave trade, with colonialism, and with the oppression and dehumanization
of people who appeared different from their oppressors . Two cases best illustrate
this relationship between oppressive and dehumanizing treatment of a people and
the production of dehumanizing images of and attitudes toward them: Spain and
England. We examine the first case in this chapter and the second in the next. The case of Spain
illustrates the relationship between the African slave trade and racism . Spain had a
long history of interaction with Africa dating back to the time of Hannibal and the
second Punic War, 218 to 201 B.C. (Du Bois 1969b, p. 141). Like most occupying armies, Carthaginian
culture, and patterns of human interaction.
soldiers commonly intermarried with European women, especially in Spain and Italy. Hannibal married a Spanish
woman (Du Bois 1969b, p. 142). Africans invaded Spain again in the 11th century A.D. The Almoravids, black
Africans from west Africa who were also known as Moors, conquered Morocco. From Morocco, they invaded and
Africans were in Europe before

the African slave trade. They were with Columbus when he journeyed across the
Atlantic. Apparently, an African was the captain of one of his ships (Bennett 1970, p. 35). African
conquered Spain, dominating this country until 1492. The point is that
Spanish explorers, most notably Estanvanico, led a number of expeditions in the Americas. African Spanish were
establishment of slavery in the Americas,

darkskinned Africans freely intermingled and intermarried with light skinned
Europeans. There was little evidence of the type of race and color prejudice that
plagues the modern and postmodern eras . Even during the early period of the African slave trade,
with Cortez in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru. Before the
the Portuguese pillaging of the coastal cities of Africa, and the Spanish ravaging of the civilizations of the Americas,
there was little evidence of the type of racism found in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. This racism emerged as
more Africans were imported to the Americas to work the mines and plantations of the Caribbean and South and
Color prejudice emerged with a new world order . This order involved a new
division of the world between dominant European nations and people of color in
other parts of the globe. Among the dominant class in Europe, it entailed a passionate drive to
accumulate wealth. This drive propelled dominant European nations on a path of savage destruction and
brutal subjugation of other people. This accumulation drive was the force behind the Atlantic
slave trade, the destruction of the Aztec and Mayan civilizations , the reduction of the Native
American population, and the establishment of the plantation system. In other words, it was not racism that
produced the enslavement of people of color. It was the accumulation drive that led
Central America.
to the enslavement that produced the racismthe notion that people of color
constitute a subspecies of humanity or a species below humankind .
Generic
Capitalism causes people to be one minded
Marxist Response, chapter 7, pgs 114-115, 2009//MG)
everything under capitalism has a certain, at

times hidden, at times transparent, class-based, racialized and gendered logic of
inevitability and insurmountability, prompted in part by the success of the state
apparatuses in interpellating subjects-this is how things are or even should be, and
there's nothing we can or even should do (see chapter 2 of this volume). 2 The ruling class's success
Outside of these political and economic crises,
at keeping Marxism off the agenda, most notably in the United States, and significantly in the United Kingdom since
Thatcherism and its aftermath (see Cole, 2008g) is not logical (indeed, given that Marxism is in the interests of the
ideologies don't work

by logic-they have logics of their own. Thus: we act and respond to ideology as if we
were the originators of the ideas and values within it . In other words, when The Sun or The Daily
working class, it is, in fact, illogical). However, as Stuart Hall (1978) once remarked,
Mail 3 speaks of what 'the public' 'wants', 'needs', 'is fed up with', 'has had enough of' this strikes a chord with all
we
are largely trapped with one view of the world ... -it all makes sense to us. (Cole, 1986b,
p. 131) It is the role of Marxism and Marxists to transcend these ruling class
interpellations, to provide an alternative vision, an insistence that another world is
possible. I will now address some of the common objections to Marxism, themselves by and large the result of
the other organs of ruling-class ideology-the rest of the media, the various apparatuses of the state. Because
successful interpellation, and attempt to respond to them.
Humans are selfish (LINK TO ANTHRO)

Marxist Response, chapter 7, pg 116, 2009//MG)
For Marxists, there is no such thing as 'human nature'. Marxists believe that our
individual natures are not ahistorical givens, but products of the circumstances into
which we are socialized, and of the society or societies in which we live or have
lived (including crucially the social class position we occupy therein). While it is true that babies and infants, for
example, may act selfishly in order to survive, as human beings grow up they are strongly
influenced by the norms and values that are predominant in the society in which
they live. Thus in societies which encourage selfishness, greed and competitiveness (Thatcherism is a perfect
example) people will tend to act in self-centered ways, whereas in societies which
discourage these values and promote communal values (Cuba is a good example) people
will tend to act in ways that consider the collective as well as their own selves, the
international, as well as the national and local .6 As Marx (1845) put it, '[l]ife is not
determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life' . Unlike animals, we have the
ability to choose our actions, and change the way we live, and the way we respond
to others. Hence, in capitalist society, the working class is capable of transcending
false consciousness and becoming, 'class for itself' (Marx, 1847 [1995]), as well as 'a class in
itself' (Bukharin, 1922 cited in Mandel, 1970 [2008]), that is to say, pursuing interests which can
ultimately lead to a just society. Socialism does not require as a precondition that we are all altruistic
and selfless; rather, as Bowles and Gintis (1976, p. 267) argue, the social and economic conditions of
socialism will facilitate the development of such human capacities.
Alternative
Alt solves
Generic
Alt solves - In a socialistic state, jobs could be done way more
efficiently than under a capitalistic one
Someone Has to Do the Drudge Jobs , and How Could that Be Sorted Out in a Socialist World.
Technology already has the potential to eliminate most of the most boring and/or
unpleasant jobs. Some of those that remain could be done on a voluntary rota basis, so that no one would
have to do drudge jobs for longer than a very brief period (utopian socialist Charles Fourier had a similar idea-see
Voluntary work under capitalism in the public sector abounds, and

there is every reason to assume that such work would flourish much more under
socialism.
Cole, 2008d, pp. 17-20).
Alt solves Socialism creates equality

World socialism will only lower the standard of life for the Ruling Classes. There will
not, for sure, be the massive disparities of wealth apparent in our present capitalist
world. There will, of course, be no billionaires and no need for a (parasitic)
monarchy. If the wealth of the world is shared, then there will be a good standard of
life for all, since all reasonable needs will be met, including enough food (as noted above
by Molyneux (2008, p. 13) enough already exists). To paraphrase Marx, 1875, the principle will be from
each according to his or her ability, to each according to his or her needs .
Not having a social revolution will involve violence and death

on a massive scale
It is, in fact, capitalism that has created and continues to promote death and violence and terror on a global scale.
Inequalities in wealth and quality of life cause death and disease in capitalist
countries themselves, and the capitalist west's underdevelopment of most of the
rest of the world and the aforementioned massive disparity in wealth and health has
dire consequences (Hill and Kumar, 2009; Hill and Rosskam, 2009). In addition, imperialist conquest
historically and contemporaneously unleashes death, terror and destruction on a
colossal scale. Stalinism, and other atrocities, committed in the name of, but not in
the spirit of socialism, also shares this guilt , but as argued above, there is no inherent
reason why the historical perversities of Stalinism need to be repeated. As for the
violence entailed in future social revolution is concerned, this is, of course, an
unknown. However, as argued in Cole, 2008d, pp. 78-79, socialism is a majoritarian process not
an imposed event which is not dependent on violence . It is, of course, inconceivable
that a world social revolution would involve no violence, not least
because of the resistance of the dominant capitalist class . However, there are
no reasons for violence to be a strategic weapon. Anyone who has ever attended a
mass socialist gathering, e.g., Marxism 2008 in Britain (http://www.marxismfestival.org.uk/), can attest
to the fact that violence is not, in any way, an organizing tool of the socialist
movement. Mass violence is the province of world capitalism . Moreover, Marxists

oppose terrorism unreservedly. Terrorism is reactionary, in that it diverts attention
away from the class struggle. It militates against what Leon Trotsky has described as self-organization
and self-education. Trotsky favored a different resolution to the revenge desired by many who subscribe to
The more 'effective' the terrorist acts, the greater their impact, the
more they reduce the interest of the masses in self-organisation and selfeducation ... To learn to see all the crimes against humanity, all the indignities to
which the human body and spirit are subjected, as the twisted outgrowths and
expressions of the existing social system, in order to direct all our energies into a
collective struggle against this system-that is the direction in which the burning
desire for revenge can find its highest moral satisfaction . (Trotsky, 1909)
terrorism. As he put it:
Capitalism causes the efficiency of the state

It Is Impossible to Plan Centrally in Such a Hugely Diverse and Complex World. In a

socialist world, local, national and international needs will need to be coordinated
fairly and efficiently. Given modern technology, this is easier now than ever before,
and will become more and more so, as technology continues to develop. Under
capitalism, technology is harnessed to the creation of greater and greater surplus
value and profit. In a socialist world, technology would be under the control of the
people for the benefit of the people as a whole; for universal human need rather
than global corporate profit. Cuba is a good example.
Elimination of Racism
Movements against capitalism have resulted in the elimination
of racism, Venezuela proves
Cole 9 (Mike Cole, Mike Cole is a Professor in Education, and is also an Emeritus
Research Professor in Education and Equality at Bishop Grosseteste University. His

duties at UEL include research and publications, PhD supervision and occasional
doctoral and undergraduate teaching. He also has a PhD in Philosophy. June 9, 2009,
Critical Race Theory comes to the UK: A Marxist response,
http://etn.sagepub.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/content/9/2/246.)//ky
MARXISM AND WAYS FORWARD Marxists would agree with Mills (1997: 127) that the
aim is . . . ultimately to eliminate race (not as innocent human variety but as
ontological superiority and inferiority, as differential entitlement and privilege)
altogether. However, Marxists, as I have indicated, would most definitely not go
down the path advocated by John Preston. Elsewhere, I have argued, at length, that
I see the 21st-century socialism advocated by President Hugo Chvez in Venezuela
as an excellent example of a way forward. In the context of Mills concerns about
white Marxists, it is worth noting that Chvez was the first Venezuelan president
ever to claim and honour his indigenous and African ancestry. Anti-racist/antiimperialist 21st-century socialism Like the rest of Latin America, Venezuelas history
is scarred by colonialism and imperialisms racist legacies. Only now, with the gains
being made by the socialist government and the growing mass revolutionary
movement, is Venezuela beginning to grapple in earnest with how to confront this
racist legacy. The rights of Venezuelas indigenous people were first entrenched in
the 1999 Bolivarian constitution (Chvez came to power in 1998), which was ratified
by 71 percent of voters. For the first time, indigenous land rights DEBATE
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identified as being collective, inalienable and non-transferable, recognizing the: . . .
rights of the indigenous peoples over the land they traditionally and ancestrally
occupied. They must demarcate that land and guarantee the right to its collective
ownership. (cited in Harris, 2007) As Harris points out: Article 9 stipulates that while
Spanish is Venezuelas primary language, indigenous languages are also for official
use for indigenous peoples and must be respected throughout the Republics
territory for being part of the nations and humanitys patrimonial culture. The 1999
constitution also affirms that exploitation by the state of natural resources will be
subject to prior consultation with the native communities, that indigenous peoples
have the right to an education system of an intercultural and bilingual nature, that
indigenous people have the right to control ancestral knowledge over native
genetic resources and biodiversity, and that three indigenous representatives are
ensured seats in the countrys National Assembly (these were elected by delegates
of the National Council of Venezuelan Indians in July 1999). Since 1999, the
confidence of the indigenous rights movement has exploded. The multitude of social
problems that persist as a hangover of previous, capitalist policies has led to a
culture of Chvista activists who support the revolution and lobby the Chvez
government to demand attention to their particular issues (Harris, 2007). At the
forefront of the anti-racist movement is the Afro-Venezuelan Network, headed by
Jesus Chucho Garcia, which is lobbying for recognition of Afro-Venezuelans in the
next round of amendments to the Bolivarian constitution. The Network successfully
campaigned for the creation of a presidential commission against racism in 2005,
the inclusion of Afro- Venezuelan history in the school curriculum, the establishment
of a number of cocoa-processing plants and farming cooperatives run by black
Venezuelans and for Afro-Venezuelan Day on 10 May each year (Harris, 2007). As
Harris (2007) explains, the ambitious land and agrarian reforms embedded in the
1999 constitution have been especially beneficial to indigenous and AfroVenezuelan communities. The constitution declares that idle, uncultivated private
land over a certain size can be transformed into productive units of land for
common social benefit. By prioritising socially productive land use over
monopolistic private land ownership and re distributing idle land to the landless,
Chvez has promoted independence, food sovereignty and local agricultural
development (Harris, 2007). Such developments are not confined to Venezuela.
Chvez has also been building alliances with other marginalized communities in the
Americas, including providing food, water and medical care to 45,000 Hurricane
Katrina victims in areas surrounding New Orleans, and supplying discounted heating
and diesel oil to schools, nursing homes and hospitals in poor communities in the US
(Harris, 2007). Harris (2007) concludes: . . . in Venezuela the space for frank
discussion about how to move forward in the context of a mass movement has been
opened up by the ongoing revolutionary process, and genuine gains have been
made by indigenous and Afro-Venezuelan movements to eliminate the systemic
nature of racism from Venezuelan life.
Socialism creates equality between races

Marxist Response, chapter 7, pgs 130-, 2009//MG
In the light of CRT concerns about 'white Marxism' (see, for example the critique of Mills' and Gillborn's views on this
Chavez was the first Venezuelan President

ever to claim and honor his indigenous and African ancestry .18 It is also important to
emphasize the antiracist developments currently occurring in Venezuela. Chavez
articulated this when he stated: We've raised the flag of socialism, the flag of antiimperialism, the flag of the black, the white and the Indian ... I love Africa . I've said to
the Venezuelans that until we recognise ourselves in Africa, we will not find our way ... We have started a
hard battle to bring equality to the African descendents, the whites and the
indigenous people. In our constitution it shows that we're a multicultural, multiracial
nation. (Chavez, 2008, cited in Campbell, 2008, p. 58) Like the rest of Latin America, Venezuela's history is
scarred by colonialism's and imperialism's racist legacies. Only now, with the gains being made by the Chavez
Government and the growing mass revolutionary movement, is Venezuela
beginning to grapple in earnest with how to confront this racist legacy . The rights of
Venezuela's indigenous people were first entrenched in the 1999 Bolivarian
constitution (as noted earlier in this chapter, Chavez came to power in 1998), which was ratified by
71% of voters. For the first time, indigenous land rights were identified as being
collective, inalienable, and nontransferable, recognizing the rights of the indigenous
peoples over the land they traditionally and ancestrally occupied . They must
demarcate that land and guarantee the right to its collective ownership . (cited in Harris,
in chapter 5 of this volume), it is worth pointing out that
2007)
Material base of discourse inverts the historical relationship between the Other
and imperialists
Cole 9 Research Professor in Education and Equality, Head of Research and Director of the
Centre for Education for Social Justice at Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln, UK
(Mike, Critical Race Theory and Education A Marxist Response, chapyer 6, pgs 104-107,
2009//SRSL)
While Smith's arguments on enfraudening and enantiomorphism are convincing, and in
centering on the role of ideology, in essence Marxist, I have problems with the vague
transmodern notions of 'narcissism>4 in explaining the source of Western violence directed
against the Other. As Paul Warmington (2006, personal correspondence) has pointed out, the transmodern
notion of 'narcissism' is problematic for Marxists . First, it represents essentialist notions of
'kinship'; a natural tendency to align oneselfwith one's 'own kind'. Second, because its
psychosocial gloss does not take account of Marxist understandings of the material base of
discourse, it inverts the historical relationship between imperialism and Otherness. Far from
deriving from a narcissistic alignmentwith one's own kind and antipathy to the Other, I would argue,
following Warmington (ibid.), that the western violence that enforced capitalist imperialism (from the sixteenth century
onward) entailed a conscious and strategic (and traumatic) alienation from other nations (as well as from the west's own
emergent liberal-democratic values). This historically specific alienation was achieved through contrived 'racial',
cultural and spatial distinctions that served to mask the key contradictions of imperialist
production. 'Race' and racialization were key factors here. As I agued in chapter 5 ofthis volume, the rhetoric
ofthe purveyors ofdom- inant discourses aims to shape 'common sense discourse' into formats
which serve their interests. Underlining the fragmentary and incoherent role of'common sense'
in connecting racialization to popular consciousness, Peter Fryer (1988), outlines the following argument. Modern racist
ideology emerged with and from the Atlantic slave trade (which predated the 'mature' colonialism of the Indian sub-continent by 150 years) and was anomalous in that: at the point when
western European production was shifting towards free labor and was shifted by technological
advances, it made itselfincreasingly reliant on a backward form of production, that is, chattel
slavery at the point at which the emergent Enlightenment began to posit notions ofindividual freedom, the west embarked on conquest and enslavement, in order to
secure servile labor systems (first in America, later in colonial Asia and Africa). As Warmington (2006, personal correspondence) argues, racialization can be seen, therefore, as
a project to rhetorically 'resolve' these contradictions, not merely to justify them in the sense Ofpapering over their cracks but to construct a racialized 'justice' upon which to
build brutal, servile production systems. In short, if liberty and the Enlightenment were morally and ideologically correct then they must necessarily be extended to all human-
this extension was clearly impossible (both at home and

abroad-but especially abroad in those continents that were, as Du Bois pointed out, being
subjected to conquests that made them bear the largest burden of global pauperization,
conquests involving unprecedented levels ofviolence and displacement). Thus an ideology was
required that placed the slave labor force outside the bounds of humanity and therefore outside
the 'human rights' being tentatively proclaimed in Europe (clearly this ideology also infused racial folklore). Fryer (1988, p. 63)
ity (and this was the view of some dissident voices in the west). However,
quotes Genovese and Genovese: '[The rising capitalist] class required a violent racism not merely as an ideological rationale but as a psychological imperative.' In Cole, 2006a I
addressed the origins of the New Imperialism, how 'the eclipse of the non-European' following the European invasion of 1492, con- solidated by subsequent invasions and
conquests, unleashed racialized capi talism, often gendered, on a grand scale. The expansion ofcapital entailed not only the beginnings of the transatlantic slave trade, but also
the attempted enslavement, the massacre, and the seizing ofthe land ofindigenous peoples, both local and adjacent. Its legacy today includes a very high and disproportionate
suicide rate for Native Americans in general, and continuing attacks on the reproductive rights of Native American women; the 'prison industrial complex'-a legacy of slaverywhere 'people of color' are disproportionately represented; human rights abuse at U.S. borders; and continuing segregation in U.S. cities. Racialized notions of 'like' and
'Other' ('black' and 'white', 'civilized', and 'savage') are ends (or mediators), the starting point being shifts in production (slavery and colonialism's forms of sixteenth- to earlytwentieth-century globalization). 'Otherness' was a strategic, violent creation. Once groups have become racialized via 'common sense', for example, as 'savages' in the case of
indigenous peoples, or sub-human and genetically inferior, as in the case of African slaves, genocide becomes less problematic (Cole, 2006a; see also McLaren, 1997). In a
similar fashion, once Muslims are racialized as the Other (and the 'war on terror' knows no bounds) torture, humiliation and other human rights abuses, to which Guantanamo
Bay and Abu Ghraib bear witness, becomes routine practice. Such practice is not confined to these locations. Former detainee, Moazzam Begg (Begg and Brittain, 2006) for one,
recalls abuse in U.S. and British military prisons in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Egypt, as well as in Guantanamo Bay (see also Campbell and Goldenberg, 2004). Such
treatment is sustained by racialization. Indeed, the historic a priori racialization ofNative Americans and African Americans as sub-human, and Muslims as sub-human and
terrorists serves to legitimate and facilitate their massacre, enslavement, torture, rape, humiliation and degradation. In the current era, global imperialist abuse involves
psychological as well as physical abuse, with detainees denied halal meat, for example. In addition, sexual torture has been revealed as having occurred on a massive scale, and
as having apparently been developed by intelligence services over many years. In particular the humiliation ofthe body stands in stark contrast to the Muslim importance
ofcovering, and not exposing flesh. Such abuse has also involved sexual humiliation. In 2003, U.S. soldier, Lynndie England serving at the Abu Ghraib camp in Iraq was charged
with abusing detainees and prisoners by forcing them to lay in a naked pyramid with an aim to humiliate. Photographs taken by U.S. military also showed Lynndie England
holding a leash attached to the neck ofa naked man on the floor (Sands, 2008, p. 23), while another showed a prisoner with wires attached to his fingers, standing on a box with
his head covered (ibid.) BBC News (2004) reported that there 'were numerous incidents of sadistic and wanton abuse.... Much of the abuse was sexual, with prisoners often kept
naked and forced to perform simulated and real sex acts'. Torture techniques, approved by Donald Rumsfeld, and endorsed by George Bush were in three categories: Category 1
comprised yelling and deception; Category II included 'humiliation and sensory deprivation, including stress positions, such as standing for a maximum of four hours; isolation;
deprivation of light and sound; hooding; removal of religious and all other comfort items; removal of clothing; forced grooming, such as shaving of facial hair; and the use of
individual phobias, such as fear of dogs, to induce stress' (Sands, 2008, p. 21). Category III techniques were to be used for a very small percentage of detainees, 'the most
uncoopera- tive (said to be fewer than 3%) and exceptionally resistant individuals-and required approval by the commanding general at Guantanamo' (ibid.). There were four
techniques in the last category: 'the use of "mild, non-injurious physical contact", such as grabbing, poking and light pushing; the use of scenarios designed to convince the
detainee that death or severely painful consequences were imminent for him or his family; exposure to cold weather or water; and, finally, the use ofa wet towel and dripping
water to induce the misperception of suffocation' (ibid.). According to Sands (ibid.) the pattern at Guantanamo was always the same, and consisted of: 20-hour interrogation
sessions, followed by four hours of sleep. Sleep deprivation appears as a central theme, along with stress positions and constant humiliation, including sexual humiliation.
These techniques were supple- mented by the use ofwater, regular bouts ofdehydration, the use ofIV tubes, loud noise (the music of Christina Aguilera was blasted out in the first
days of the new regime), nudity, female contact, pin-ups. An interrogator even tied a leash to [one detainee], led him around the room and forced him to perform a series of dog
tricks. He was forced to wear a woman's bra and a thong was placed on his head. What seemed to unite torture at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib was 'humiliation, stress,
hooding, nudity, female interrogators, shackles, dogs' (Sands, 2008, p. 23). Such sexualized abuse is part and parcel of the racialization ofthe Other in the pursuit ofhegemony
and oil (see the appendix to this chapter). Global rule and the New Imperialism are, of course, first and foremost, about global profits. This connection to capital, national and
international is outside the remits ofboth transmodernism and CRT, thereby rendering their use as a tool for analysis significantly lacking. Racialization, under conditions of
imperialism is fired by what Dallmayr (2004, p. 11), has described above as 'the intoxicating effects of global rule' that anticipates 'corresponding levels of total depravity and
corruption among the rulers'. The racialization of the Other provides a more convincing explanation of the justification of conquest and enslavement by the West and of 'The
New Imperialism' than the transmodern exaltation of basic narcissism as a causal factor. The concept of 'narcissism' is unconvincing because it starts from the opposition of 'like'
Critical Race
Theorists like Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995, p. 55) note the plunder of native Americans land
through military conquest of the Mexicans to the construction of Africans as property, they are
unable within their own frames of reference, without resorting to Marxist analysis, to relate all
this to capitalism. As Darder and Torres (2004, p. 99) put it, the efforts of Critical Race Theorists: to explore the
ways in which socioeconomic interests are expressed in the law or education are generally vague
and undertheorized. Because of this lack of a theoretically informed account ofracism and
capitalist social relations, critical race theory has done little to further our understanding of the
political economy of racism and racialization. For Marxists, the historical and contemporaneous racialization of the Other via 'common
and 'Other', and because it conflates ahistorical notions of 'Otherness' with historically specific forms of racialization. While, as noted in chapter 1,
sense' must be connected historically and contemporaneously to changes and developments in the mode ofproduction. Indeed, as I have tried to demonstrate in this book, for
Marxists, an analysis of racism begins with the capitalist mode of production, with social class and with class struggle (Darder and Torres, 2004, p. 99). In the current era,
capital is preeminently under U.S. control. We live in a world, much of which is increasingly at the beck and call ofthe White House, and ofthe diktats ofthe New Imperialism,
where globalization is portrayed as inevitable, and imperialistic designs are masked as 'the war against terror' and the promotion ofdemocracy.
Capitalism makes racism prevalentwith a capitalism overthrow skin

color would become irrelevant
chapter 8, pgs 137, 2009//SRSL)
I would argue that it is capitalism not white supremacy that is a structural system
ofoppression. With capitalism's overthrow, there is every possibility that the color of
one's skin will be irrelevant and racism (which, as I have argued, is not necessarily based on skin color)
abolished. While it may be the intention of Critical Race Theorists to make skin
color irrelevant, it is my view that encouraging young people in schools to think on
these lines is also not conducive to effective socialist practice. In chapter 5 of this
volume, I referred to current developments in Venezuela (see also Cole, 2008g, 2008h) which
point to a revolutionary process where whiteness is neither redeemed, nor reformed
nor abolished but, in the context ofmajor ameliorative projects, seen as a constituent form of identity in an antiracist struggle for twenty-first century socialism . For
Chavez, as I noted in that chapter, 'the flag of the black, the white and the Indian' has been raised (cited in Campbell, 2008, p. 58).
Education
Using a Marxist approach to education by introducing
imperialism and colonization allows us to solve for the tenets
of Critical Race Theory
ANTI-IMPERIALIST/ANTI-RACIST EDUCATION IN THE US AND THE UK12 In
contemporary societies, we are in many ways being globally miseducated. The Bush
and Blair administrations propaganda war about weapons of mass destruction,
aimed at masking new imperialist designs and capitals global quest for imperial
hegemony and oil, was a key example. Conditioning the discourse is only half the
story. Education has become a key component in the profit-making process itself.
Tied to the needs of global, corporate capital, education worldwide has been
reduced to the creation of a flexible workforce, the openly acknowledged, indeed
lauded (by both capitalists and politicians) requirement of todays global markets.
Corporate global capital is in schools, in the sense of both determining the
curriculum and exercising burgeoning control of schools as businesses. An
alternative vision of education is provided by Peter McLaren. Education should,
McLaren argues, following Paulo Freire, put social and political analysis of everyday
life at the centre of the curriculum (McLaren, 2003: xxix). Racism should be a key
component in such an analysis. Following through the thrust of this article, I would
argue that, in order for racism to be understood, and, in order for strategies to be
developed to undermine it, there is a need first to reintroduce the topic of
imperialism in schools; second to initiate in schools a thorough analysis of the
manifestations of xeno-racism and xeno-racialization. I deal with each in turn. The
reintroduction of the teaching of imperialism in schools Anti-imperialism is one of
Chvezs main platforms. As he remarked in 2003: In Venezuela, we are developing
a model of struggle against neoliberalism and imperialism. For this reason, we find
we have millions of friends in this world, although we also have many enemies.
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at UNIV OF MICHIGAN on July 13, 2014 I have dealt with the teaching of imperialism
in schools at length elsewhere (e.g. Cole, 2004c, 2008a). Here I make a few general
points. Reintroducing the teaching of imperialism in schools, I believe, would be far
more effective than CRT in increasing awareness of racism, and crucially linking
racism to capitalist modes of production. Students will need skills to evaluate the
New Imperialism and the permanent war being waged by the US with the
acquiescence of Britain. Boulang (2004) has argued that it is essential, with the
Bush and Blair war on terror, and Islamophobia worldwide reaching new heights,
for teachers to show solidarity with Muslims, for this will strengthen the unity of all
workers, whatever their religion (Boulang, (2004: 24), and this will have a
powerful impact on the struggle against racism in all spheres of society, and
education in particular. In turn, this will strengthen the confidence of workers and
students to fight on other issues. According to the neoconservative, Niall Ferguson
(2003): Empire is as cutting edge as you could wish . . . [It] has got everything:
economic history, social history, cultural history, political history, military history
and international history not to mention contemporary politics (just turn on the
latest news from Kabul). Yet it knits all these things together with . . . a
metanarrative. For Marxists, an understanding of the metanarrative of imperialism,
past and present, does much more than this. Indeed, it encompasses but goes
beyond the centrality of racial liberation in CRT theory. It takes us to the crux of
the trajectory of capitalism from its inception right up to the 21st century; and this
is why Marxists should endorse the teaching of imperialism old and new. Of course,
the role of education in general, and teaching about imperialism in schools in
particular, has its limitations and young people are deeply affected by other
influences and socialized by the media, parents/carers and by peer culture (hence
the need for media awareness). Unlike Marxism, CRT does not explain why
Islamophobia, the war on terror and other forms of racism are necessary to keep
the populace on task for permanent war and the accumulation of global profits.
Teaching against xeno-racism and xeno-racialization Marxism most clearly connects
old and new imperialisms with capitalism. It also provides an explanation for xenoracism and xeno-racialization. While CRT certainly reminds us that racism is central
in sustaining the current world order, and that we must listen to the voices of
people oppressed on grounds of racism, it does not and cannot make the necessary
connections to understand and challenge this racism. Indeed, as I have argued, its
advocacy of white supremacy as an explanatory factor is counterproductive,
particularly, as I have argued, in the school and university context, in the struggle
against racism. 262 ETHNICITIES 9(2) Downloaded from etn.sagepub.com at UNIV
OF MICHIGAN on July 13, 2014 263 Xeno-racism and xeno-racialization in the UK and
the rest of Europe need to be understood in the context of the origins of the EU, and
globalization generally. With respect to the EUs current enlargement, connections
need to be made between the respective roles of (ex-)imperial citizens in the
immediate post-Second World War period, and migrant workers from Eastern Europe
today (both sources of cheap labour). An analysis of the way in which the media
portrays asylum seekers and refugees, on the one hand, and migrant workers, on
the other, would also foster an awareness of the processes of xeno-racism and
xeno-racialization. Alternatives to neoliberal global capitalism Chvez devoted a
call-in television programme on 15 May 2005 to education. In direct contrast to the
US and the UK view that we should teach the entrepreneurial culture in schools, for
Chvez there is a new educational model: competition and individualism in schools
must give way to unity and solidarity: We are all a team, going along eliminating
little by little the values or the anti-values that capitalism has planted in us from
childhood (Chvez, cited in Whitney, 2005). No space in the education systems of
the US or the UK is provided for a discussion of alternatives to neoliberal global
capitalism, such as world democratic socialism. Marxists should agitate for the
(totally democratic) suggestion that such discussions should take place in schools,
colleges and universities.
Discourse is a product of reality- capitalism shapes how we

view conflicts
Cole 09 (Mike, professor in Education, Emeritus Research Professor in Education
and Equality at Bishop Grosseteste University. His duties at UEL include research
and publications, PhD supervision and occasional doctoral and undergraduate
teaching, 3/31, Critical Race Theory and Education: A Marxist Response (Marxism
and Education)
For Marxists, any discourse is a product of the society in which it is formulated. In
other words, 'our thoughts are the reflection of political, social and economic
conflicts and racist discourses are no exception' (Camara, 2002, p. 88). While such
reflections can, of course, be refracted and disarticulated, dominant discourses
(e.g., those of the Government, of Big Business, of large sections of the media, of
the hierarchy of some trade unions) tend to directly reflect the interests of the
ruling class, rather than 'the general public'. The way in which racialization
connects with popular consciousness, however, is via 'common sense'. 'Common
sense' is generally used to denote a down-to-earth 'good sense' and is thought to
represent the distilled truths of centuries of practical experience, so that to say that
an idea or practice is 'only common sense' is to claim precedence over the
arguments ofLeft intellectuals and, in effect, to foreclose discussion (Lawrence,
1982, p. 48). As Diana Coben (2002, p. 285) has noted, Gramsci's distinction
between good sense and common sense 'has been revealed as multifaceted and
complex' For Common Sense is not a single unique conception, identical in time and
space. It is the 'folklore' of philosophy, and, like folklore, it takes countless different
forms. Its most fundamental characteristic is that it is...fragmentary, incoherent and
inconsequential. (Gramsci, 1978, p. 419)
Pre-Requisite
Marxism is key to understanding the racial implications of
production and development systems

Directing attention away from modes of production While, for Marxists, it is certainly
the case that there has been a continuity of racism for hundreds of years, the
concept of white supremacy does not in itself explain this continuity, since it does
not need to connect to modes of production and developments in capitalism. It is
true that Mills (1997) provides a wide-ranging discussion of the history of economic
exploitation, and that Preston (2007) argues that CRT needs to be considered
alongside Marxism. However, unlike Marxism, there is no a priori need to connect
with capitalist modes of production. Thus Gillborn (e.g. 2005, 2006a) is able to make
the case for CRT and white supremacy without providing a discussion of the
relationship of racism to capitalism. For me, the Marxist concept of racialization5 is
most useful in articulating racism to modes of production, and I have developed
these links at length elsewhere (e.g. Cole, 2004a, 2004b). Manning Marable (2004)
has used the concept of racialization to connect to modes of production in the US.
He has described the current era in the US as The New Racial Domain (NRD). This
New Racial Domain, he argues, is different from other earlier forms of racial
domination, such as slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and ghettoization, or strict
residential segregation, in several critical respects. These early forms of
racialization, he goes on, were based primarily, if not exclusively, in the political
economy of US capitalism. Meaningful social reforms such as the Civil Rights Act of
1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were debated almost entirely within the
context of Americas expanding, domestic economy, and a background of
Keynesian, welfare state public policies. The political economy of the New Racial
Domain, on the other hand, is driven and largely determined by the forces of
transnational capitalism, and the public policies of state neoliberalism, which rests
on an unholy trinity, or deadly triad, of structural barriers to a decent life. These
oppressive structures are mass unemployment, mass incarceration and mass
disfranchisement, with each factor directly feeding and accelerating the others,
creating an ever-widening circle of social disadvantage, poverty, and civil death,
touching the lives of tens of millions of US people. For Marable, adopting a Marxist
perspective, The process begins at the point of production. For decades, US
corporations have been outsourcing millions of better-paying jobs outside the
country.The class warfare against unions has led to a steep decline in the
percentage of US workers. As Marable concludes: Within whole US urban
neighborhoods losing virtually their entire economic manufacturing and industrial
employment, and with neoliberal social policies in place cutting job training
programs, welfare, and public housing, millions of Americans now exist in conditions
that exceed the devastation of the Great Depression of the 1930s. In 2004, in New
Yorks Central Harlem community, 50 percent of all black male adults were currently
unemployed. When one considers that this figure does not count those black males
who are in the military, or inside prisons, its truly amazing and depressing.
Moreover, the new jobs being generated for the most part lack the health benefits,
pensions, and wages that manufacturing and industrial employment once offered.
Marxist analysis is key to understanding the systems of

production, and is needed to contextualize the relations of
race in society

TENET II: RACE NOT CLASS AS THE PRIMARY CONTRADICTION Mills (2003: 156)
rejects both what he refers to as the original white radical orthodoxy (Marxist) for
arguing that social class is the primary contradiction in capitalist society, and the
present white radical orthodoxy (post- Marxist/postmodernist) for its rejection of
any primary contradiction. Instead, for Mills (2003), there is a primary
contradiction, and . . . its race. Mills (2003: 157) states that Race [is] the central
identity around which people close ranks and there is no transracial class bloc.
Given the way in which neoliberal global capitalism unites capitalists throughout the
world on lines that are not necessarily colour-coded, this statement seems quite
extraordinary. Race, Mills argues, is the stable reference point for identifying the
them and us which override all other thems and uss (identities are
multiple, but some are more central than others). Race, he concludes is what ties
the system together, and blocks progressive change. For Marxists, it is self-evident
that it is capitalism that does this. Mills (2003: 1578) goes on to suggest that
European models of radicalism, predicated on a system where race is much less
domestically/internally important (race as the external relation to the colonial
world), operate with a basically raceless (at least nominally) conceptual apparatus.
Race, he states, then has to be added on (Mills, 2003: 158). There is in fact a
longstanding and wide range of US- and UK-based Marxist analyses of race and
racialization (e.g. Marable, 2004; Miles, 1987, 1989, 1993; Zarembka, 2002). Mills
(2003: 158) invites readers to: Imagine youre a white male Marxist in the happy
prefeminist, pre-postmodernist world of a quarter-century ago. You read Marcuse,
Miliband, Poulantzas, Althusser. You believe in a theory of group domination
involving something like the following: The United States is a class society in which
class, defined by relationship to the means of production, is the fundamental
division, the bourgeoisie being the ruling class, the workers being exploited and
alienated, with the state and the juridical system not being neutral but part of a
superstructure to maintain the existing order, while the dominant ideology
naturalizes, and renders invisible and unobjectionable, class domination. This all
seems a pretty accurate description of the US in the 21st century, but for Mills
(2003: 158) it is a set of highly controversial propositions. He justifies this
assertion by stating that all of the above would be disputed by mainstream political
philosophy (liberalism), political science (pluralism), economics (neo-classical
marginal utility theory), and sociology (Parsonian structural-functionalism and its
heirs) (Mills, 2003: 158). My response to this would be, well, of course it would be
disputed by mainstream philos - ophers, pluralist political scientists, neoclassical
economists and functionalist sociologists, all of which, unlike Marxists, are

apologists for capitalism. Social class, I would argue, albeit massively racialized (and
gendered) is the system upon which the maintenance of capitalism depends. It is
possible, though extremely difficult because of the multiple benefits accruing to
capital of racializing workers, and the unpaid and underpaid labour of women as a
whole, to imagine a capitalist world of racial (and gender) equality. It is not
logically possible for capitalism to exhibit social class equality. Without the
extraction of surplus value from the labour of workers, capitalism cannot exist. I am
not arguing that CRT cannot provide insights into racism in capitalist societies; for
example, its emphasis that people of colour need to be heard to provide
meaningful analyses of racism is useful and particularly illuminating for those whose
life experiences are restricted to monocultural settings in multicultural societies
(Delgado, 1995). (Xeno-) racism and the process of (xeno-)racialization can best be
understood, however, by a combination of listening to and learning about the life
histories and experiences of those at the receiving end of racism, and by objective
Marxist analysis. There is a richness to be gained from this theoretical technique,
which facilitates a synthesis of lived experience through the lens of Marxist theory
and traces the how of life experience back to the why of capitalist class practices.
This is always rooted in shifts in the relations of production aimed at more and more
profit for the few, and which results in more and more immiseration for the many.
There is thus considerable purchase in Zeus Leonardos (2004) attempt to integrate
Marxist objectivism and race theorys focus on subjectivity, a move that works to
ensure that the CRT concept of voice does not drift into postmodern multivocality
(multiple voices) where everyones opinion has equal worth and therefore voice
becomes thoroughly depoliticized (Maisuria, 2006). In summary, I must reject the
insistence of CRT to valorize race over class. Marxism has the crucial benefit of
contextualizing practices in capitalist relations of production. It gives priority to the
abolition of class society because without its demise, racism (as well as other forms
of discrimination) is likely to continue it in its various guises.
Social class and capitalism must be central to the analysis to avoid

partial and ambiguous explanations
I have described the process by which refugees, asylum-seekers23 and migrants to the United Kingdom from the newly joined
countries of the European Union become falsely categorized as belonging to distinct 'races' as xeno- racialization (for an analysis, see
Cole, 2004b, 2008c, 2008d, Chapter 9).24 With respect to the EU's current enlargement, connections can be made between the
respective roles of (ex-)imperial citizens in the immediate post World War II period, and migrant workers from Eastern Europe
today (both sources ofcheap labor). In addition, there are, as I have indicated, similarities in perceptions and treatment, something
that is promoted by sections of the racist capitalist media. The existence of xeno-racialization, although he did not use that term,
along with other forms of racism, was recognized by the Chair of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights in 2005, Trevor
Phillips, when he noted: The nature of racism is changing subtly, but critically. We cannot respond by recycling the slogans of the
'70s and '80s when race was regarded as a black and white affair. Today, we know that the reality of multi-
ethnic, multi-faith Britain is more complex. Now, when we talk 'racial equality' and 'disadvantage', we are
not necessarily referring to the needs ofyoung black men. Rather we are speaking ofthe stigmatised [E]astern European asylum
seeker; the Iraqi woman trapped in her own home by stone-throwing jobs; the Gypsies and Travellers who will live for 12 years less
than the rest of us; and the Muslims unjustly victimised for atrocities committed by a tiny minority offollowers of their faith ... A
recent . .. survey . .. shows that blatant discrimination or gross harassment is not

found as frequently as in the past. But increasingly we are seeing the emergence of
some other forms of racial bias which demand differ ent tools (redhotcurry.com, 2005) While
CRT analysis serves as a constant reminder that racism is central in sustaining the current world order, the CRT concept
of'race-ing' (Crenshaw et al., 1995, p. xxvi), unlike the Marxist concepts of racialization and xeno- racialization, does not
need to make the interconnections with modes ofproduction since 'race' is itself
material. In other words, oppression on grounds of 'race' can be explained merely as the modus operandi of 'white supremacy', a power structure in its own right. To reiterate, I would argue that, in articulating with modes of production, these Marxist
concepts of racialization and xeno-racialization have more purchase in explaining and understanding contemporary racism than
'white supremacy'. Indeed, I would maintain that if social class and capitalism are not central
to the analysis, explanations are ambiguous and partial. Capitalism and social class
are addressed in chapter 6 ofthis volume. In this chapter I began by critiquing two
ofCRT's central tenets, the concepts of'white supremacy' and the beliefin 'race' as
primary. I then outlined the definition ofracism preferred by Marxist theorist, Robert Miles
and his colleagues (a narrow one) before developing my own definition, which I
argued, contra Miles, should be wide-ranging, finding this more useful than 'white
supremacy' in understanding the multiple manifestations of racism in the
contemporary neoliberal capitalist world. I then went on to make the case that the
Marxist concepts of racialization and xeno-racialization have most purchase in
explaining the processes by which certain groups become racialized at different
phases in the capitalist mode of production. I will revisit the concept of racialization
with respect to U.S. imperialism in chapter 6 of this volume. Having identified what I
perceive to be CRT's two major weaknesses, in the next chapter I turn to what I
perceive to be some of its strengths, strengths that nevertheless can be enhanced
by Marxist analysis.
Critical race theorists dont use specificity and without engaging the
discussion of cap is incomplete
intro, pgs 2-3, 2009//SRSL)
I first read Marx, starting with Capital Volume 1, nearly thirty years ago. At the same time, I became familiar with the work ofthe
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. Headed at the time by Stuart Hall, the CCCS was
publishing neo-Marxist analyses ofpopular culture at a breathtaking pace. Along with a number of Occasional Stenciled Papers, the
Centre and its associates produced some major books (e.g., Hall and Jefferson, 1976; Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
[CCCS], 1977, 1978; Hall et al., 1978; Clarke et al., 1979; Hall et al., 1980; CCCS, 1981). One of the Centre's books, The Empire Strikes
Back (CCCS, 1982) dealt specifically with racism. This book, along with other Marxist analyses of racism both
emanating from the CCCS and elsewhere, made me think that perhaps Marxism had
most purchase in understanding the multifaceted nature ofracism, both historically
and contemporaneously. A few years after becoming acquainted with such analyses, I published my first Marxist
critiques ofracism (Cole, 1986a, 1986b) and have been using Marxist theory to try to understand racism ever since. I am not sure
when I first became aware of Critical Race Theory (CRT). However, I do remember the first critical Marxist analysis of CRT (Darder
and Torres, 2004, Chapter 5) that I came across. After reading it, I began to see CRT as the latest in a long line of
academic challenges to Marx and Marxism.4 This is how Antonia Darder and Rodolfo Torres (2004, p. 117)
conclude the chapter: any account of contemporary racism(s) and related exclusionary
practices divorced from an explicit engagement with racialization and its
articulation with the reproduction of capitalist relations of production is incomplete .
The continued neglect by critical race theorists to treat with theoretical specificity the
political economy of racialized class inequalities is a major limitation in an otherwise
significant and important body of literature . Since I had read and respected previous work by Darder and
by Torres, I decided that I needed to read CRT in order to ascertain whether I agreed with the conclusion reached by Darder and
Torres. Having read CRT, my purpose became clear: to interrogate CRT from a Marxist
perspective, but also to respect some of CRT's strengths. Accordingly, Darder and
Torres' critique will resonate throughout its pages. While, as will become clear in
chapter 1, CRT had its origins in law, the specific focus in this volume is CRT and
Education.
AT: Doesnt explain slavery

Even if capitalism doesnt explain slavery, Marxism is still the
best starting point for redress and forward-looking politics
Johnson, Associate Professor of History and American Studies NYU, 4
(Walter, The Pedestal and the Veil: Rethinking the Capitalism/Slavery Question,
Journal of the Early Republic Vol. 24, No. 2, p. 299-308, MM)
In trying to reframe the capitalism/slavery discussion as a set of questions about
eighteenth and nineteenth-century Atlantic political economy, it might be worth just for a second
(because that is all it will take) to see what Marx did say about the history of slavery in Capital.
Right before the business about the veil and the pedestal he wrote this: "Whilst the cotton industry
introduced child-slavery in England, it gave in the United States a stimulus to the transformation of
the earlier, more or less patriarchal slavery, into a system of commercial exploitation ."14
What is striking about this sentence is the first word: "whilst." It frames the relation of what we have been
calling "capitalism" and what we have been calling "slavery" in terms of dynamic
simultaneity rather than simple super-cession, though it does so with careful attention
to the historically different relations of production-slavery and wage labor-which
characterized the two poles of this single Atlantic economy. In so doing, it frames the pedestal
metaphor that directly follows it as a structural (or spatial) metaphor rather than a temporal one. Rather than
focusing on the specifics of capitalist development in Europe, this sentence treats the
Atlantic economy as its ground of analysis, a spatial unit over which economic practice had
differential but nevertheless related forms and effects. And the name that Marx gives this trans-Atlantic political
economy at this moment very close to the end of Capital is not "capitalism" but "slavery"-"child-slavery," "veiled
slavery," "slavery pure and simple." It would strain credibility to argue that the hundreds upon hundreds of pages of
Capital in which Marx ignored the question of slavery should be re-read in the light of the several moments at the
end where he seemed to suggest that "slavery" was the essential form of exploitation in the nineteenth-century
economy and that the forms it took in Manchester or in Mississippi were simply variant manifestations of a shared
essence. Safer to understand the invocation of "slavery" as a rhetorical effect, designed to pierce the illusion that
wage-workers were in any sense "free." "Slavery" was, after all, an often-invoked metaphor in the nineteenthcentury. The term served as a sort of universal comparison for disparate injustices, and in the process it lost some
of its meaning and most of its liistorical specificity. But the very metaphorical promiscuity of the term "slavery" as
Marx used it, calls us to pay close attention to both the pattern of its deployment and the maneuvers by which its
seemingly universal applicability was contested and controlled. To pay attention, that is, to historical process by
which the boundaries between slavery and "freedom" were drawn, and to the character of the "veil" that separated
The "veil" to which Marx refers is most simply imagined as "contract freedom":
the idea that wage-labor contracts (by which "free" workers sold control over the capacities of their
bodies by the hour) reflected freely given "consent" to the bargain (and thus elided the deeper
them.
histories of expropriation and coercion that, according to Marx, actually structured the bargain).15 It refers, that is,
to the historical process by which the commodification of laborers and the commodification
of labor power came to be understood as two entirely separate and, indeed, opposite
things-slavery and freedom, black and white , household and market, here and there-rather
than as two concretely intertwined and ideologically symbiotic elements of a
larger unified though internally diversified structure of exploitation. This formulation of
functional unity veiled by ideological separation entails several interesting
avenues of inquiry taken up by these essays. They commend us, first, to try to think about the
economies of Europe, America, Africa-so long divided by historiographies framed around national
boundaries and hard-and-fast distinctions between modes of production- in all of their concrete
interconnection.16 This emphasis on the concrete and practical seems to me to have
the virtue of allowing for the use of some of the most powerful categories produced by
western political economy-the idea of commodification, the labor theory of value, the notion of variability
of the socially necessary cost of the reproduction of the laboring class, and
the calculation of surplus value-without having first to engage a long doctrinal
dispute about the capitalism question. Once the teleology of the "slavery-tocapitalism" question has been set aside, that is, we still have an enormous
(across space and race)
amount to learn from what Marx had to tell us about the work of capitalists as we try to
diagram the historical interconnections and daily practices of the global economy of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These essays likewise suggest a second set of topics as we try
to think of the enormous work involved in categorizing and containing all of those interconnections in notions of
process and history structured by the oppositions of slavery and freedom, black and white, and coercion and
As they argued about where to draw the line between proper and improper forms of
political economy-about whether wage work was wage slavery, whether
slaveholding was slave trading, and whether marriage was prostitution-capitalists and anticapitalists, employers and employees, masters and slaves, husbands and wives argued over the
character of freedom, right, and personhood, over where they began and where they ended, where these
things could be said to be salable and where they must be held to be sacred. These violent arguments were
eventually settled on a frontier where we live today: "slavery" was defined by the
condition of blacks in the South before 1865 and "freedom" was defined as the ability to
choose to work for a wage or a share of the crop (though not to choose not to work for a wage or a share
consent.
of the crop or, indeed, to choose not to be "free"), and "the household" was defined as "in but not of the market."17
"So
massive was the effort" wrote Marx, "to establish 'the eternal laws of Nature' of the
capitalist mode of production."18 And so began the history of "freedom," which is
apparently hurtling toward such a fearful conclusion all over the world today.
AT: Perm
Perm fails- only a complete rejection of capitalism can solvecapitalism alienates one from the very essence of humanity
and prevents self-realization
and Education)
On page 41 of chapter 3, Gillborn (2008) states that CRT argues 'strongly against
any comforting belief in the essential goodness of the human spirit'. In chapter 3 of
this volume, I expressed agreement with Gillborn, in his conclusion that The
Lawrence Inquiry was not agreed to by a benign state that wanted to put right an
injustice, but was rather in the wake of protests and demonstrations. However,
given that the context on Gillborn's page 41 is a discussion about whether racism is
permanent, and given that for Gillborn (2008, p. 41) this is 'a moot point', more
seems to be being said here. Gillborn seems to be making a more general, more
ahistorical point about humankind. Marx would not agree, since he related our
humanity to the capitalist mode of production, which he believed stifles the worker's
'species essence'. In order to understand what Marx meant, it is necessary to briefly
consider Marx's theory of alienation. Marx attributes four types of alienation, a
fundamental condition oflabor under capitalism, which prevented humankind from
realizing its species-being and establishing an objectively better socialist society.
These are described by Gordon Marshall (1998) as follows: alienation of the worker
from his or her 'species essence' as a human being rather than an animal;
alienation between workers, since capitalism reduces labour to a commodity to be
traded on the market, rather than a social relationship; alienation of the worker
from the product, since this is appropriated by the capitalist class, and so escapes
the worker's control; and, finally, alienation from the act of production itself, such
that work comes to be a meaning- less activity, offering little or no intrinsic
satisfactions. Marshall (ibid.) goes on to argue that the last of these 'generates ...
feelings of powerlessness, isolation, and discontent at work-especially when this
takes place within the context oflarge, impersonal, bureaucratic social organizations'. In Marx's own words, this is how the alienation of labor affects the
worker: It] mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind. Hence, the worker feels himself
better socialist society. These are described by Gordon Marshall (1998) as follows:
alienation of the worker from his or her 'species essence' as a human being rather
than an animal; alienation between workers, since capitalism reduces labour to a
commodity to be traded on the market, rather than a social relationship; alienation
of the worker from the product, since this is appropriated by the capitalist class, and
so escapes the worker's control; and, finally, alienation from the act ofproduction
itself, such that work comes to be a meaning- less activity, offering little or no
intrinsic satisfactions. only when he is not working; when he is working, he does not
feel himself. He "..' is at home when he is not working, and not at home when he is
working. His labour is, therefore, not voluntary but forced, it is forced labour. It is,
therefore, not the satisfaction of a need but a mere means to satisfy needs outside
itself. Its alien character is clearly demonstrated by the fact that as soon as no
physical or other compulsion exists, it is shunned like the plague. Thus, workers
under capitalism cannot come to full self-realization. To be alienated is to be
separated from one's essential humanity. We can only fulfill our species essence
through freely chosen labor, in a collective and coop- erative society. Only in such a
society can our 'essential goodness', to use Gillborn's terminology, come to fruition.
Alt Fails
The working class cannot overthrow the capitalism system
The Working Class Wont Create the Revolution Because They Are Reactionary. It is a
fundamental tenet of Marxism that the working class are the agents of social
revolution, and that the working class, as noted above, needs to become a class for
itself in addition to being a class in itself (Marx, 1847 [1995]). It is unfortunately the case that
major parts of the world are a long way off such a scenario at the present conjuncture. It is also the case
that successful interpellation and related false consciousness hampers the
development of class consciousness and the move towards the overthrow of
capitalism. Britain is one example where the Ruling Class has been particularly
successful in interpellating the working class (see Cole, 2008g, 2008h for discussion). Elsewhere,
however, there are examples of burgeoning class consciousness, witnessed for example by the growth of Left
parties (see below) in Europe and by developments across South America, notably the Bolivarian Republic of
as neoliberal global imperial capitalism

continues to reveal and expose its essential ruthlessness and contempt for those
who make its profits, class consciousness will increase and that the working class
will one day be in a position to overthrow (world) capitalism and to replace it with
(world) democratic socialism. Perhaps it should be pointed out here that Marxists do not idolize
or deify the working class; it is rather that the structural location in capitalist
societies of the working class, so that, once it has become 'a class in itself' makes it
the agent for change. Moreover the very act of social revolution and the creation of
socialism mean the end of the very existence of the working class as a social class .
Venezuela (see below) and in Bolivia. It is to be hoped that,
As Marx and Engels (1845) [1975] put it: When socialist writers ascribe this world-historic role to the proletariat, it is
not at all ... because they regard the proletarians as gods. Rather the contrary ... [ The
proletariat] cannot
emancipate itself without abolishing the conditions of its own life. It cannot abolish
the conditions of its own life without abolishing all the inhuman conditions of society
today which are summed up in its own situation .
Critiques of a Marxist perspective on race are flawed- 5

reasons
and Education)
In true postmodern style the Chronicle also allows the Professor (partly Gillborn, but
not totally-p. 5)4 to introduce CRT, and outline the chapters of Gillborn's book. It is
in the section entitled Critical Race Theory, which is the Professor's/Gillborn's
introduction to CRT, that I find my first major disagreement with the
Professor/Gillborn (p. 13). The Professor states 'I don't think there's anything in CRT
that a serious antiracist would have a problem with' (p. 13). My disagreement stems
from the fact that I very much consider myself a serious antiracist, and from a
number of conversations and correspondences over the years with Dave Gillborn, I
know that he would concur with this. He would also acknowledge that I have been
engaged in writing Marxist critiques of CRT, of which this present volume forms part,
and therefore that there most definitely isa lot in CRT that certain antiracists would
have a number of problems with. Indeed in the second chapter of his book, Gillborn
(p. 20) makes reference to such a critique, a paper by Alpesh Maisuria and myself
(Cole and Maisuria, 2007). Unfortunately in stating that in this paper, our position is
that CRT 'gives undue attention to racism rather than class divisions', he greatly
oversimplifies our argument. What we actually set out to do, in similar fashion to my
arguments in chapter 2 of this volume, is to make the case, in order to facilitate a
serious and in-depth understanding of racism, that CRT, in its advocacy of 'white
supremacy', and in its pre-eminence of 'race' over class (Cole and Maisuria, 2007),
is not able to attain such an understanding. As in chapter 2 ofthis volume, in Cole
and Maisuria (2007) we commend the Marxist concepts of racialization and xenoracialization as having the best purchase in explaining manifestations ofracism,
Islamophobia and xeno-racism in contemporary Britain Gillborn (p. 37) further
misrepresents our position, when, in referring to Cole and Maisuria (2007) he states
that 'a conceptual debate with Marxist orthodoxy may simply be redundant because
by definition Marxists place class in a position that supersedes all other forms of
exclusion'. There are two responses I would like to make to this assertion.The first is
that Gillborn knows that Maisuria and I are keen to debate racism with critical race
theorists.5 I believe that a conceptual debate between Marxism and critical race
theory is very important. Indeed, I have engaged in such a debate with Gillborn and
other Critical Race Theorists, both face-to-face, and in written form (e.g., Cole,
2008e, 2009a, 2009d; Mills, forthcoming, 2009) for several years. Moreover, as
should be clear by now, this is one of the major purposes of this volume: to engage
in a conceptual debate with Critical Race Theorists. My second response is that
Gillborn is also fully aware that an analysis of racism from a Marxist perspective,
rather than an analysis of class, has been one of the central features of my writing
over a period of over two decades (I recently (Cole, 2007c, p. 14) described racism
as 'one of the key issues facing the world in the twenty-first century'), and thus
there are ample opportunities for him to debate with me my Marxist analyses of
'race' and racism, and, of course, the analyses of other writers. As ifto further
alienate Marxists, Gillborn (pp. 37- 38) goes on to approv- ingly quote Ricky Lee
Allen (2006) who, according to Gillborn (2008, p. 37), 'views contemporary
academic Marxism as an exercise of White power'. Arguing stridently against any
alliance with Marxists, Allen describes the ascendancy of CRT as a historic rift and a
'much needed shift' (2006, p. 9, cited in Gillborn, 2008, p. 37).6 It is disappointing
that Gillborn seems to want to foreclose discussion with Marxists. Gillborn's hostility
to Marx is underlined when he refers to some of Mills' work on the relationship
between 'White Marxism and Black Radicalism'. He cites Mills (2003, p. xvii) as
claiming: critical race theory is far from being an adjunct to, or outgrowth of, critical
class theory; in fact, it long predates it, at least in its modern Marxist form. Long
before Marx was born, Africans forcibly transported as slaves to the New World were
struggling desperately to understand their situation; they were raising the issues of
social critique and transformation as radically as-indeed even more radically thanthe white European working class, who were after all beneficiaries of and
accessories to the same system oppressing blacks. (cited in Gillborn, 2008 , p. 38)
Gillborn's (2008, p. 38) comment is that 'Mills' point is extremely powerful'. Gillborn
goes on point out that Marx moved to London in 1849, more than a decade before
slavery was abolished in U.S. territories (ibid.). 'These simple facts', Gillborn states,
'make the minimal presence of race in Marx's analyses all the more damning' (ibid.).
It is difficult to understand what both Mills and Gillborn are implying. I will deal with
Mills' quote and Gillborn's comments on the quote in turn. With respect to the
quote, Mills seems to be suggesting five things: (1) that the struggle against racism
predates the modern European class struggle; (2) that slaves' analyses and
struggles were an early form of critical race theory; (3) that slaves were more
radical that the white European working class; (4) that the white working class were
beneficiaries of slavery; and (5) that they were accessories to it. With respect to (1),
this seems to be truism. As far as (2) is concerned, given that critical race theory
grew out of critical legal studies in the 1980s, a fact heralded by those central to
the movement (see chapter 2 ofthis volume), it is difficult to make sense ofMills'
assertion. That slaves were more radical than the white working class (3) is difficult
to quantify. It really depends what Mills means by 'radical'. With respect to (4), that
the white working class were beneficiaries to slavery, this is true in the sense that
they accrued some benefits from capitalist plunder. Finally, whether the white
working class were accessories (5) needs to be seen in the context of the success of
the interpellation process (interpellation is discussed in chapter 1 of this volume). To
merely list the class as 'accessories' implies conscious rational choice outside the
confines of ideological processes. If my response to these five points makes any
sense, it is difficult to understand why Gillborn finds them 'extremely powerful'. As
to his development of Mills' assertions, while I accept Gillborn's point that there is
a minimal presence of'race' in Marx's writing, Gillborn seems to be implying that,
given that slavery existed in the U.S. territories when Marx arrived in London, that
Marx should have written about it, but did not, and should therefore be 'damned' for
it. In actual fact, Marx, a leading European abolitionist, was London Correspondent
for the radical anti-slavery 'New York Daily Tribune' (Laskey, 2003, p. 1). During the
U.S. Civil War, Marx urged and organized English textile workers to support the
blockade against the Confederacy, even though it was not in their immediate
economic interests and also led to massive layoffs as a result of the cut off of
imported cotton (Marx, 1862, p. 153). Writing about the importance ofworking class
extra- parliamentary activity, Marx described working class disgust and action
against the Confederacy as 'admirable', 'incredible', and as 'more striking' than
other demonstrations (e.g., against the Corn Laws and the Ten Hours Bill) because
of its unambiguous spontaneity and persistence (ibid.). Marx saw the action as 'new,
brilliant proof of the indestructible staunchness of the English popular masses'
(ibid.), and reported with great enthusiasm on 'a great workers) meeting in
Marylebone, the most populous district of London' (ibid.) which served 'to
characterise the "policy" of the working class' (ibid.). At that meeting, the following
motion was passed unanimously:
Trade-off
Capitalism is not the only problem--tradesoff with talking
about race, sexism, etc.
Dominick 11 (Brian, FuturEconomy, Down with (Occupy) Materialism, Up with Diversity and Holism, December 20
2011, http://futureconomy.com/tag/racism/ //SRSL)
local Occupy groups have encountered allegations of internal racism and sexism .
When people who are marginalized or sidelined in the outside world feel that happening inside
movement groups, they tend to get upset. I dont really have trouble seeing why that makes sense, but a lot of people do, so Id like to explain as briefly as possible one main reason for it.
Activists hopefully understand that racism, sexism/heterosexism, and ageism in movement
circles are rooted in their institutionalized counterparts in the rest of society. But what keeps them from effectively
preventing or even addressing these problems reemergence in and between activist groups? I believe the problem is that many leftist intellectuals
insist oppressions such as sexism and racism are secondary to classism: the exploitation,
alienation, and subjugation of labor. The Occupy movement is fertile ground for this ignorance,
and Im glad that its being challenged in many quarters. Slavoj ieks recent column really brought this home for me. In his commentary, popleft darling iek falsely identifies the Occupy phenomenon as a monist movement about
economics alone. But hes not that far off, actually; he may be more right than wrong. iek is positively giddy that, in his perception, the Left seems to be
abandoning its attachment to struggles against racism and sexism, finally getting back to the
real work of fighting capitalism. In a kind of Hegelian triad*, the western left has come full
circle: after abandoning the so-called class struggle essentialism for the plurality of anti-racist,
feminist, and other struggles, capitalism is now clearly re-emerging as the name of the problem.
Its barely secret that numerous
Yes, the was italicized in the original. I think he really believes all other problems are not just subordinate to and exacerbated by exploitative economic relations, but that racism, sexism, and other struggles are
identity
politics, that murky expanse in which the special interests of people of color, women, queers,
and sometimes even young folks are taken into account, or even raised to the same level of
concern as workers grievances against capital. Those who believe economics is the central (or only) battlefield of struggle usually admit some or all of these
groups are oppressed, but they add caveats. They say (1) people of color, women, queers, etc. are primarily oppressed as
workers; and (2) capitalism is the root cause of all oppression, so surmounting it will naturally
lead to universal liberation. Whats really going on here? How is it that someone with a supposedly sophisticated mind like ieks can believe
that capitalism is really the only problem (the problem)? Heres the deal: capitalism is reemerging as the name of the problem
because the OWS phenomenon started with a massive influx of people who are new to
radicalism and radical ideas. These folks first came together mainly around economic concerns, i.e., Wall Street vs Main Street, 1% vs. 99%, etc. Then shifty
Marxian ideologues swooped in to coopt Occupy Wall Street, along with its various
manifestations and energy. The truth is, they did a pretty poor job of this, I gather largely
because OWS and its offshoots were steadfastly anti-authoritarian . Still, as a social phenomenon that lacks the sophistication
strictly rooted in capitalism. Hes not alone. Many hardcore Marxists, and even reformed Marxists as most style themselves these days, have long lamented the Lefts foray into
developed through generations of struggle and learned analysis, Occupy is highly susceptible to oversimplified ideologies and sectarianism. Craven Marxist hacks apparently cannot help but try to take advantage
of this, even through the pages of mainstream newspapers. Make no mistake: materialist fixation (also known as economism or class struggle reductionism, as iek noted) in North American movements
means in practice writing off or at least subordinating major concerns of pretty much everyone outside the white, male so-called middle class (not to mention groups like young people, among whom
consciousness raising of oppression is barely active). This doesnt seem to matter to folks like iek, because they can draw the privileged into their camp with promises that the resulting vanguard will take care of
women and people of color (who are technically welcome, after all) after the revolution (guided by the remaining white men who stay in board). Theres nothing like an immature movement to make people with
immature analysis feel righteous. And theres nothing like a lack of real organizing experience to let someone believe exclusive ideologies wont have exclusive effects on participation. At last, theres nothing like
Even if you buy into a theory that poses a primacy

of economics over cultural, interpersonal, and other social dynamics, consider the implications
of organizing around class issues to the general exclusion of anti-racism, anti-sexism, antiageism, and so forth. This is what some incarnations of the Occupy phenomenon have tended
toward; women and people of color (too many links to list) especially are taking notice. And theyre not just
being a straight white male to enable one to decide that racism and sexism are secondary to classism.
charging that the Wall Street-oriented focus doesnt include their particular interests; theyre noting that traditional race, sex, and age-based hierarchies are appearing within Occupy groups. To truly transform
society, a social movement will need to be radical (seek out and strike at the roots of problems), and its approach to the array of oppressions will need to be holistic. To attract the kind of diverse participation that
makes a movement worth really standing behind, it will need to be at least pluralistic in this crucial regard. Sidelining or subordinating the major, legitimate concerns of people from marginalized communities
and identities all but guarantees a movement dominated by people with backgrounds and privileges in tune with the top 20% that really owns and runs society, if not the 1%. And even though Occupy might be
under the impression that the 99% are one big happy monolith, reality begs to differ. Failing to acknowledge this reality is essentially terminal for any radical social movement in the US, Canada, or Western
Europe. The good news is, there are elements inside most Occupy manifestations that Ive heard of including straight white males who are willing to challenge failures of inclusiveness. There are folks
Occupy may well be headed in the right direction, not least

because its failure to empower an official leadership has not allowed the narrowly, materially
focused among them to heed typical calls of lets just move on from matters of race, gender,
and so forth. That said, the failure to have accountable leadership has enabled unofficial hierarchies to
develop, and this militates in the wrong direction, almost no matter their characte r. If youre participating in an
effectively making the case for holistic or at least pluralistic approaches.
Occupy general assembly or working group and feel like calls for inclusiveness and diverse objectives are bogging down the process, I urge you to rethink. There is power in movement and organizational diversity,
and there is something to the idea that addressing oppressions other than hierarchy and classism is critical to the endeavor of radical social transformation. * (I wouldnt worry too much if the meaning of
Hegelian triad doesnt jump out at you; its pretty clear with references of this nature that you arent ieks intended audience. Theres no use for that phrase except as a wink to those steeped in the teachings of
the pre-Marxian philosopher Hegel. Hes just talking to the academics and bookworms; he doesnt mind if the rest miss his message. If you havent read Hegel, maybe you dont really matter to iek.)
A focus on economic justice ridiculously precludes important

racial and gender identitiesits an identity that a cisgender
white male can partake in without reflexive thought
Ross 2k [Marlon B. Ross, University of Michigan, Professor of English Language and Literature & African and
African American Studies, New Literary History, Vol. 31, No. 4, Is There Life after Identity Politics? (Autumn, 2000),
pp. 827-850, Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057638] l.gong
Although in his contribution Eric Lott targets Professor Michaels's comments and his own recent feud with Timothy
Brennan (who unfortunately is not included in this volume) rather than Ken's argument, what Eric says about "left
and liberal fundamentalists" who "simply and somewhat penitently" urge us to "'go back to class'" could also be
directed at Ken's conclusion. Ken writes, "Crafting
a political left that does not merely reflect

existing racial divisions starts with the relatively mundane proposition that it is
possible to make a persuasive appeal to the given interests of working and
unemployed women and men, regardless of race, in support of a program for
economic justice." On this one, I side with Eric, rather than Tim and Ken. Standing on the left depends on
whose left side we're talking about. My left might be your right and vice versa, because it depends on what
direction we're facing, and what direction depends on which identities we're assuming and affirming. Eric adds,
"Even
in less dismissive [than Tim's] accounts of new social movements based not on class
but on identities formed by histories of injustice, there is a striking a priori sense of
voluntarism about the investment in this cause or that movement or the other issue--as
though determining the most fundamental issue were a matter of the writer's
strength of feeling rather than a studied or analytical sense of the ever-unstable
balance of forces in a hegemonic bloc at a given momen t." I agree, but I'll risk mangling what
Eric says by putting it more crassly. Touting class or "economic justice" as the fundamental
stance for left identity is just another way of telling everybody else to shut up so I
can be heard above the fray. Because of the force of "identity politics," a leftist white
person would be leery of claiming to lead Blacks toward the promised land, a leftist straight
man leery of claiming to lead women or queers, but , for a number of complex
rationalizations, we in the middle class (where all of us writing here currently reside) still have
few qualms about volunteering to lead2, at least theoretically, the working class toward
"economic justice." What Eric calls here "left fundamental ism," I'd call, at the risk of sounding harsh, left
paternalism. Of the big identity groups articulated through "identity politics," economic
class remains the only identity where a straight white middle-class man can still feel
comfortable claiming himself a leading political voice , and thus he may sometimes
overcompensate by screaming that this is the only identity that really matters -which is the same as claiming that class is beyond identity . Partly this is because
Marxist theory and Marx himself (a bourgeois intellectual creating the theoretical practice for the work ers'
revolution) stage the model for working-class identity as a sort of trans-identification, a
magical identity that is transferable to those outside the group who commit
themselves to it wholeheartedly enough. If we look back, we realize even this magical
quality is not special to a history of class struggle , as whites during the New Negro movements of
the early twentieth century felt that they were vanguard race leaders because they had putatively imbibed some
essential qualities of Negroness by cross-identifying with the folk and their culture.
Globalization
The 1ac tries to globalize, even in new forms it still
perpetuates the terror of capitalismthey can threaten to
defeat minorities through critical race theory
Cole 9
Research Professor in Education and Equality, Head of Research and Director of the Centre for Education
Marxist Response, chapyer 6, pgs 96-97, 2009//SRSL)
Globalization always has been and is a central feature in the maintenance and
parasitic growth of capitalism. However, it became one of the orthodoxies of the
1990s and continues to hold sway into the twenty-first century, as a new
phenomenon. Its premises are that in the face of global competition, capitalist organizations are increasingly
constrained to compete on the world market. Its argument is that, in this new epoch, these
organizations can only do this in so far as they become multinational corporations
and operate on a world scale, outside the confines ofnation state s (Harman, 1996). The
argument continues: this diminishes the role of the nation-state, the implication
being that there is little, if anything, that can be done about it. Capitalists and their
allies, particularly pro-capitalist politicians, insist that, since globalization is a fact
of life, it is incumbent on workers, given this globalized market, to be flexible in
their approach to what they do and for how long they do it; to accept lower wages;
and to concur with the restructuring and diminution of welfare states (Cole, 2008d). It is
important to stress the ideological nature of this scenario, and to note that, while
globalization is taking new forms, essentially it is as old as capitalism itself. Marxists
are not only interested in processes of modern globalization, but are also interested
in this ideological element which furthers the interests ofcapitalists and their
political supporters (for an analysis, see Hill, 2003; Hill, 2009a, 2009b; Hill and Kumar, 2009; Hill and Rosskam, 2009; see also Cole, 1998a,
2005), of the way in which it is used to mystify the populace as a whole and to stifle
action by the Left in particular (e.g., Murphy, 1995; Gibson-Graham, 1996; Harman, 1996; Meiksins Wood, 1998). ritical Race
Theorists, Delgado and Stefancic (2001, p. lll) argue that globalization 'is very much in the forefront ofcritical
race theory'. They then proceed with a fundamentally Marxist analysis of the
direction globalization is taking in the twenty-first century: a globalizing economy
removes manufacturing jobs from the inner city; it creates jobs in the knowledge
economy, for which minorities have little training; the sweatshops and other
exploitative conditions it creates afflict poor people of color, many of them women
in developing countries, which were formally colonized; globalization concentrates
capital in the hands of an elite class who refuse to share it. The Marxist-inspired explanation continues:
globalization creates alliances of United States and 'third world' workers against
American corporations; it facilitates mobilization oflabor unions; and protests
against the WTO ensue. The reason wages are low and the new jobs are attractive,
they continue (pp. lll-120) is because United States and European colonialism has robbed
the former colonies of their natural wealth, stifled the development of local leaders
and conspired with right-wing dictators to keep the people poor and unorganized. 'If
the materialist wing (see chapter 1 pp. 21-22 of this volume for a discussion) of critical race theory is right',
they state, 'domestic minorities have suffered at the hands ofvery similar forces ' [I
would add white workers have suffered too]. In classic Marxist fashion they conclude, '[domestic
minorities]' fates are linked with those of their overseas counterparts, since
capitalists can always use the threat that investments will relocate overseas to
defeat unions, workplace regulations, welfare, and other programs ofinterest to U.S.
minorities' [again I would want to add, 'and white workers'].
Xeno-Racism
Alt fails - Capitalism causes xeno-racism, which CRT doesnt
account for

Xeno-racism With respect to racism that is not necessarily colour-coded, it is not
only Muslims and people perceived to be Muslims who have been racialized. Britain,
for example, is also witnessing, in the current period, a new form of racism. This
racism has all the hallmarks of traditional racism, but impacts on recently arrived
groups of people. It is a non-colour-coded racism that has been described by
Sivanandan (2001: 2) as xeno-racism: . . . a racism that is not just directed at those
with darker skins, from the former colonial countries, but at the newer categories of
the displaced and dispossessed whites, who are beating at western Europes doors,
the Europe that displaced them in the first place. It is racism in substance but xeno
in form a racism that is meted out to impoverished strangers even if they are
white. It is xeno-racism. In the UK in the 21st century, the enlarged European Union
provides an abundance of cheap Eastern European labour, and there is substantial
evidence of xeno-racism here (Cole, 2004b; Cole and Maisuria, 2007, 2009). I have
described the process by which refugees, asylum seekers8 and certain migrants
from the newly joined countries of the EU become falsely categorized as belonging
to distinct races as xeno-racialization (for an analysis, see Cole, 2004b). In addition
to cheap Eastern European labour, capitalism also benefits from illegal labour
power, from outside the EU, which is even cheaper. As Alex Callinicos (2006) puts it,
the interests of capital are best served by controls that are weak enough to allow
immigrants in, but strong enough to keep illegal workers vulnerable and therefore
easy to exploit. As David Renton (2006: 12) argues, business welcomes migration,
but on its own terms, with migrant workers insecure, unpopular: a class of people
who will remain as long as possible marginal and poor. As he puts it (Renton, 2006:
123): Economically, they will not feel confident to demand the same rights as the
settled population, while the media encourages the non-migrant majority to see
migrant workers as a threat.9 Given the widespread existence of xeno-racism and
accompanying xenoracialization (Cole, 2004b), it is important that in the current
era, as well as through history, that racism directed at people with white skins
remains firmly on the agenda. The limits to the CRT argument with respect to Britain
are that it restricts racism (white supremacy in CRT terms) to a set of practices
directly related to skin colour. Islamophobia and xeno-racism are not necessarily
colourcoded. In claiming that with the exception of Nazi Germany . . . borderline
Europeans . . . were not subpersons in the full technical sense and would all have
been ranked ontologically above genuine nonwhites (Mills, 1997: 80), Mills is
seriously underestimating the actual and potential virulence of noncolour- coded
racism. In focusing on issues of colour and being divorced from matters related to
capitalist requirements with respect to the labour market, CRT is ill-equipped to
analyse the discourses of Islamophobia, xeno-racism and processes of xenoracialization.
Foundations
Freedom of class struggle is not freedom from anti-blackness
the alternative leaves the foundation for racist structures in
place
Wilderson 10 (Frank B. Wilderson III, Associate Professor at UC Irvines Department of Drama
and African American Studies, BA in government and philosophy from Dartmouth College, MA in Fine
Arts from Columbia University PhD in Rhetoric and Film Studies from UC Berkeley Red, White & Black:
Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms, 2010, Pg. 19-23, arh)
Again, what is important for us to glean from these historians is that the preColumbian period, the Late Middle Ages, reveals no archive of debate on these
three questions as they might be related to that massive group of Black-skinned
people south of the Sahara. Eltis suggests that there was indeed massive debate
which ultimately led to Britain taking the lead in the abolition of slavery, but he
reminds us that that debate did not have its roots in the late Middle Ages, the postColumbian period of the 1500s or the Virginia Colony period of the 1600s. It was, he
asserts, an outgrowth of the mid- to late-18th century emancipatory thrustintraHuman disputes such as the French and American Revolutionsthat swept through
Europe. But Eltis does not take his analysis further than this. Therefore, it is
important that we not be swayed by his optimism about the Enlightenment and its
subsequent abolitionist discourses. It is highly conceivable that the discourse that
elaborates the justification for freeing the slave is not the product of the Human
being having suddenly and miraculously recognized the slave. Rather, as Saidiya
Hartman argues, emancipatory discourses present themselves to us as further
evidence of the Slaves fungibility: [T]he figurative capacities of blackness enable
white flights of fancy while increasing the likelihood of the captives
disappearance (Scenes22). First, the questions of Humanism were elaborated
in contradistinction to the human void, to the African-qua-chattel (the 1200s to the
end of the 17th century). Then, as the presence of Black chattel in the midst of
exploited and un-exploited Humans (workers and bosses, respectively) became a
fact of the world, exploited Humans (in the throes of class conflict with un-exploited
Humans) seized the image of the slave as an enabling vehicle that animated the
evolving discourses of their emancipation, just as un-exploited Humans had seized
the flesh of the Slave to increase their profits. Without this gratuitous violence, a
violence that marks everyone experientially until the late Middle Ages when it starts
to mark the Black ontologically, the so-called great emancipatory discourses of
modernitymarxism, feminism, postcolonialism, sexual liberation, and the ecology
movementpolitical discourses predicated on grammars of suffering and whose
constituent elements are exploitation and alienation, might not have developed.xi
Chattel slavery did not simply reterritorialize the ontology of the African. It also
created the Human out of culturally disparate entities from Europe to the East. I am
not suggesting that across the globe Humanism developed in the same way
regardless of region or culture; what I am saying is that the late Middle Ages gave
rise to an ontological categoryan ensemble of common existential concerns
which made and continues to make possible both war and peace, conflict and
resolution, between the disparate members of the human race, east and west.
Senator Thomas Hart Benton intuited this notion of the existential commons when
he wrote that though the Yellow race and its culture had been torpid and
stationary for thousands of years [Whites and Asians] must talk together, and
trade together, and marry together. Commerce is a great civilizersocial

intercourse as greatand marriage greater (The Congressional Globe. May 28,
1846). David Eltis points out that as late as the 17th century, [p]risoners taken in
the course of European military actioncould expect death if they were leaders, or
banishment if they were deemed followers, but never enslavementDetention
followed by prisoner exchanges or ransoming was common (1413). By the
seventeenth century, enslavement of fellow Europeans was beyond the limits
(1423) of Humanisms existential commons, even in times of war. Slave status was
reserved for non-Christians. Even the latter group howeverhad some prospect of
release in exchange for Christians held by rulers of Algiers, Tunis, and other
Mediterranean Muslim powers (emphasis mine 1413). But though the practice of
enslaving the vanquished was beyond the limit of intra-West wars and only
practiced provisionally in East-West conflicts, the baseness of the option was not
debated when it came to the African. The race of Humanism (White, Asian, South
Asian, and Arab) could not have produced itself without the simultaneous
production of that walking destruction which became known as the Black .
Put another way, through chattel slavery the world gave birth and coherence to
both its joys of domesticity and to its struggles of political discontent; and with
these joys and struggles, the Human was born, but not before it murdered the
Black, forging a symbiosis between the political ontology of Humanity and the social
death of Blacks. In his essay To Corroborate Our Claims: Public Positioning and the
Slavery Metaphor in Revolutionary America, Peter Dorsey (in his concurrence with
cultural historians F. Nwabueze Okoye and Patricia Bradley) suggests that, in mid- to
late-18th century America, Blackness was such a fungible commodity that it was
traded as freely between the exploited (workers who did not own slaves) as it was
between the unexploited (planters who did). This was due to the effective uses to
which Whites could put the Slave as both flesh and metaphor. For the
Revolutionaries, slavery represented a nightmare that white Americans were
trying to avoid (359). Dorseys claim is provocative, but not unsupported: he
maintains that had Blacks-as-Slaves not been in the White field of vision on a daily
basis that it would have been virtually impossible for Whites to transform
themselves from colonial subjects into Revolutionaries: Especially prominent in the
rhetoric and reality of the [Revolutionary] era, the concepts of freedom and slavery
were applied to a wide variety of events and values and were constantly being
defined and redefined[E]arly understandings of American freedom were in many
ways dependent on the existence of chattel slavery[We should] see slavery in
revolutionary discourse, not merely as a hyperbolic rhetorical device but as a crucial
and fluid [fungible] concept that had a major impact on the way early Americans
thought about their political future The slavery metaphor destabilized previously
accepted categories of thought about politics, race, and the early republic. (355)
Though the idea of taxation without representation may have spoken concretely
to the idiom of power that marked the British/American relation as being structurally
unethical, it did not provide metaphors powerful and fungible enough for Whites to
meditate and move on when resisting the structure of their own subordination at
the hands of unchecked political power (354). The most salient feature of
Dorseys findings is not his understanding of the way Blackness, as a crucial and
fungible conceptual possession of civil society, impacts and destabilizes previously
accepted categories of intra-White thought, but rather his contribution to the
evidence that, even when Blackness is deployed to stretch the elasticity of civil
society to the point of civil war, that expansion is never elastic enough to embrace
the very Black who catalyzed the expansion. In fact, Dorsey, building on Patricia
Bradleys historical research, asserts that just the opposite is true. The more the
political imagination of civil society is enabled by the fungibility of the slave
metaphor, the less legible the condition of the slave becomes: Focusing primarily
on colonial newspapersBradley finds that the slavery metaphor served to
distance the patriot agenda from the antislavery movement. If anything, Bradley
states, widespread use of the metaphor gave first evidence that the issue of real
slavery was not to have a part in the revolutionary messages (359). And David
Eltis believes that this philosophical incongruity between the image of the Slave and
freedom for the Slave begins in Europe and pre-dates the American Revolution by at
least one hundred years: The [European] countries least likely to enslave their own
had the harshest and most sophisticated system of exploiting enslaved nonEuropeans. Overall, the English and Dutch conception of the role of the individual in
metropolitan society ensured the accelerated development of African chattel
slavery in the Americasbecause their own subjects could not become chattel
slaves or even convicts for life(1423) Furthermore, the circulation of Blackness as
metaphor and image at the most politically volatile and progressive moments in
history (e.g. the French, English, and American Revolutions), produces dreams of
liberation which are more inessential to and more parasitic on the Black, and more
emphatic in their guarantee of Black suffering, than any dream of human liberation
in any era heretofore. Black slavery is foundational to modern Humanisms ontics
because freedom is the hub of Humanisms infinite conceptual trajectories. But
these trajectories only appear to be infinite. They are finite in the sense that they
are predicated on the idea of freedom from some contingency that can be named,
or at least conceptualized. The contingent rider could be freedom from patriarchy,
freedom from economic exploitation, freedom from political tyranny (for example,
taxation without representation), freedom from heteronormativity, and so on. What I
am suggesting is that first, political discourse recognizes freedom as a structuring
ontologic and then it works to disavow this recognition by imagining freedom not
through political ontologywhere it rightfully beganbut through political
experience (and practice); whereupon it immediately loses its ontological
foundations. Why would anyone do this? Why would anyone start off with, quite
literally, an earth-shattering ontologic and, in the process of meditating on it and
acting through it, reduce it to an earth reforming experience? Why do Humans take
such pride in self-adjustment, in diminishing, rather than intensifying, the project of
liberation (how did we get from 68 to the present)? Because, I contend, in allowing
the notion of freedom to attain the ethical purity of its ontological status, one would
have to lose ones Human coordinates and become Black. Which is to say one would
have to die. For the Black, freedom is an ontological, rather than experiential,
question. There is no philosophically credible way to attach an experiential, a
contingent, rider onto the notion of freedom when one considers the Blacksuch as
freedom from gender or economic oppression, the kind of contingent riders
rightfully placed on the non-Black when thinking freedom. Rather, the riders that
one could place on Black freedom would be hyperbolicthough no less trueand
ultimately untenable: i.e., freedom from the world, freedom from humanity, freedom
from everyone (including ones Black self). Given the reigning episteme, what are
the chances of elaborating a comprehensive, much less translatable and
communicable, political project out of the necessity of freedom as an absolute?
Gratuitous freedom has never been a trajectory of Humanist thought, which is why
the infinite trajectories of freedom that emanate from Humanisms hub are anything
but infinitefor they have no line of flight leading to the Slave.
Class struggle doesnt reveal the foundations of violence

against the black body, identities of race will always permit
violence to maintain their humanity
Pak 12 PhD in literature from UC-San Diego
[Yumi, PhD in literature from UC-San Diego , Outside Relationality: Autobiographical
Deformations and the Literary Lineage of Afro-pessimism in 20th and 21st Century
African American Literature, 2012, acc. 7/15/14, arh]
Because the four authors I examine focus intensively on untangling and retangling the nexus of race,
gender, and sexuality in autobiographical narratives, this project originally relied most heavily on the
frameworks provided by queer theory and performance studies, as the structural organization and
methodology behind both disciplines offered the characteristic of being inter in between...
intergenric [sic], interdisciplinary, intercultural and therefore inherently unstable (What is
Performance Studies Anyway? 360). My abstract ideation of the dissertation was one which
conceptualized the unloosening of the authors respective texts from the ways in which they have
been read in particular genres. Yet the investigative progression of my research redirected me to
question the despondency I found within Toomer, Himes, Baldwin and Jones novels, a despondency
and sorrow that seemed to reach beyond the individual and collective purportedly represented in these
works. What does it mean, they seem to speculate, to suffer beyond the individual,
beyond the collective, and into the far reaches of paradigmatic structure? What does it
mean to exist beyond social oppression and veer instead into what Frank B. Wilderson, III calls
structural suffering (Red, White & Black 36)? Briefly, Wilderson utilizes what he calls Frantz Fanons
splitting of the hair[s] between social oppression and structural suffering; in other words,
Wilderson refutes the possibility of analogizing blackness with any other

positionality in the world. Others may be oppressed, indeed, may suffer
experientially, but only the black, the paradigmatic slave, suffers
structurally. Afro-pessimism, the theoretical means by which I attempt to answer this query,
provides the integral term and parameters with which I bind together queer theory,
performance studies, and autobiography studies in order to propose a re-examination of these authors
and their texts. The structural suffering of blackness seeps into all elements of
American history, culture, and life, and thus I begin my discussion with an analysis of Hortense
Spillers concept of an American grammar in Mamas Baby, Papas Maybe: An American Grammar
Book. To theorize blackness is to begin with the slave ship, in a space that is in
actuality no place.7 In discussing the transportation of human cargo across the
Middle Passage, Spillers writes that this physical theft of bodies was a willful and
violent (and unimaginable from this distance) severing of the captive body from its motive
will, its active desire (Spillers 67). She contends here that in this mass gathering and
transportation, what becomes illuminated is not only the complete and total deracination of
native from soil, but rather the evisceration of subjectivity from blackness, the
evacuation of will and desire from the body; in other words, we see that even before
the black body there is flesh, that zero degree of social conceptualization that does not escape
concealment under the brush of discourse, or the reflexes of iconography (67). Black flesh, which
arrives in the United States to be manipulated and utilized as slave bodies, is a
primary narrative with its seared, divided, ripped-apartness, riveted to the ships
hole, fallen, or escaped overboard (67). These markings lacerations, woundings, fissures,
tears, scars, openings, ruptures, lesions, rendings, punctures of the flesh are indicative of the sheer
scale of the structural violence amassed against blackness, and from this beginning Spillers culls an
American grammar that grounds itself in the rupture and a radically different kind of cultural
continuation, a grammar that is the fabric of blackness in the United States (67, 68). As Wilderson
observes, Africans went into the ships and came out as Blacks (Red, White & Black 38).
In other words, in the same moment they are (re)born as blacks, they are doomed to
death as slaves. This rupture, I argue, is evident in the definitions of slavery set forth by Orlando
Patterson in his seminal volume, Slavery and Social Death: natal alienation, general dishonor and
openness to gratuitous violence. The captive body, which is constructed with torn flesh, is laid bare to
any and all, and it is critical to note here that Patterson, in line with Afro-pessimists, does not align
slavery with labor. The slave can and did work, but what defines him/her as such is that as a
dishonored and violated object, the masters whims for him/her to work, or not work, can be carried
out without ramifications. Rather, the slaves powerlessness is heightened to the greatest possible
capacity, wherein s/he is marked by social death and the permanent, violent domination of their
selves (Patterson 13). Spillers radically different kind of cultural continuation finds an articulation of
the object status of blackness in the United States, one which impugns the separation of slave and
black. As Jared Sexton and Huey Copeland inquire, [h]ow might it feel to be... a scandal to ontology,
an outrage to every marker of the human? What, in the final analysis, does it mean to suffer? (Sexton
and Copeland 53). Blackness functions as a scandal to ontology because, as Wilderson states,
black suffering forms the ethical backbone of civil society. He writes, [c]hattel
slavery did not simply reterritorialize the ontology of the African. It also created the
Human out of cultural disparate identities from Europe to the East... Put another
way, through chattel slavery the world gave birth and coherence to both its joys of
domesticity and to its struggles of political discontent, and with these joys and
struggles, the Human was born, but not before it murdered the Black, forging a
symbiosis between the political ontology of Humanity and the social death of
Blacks. (Red, White & Black 20 21) Again, the African is made black, and in this murder both
ontological and physical, humanity gains its coherence. It is not my intention (nor of other Afropessimists) to argue that violence has only ever been committed against black individuals and
communities in the United States, or in the world, but rather that the structural suffering that defines
blackness, the violence enacted against blackness to maintain its positioning outside of civil society,
that demarcates the black as slave, has no horizontal equivalent and, indeed, provides the logical
ethos of existence for all othered subjectivities; by this I mean that all other subjects (and I use this
word quite intentionally) retain a body and not the zero degree of flesh. As Sexton writes, we might
say of the colonized: you may lose your motherland, but you will not lose your mother (Hartman
2007) (The Curtain of the Sky 14). This is precisely why Sexton offers the succinct definition of Afropessimism as a political ontology dividing the Slave from the world of the Human in a constitutive
way (The Social Life of Social Death 23). Furthermore, Afro-pessimists contest the idea that the
modern world is one wherein the price of labor determines the price of being equally for all people. In
this capitalistic reading of the world, we summon blacks back into civil society by utilizing Marxism to
assume a subaltern structured by capital, not by white supremacy (Gramscis Black Marx 1).
While it is undeniable, of course, that black bodies and labor were used to aid in the
economic growth of the United States, we return again to the point that what
defines enslavement is accumulation and fungibility, alongside natal alienation,
general dishonor, and openness to gratuitous violence; the slave, then, is not
constituted as part of the class struggle.8 While it is true that labor power is exploited and
that the worker is alienated in it, it is also true that workers labor on the commodity, they are not the
commodity itself is, their labor power is (Red, White & Black 50). The slave is, then, invisible within
this matrix, and, to a more detrimental effect, invisible within the ontology of lived subjects entirely.
The slave cannot be defined as loss as can the postcolonial subject, the woman, or the immigrant
but can only be configured as lack, as there is no potential for synthesis within a rubric of antagonism.
Wilderson sets up the phrase rubric of antagonism in opposition to rubric of conflict to clarify the
positionality of blacks outside relationality. The former is an irreconcilable struggle between
entities, or positions, the resolution of which is not dialectical but entails the
obliteration of one of the positions , whereas the latter is a rubric of problems that can be
posed and conceptually solved (Red, White & Black 5). He continues, [i]f a Black is the very
antithesis of a Human subject... then his or her paradigmatic exile is not simply a
function of repressive practices on the part of institutions (9). Integrating Hegel and
Marx, and returning to Spillers, Wilderson argues that within this grammar of suffering, the
slave is not a laborer but what he calls anti- Human, against which Humanity
establishes, maintains, and renews its coherence, its corporeal integrity (11). In
contrast to imagining the black other in opposition to whiteness, Wilderson and
other Afro-pessimists theorize blackness as being absent in the dialectic, as antiHuman.
Pre-req to Identity Politics

Identity politics forecloses potential for radical change by
creating insurmountable rifts based on difference. Only
Marxism solves.
International Socialist Review 2008 (The ISR is dedicated to advancing socialist

theory and practice in the United States The Politics of Identity February 2008 ISR
Issue 57 http://www.isreview.org/issues/57/feat-identity.shtml accessed 7.11.14 .nt)
LaClau and Mouffe describe society as made up of a whole range of autonomous,
free-floating antagonisms and oppressions, none more important than any other
each is a separate sphere of struggle.14 But this concept falls apart once it is
removed from the world of abstraction and applied to the real world. Separate
struggles do not neatly correspond to separate forms of oppression.
Forms of oppressions overlap, so that many people are both Black and
female, or both lesbian and Latino. If every struggle must be fought
separately, this can only lead to greater and greater fragmentation and
eventually to disintegration, even within groups organized around a
single form of oppression. A Black lesbian, for example, faces an obvious
dilemma: If all men are enemies of women, all whites are enemies of Blacks, and all
straights are enemies of gays, then allies must be precious few. In the real world,
choices have to be made. If LaClau and Mouffe are correct, and the main
divisions in society exist between those who face a particular form of
oppression and those who dont, then the likelihood of ever actually
ending oppression is just about nil . At its heart, the politics of identity is
extremely pessimistic, implying not just a rejection of the potential to
build a broad united movement against all forms of exploitation and
oppression, but also a very deep pessimism about the possibility for
building solidarity even among people who face different forms of
oppression. The only organizational strategy identity politics offers is for
different groups of oppressed people to each fight their own separate
battles against their own separate enemies. The second key problem with
LaClau and Mouffe flows from the concept of autonomy that is so central to their
theory. Most importantly from a theoretical standpoint, Laclau and Mouffe go to
great lengths to refute the Marxist analysis of the state, or the government.
Marxist theory is based upon an understanding that the government is
not a neutral body, but serves to represent the interests of the class in
powerwhich in the case of capitalism is the capitalist class . This should
not be too hard to imagine in the era of George W. Bush, when the capitalist class
has brazenly flaunted its wealth and power. But Laclau and Mouffe insist that the
state is neutral and autonomous. Even the different branches of government are
autonomous from each other. Apparently, the Senate and the House of
Representatives have no real relationship, and the White House is similarly

autonomous. If that is the case, then the stranglehold of neoconservatives and the
Christian Right over U.S. politics since 9/11 must have been a figment of liberals
imaginations. Thus, there is a serious flaw in this logic. Oppression is built into
the capitalist system itself, and the state is one of the key ways in which
oppression is enforcedthrough laws that discriminate and the police
who serve and protect some people while harassing and brutalizing other
groups of people. But the theory of autonomy leads to another
theoretical problem as well: every separate struggle warrants equal
importance, no matter how many people are involved on either side, and
whether or not demands are being made against the state or other
institutions . Indeed, LaClau and Mouffe carry this logic a critical step further,
noting that struggle need not involve more than one person. It can simply denote
a matter of achieving increasingly affirmed individualism.15 The personal
struggle in this process substitutes for political struggle, leaving the
system that maintains and enforces oppression intact. Like LaClau and
Mouffe, theorists who advocate the most extreme forms of identity politics do not
actually aim to build a movement, large or small. They prefer small groups of the
enlightened few, who remain content in their superiority to the ignorant masses.
Marxism offers a way forward for those interested in ending oppression in
the real world. As Marx remarked of his generation of smug academics,
The philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various
ways. The point, however, is to change it. 16
Class is a better starting point - Marxism is key to historically

contextualize and examine all forms of oppression.
Taylor 11 (Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, on the editorial board of the International

Socialist Review and a doctoral student in African American Studies at Northwestern
University; Race, class and Marxism, SocialistWorker.org,
http://socialistworker.org/2011/01/04/race-class-and-marxism .nt)
What do Marxists actually say? Marxists argue that capitalism is a system that is
based on the exploitation of the many by the few. Because it is a system based on
gross inequality, it requires various tools to divide the majority--racism and all
oppressions under capitalism serve this purpose. Moreover, oppression is used to
justify and "explain" unequal relationships in society that enrich the minority that
live off the majority's labor. Thus, racism developed initially to explain and justify
the enslavement of Africans--because they were less than human and undeserving
of liberty and freedom. Everyone accepts the idea that the oppression of slaves was
rooted in the class relations of exploitation under that system. Fewer recognize that
under capitalism, wage slavery is the pivot around which all other inequalities and
oppressions turn. Capitalism used racism to justify plunder, conquest and slavery,
but as Karl Marx pointed out, it also used racism to divide and rule--to pit one
section of the working class against another and thereby blunt class consciousness.
To claim, as Marxists do, that racism is a product of capitalism is not to deny or
diminish its importance or impact in American society. It is simply to explain its

origins and the reasons for its perpetuation. Many on the left today talk about class
as if it is one of many oppressions, often describing it as "classism." What people
are really referring to as "classism" is elitism or snobbery, and not the fundamental
organization of society under capitalism. Moreover, it is popular today to talk about
various oppressions, including class, as intersecting. While it is true that oppressions
can reinforce and compound each other, they are born out of the material relations
shaped by capitalism and the economic exploitation that is at the heart of capitalist
society. In other words, it is the material and economic structure of society that
gave rise to a range of ideas and ideologies to justify, explain and help perpetuate
that order. In the United States, racism is the most important of those ideologies.
Despite the widespread beliefs to the contrary of his critics, Karl Marx himself was
well aware of the centrality of race under capitalism. While Marx did not write
extensively on the question of slavery and its racial impact in societies specifically,
he did write about the way in which European capitalism emerged because of its
pilfering, rape and destruction, famously writing: The discovery of gold and silver in
America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal
population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning
of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of Black skins, signalized the rosy
dawn of the era of capitalist production. He also recognized the extent to which
slavery was central to the world economy. He wrote: Direct slavery is just as much
the pivot of bourgeois industry as machinery, credits, etc. Without slavery you have
no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry. It is slavery that has given
the colonies their value; it is the colonies that have created world trade, and it is
world trade that is the pre-condition of large-scale industry. Thus slavery is an
economic category of the greatest importance. Without slavery North America, the
most progressive of countries, would be transformed into a patriarchal country.
Wipe out North America from the map of the world, and you will have anarchy--the
complete decay of modern commerce and civilization. Cause slavery to disappear
and you will have wiped America off the map of nations. Thus slavery, because it is
an economic category, has always existed among the institutions of the peoples.
Modern nations have been able only to disguise slavery in their own countries, but
they have imposed it without disguise upon the New World. Thus, there is a
fundamental understanding of the centrality of slave labor in the national and
international economy. But what about race? Despite the dearth of Marx's own
writing on race in particular, one might look at Marx's correspondence and
deliberations on the American Civil War to draw conclusions as to whether Marx was
as dogmatically focused on purely economic issues as his critics make him out be.
One must raise the question: If Marx was reductionist, how is his unabashed support
and involvement in abolitionist struggles in England explained? If Marx was truly an
economic reductionist, he might have surmised that slavery and capitalism were
incompatible, and simply waited for slavery to whither away. W.E.B. Du Bois in his
Marxist tome Black Reconstruction, quotes at length a letter penned by Marx as the
head of the International Workingmen's Association, written to Abraham Lincoln in
1864 in the midst of the Civil War:
Identity politics ignores the material realities of class-based

oppression. Only Marxism, through an analysis of the systemic
benefits of oppression, can equip us with the tools to
holistically examine oppression and generate the cohesive
political will to create real change.
The entire element of social class is missing from the theory of identity
politics. The same analysis that assumes Barack Obama shares a
fundamental interest with all African Americans in ending racism also
places all straight white men in the enemy camp, whatever their social
class. Yet, the class divide has rarely been more obvious than in the United States
today, where income and class inequality is higher than at any time since 1929,
immediately before the onset of the Great Depression.10 It is plain to see that the
rich obtain their enormous wealth at the expense of those who work for them to
produce their profits, a process known as exploitation in Marxist parlance. Class
inequality is not a side issue, but rather the main byproduct of exploitation,
the driving force of the capitalist system. Class inequality is currently
worsening by the minute , as the economy edges its way toward a deep
recession. Yet the theory of identity politics barely acknowledges the
importance of class inequality, which is usually reduced to a label known
as classisma problem of snobbery, or personal attitude. This, again,
should be confronted when it occurs, but such confrontations do not change the
system that relies upon class exploitation. In contrast to the inconsistencies and
contradictions of identity politics, a class analysis bases itself on materialism
a concrete and objective measure of systemic benefits derived from
racism, sexism, and homophobia. In short, the ruling class has an
objective interest in upholding the capitalist system, which is based upon
both oppression and exploitation, while the working class has an
objective interest in overthrowing it . For the special oppression of women,
Blacks, Latinos, other racially oppressed populations, and the LGBT community
actually serves to increase the level of exploitation and oppression of the working
class as a whole. The ruling class has always relied upon a divide and
conquer strategy to maintain its rule, aimed at keeping all the exploited
and oppressed fighting against each other instead of uniting and fighting
against their real enemy. At the most basic material level, no one group of
workers ever benefits from particular forms of oppression. The historic role of racism
in the U.S. provides perhaps the clearest example. The prevailing view is that if
Black workers get a smaller piece of the pie, then white workers get a bigger piece
of it. In fact, the opposite is true. In the South, where racism and segregation have
traditionally been the strongest, white workers have historically earned lower wages
than Black workers in the North.11 The same dynamic holds true for men and
women workers. When lower paid women workers enter an occupation, such as
clerical work, in large numbers the wages in that occupation tend to fall. The
dynamic is straightforward: Whenever capitalists can force a higher paid
group of workers to compete with a lower paid group, wages tend to
drop. The same dynamic also holds for the global capitalist system. When
U.S. capitalists force their workers into competition with workers in the
poorest countries, U.S. workers wages do not rise; they fall . And that is
precisely why U.S. workers wages have been falling in recent years. The only
beneficiaries are capitalists, who earn bigger profits, while ensuring the survival of
the rule of the profit system. It is also important to recognize that all working-class
people suffer from some forms of oppression. Workers pay much higher proportions
of their incomes in taxes than rich people and have far less leisure time; workingclass schools are underfunded and overcrowded, poorer neighborhoods are more
run-down, and the streets have more potholes. Perhaps most significantly,
prevailing ideology regards workers as generally too stupid to run society
assuming this is better left to the experts, dooming the vast majority of workers to
a lifetime of alienated labor. So oppression is something that even most
white male workers suffer to some degree. If one were to compare the
self-confidence of the vast majority of white male workers to that of the
arrogant Hillary Clinton or Condoleezza Rice, it would be clear that
something more than personal politics is a determining factor in
oppression. The problem is systemic. The point here is not at all to trivialize
racism, sexism, or homophobiabut to understand that the entire working class
faces oppression and has an objective interest in ending it. To be sure, workers dont
always realize this . Male workers can behave in an utterly sexist manner ;
white workersmale and femalecan embrace racism; and straight workers
Black, white, and Latinocan be completely homophobic. But such behaviors
are subjective they vary from individual to individual and, unlike objective
interests that remain the same, subjective factors change according to changing
circumstances. Most important among these is the Marxist concept of false
consciousness. The definition of false consciousness is straightforward: whenever
workers accept ruling-class ideologies, including racism, sexism, and
homophobia, they are acting against their own class interestsprecisely
because these ideas keep workers fighting against each other . False
consciousness is not unique to white, male workers.
Identity as both the means and ends for politics prevents

communal discussion and further forecloses possibility for
individual development. Capital formulates all identity and
must be our starting point for liberation.
Rectenwald 13 (Michael, Editor at the North Star Magazine a magazine
dedicated to examining radical politics, from social democracy to anarchy Whats
Wrong With Identity Politics (and Intersectionality Theory)? A Response to Mark
Fishers Exiting the Vampire Castle (And Its Critics) http://www.thenorthstar.info/?
p=11411 December 2, 2013 accessed 7/13/14 .nt)
Much better in this regard is a longer article by the feminist Marxist blogging at
Unity and Struggle: I Am a Woman and a Human: A Marxist-Feminist Critique of
Intersectionality Theory. Here, while some unfortunate lapses into a humanist
essentialism are apparent, the author otherwise argues rather convincingly that
identity groups , such as straight white man, gay black man, lesbian black
woman, trans* person, etc., are not natural categories into which people
are born and sorted. Rather, they are relatively recent formations
possible only under capitalism, equivalent to occupations with their own
forms of alienation attendant upon the division of labor. As Marx wrote in
The German Ideology, as soon as the distribution of labour comes into
being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is
forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. Similarly, identity, like an
occupation, is a trap, because it curtails human potential and bars
workers from participation in the social totality as fully developing
individuals. Identities are reified social categories from which we should emerge,
not within which we should be compelled to remain. The problem with identity
politics, then, is that it is one-sided and undialectical . It treats identities
as static entities, and its methods only serve to further reify those
categories. It aims to liberate identity groups (or members thereof) qua
identity groups (or individuals), rather than aiming to liberate them from
identity itself. Identity politics fails not because it begins with various
subaltern groups and aims at their liberation, but because it ends with them
and thus cannot deliver their liberation. It makes identities and their
equality with other privileged groups the basis of political activity,
rather than making the overcoming of the alienated identity, for
themselves and all identity groups, the goal. The abolition of the onesidedness of identity as worker, woman, man, or what have you represents real
human emancipation. Always failing this, identity politics settles for mere linguistic
emancipation, which is offered (and policed so assiduously, as Fisher notes) by the
defenders of the sanctuary of identity. As I suggested above, the most common
response to Fishers article has been that his position is explicable strictly in terms
of his identity . No sooner does one make a critique of identity politics, than
is ones identity deemed the cause of said critique . It is as if identity
explains the argument itself, and causes it. Once identity is deemed the
actual causal factor of a statement, nothing that is said means what it
says. Everything is explicable only in terms of identity, and the content of
the statement becomes identity itself. Once set, identity is a trap from
which no one escapes . Of course, such defenses are circular, reverting to that
which is being critiqued to explain those doing the critiquing.
But theory like this , or any other, as the author of I am a Woman suggests,
does not appear out of thin air. Rather, it is produced in relation to the
social relations of production and the overall social relations themselves:
There was no revolution in the US in 1968. The advances of Black Power,
womens liberation, gay liberation, and the movements themselves, have been
absorbed into capital. Since the 1970s, academia has had a stronghold on
theory. A nonexistent class struggle leaves a vacuum of theoretical
production and academic intellectuals have had nothing to draw on
except for the identity politics of the past. But , identity politics has not
since been absorbed into capital, as suggested in the quote above . As
forms of alienated labor, capitalist relations have always determined
them. They have been the products of capitalism from the outset. By
treating such categories as ends in themselves, therefore, a politics
based on identities necessarily leads down the blind alley of reification.
That is, such politics, even when successful, necessarily ends at the
limits of identity itself. The problem is , while theoretically , we might all
wake up tomorrow to changed identities, or to changed conditions for our
identities, we would still be exploited under capitalism. Running the circuits
of capital from production through consumption, identity can only lead us back to
the office, the factory, or the streets, allowing at best our coalescence around
particular consumer cultures. Finally, as I mentioned above, Fisher claimed that
while promising a politics of collectivities , identity politics is actually
individualistic. One might wonder how he arrives at such a statement, especially
since he merely asserts it rather than arguing it. He could have argued that because
identity politics and intersectionality focus on difference and its
articulations, the divisions are potentially endless, but necessarily extend
to differences not only between groups, but also between individuals.
Ones display of the characteristics becomes a requirement for the
politics of identity. Identity politics requires identification, which requires
signaling of individual membership by virtue of particular characteristics.
The understanding and appreciation of individual difference is surely not a liability in

itself, by any stretch. Nor does understanding and appreciation necessarily entail an
individualistic ideological and political agenda. But because identity is the object
rather than merely the starting point, the ends rather than only the means of
collectivity, identity politics continually devolves into the articulation of the
requirements for group membership, and thus, to the individual. This individualism
extends to those whose privilege differentiates them from the identity groups in
question. That is, each encounter with the group involves the articulation of the
characteristics of the group, and the evaluation of all comers on the basis of such
characteristics. Whether or not this involves the imputation of guilt to non-members
is a question of particular circumstances, and likewise, cannot be generalized
without qualification. But identity politics does involve a linguistic policing around
various identity formations, not only to determine eligibility for membership, but as
importantly, to guard against the ill treatment of said group and its members as
representatives thereof. Of course, any political movement on the left worthy of
support will defend those subject to various forms of discrimination and abuse. But
in the case of identity politics, the defense is of the group and its
individual members as such, as particular identities , for the maintenance
and continuation of said identities, and not for their liberation from the
liabilities that all identities necessarily entail. Thus, identity politics is
exclusionary and divisive, continually falling back on difference in order
to establish group identity and cohesion.
____________________________________
_______________
Racism
Impact
Scenarios
Exclusion
Blacks face a different type of historical experiencewhereas
other groups faced discrimination, blacks faced exclusion
l.gong
Pluralist Theories Assimilationist and pluralist theories focus on

patterns of interaction among racial and ethnic groups . Assimilationists see racial and
ethnic differences disappearing and racial conflicts evolving into patterns of racial
integration. As pluralists see it, racial and ethnic differences persist , but conflicts are
resolved in the political arena. Assimilationists identify stages or cycles of interracial conflict, ending in
Assimilationist and
assimilation. Park (1974), for example, identified the following stages: Initial contact between racial or ethnic groups
Competition between these groups Accommodation Assimilation He saw racial or ethnic conflict as only one stage
of historical development, a stage that inevitably progresses toward accommodation and assimilation.
Contentious racial groups become more tolerant and adjust to their differences in
the accommodation stage. Finally, separate racial interests disappear, and a
common identity arises in the assimilation stage. The cycle repeats itself with the
introduction of new racial or ethnic groups. Gordon (1964) divided assimilation into finer stages,
which include the following: Cultural assimilation the acceptance of the dominant culture Marital assimilation
interracial marriages occurring in large numbers Prejudicefree assimilation the

disappearance of belief in racial or ethnic superiority The final stage of assimilation, according
to Gordon, is civic assimilation, which occurs when special racial or ethnic demands or interests disappear. Nathan
Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1970) rejected the assimilationist thesis and set forth a theory of immigration,
ascension, and group politics in its place. In their book, Beyond the Melting Pot, they examined racial and ethnic
groups in New York City: Italians, Irish, Jews, Puerto Ricans, and African Americans. T hey
suggested that
African Americans will overcome prejudices against them and rise in social status
just as the Italians, Irish, and Jews did in earlier periods. According to Glazer and Moynihan,
blacks will not assimilate, but they will become more involved in pluralist politics. The assimilationist and
pluralist paradigms are fundamentally different from our model. T hese paradigms
anticipate conflict and accommodation among groups and presuppose a natural process of ethnic ascension. That
is, these paradigms assume that ethnic and racial groups that start at the bottom of
the social ladder will naturally climb to the top over time. We reject this assumption
because the social and historical experiences of blacks are fundamentally different
from those of European ethnic groups. Whereas European immigrants faced
discrimination, blacks have suffered exclusion . Whereas European immigrants
struggled to move up the social ladder in the North, blacks remained trapped in
slavery and debt peonage in the South. In the North, black city dwellers whose
forefathers had lived in this country for centuries were excluded from the same
skilled trade jobs open to firstgeneration immigrants (Pinderhughes 1987 Steinberg 1989). We
do not assume that ethnic and racial groups naturally rise up the social ladder. The
social and historical experiences of African Americans suggest this is not the case .
Our model attempts to explain why blacks were subjugated so long in this country. It focuses on social,
economic, and political processes that explain the persistence of racial oppression.
Anthropocentrism
Anthropocentrism is the root causewhen the slavemasters
needed to justify slavery, they made the slave inhuman
l.gong
Radical Psychoanalytical Approach The radical psychoanalytical approach associates oppressive modes of
psychological processes that explain the formation

of oppressive social character types and cultural forms . For example, this framework sees a
strong association between the slave mode of Page 35 production and the formation of the
sadistic character type. This mode of production required the master to exercise
intense, direct, and incessant control over the slave. The sadistic character type was most
successful in operating a slave plantation. Hence, it emerged as the dominant social
character associated with the slave mode of production . The psychoanalytical
approach also connects the formation of racial images to particular psychological
needs and processes. For example, the image of blacks as sexually promiscuous is
connected to the process of repression/projection the white racist mind represses its own
sexual impulses and projects them onto blacks. The image of the black cannibal is
connected to whites' intense fear of those blacks who are unrestrained by white society .
The image of the childlike Black Sambo is related to the white racist mind's need to see the
controlled black slave as innocuous. The psychoanalytical approach associates the formation of racist
discourse and images with the fulfillment of ego needs. For example, in order for the slave master to
live with himself and to see himself as a good, decent Christian after brutalizing the slave, the master
had to dehumanize the slave. The master's ego, his image of himself as a decent human being, required
that he see the slave as less than human, as a subspecies, like an ape or a monkey.
His ego needed ideas and discourse that justify slavery as a natural, rational, and
legitimate arrangement.
production and relations of production with
Root Cause
Generic
Racism is a modern phenomenonno prior incidents
l.gong
the history of the concept of

race and race prejudice suggest that there are few examples of race prejudice in
ancient civilizations. Du Bois presents evidence of race prejudice emerging in India
about 5,000 years ago, after the lightskinned Aryans conquered the darkerskinned
inhabitants. The lighterskinned people despised the darker in caste skinned ones.
However, Du Bois (1969a, p. 177) concluded, "The whites long held the conquered
blacks servitude, but eventually the color line disappeared before commerce and
industry, intermarriage, and defense against enemies from without .'' Underscoring Du
Bois's view, Gossett (1971, p. 7) said, "If race ever was the original basis of caste in India it did
not remain so." Although the Greeks were aware of differences in skin color , these
differences did not have the same connotation they have in modern society . The
Greeks, for example, referred to Africa as the land of the burnt faces, but they never
attached a stigma to darker skin color (Du Bois 1969b). The Greeks were suspicious of
foreigners, and they were chauvinistic, but they treated foreigners who became part of
their society, including Africans, much as they treated their own people. Although the Greeks
divided people into Greeks and barbarians, this division was nonracial. It was based on
membership in society rather than racial or ethnic origin. Arguing this point more succinctly, Cox (1970, p.
Racism and Ancient Civilization A number of scholars who have examined
323) said, The Greeks knew that they had a superior culture to those of the barbarians, but they included
Europeans, Africans, and Asiatics in the concept Hellas as these peoples acquired a working knowledge of the Greek
culture. . . . The experience of the later Hellenistic empire of Alexander tended to be the direct contrary of modern
racial antagonism. The Greek myth of Phathon, the son of the god Helios, illustrates the point that Greek culture
explains differences in skin color as a function of different levels of exposure to the sun. According to this legend,
Phathon convinced his father to allow him to pilot the sun chariot across the sky. Phathon lost control of the
chariot and drove it "too close to the earth in some regions, burning the people there black, and drove it too far
In Greek
culture, darker skin meant closer exposure to the sun and little else. The Greek
philosopher Aristotle wrote about slavery and race. Although his writings were used to
justify black slavery in 19thcentury United States, his views are profoundly different from
those of modern racists. In the early 1800s, supporters of slavery in the United States interpreted Aristotle
as saying that some races are naturally suited for slavery. Indeed, in his Politics, Aristotle (1969, p. 11) said,
"For there is one rule exercised over subjects who are by nature free, another over
subjects who are by nature slaves." He added, "The master is not called a master
because he has science, but because he is of a certain character, and the same remark
applies to the slave and the freeman" (p. 12). Page 39 Although Aristotle justified slavery, he offered some
criticisms. He conceded that it is possible for powerful nations to engage in unjust wars
and make slaves of the nobility of the conquered nations. He intimated that slavery should not be a
permanent state and that slaves should be rewarded with liberty (Aristotle 1969, p. 191).
Moreover, he suggested that constitutional governments, which rule by law rather than by nature, are
inconsistent with slavery (pp. 1112). Aristotle maintained that racial differences are
products of climatic and environmental differences and that slaves taken in war are often more
from the earth in other regions, whose inhabitants turned pale from the cold" (Gossett 1971, p. 6).
intelligent than their captors. Specifically he said, Those who live in a cold climate and in Europe are full of spirit,
but wanting in intelligence and skill and there they retain comparative freedom, but have no political organization,
and are incapable of ruling over others. Whereas the natives of Asia are intelligent and inventive, but they are
wanting in spirit, and therefore they are always in a state of subjection and slavery. But the Hellenic race, which is
situated between them, is likewise intermediate in character, being highspirited and also intelligent. Hence it
continues free, and is the bestgoverned of any nation, and if it could be formed into one state, would be able to rule
the world. (Aristotle's Politics, quoted in Gossett 1971, p. 6)
Aristotle did not see slaves as less
intelligent, less virtuous, or less human than others. In contrast, modern racism stigmatizes
oppressed racial groups as less intelligent, less virtuous, and less human than the dominant racial groups. Like the
In this
civilization also we do not find racial antagonism , for the norm of superiority in the Roman system
remained a culturalclass attribute. . . . Sometimes the slaves, especially the Greeks, were the
teachers of their masters indeed, very much of the cultural enlightenment of the Romans came through
Greeks, the Romans were chauvinistic but not racist. Commenting on the Romans, Cox (1970, p. 324) said,
slaves from the East. Because slavery did not carry a racial stigma, educated freedmen, who were granted
citizenship upon emancipation, might rise to high positions in government or industry. There were no interracial
laws governing the relationship of the great mass of obscure common people of different origin. A number of
historians corroborate Cox's contention that the type of color prejudice found in modern America and in Western
nothing
comparable to the virulent color prejudice found in modern times existed in the
ancient world. This is the view of most scholars who have examined the evidence and who have come to
conclusions much as these: the ancients did not fall into the error of biological racism black skin color was
not a sign of inferiority, Greeks and Romans did not establish color as an obstacle to integration in society
and ancient society was one that , for all its faults and failures, never made color the
basis for judging a man. Snowden concluded that Greek and Roman culture portrayed a
favorable image of blacks. This favorable image is evident in the works of Greek and Roman artists,
society simply did not exist in the ancient world. For example, Snowden (1983, p. 63) said, Yet
historians, philosophers, poets, and writers, including Ovid and Homer. Commenting on the integration of African
characters into Greek and Roman mythology, Snowden (1983, p. 94) said that Zeus, "called the Ethiopian by the
inhabitants of Chios, may have been the black or dark faced stranger in the Inachus of Sophocles (c. 496406 B.C.)
Other black figures include Delphos,

the founder of the Delphi, whose name means the Black Woman, and Andromeda,
wife of Perseus, who was the daughter of an Ethiopian king. Although these figures
were depicted as black, their images have been positive and wellintegrated in Greek
culture. Color for the Greeks and Romans did not have the same connotation that it had for the Western world
and may have appeared as a Negro in the dramatist's satyrplay."
after the 17th century. For example, Africans intermarried with Greeks and Romans and held prominent positions in
these societies. In contrast, during the 19th and 20th centuries, U.S. laws prohibited interracial marriages, black
skin was a stigma of inferiority, and slavery or sharecropping were fixed social stations. For the most part,
incorporation and accommodation followed conquest in ancient societies . When the
Greeks conquered the Egyptians, they incorporated Egyptian culturescience, mathematics, philosophy, and
technology and advanced Greek culture well beyond its preconquest state. The Romans advanced their culture
after conquering, incorporating, and accommodating the Greeks. Both Romans and Greeks struggled to maintain
cultural unity in the midst of color diversity. This pattern began to break down in late feudalism, especially during
the Crusades.
Capitalism Generic
Race pre-figures the issue of capitalism
Mills 97 (Charles, author and advocate of blackness, The Racial Contract, pp. 31-40, acc.
7/13/14, arh)
The classic social contract, as I have detailed, is primarily moral/political in nature. But it is also economic in the background sense
that the point of leaving the state of nature is in part to secure a stable environment for the
industrious appropriation of the world. (After all, one famous definition of politics is that it is about who gets what and why.) Thus even in Locke's moralized state of
nature, where people generally do obey natural law, he is concerned about the safety of private property, indeed proclaiming that "the great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and
putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property."42 And in Hobbes's famously amoral and unsafe state of nature, we are told that "there is no place for Industry; because the fruit
So part of the point of bringing society into existence, with its

laws and enforcers of the law, is to protect what you have accumulated. / What, then, is the nature of the economic system of
thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth."43
the new society? The general contract does not itself prescribe a particular model or particular schedule of property rights, requiring only that the "equality" in the prepolitical state be somehow preserved. This
provision may be variously interpreted as a self-interested surrender to an absolutist Hobbesian government that itself determines property rights, or a Lockean insistence that private property accumulated in the
moralized state of nature be respected by the constitutionalist government. Or more radical political theorists, such as socialists and feminists, might argue that state-of-nature equality actually mandates class or
different political interpretations of the initial moral egalitarianism can be

advanced, but the general background idea is that the equality of human beings in the state of
nature is somehow (whether as equality of opportunity or as equality of outcome) supposed to carry over into the economy of the
created sociopolitical order, leading to a system of voluntary human intercourse and exchange in
which exploitation is precluded. / By contrast, the economic dimension of the Racial Contract is
the most salient, foreground rather than background, since the Racial Contract is calculatedly
aimed at economic exploitation. The whole point of establishing a moral hierarchy and
juridically partitioning the polity according to race is to secure and legitimate the privileging of
those individuals designated as white/persons and the exploitation of those individuals
designated as nonwhite/subpersons. There are other benefits accruing from the Racial Contractfar greater political influence, cultural hegemony, the psychic payoff
that comes from knowing one is a member of the Herrenvolk (what W. E. B. Du Bois once called "the wages of whiteness")44but the bottom line is material advantage. Globally, the Racial
Contract creates Europe as the continent that dominates the world; locally, within Europe and
the other continents, it designates Europeans as the privileged race. / The challenge of explaining
what has been called "the European miracle"the rise of Europe to global domination has long exercised both academic
and lay opinion.45 How is it that a formerly peripheral region on the outskirts of the Asian land
mass, at the far edge of the trade routes, remote from the great civilizations of Islam and the
East, was able in a century or two to achieve global political and economic dominance? The
explanations historically given by Europeans themselves have varied tremendously, from the straightforwardly
racist and geographically determinist to the more subtly environmentalist and culturalist. But
what they have all had in common, even those influenced by Marxism, is their tendency to
depict this development as essentially autochthonous, their tendency to privilege some set of
internal variables and correspondingly-downplay or ignore altogether the role of colonial
conquest and African slavery. Europe made it on its own, it is said, because of the peculiar characteristics of Europe and Europeans. / Thus whereas no reputable historian today
gender economic egalitarianism in society. So,
would espouse the frankly biologistic theories of the past, which made Europeans (in both pre- and post-Darwinian accounts) inherently the most advanced race, as contrasted with the backward/less-evolved
races elsewhere, the thesis of European specialness and exceptionalism is still presupposed. It is still assumed that rationalism and science, innovativeness and inventiveness found their special home here, as
against the intellectual stagnation and traditionalism of the rest of the world, so that Europe was therefore destined in advance to occupy the special position in global history it has. James Blaut calls this the
theory, or "super-theory" (an umbrella covering many different versions: theological, cultural, biologistic, geographical, technological, etc.), of "Eurocentric diffusionism," according to which European progress is
seen as "natural" and asymmetrically determinant of the fate of non-Europe." Similarly, Sandra Harding, in her anthology on the "racial" economy of science, cites "the assumption that Europe functions
autonomously from other parts of the world; that Europe is its own origin, final end, and agent; and that Europe and people of European descent in the Americas and elsewhere owe nothing to the rest of the
Third World theorists have traditionally dissented from this notion of happy
European dispensation. They have claimed, quite to the contrary, that there is a crucial causal
connection between European advance and the unhappy fate of the rest of the world. One classic
example of such scholarship from a half century ago was the Caribbean historian Eric Williams's Capitalism and Slavery,
which argued that the profits from African slavery helped to make the industrial revolution
possible, so that internalist accounts were fundamentally mistaken. 48 And in recent years, with decolonization, the rise of the New
world."47 / Unsurprisingly, black and
divine or natural
Left in the United States, and the entry of more alternative voices into the academy, this challenge has deepened and broadened. There are variations in the authors' positionsfor example, Walter Rodney, Samir
the exploitation of the empire (the bullion from the great

gold and silver mines in Mexico and Peru, the profits from plantation slavery, the fortunes made
by the colonial companies, the general social and economic stimulus provided by the opening up
of the "New World") was to a greater or lesser extent crucial in enabling and then consolidating the takeoff of
what had previously been an economic backwater. It was far from the case that Europe was
Amin, Andre Guilder Frank, Immanuel Wallerstein9but the basic theme is that
specially destined to assume economic hegemony; there were a number of centers in Asia and
Africa of a comparable level of development which could potentially have evolved in the same
way. But the European ascent closed off this development path for others because it forcibly
inserted them into a colonial network whose exploitative relations and extractive mechanisms
prevented autonomous growth. / Overall, then, colonialism "lies at the heart" of the rise of Europe.50
The economic unit of analysis needs to be Europe as a whole, since it is not always the case that the colonizing nations directly involved always benefited in the long term. Imperial Spain, for example, still feudal in
character, suffered massive inflation from its bullion imports. But through trade and financial exchange, others launched on the capitalist path, such as Holland, profited. Internal national rivalries continued, of
course, but this common identity based on the transcontinental exploitation of the non-European world would in many cases be politically crucial, generating a sense of Europe as a cosmopolitan entity engaged in
a common enterprise, underwritten by race. As Victor Kiernan puts it, "All countries within the European orbit benefited however, as Adam Smith pointed out, from colonial contributions to a common stock of
wealth, bitterly as they might wrangle over ownership of one territory or another... [T]here was a sense in which all Europeans shared in a heightened sense of power engendered by the successes of any of them, as
well as in the pool of material wealth... that the colonies produced."51 / Today, correspondingly, though formal decolonization has taken place and in Africa and Asia black, brown, and yellow natives are in office,
ruling independent nations, the global economy is essentially dominated by the former colonial powers, their offshoots (Euro-United States, Euro-Canada), and their international financial institutions, lending
agencies, and corporations. (As previously observed, the notable exception, whose history confirms rather than challenges the rule, is Japan, which escaped colonization and, after the Meiji Restoration,
successfully embarked on its own industrialization.)
Thus
one could say that
the world is essentially dominated by white capital.
Global figures on income and property
if a transnational racial disaggregation were to be done, it

would reveal that whites control a percentage of the world's wealth grossly disproportionate to
their numbers. Since there is no reason to think that the chasm between First and Third Worlds
(which largely coincides with this racial division) is going to be bridgedvide the abject failure of various United Nations plans
from the "development decade" of the 1960s onward it seems undeniable that for years to come, the planet will be white
dominated. With the collapse of communism and the defeat of Third World attempts to seek
alternative paths, the West reigns supreme, as celebrated in a London Financial Times headline: "The fall of the Soviet bloc has left the IMF and G7 to rule the
world and create a new imperial age."52 Economic structures have been set in place, causal processes established,
whose outcome is to pump wealth from one side of the globe to another, and which will continue
to work largely independently of the ill will/good will, racist/antiracist feelings of particular
individuals. This globally color-coded distribution of wealth and poverty has been produced by
the Racial Contract and in turn reinforces adherence to it in its signatories and beneficiaries. /
Moreover, it is not merely that Europe and the former white settler states are globally dominant but
that within them, where there is a significant nonwhite presence (indigenous peoples, descendants of imported slaves, voluntary
nonwhite immigration), whites continue to be privileged vis-a-vis non-whites. The old structures of formal, de jure exclusion have largely been
dismantled, the old explicitly biologistic ideologies largely abandoned53the Racial Contract, as will be discussed later, is continually being rewrittenbut opportunities for
nonwhites, though they have expanded, remain below those for whites. The claim is not, of course, that
all whites are better off than all nonwhites, but that, as a statistical generalization, the objective
life chances of whites are significantly better. / As an example, consider the United States. A series of books has recently documented the decline of the
integrationist hopes raised by the 1960s and the growing intransigence and hostility of whites who think they have "done enough," despite the fact
that the country continues to be massively segregated, median black family incomes have begun
falling by comparison to white family incomes after some earlier closing of the gap, the so-called "black underclass"
has basically been written off, and reparations for slavery and post-Emancipation discrimination have
never been paid, or, indeed, even seriously considered.54 Recent work on racial inequality by Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro suggests that wealth
is more important than income in determining the likelihood of future racial equalization, since
it has a cumulative effect that is passed down through intergenerational transfer, affecting life
chances and opportunities for one's children. Whereas in 1988 black households earned sixty two cents for every dollar earned by white households, the
comparative differential with regard to wealth is much greater and, arguably, provides a more realistically negative picture of the prospects for closing the racial gap: "Whites possess
nearly twelve times as much median net worth as blacks, or $43,800 versus $3,700. In an even starker contrast, perhaps, the average white
household controls $6,999 in net financial assets while the average black household retains no NFA nest egg whatsoever." Moreover, the analytic focus on wealth rather than
income exposes how illusory the much-trumpeted rise of a "black middle class" is: "Middle class
blacks, for example, earn seventy cents for every dollar earned by middle-class whites but they
possess only fifteen cents for every dollar of wealth held by middle-class whites." This huge
disparity in white and black wealth is not remotely contingent, accidental, fortuitous; it is the
direct outcome of American state policy and the collusion with it of the white citizenry. In effect,
"materially, whites and blacks constitute two nations,"55 the white nation being constituted by
the American Racial Contract in a relationship of structured racial exploitation with the black
(and, of course, historically also the red ) nation. / A collection of papers from panels organized in the 1980s by the National Economic Association, the
ownership are, of course, broken down nationally rather than racially, but
professional organization of black economists, provides some insight into the mechanics and the magnitude of such exploitative transfers and denials of opportunity to accumulate material and human capital. It
takes as its title The Wealth of Racesan ironic tribute to Adam Smith's famous book The Wealth of Nationsand analyzes the different varieties of discrimination to which blacks have been subjected: slavery,
employment discrimination, wage discrimination, promotion discrimination, white monopoly power discrimination against black capital, racial price discrimination in consumer goods, housing, services,
insurance, etc.56 Many of these, by their very nature, are difficult to quantify; moreover, there are costs in anguish and suffering that can never really be compensated. Nonetheless, those that do lend themselves
to calculation offer some remarkable figures. (The figures are unfortunately dated; readers should multiply by a factor that takes fifteen years of inflation into account.) If one were to do a calculation of the
cumulative benefits (through compound interest) from labor market discrimination over the forty-year period from 1929 to 1969 and adjust for inflation, then in 1983 dollars, the figure would be over $1.6
trillion.57 An estimate for the total of "diverted income" from slavery, 1790 to 1860, compounded and translated into 1983 dollars, would yield the sum of $2.1 trillion to $4.7 trillion.58 And
if one
were to try to work out the cumulative value, with compound interest, of unpaid slave labor
before 1863, underpayment since 1863, and denial of opportunity to acquire land and natural
resources available to white settlers, then the total amount required to compensate blacks "could
take more than the entire wealth of the U nited S tates"59 / So this gives an idea of the centrality of racial
exploitation to the U.S. econ omy and the dimensions of the payoff for its white beneficiaries from one
nation's Racial Contract. But this very centrality, these very dimensions render the topic taboo, virtually
undiscussed in the debates on justice of most white political theory. If there is such a backlash against affirmative action, what
would the response be to the demand for the interest on the unpaid forty acres and a mule? These issues cannot be raised because they go to the
heart of the real nature of the polity and its structuring by the Racial Contract. White moral
theory's debates on justice in the state must therefore inevitably have a somewhat farcical air,
since they ignore the central injustice on which the state rests. (No wonder a hypothetical contractarianism that evades the actual
circumstances of the polity's founding is preferred!) / Both globally and within particular nations, then, white people, Europeans and their descendants, continue to benefit from the Racial Contract, which creates
a world in their cultural image, political states differentially favoring their interests, an economy structured around the racial exploitation of others, and a moral psychology (not just in whites but sometimes in
nonwhites also) skewed consciously or unconsciously toward privileging them, taking the status quo of differential racial entitlement as normatively legitimate, and not to be investigated further.
Capitalism needs racism to work

Manuela Bojadijev 11/29/06 Translate Does Contemporary Capitalism Need Racism?
http://translate.eipcp.net/strands/02/bojadzijev-strands01en#redir (MG)
Integration, Integration, Integration. Wherever you look at you can find Anti-discrimination programmes, new
initiatives for migration legislation, language course programmes, citizenship tests etc. These services represent a
mixture of incentives and coercions to deal with the constant recomposition of migration within and to Europe.
Integration seems to provide the magic formula, a new chorus line that bans all dissonance and creates a deeprooted consensus between those who are supposed to belong to and those, who want to give admittance to their
participation. How are we to understand racism in a situation where consensus dictates that racism has been
eliminated from modern societies? How do we make sense of racism at a moment when integration promises to
deal with the residual frictions and contradictions in our immigration societies? There are voices that do not accept
this consensus and that question the paradigm of integration. They doubt that a respective form of society can be
conceptualised according to its ability to balance governmental, economic, and social means for managing and
regulating processes of immigration on the one hand and, on the other hand, facilitating the step by step
integration of migrants. Rightly, these critics point to the asymmetry reproduced time and again by integration as a
governmental imperative. What if we bear this critic in mind but switch the perspective for a moment? What if we
understand the current debates around integration as inadequate to speak of exploitation and racism? Let me take
that inadequacy as a starting point for discussing the given question on the relation between Capitalism and Racism
today. Let me begin by recalling a couple of crucial objections to and presumptions within the integration question. I
flaws in the integration debate make problematic a functional

relation between Capitalism and Racism even if I am running the risk of stating the obvious. a)
There is no consistent subject of Capitalism that needs Racism ; b) there is not even a
consistent subject as 'the State' that needs Racism ; c) we cannot speak of Racism as
one ideology (but rather of ideological race constructions) . I've always found the book 'The
will argue that these
Invention of the White Race' by Theodor W. Allen particularly useful in illuminating the shortcomings of a
Allen defines two schemas of

explanation in the historiography of slavery and racism: the psycho-cultural schema
and the socio-economic schema. Following the explanation of the psycho-cultural schema, the
enslavement of blacks was a result of a given psycho-cultural stance of the
colonisers. Allen objects that at the beginning of slavery there existed no racist segregation of the work force.
Both blacks and Whites had been subordinated by temporary bondage. The psycho-cultural approach
presupposes racism prior to slavery. Or more accurately, this schema presupposes an
ideological race construction before racism and its historical mode of existence (in
this case: slavery). Rather than explaining the conditions for the constitution of racism, the psycho-cultural
functionalist explanation of the relation between capitalism and racism.
approach induces and historically deduces its object of analysis. Therewith perpetual race struggles are postulated.
the socio-economic approach attempts to explain racism through slavery.

Thus, Racism is a result of slavery. But this approach, on the other hand, cannot take into account
specific forms of exploitation and racist oppression. According to this explanation, the exploitation of
bondslaves gave way to slavery because an African work force was cheaper . But this
argumentation implies a tautology: An African work force was cheaper because it
was enslaved, and before it was enslaved it was cheaper . The socio-economic approach leaves
Conversely,
the relation between economy and outer-economic forces, that is racism, unsolved and often falls back into psycho-
slaves become fixed capital and are no longer

perceived as the rebellious work force, that they were . The aspect of social control remains
cultural modes of explanation. Additionally,
neglected. If these schemas of explanation remain unsatisfactory then how are we to explain historical conjunctures
of racism Before I attempt to approach this question, let me take a random sample of what we can observe in
that capitalism needs racism, perhaps we can at least state

capitalism does not now nor has it ever existed without labour force
current capitalism. If it is not possible to say

that
mobility . Wherein contemporary global capitalism in its new contours allows us to really grasp the sheer scale
of migratory movements, we do need new metaphors and concepts. The traditional distinctions between economy,
politics and culture have become obsolete. It is simply no longer possible to speak of exploitation, or the realisation
it is
no longer possible to speak of the working class without at the same time
understanding the process of dissolution that has affected the whole 'milieu',
transforming subjectivity in the very process. It seems that in the context of contemporary
capitalism, migration allows us to spot lots of these aspects that intersect here. The regime over
migration movements (that is, the mobility of the work force) plays a key role in
reconstructing the oppression of living labour under capital as a whole. We cannot
begin to understand the transformations in class composition without considering
the management and regulation of migration . As we research migration we detect a subjective
of capital, without raising the question of the transformation of borders and concepts of citizenship. Similarly,
figure for whom the highest degree of labour flexibility, as expressed by the social attitude of migrant workers,
encounters the effects arising from the brutal control of that flexibility. This is not to say that migrants form a
we can
understand the current composition of living labour as a whole articulated within a
new interplay of flexibility, mobility and control on different levels . The common sense
potential vanguard in class composition. Rather, - from the perspective of a specific subject position -
category of the labour market as characterised by specific segmentations, then shows its perfect fragility, its mere
If we perceive migration as a social movement, we can start to think

about the nature of the "encounter" between labour and capital. Speaking of the
attempts to control migration as well as its constitutional force/violence, brings into
play the relations of domination and exploitation characterizing that "encounter." It is
true, were I to reduce racism by definition I would be tempted to relate it to the
capitalist form of socialisation. But even if we presume the permanency of racism, in
the same way that we take for granted the permanency of exploitation, we cannot
assume continuities. Rather we would have to acquire an understanding of the concurrency and
metaphorical value.
ubiquitousness of different ideological race formations. The current conjuncture before all sociological descriptions
and even before all descriptions of discrete forms of existence of racisms would then have to be defined as a form
(in the materialist sense), or rather as a new dominating form that defines ideological race constructions on the
whole.
Turn: America is only what it is today because of the capitalism

that slavery caused in the north
Beckert and Rockman 7/4/11 HSozUKult Slaverys Capitalism: A New History of American
Economic Development http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/tagungsberichte/id=3665 (Sven Beckert, Harvard
University; Seth Rockman, Brown University) (MG)
For generations, historians have struggled to excavate the roots of what Kenneth Pomeranz has called the Great
Divergence: namely, how and why did the nineteenth century see northwestern Europeand later, the United
Statesso abruptly burst forth in an unprecedented explosion of industrial growth while so much of the world
lagged behind in a preindustrial past. Pomeranz himself pointed to two key dissimilarities: access to coal, and
access to the vast resources of the American continent cultivated largely through coerced and slave labor. Yet
historians have been ultimately reticent to chart a

common history of these two institutions that so indelibly marked the global history
of the nineteenth century: capitalism and slavery . Moreover, since the end of the American Civil
War, American historians have been only too eager to make slavery out to be merely
a southern problem, thereby conveniently exculpating the north from its role in
the development and promulgation of this abhorrent institution . Indeed, the northern United
despite Pomeranzs provocative insight,
the infinite
productive capacity of free laborers and yeoman farmers in an open market . The
south, on the other hand, was locked in hopeless stagnationinextricably wedded
to its endless wealth of homegrown cotton founded upon the sweltering sin of its
peculiar institution: slavery. Only the cataclysm of Civil War could have possibly brought the simmering
States, it is so often claimed, represented the modernizing impulse of industrialization itself:
conflict between these two oppositional systems to a head, and thus pave the way towards the ascendance of
popular consciousness has increasingly diverged

from the discourse of many American historians. Indeed, just as many Americans
before the Civil War candidly acknowledged the ways in which slave-grown cotton
was at the foundation of Americas growing industrial ascendanceit was, after all,
the United States most valuable export, as well as the essential resource bringing
specie into the nations fledgling bankspopular discourse has once more returned
to seeing the reverberations of slaverys past all around us . Activists from the reparations
movement have exposed the ways in which Northern companies directly benefited from it ;
American universities have dug into their archives, consciously striving to
disentangle their own links to it; and economists have produced a veritable corpus
of econometric research compellingly demonstrating how slave labor undergirded
Americas industrial revolution. American historians, however, have remained
strangely aloof from these developments . Curiously, the connections between modern
institutions and slaverys past had become so patently self-evident that it seemed
to warrant little further research. Yet nothing could be less true. Indeed, highly charged
statements of northern complicity in southern slavingwhether true or not
mask a far more complicated, contradictory, and often disconcerting historical
reality. And although much is already known about the abstract linkages between
northern industry and southern slavery, there still exists little scholarly research on
the precise connections between these two key enterprises once central to
American economic development. With these questions in mind, Sven Beckert, Laird Bell Professor of
liberal capitalism. Yet in the last two decades,
History at Harvard University, and Seth Rockman, Professor of History at Brown University, brought together
seventeen scholars for a conference aimed at painting a very different picture of American economic development.
how might American history look different once we invite the possibility that
perhaps the industrialization of the north and the proliferation of slavery in the
south were not rival developments, but rather, transformations deeply embedded
within one another? What were the precise connections between the burgeoning economic institutions of the
Indeed,
northbanks, merchant establishments, trading firms, commercial shippers, and industrial manufacturersand the
slave plantations of the south? And ultimately, how might an understanding of slaverys capitalism alter our
understandings of the development of the American economy and its particular place in world history? The
conference opened at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island on April 7 to a wonderfully provocative keynote
address by Brown University President RUTH SIMMONS (Providence) on how the university itself can play a key role
in fostering open, public dialogueeven on contentious issues like the history of slavery. After three days and six
panels, the conference ended at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts on April 9, 2011. The first panel,
Finance, explored the intricacies of how slavery was capitalized and funded. First, JOSHUA D. ROTHMAN
(Tuscaloosa) traced the ways in which speculation in slave labor further inflated the financial bubble of the 1830s
that culminated in the Panic of 1837. Indeed, Rothman detailed the ways in which northern financial markets
supplied the loans (based on the potential return, in labor, of plantation slaves) which effectively made this
speculative economic boomand subsequent bustpossible. BONNIE MARTIN (University Park) then interrogated
mortgaging (often repeated mortgaging) of slaves brought in muchneeded cash and capital to the south . Yet Martin ultimately emphasized that northern banks and
the ways in which the
merchants were actually much less involved in this process than the complex neighbor-to-neighbor networks which
permeated local southern communities. Finally, KATHRYN BOODRY (Cambridge) compellingly detailed the ways in
slavery was just one part of a larger, integrated Atlantic economy of cotton,
capital, and textile manufacturing. The second panel, Development, explored the institutional force
which
and coherence of slavery. First, JOHN MAJEWSKI (Santa Barbara) presented a paper that sought, if not for just a
take Abraham Lincoln seriously in his fears that slavery might have spread
north. Indeed, Majewski showed how in the so-called limestone southnorthern Virginia, the Kentucky
moment, to
Bluegrass region, and the Tennessee Nashville Basinthe natural, built, and cultural environment did not look all
slavery perhaps did have the potential to be

a national institution, arguing that the defining factor that inhibited its growth in any
given area was not climate or economics, but conscious political decision-making .
STANLEY ENGERMAN (Rochester) then presented, arguing that although it was undoubtedly true that
northern merchants were involved in the financing of slavery, whether or not the
slave trade was necessary to northern economic development is a very different
and far more complicated question. Indeed, Engerman pointed out that many other national
too different from the north. Thus, he concluded that
economies thrived in this period without slavery. Thus, he ultimately asked whether slavery undergirded New
Englands industrial ascendance, or whether it was the very success of New Englands economy that made slavery
such a thriving institution. Before the next panel started, conference co-convener Seth Rockman reminded the
what
exactly is capitalism? and to what degree it is merely synonymous with economic
development. He argued that although, historically, there may have been other nations
exhibiting capitalism without slavery, this does not preclude the simple fact that
nineteenth-century America did indeed witness the institutional development of
both slavery and capitalism. Thus, Rockman argued that we should continue to keep our sights set on
audience that we should be hesitant to rush into abstruse theoretical debates about questions of
telling a better American economic history, not on redefining the very theoretical foundations of capitalism itself. In
the last panel of the day, Commerce, ERIC KIMBALL (Greensburg) asked how we might then quantify complicity:
By
exploring the connections between West-Indian sugar plantations and northern
industries like lumber and whaling, Kimball made a compelling argument that
northern manufacturing and resource extraction was indelibly linked to slaverys
profitability. Next, CALVIN SCHERMERHORN (Phoenix) showed how the coastwise slave trade was itself an
integral part of United States developing commercial shipping network. Finally, DANIEL ROOD (Worcester)
detailed the ways in which the wheat-flour economy of the antebellum era was
instrumental in pioneering new methods of business integration, foreign trade, and
technological change.
which is to say, how might we quantify the level of involvement most northerners had with the slave trade?
Capitalism White Supremacy

White supremacy is the root cause of Capitalism and
colonialism
Rabaka 7 (Reiland Rabaka, Professor of African, African American, and Caribbean
Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado at

Boulder, Ph.D., Temple University, 8/4/7, The Souls of White Folk: W.E.B. Du Boiss
Critique of White Supremacy and Contributions to Critical White Studies,
http://link.springer.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/article/10.1007%2Fs12111-007-90118/fulltext.html.)//ky
Traditionally white supremacy has been treated in race and racism discourse as
white domination of and white discrimination against non-whites, and especially
blacks. It is a term that often carries a primarily legal and political connotation,
which has been claimed time and time again to be best exemplified by the historic
events and contemporary effects of: African holocaust, enslavement and
colonization; the failure of reconstruction, the ritual of lynching and the rise of Jim
Crow segregation in the United States; and, white colonial and racial rule
throughout Africa, and especially apartheid in South Africa (Cell 1982; Fredrickson
1981; Marx 1998; Shapiro 1988). Considering the fact that state-sanctioned
segregation and black political disenfranchisement have seemed to come to an end,
white supremacy is now seen as classical nomenclature which no longer refers to
contemporary racial and social conditions. However, instead of being a relic of the
past that refers to an odd or embarrassing moment in the United States and South
Africas (among many other racist nations and empires) march toward multicultural
democracy, it remains one of the most appropriate ways to characterize current
racial national and international conditions. Which, in other words, is to say that
white supremacy has been and remains central to modernity (and postmodernity)
because modernity (especially in the sense that this term is being used in
European and American academic and aesthetic discourse) reeks of racial
domination and discrimination (Goldberg 1993; Gordon 1997, 2000a; Outlaw 1996).
It is an epoch (or aggregate of eras) which symbolizes not simply the invention of
race, but the perfection of a particular species of global racism: white supremacy.
Hence, modernity is not merely the moment of the invention of race, but more, as
Theodore Allen argues in The Invention of the White Race (1994, 1997), it served as
an incubator for the invention of the white race and a peculiar pan-Europeanism
predicated on the racial ruling, cultural degradation and, at times, physical
decimation of the life-worlds of people of color. In The Souls of White Folk, which
was initially published in the Independent in 1910, then substantially revised and
published in Darkwater (1920), Du Bois stated, Everything considered, the title to
the universe claimed by White Folk is faulty (1995a, p. 454). Long before the
recent discourse on racism and critical white studies, Du Bois called into question
white superiority and white privilege, and the possibility of white racelessness
and/or white racial neutrality and universality. He was one of the first theorists to
chart the changes in race relations from de jure to de facto forms of white
supremacy, referring to it, as early as 1910, as the new religion of whiteness
(454). White supremacy would or will not end unless and until the values and views
endemic to it and associated with it were or are rejected and replaced by radical
and, I am wont to say, following Peter McLaren, revolutionarymulticultural and
uncompromising ethical views and values (McLaren 1994, 1997, 1999a, b; see also
Goldberg 1994; May 1999). The rejection of white supremacy and the replacement
of white supremacist views and values involves not only blacks and other people of
color, but whites as well. As the examples of the Emancipation Proclamation,
Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights movement indicate, changes in the law and its
interpretation and application do not always translate into racial justice and social
transformation (Berry 1994; Higginbotham 1978, 1996; D. King 1995). White
supremacist social views and values linger long after amendments have been made
2 J Afr Am St (2007) 11:115 and laws changed. Therefore, law-focused critical white
studies and critical race theory provide at best only part of the picture (Bonilla-Silva
2001; Delgado 1995; Delgado and Stefancic 1997). The conception and critique of
white supremacy that I develop here does not seek to sidestep socio-legal race
discourse as much as it intends to supplement it with the work of Du Bois and
others in radical politics and critical social theory (Rabaka 2002, 2003a,b,c,d,
2005a,b,c). One of the main reasons this supplemental approach to critical white
studies (and critical race theory) is important is because typically legal studies of
race confine theorists to particular national social and political arenas, which is
problematic considering the fact that white supremacy is an international or global
racist system (Mills 1999; Rabaka 2006a,b,c). Du Bois declared, whiteness is the
ownership of the earth forever and ever, Amen! (1995a, p. 454). Here he is
sardonically hinting at the cardinal difference between white supremacy and most
other forms of racism: its worldwide historical, cultural, social, political, legal, and
economic influence and impact. White supremacy serves as the glue that connects
and combines racism to colonialism, and racism to capitalism. It has also been
illustrated that it exacerbates sexism by sexing racism and racing sexism, to put it
unpretentiously. Thus, white supremacy as a global racism intersects and
interconnects with sexism, and particularly patriarchy as a global system that
oppresses and denies womens human dignity and right to be humanly different
from men, the ruling gender (Davis 1981, 1989; hooks 1981, 1984, 1991, 1995; J.A.
James 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999; Lorde 1984, 1988; Rabaka 2003e, 2004).
White supremacy is the symbol of economic exploitation and

establishes racism in capitalist greed, resulting in the looting
of colored culture and knowledge

From Du Boiss optic, blacks had been unable to give civilization the full spiritual
message which they are capable of giving primarily because of white supremacy
and its enormous and unfathomable effects on Africana life-worlds and livedexperiences. His early uncertainty regarding the African origins of ancient Egyptian
civilization was laid to rest as a result of the research of Franz Boas, Leo Frobenius,
and Harry Johnston, among others. If Egypt, undoubtedly one of the greatest
classical civilizations, was African or, at the least, initiated by Africansas Du Bois
documented in The Negro, Black Folk Then and Now, and The World and Africa
then, it would be a great disservice to modern Africana people to argue that they
have given no message to the world. As he studied and learned more of Africas
ancient and pre-colonial past, Du Boiss gift theory shifted its emphasis from
Africana people giving the full, complete Negro message...to the world, to
accenting and highlighting classical African contributions to culture and civilization
with an eye toward: first, confronting and combating the white supremacist theses
of, of course, white superiority and black inferiority and, also, blacks purported lack
of history and culture; second, providing contemporary Africana people with
classical Africana cultural paradigms and traditional motifs; and, finally, offering a
caveat to continental and diasporan Africans that their task is not so much to give
the definitive Africana message to the world (something, on second thought, that
may never really be possible), but to contribute to and continue the Africana
struggle for freedom and justice in their age and leave a legacy for succeeding
generations. Generic racism, if there is such a thing, essentially entails racial
domination and discrimination. White supremacy does not simply racially oppress,
as Du Bois asserts above. Being the fraternal twin (or, at the least, a sibling of some
sort) of capitalism it racially oppresses in the interest of nonpareil racialized
economic exploitation. It symbolizes the intensification of economic exploitation by
adding a racist dimension to capitalist greed and colonial gain. Hinging on a
diabolical dialectic that sees whites as superior and non-whites as inferior, white
supremacy consumes the world of color and claims non-whites contributions to
human culture and civilization as European or white contributions to culture and
civilization. This is so because from the white supremacist point of view, non-whites
do not now and have never possessed culture and civilization and, therefore, could
not possibly contribute to the (re) construction of something they do not now and
have never possessed. Further, white supremacy enables and utterly encourages
whites to theoretically and culturally loot the knowledge banks and cultural treasure
troves of the colored world, similar to the way whites did when they established
racial colonialism and colonial capitalism, because it is a global system that rewards
based on the embrace of white hegemonic views and values, white conquest and
racialized colonization.
Class Struggle
Capitalist society is dependent on racism
Pamela Brown No Date Alter Net Can We Have Capitalism Without Racism? The Invisible Chains of Debt
and the Catastrophic Loss of African American Wealth http://www.alternet.org/economy/can-we-have-capitalismwithout-racism-invisible-chains-debt-and-catastrophic-loss-african?page=0%2C1 (MG)
Years after Thomas Jeffersons famous words all men are created equal began to
ring as a call to conscience, he himself must have felt every bit of their hollowness .
Polish Revolutionary War hero Thaddeus Kosciuszko bequeathed Jefferson enough money to free his slaves, as well
as to set them off with land and farming equipment of their own, but Jefferson refused this gift. Instead, he died
with a debt hanging over Monticello a kind of debt that he was the first to incur through monetizing his slaves for
The slave families, who resided on

Jeffersons estate as intact families, were separated and sold to pay the outstanding
debt such that the estate could be passed down to its rightful heir. In spite of words
we have no reason not to believe were heartfelt, and in spite of fathering six black
children, Jefferson was not able to rise to the call of his words in the end, leaving as
mixed a legacy as the American history that has followed . And in spite of
generations of black descendants, no reparation has ever been paid to them; they
remain a forgotten part of this legacy. As the story is most commonly told, there is only mention
use as collateral for the loan to build his estate (Weincek 2012: 96).
made to a legitimate debt paid with the bodies, blood and breath of Jefferson slaves, but no mention of any owing
to them. Unfortunately, this telling of Jeffersons story not only exposes the power dynamics of the past, but also
discloses a fundamental understanding of the world that continues to rear its ugly head today. During Jeffersons
life, Wall Street was already expanding on and experimenting with the monetization of human life through debt. In
1804, well before the battle for abolition was won here in America, but only after a bloody 13-year struggle, Haitian
slaves liberated themselves by successfully defeating Napoleon. President Jefferson was the first to refuse to
recognize their independence from France. As a result, over twenty years later, the French reminded the Haitians
that they, themselves, constituted a debt. The Haitians did the only thing they could to retain their physical
freedom and borrowed the equivalent of $150 million (almost double the cost of Louisiana) from Wall Street to pay
this original predatory debt reaped enormous rewards

and in the end they paid the equivalent of $20 billion dollars for their freedom
something that never should have been for sale . And all the way up until 1947, 80%
of Haitis economy went to pay off this debt to National City Bank known today as
Citibank. Of course, the price of freedom was unrelenting poverty, the permanent loss
of opportunity to develop infrastructure, and the seemingly never-ending suffering
in enslavement of another form. Yet, when we talk about debt, mostly we talk about it
as a thing as the kind of thing that hangs from the body like a ball and chain or
from our necks like an albatross. We talk a lot about how debt makes us feel:
atomized, isolated, alone. But, we dont often talk about how the neoliberal
construct of perpetual indebtedness to non-human financial entities has created a
populace so focused on debts owed to Wall Street that we have no collective
memory of any other kinds of debts. But, once we open Pandoras box to take a look
at the intersections of debt and race, we are forced to ask ourselves how it is that
we have forgotten so much. Could it be that alongside the rise of the neoliberal social
order characterized by the isolation of the invisible chains of debt, a parallel
practice of colorblindness arose that produces the invisibility of race ? And if Malcolm X
was correct that we cannot have capitalism without racism, we have to ask ourselves
whether racism has really declined with colorblindness, or whether colorblindness
might be neoliberalisms corollary. It has been under a gray monotone cloud that a predatory debt
reparations to the French. Of course,
system has been advanced, one that stripped African Americans of all economic gains subsequent to Civil Rights,
Theres plenty of
evidence of racism in spite of all the talk about post-racial America . Still, it comes as a
big surprise that while we have been declaring race dead, structural racism has
clearly increased. In fact 50 years after Civil Rights, 150 years after the
and that spread throughout the rest of the economy, impacting generations to come.
Emancipation Proclamation, and during the first black presidency, white Americans
currently hold at least 19 times the wealth of African-Americans (Kochhar 2010: 3). Put into
perspective, in 1984 the ratio was 12 to 1, dipping to 7 to 1 in 1995, jumping to an
astonishing 19 to 1 in 2009, and is probably even greater now . In practical terms this
means that the average middle income black family has less wealth than the
average white family with earnings below the poverty line (Shapiro 2004: 7). According to a
2010 Brandeis University study, in the last 23 years, the racial wealth gap increased by 75K from
20K to 95K (Shapiro 2010: 2). Even within the highest income African Americans, wealth
has fallen from 25K to 18K, whereas the wealth of whites in a similar class surged to
240K (Shapiro 2010: 2). White families saw a dramatic growth of financial assets
excluding home value from 22K to 100K, while African Americans saw very little
increase at all (Shapiro 2010: 1). Because family wealth is the biggest predictor of personal wealth, and wealth
is used to pay for education, this gap assures racial inequality for at least the next generation. Already 81% of
African American students are graduating from college an average of 29K in the
hole (Johnson, 2012: 21). And already the average middle income African American
worker would have to spend an additional twelve weeks per year working to earn
the same amount as a white worker (Shapiro 2004: 7). As a result, between 1984 and 2007
African Americans actually doubled their debt burden as measured by assets
against liabilities. At the rate blacks have been falling behind since the mid 90s, black and white
median wealth will never ever reach parity, and unless something is done, these
paths will continue to diverge.
Colonialism
Racism was a result of the political economy, where it was
essential to European dominance and globalization

Materialist accounts of race, which are primarily inspired by Marxist theory,
maintain that racism does not have to do with culture as much as it does with
political economy. Europeans needed a cheap labor force to extra-exploit and work
their newly and imperially acquired continents, countries, colonial settlements and
plantations. For the racial materialists it was not about religion or civilization or
science, but an economics and politics reduced to its lowest and most racist level
(Cox 1959, 1987; Genovese 1965, 1969, 1974, 1979; C.L.R. James 1963, 1995,
1996; E. Williams 1966). Finally, racial constructionists contend that race is an
outgrowth of human beings inherent ethnocentrism, but that racism is a result of
Europes push for global dominance. In this view, no matter who invented race, its
reasons for J Afr Am St (2007) 11:115 3 origination, and whether it is scientifically
sound, it is an artifact that most modern (and postmodern) human beings use,
either consciously or unconsciously, to make interpersonal, socio-cultural and
politico-economic decisions. Whites and nonwhites do not exist prior to the
imperial expansion that helped to birth, raise and rear European modernity. But,
this is all beside the point to the constructionists. What is relevant is the invention
of whiteness and its classical and contemporary uses and abuses, and the ways it
has evolved over several centuries, transitioning from de jure to de facto form, and
transforming the racial rules and ethnic ethics of who counts as white and nonwhite (Allen 1994, 1997; Goldberg 1997; Harris 1999; Lopez 1995, 1996; Omi and
Winant 1994; Roediger 1994, 1999).
Neoliberalism
Racism fuels neoliberalism
Pamela Brown No Date Alter Net Can We Have Capitalism Without Racism? The Invisible Chains of Debt
and the Catastrophic Loss of African American Wealth http://www.alternet.org/economy/can-we-have-capitalismwithout-racism-invisible-chains-debt-and-catastrophic-loss-african?page=0%2C1 (MG)
Because the predominant underlying colorblind assumptions have been that a

culture of financial illiteracy or class based lower credit rating, these products were
allowed to take hold in ways they would not have been allowed to had racism been
considered a possibility. A study conducted by Ethan Cohen-Cole of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
demonstrates that racial bias is a factor in the amount of credit offered even when other possible factors are
The study shows that the same individual in an 80% white area would
receive about $7000 more dollars in credit than an individual living in an 80% black
area (Cohen-Cole 2009: 14). And a 1% increase in the percentage of blacks in an area
corresponds to a $117 dollar reduction in credit (Cohen-Cole 2009: 14). Further, even high
quality credit individuals receive less credit if they simply live near a payday lender.
Because available credit corresponds to credit score, the reduction of available
credit automatically means that credit scores are stratified racially . Therefore, its
typical for African-American borrowers with equal credentials to have a lower credit
scores simple by virtue of where they live. This impacts both the available credit
products, insurance rates and also may impact employment, as 60% of employers
now use credit score in hiring decisions. Of course, this also means that predatory
credit products like payday and auto title loans are frequently the only available
products for even higher quality borrowers. In essence, this is a combination strategy of
first redlining to offer less credit and then reverse redlining to offer subprime and
high-risk products. Because colorblindness normalizes racial disparity as related to
class or culture, and minimizes the possibility of racism, a cloak of invisibility hides
the reality of the economic hate crime being committed. Rather than being polite
and innocuous, colorblindness is really a dangerous new form of racism that grants
neoliberalisms wealth moving tactics momentum and power .
eliminated.
Anti-blackness
Capitalism began through the destruction of the black body
racism was the precondition that made capitalism profitable
Wilderson, 2003 (Frank B., Professor UCI, The Prison Slave as Hegemonys (Silent)
Scandal, Soc Justice 30 no2 2003, arh)
The theoretical importance of emphasizing this in the early 21st century is twofold. First, capital
was kick-started by approaching a particular body (a black body) with direct relations of force,
not by approaching a white body with variable capital. Thus, one could say that slavery is closer
to capital's primal desire than is exploitation. It is a relation of terror as opposed to a relation of
hegemony. Second, today, late capital is imposing a renaissance of this original desire, the direct
relation of force, the despotism of the unwaged relation. This renaissance of slavery, i.e., the
reconfiguration of the prison-industrial complex has, once again, as its structuring metaphor
and primary target the Black body. The value of reintroducing the unthought category of the
slave, by way of noting the absence of the Black subject, lies in the Black subject's potential for
extending the demand placed on state/capital formations because its reintroduction into the
discourse expands the intensity of the antagonism. In other words, the positionality of the slave
makes a demand that is in excess of the demand made by the positionality of the worker. The
worker demands that productivity be fair and democratic (Gramsci's new hegemony, Lenin's
dictatorship of the proletariat, in a word, socialism). In contrast, the slave demands that
production stop, without recourse to its ultimate democratization. Work is not an organic
principle for the slave. The absence of Black subjectivity from the crux of radical discourse is
symptomatic of the text's inability to cope with the possibility that the generative subject of
capitalism, the Black body of the 15th and 16th centuries, and the generative subject that
resolves late capital's over-accumulation crisis, the Black (incarcerated) body of the 20th and 21
st centuries, do not reify the basic categories that structure conflict within civil society: the
categories of work and exploitation.
Slavery
Racism is the root cause of slavery
West 13, az lyrics http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/kanyewest/newslaves.html (Kanye, victim of anti-blackness
and worldwide ranked rap artists, verse 1, slightly edited for racist language) MG
My momma was raised in an era when, Clean water was only served to the fairer
skin Doing clothes you would have thought I had help But they wasn't satisfied
unless I picked the cotton myself. You see it's broke nigga [black people] racism
That's that "Don't touch anything in the store" And there's rich nigga [black people] racism That's
that "Come here, please buy more" What you want a Bentley, fur coat and diamond chain? All you blacks want all
the same things Used to only be niggas [black peoples] now everybody play me Spending everything on Alexander
Wang
New Slaves
Slavery led to modern capitalism Slave owners realized that

they could sell the work of their slaves for money
Steven Beckert and Seth Rockman 2/24/14 Huffington Post How Slavery Led to Modern Capitalism
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/24/slavery_n_4847105.html (Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, historians at
Harvard University and Brown University respectively, are co-editing "Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of
American Economic Development," to be published by University of Pennsylvania Press in 2013. The opinions
expressed are their own.) MG
Bloomberg View: When the New York City banker James Brown tallied his wealth in 1842, he had to look far below
Wall Street to trace its origins. His investments in the American South exceeded $1.5 million, a quarter of which was
Brown was among the world's most

powerful dealers in raw cotton, and his familys firm, Brown Brothers & Co., served
as one of the most important sources of capital and foreign exchange to the U.S.
economy. Still, no small amount of his time was devoted to managing slaves from the study of his Leonard
Street brownstone in Lower Manhattan. Brown was hardly unusual among the capitalists of the
North. Nicholas Biddle's United States Bank of Philadelphia funded banks in Mississippi to promote the expansion
of plantation lands. Biddle recognized that slave-grown cotton was the only thing made in
the U.S. that had the capacity to bring gold and silver into the vaults of the nation's
banks. Likewise, the architects of New England's industrial revolution watched the
price of cotton with rapt attention, for their textile mills would have been silent
without the labor of slaves on distant plantations . The story we tell about slavery is almost
directly bound up in the ownership of slave plantations.
always regional, rather than national. We remember it as a cruel institution of the southern states that would later
secede from the Union. Slavery, in this telling, appears limited in scope, an unfortunate detour on the nation's
to understand
slavery's centrality to the rise of American capitalism, just consider the history of an
antebellum Alabama dry-goods outfit called Lehman Brothers or a Rhode Island
textile manufacturer that would become the antecedent firm of Berkshire Hathaway
Inc. Reparations lawsuits (since dismissed) generated evidence of slave insurance
policies by Aetna and put Brown University and other elite educational institutions
on notice that the slave-trade enterprises of their early benefactors were potential
legal liabilities. Recent state and municipal disclosure ordinances have forced firms such as JPMorgan Chase &
Co. and Wachovia Corp. to confront unsettling ancestors on their corporate family trees. Such revelations
are hardly surprising in light of slaverys role in spurring the nations economic
development. America's "take-off" in the 19th century wasn't in spite of slavery; it
was largely thanks to it. And recent research in economic history goes further: It highlights the role
that commodified human beings played in the emergence of modern capitalism
itself. The U.S. won its independence from Britain just as it was becoming possible to imagine a liberal alternative
to the mercantilist policies of the colonial era. Those best situated to take advantage of these
new opportunities -- those who would soon be called "capitalists" -- rarely started
march to modernity, and certainly not the engine of American economic prosperity. Yet
from scratch, but instead drew on wealth generated earlier in the robust Atlantic
economy of slaves, sugar and tobacco. Fathers who made their fortunes outfitting ships for distant
voyages begat sons who built factories, chartered banks, incorporated canal and railroad enterprises, invested in
This recognizably modern

capitalist economy was no less reliant on slavery than the mercantilist economy of
the preceding century. Rather, it offered a wider range of opportunities to profit from the remote labor of
slaves, especially as cotton emerged as the indispensable commodity of the age of industry. In the North,
where slavery had been abolished and cotton failed to grow, the enterprising might
transform slave-grown cotton into clothing; market other manufactured goods, such
as hoes and hats, to plantation owners; or invest in securities tied to next year's
crop prices in places such as Liverpool and Le Havre . This network linked Mississippi planters
and Massachusetts manufacturers to the era's great financial firms: the Barings, Browns and Rothschilds. A major
financial crisis in 1837 revealed the interdependence of cotton planters,
manufacturers and investors, and their collective dependence on the labor of
slaves. Leveraged cotton -- pledged but not yet picked -- led overseers to whip their
slaves to pick more, and prodded auctioneers to liquidate slave families to cover the
debts of the overextended. The plantation didn't just produce the commodities that
fueled the broader economy, it also generated innovative business practices that
would come to typify modern management . As some of the most heavily capitalized enterprises
government securities, and speculated in new financial instruments.
in antebellum America, plantations offered early examples of time-motion studies and regimentation through clocks
and bells. Seeking ever-greater efficiencies in cotton picking, slaveholders reorganized their fields, regimented the
workday, and implemented a system of vertical reporting that made overseers into managers answerable to those
The perverse reality of a capitalized labor force led to new

accounting methods that incorporated (human) property depreciation in the bottom
line as slaves aged, as well as new actuarial techniques to indemnify slaveholders
from loss or damage to the men and women they owned. Property rights in human
beings also created a lengthy set of judicial opinions that would influence the
broader sanctity of private property in U.S. law . So important was slavery to the
American economy that on the eve of the Civil War, many commentators predicted
that the North would kill "its golden goose." That prediction didn't come to pass, and
as a result, slavery's importance to American economic development has been
obscured. But as scholars delve deeper into corporate archives and think more
critically about coerced labor and capitalism -- perhaps informed by the current
scale of human trafficking -- the importance of slavery to American economic
history will become inescapable.
above for the labor of those below.
Race was the precondition that enabled capitalism slaves

were the capital that made capitalism possible and the
relationship is reverse causal
Ott 4/9 (Julia, Assistant professor in the history of capitalism and the co-director of the
Robert L. Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies at the New School for Social Research and
the Eugene Lang College at the New School, Slaves: the capital that made capitalism,
http://www.publicseminar.org/2014/04/slavery-the-capital-that-madecapitalism/#.U7oQto1dVKY, 4/9/14, acc. 7/6/14, arh)
Racialized chattel slaves were the capital that made capitalism. While most theories of
capitalism set slavery apart, as something utterly distinct, because under slavery, workers do not
labor for a wage, new historical research reveals that for centuries, a single economic system
encompassed both the plantation and the factory. At the dawn of the industrial age
commentators like Rev. Thomas Malthus could not envision that capital an asset that is used
but not consumed in the production of goods and services could compound and diversify its
forms, increasing productivity and engendering economic growth. Yet, ironically, when Malthus
penned his Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798, the economies of Western Europe
already had crawled their way out of the so-called Malthusian trap. The New World yielded
vast quantities of drug foods like tobacco, tea, coffee, chocolate, and sugar for world markets.
Europeans worked a little bit harder to satiate their hunger for these drug foods. The luxurycommodities of the seventeenth century became integrated into the new middle-class rituals like
tea-drinking in the eighteenth century. By the nineteenth century, these commodities became a
caloric and stimulative necessity for the denizens of the dark satanic mills. The New World
yielded food for proletarians and fiber for factories at reasonable (even falling) prices. The
industrious revolution that began in the sixteenth century set the stage for the Industrial
Revolution of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But the demand-side tells only part
of the story. A new form of capital, racialized chattel slaves, proved essential for the industrious
revolution and for the industrial one that followed. The systematic application of African
slaves in staple export crop production began in the sixteenth century, with sugar in Brazil. The
African slave trade populated the plantations of the Caribbean, landing on the shores of the
Chesapeake at the end of the seventeenth century. African slaves held the legal status of chattel:
moveable, alienable property. When owners hold living creatures as chattel, they gain additional
property rights: the ownership of the offspring of any chattel, and the ownership of their
offspring, and so on and so forth. Chattel becomes self-augmenting capital. While slavery
existed in human societies since prehistoric times, chattel status had never been applied so
thoroughly to human beings as it would be to Africans and African-Americans beginning in the
sixteenth century. But this was not done easily, especially in those New World regions where
African slaves survived, worked alongside European indentured servants and landless free
men and women, and bore offspring as they did in Britains mainland colonies in North
America. In the seventeenth century, African slaves and European indentured servants worked
together to build what Ira Berlin characterizes as a society with slaves along the Chesapeake
Bay. These Africans were slaves, but before the end of the seventeenth century, these Africans
were not chattel, not fully. Planters and overseers didnt use them that differently than their
indentured servants. Slaves and servants alike were subject to routine corporeal punishment.
Slaves occupied the furthest point along a continuum of unequal and coercive labor relations.
(Also, see here and here.) Even so, 20% of the Africans brought into the Chesapeake before 1675
became free, and some of those freed even received the head-right a plot of land promised
to European indentures. Some of those free Africans would command white indentures and own
African slaves. To the British inhabitants of the Chesapeake, Africans looked different. They
sounded different. They acted different. But that was true of the Irish, as well. Africans were
pagans, but the kind of people who wound up indentured in the Chesapeake werent exactly
model Christians. European and African laborers worked, fornicated, fought, wept, birthed, ate,
died, drank, danced, traded with one another, and with the indigenous population. Neither laws
nor customs set them apart. And this would become a problem. By the 1670s, large landowners
some local planters, some absentees began to consolidate plantations. This pushed the
head-rights out to the least-productive lands on the frontier. In 1676, poor whites joined forces
with those of African descent under the leadership of Nathaniel Bacon. They torched
Jamestown, the colonys capital. It took British troops several years to bring the Chesapeake
under control. Ultimately, planter elites thwarted class conflict by writing laws and by modeling
and encouraging social practices that persuaded those with white skin to imagine that
tremendous social significance inherent difference and inferiority lay underneath black
skin. (Also, see here and here.) New laws regulated social relations sex, marriage, sociability,
trade, assembly, religion between the races that those very laws, in fact, helped to create.
The law of chattel applied to African and African-descended slaves to the fullest extent on
eighteenth century plantations. Under racialized chattel slavery, master-enslavers possessed the
right to torture and maim, the right to kill, the right to rape, the right to alienate, and the right to
own offspring specifically, the offspring of the female slave. The exploitation of enslaved
womens reproductive labor became a prerogative that masters shared with other white men.
Any offspring resulting from rape increased the masters stock of capital.
Racial inferiority led to slavery

Greene 3 independent writer, researcher, and historian. With degrees in history and historic preservation, she also works as
an architectural historian who documents and writes about historic buildings and landscapes. (Meg, Did slavery cause racism?,
2003, http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCcQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F
%2Fwww.stratford.org%2Fuploaded%2Ffaculty%2Fjjordan%2Fviewpoint_essays
%2Fdid_slavery_cause_racism_viewpoint_essay.doc&ei=LPe3UCpAorP0AXnwoD4Dg&usg=AFQjCNFtuyaqtMDgz_dDGhy00TUfFc7wvA&sig2=s7Av7kATnB4j1SUkV7isNg //SRSL)
No. Slavery followed from racism and reinforced existing perceptions of blacks' racial
inferiority. Racism both preexisted and survived slavery . Slavery bred racism. No people can systematically
enslave another people of a different "race" for several hundred years without developing some
form of racial animosity and prejudice. Yet, racism also preceded slavery and survived it. Various and
Viewpoint:
subtle influences had already conditioned Europeans to take a negative view of blacks long before they thought of enslaving them. In his classic study of racial stereotypes, White Over Black: American Attitudes
Winthrop D. Jordan identified three distinct but related prejudices that

conditioned English perceptions of Africans. First, the English noticed that Africans were black.
Jordan, however, shows that this judgment was mistaken inasmuch as it simplified a more complex reality . Not all Africans had black skin . For the English, though,
"blackness became so generally associated with Africa," Jordan wrote, "that every African seemed a black
man." The English were quick to attach an unwarranted pejorative significance to black skin. Blackness signified filth, immorality, sin, and evil. Whiteness, by contrast, represented cleanliness, goodness,
Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (1968),
virtue, and purity. As Jordan pointed out, before the sixteenth century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, "black" meant "deeply stained with dirt; soiled, dirty, foul. . . . Having dark and deadly purposes,
malignant; pertaining to or involving death, deadly; baneful, disastrous, sinister. . . . Foul, iniquitous, atrocious, horrible, wicked. . . . Indicating disgrace, censure, liability to punishment, etc." Despite some
Second, the English thought the

Africans were "uncivilized." Africans dressed, lived, fought, spoke, and even ate differently from the English. In any comparison with English ways, Africans were found wanting.
Difference constituted inferiority. The second "fact" worthy of note about Africans after the color of their skin was that they were not English. Deviation
from English norms and standards implied barbarism. Although they knew better, the English depicted
Africans as savages, beasts, and cannibals. In making such comparisons, Jordan declared, "Englishmen unwittingly
demonstrated how powerfully the African's different culture--for Englishmen, his 'savagery'-operated to make Negroes seem to Englishmen a radically different kind of men. " Few writers
applied this racial ideology as thoroughly as did Edward Long, or less hesitantly drew out its
implications. In The History of Jamaica; or, General Survey of the Ancient and Modern State of the Island. . . . (1774) Long popularized the notion that
blacks were a separate species fit only for slavery. Instead of degrading human nature, Long
maintained that the theory of black racial inferiority confirmed belief in a rational, creative,
fecund, and perfect God. What better testimony to the omnipotence of God, Long asked, than a beautifully complete and coherent chain of being, a "series and progression from a
marked inconsistencies, medieval Christian thinkers also linked blackness to the same general set of associations and characteristics.
lump of dirt to a perfect man?" Long failed to explain why one link in this continuum ought to be so loathsome, but he made no effort to conceal his disgust for the "bestial fleece," the "tumid nostrils," and the
"fetid smell" that he thought characterized all blacks to a greater or lesser degree. Long also concluded that blacks possessed no rational faculty or moral sense. Incapable of thought and virtue, they thus desired
no more than food, drink, sex, and leisure and would pursue these amusements without restraint unless disciplined and coerced. Africans had made no progress for two thousand years, he asserted. They
remained, in Long's estimation, "a brutish, ignorant, idle, crafty, treacherous, bloody, thievish, mistrustful, and superstitious people." Apes, Long conjectured, could be trained to "perform a variety of menial
domestic services" and the "mechanic arts" as well as any black. African bestiality was nowhere more transparent, in Long's view, than in the possibility of sexual relations between apes and black women. Apes
coveted black women, Long wrote, "from a natural impulse of desire, such as inclines one animal towards another of the same species, or which had a conformity in the organs of generation." With blacks, Long
observed, sex was "libidinous and shameless." Since both blacks and apes shared the "lasciviousness of disposition," Long did not think that "an orang-outang husband would be any dishonour to an Hottentot
female." There was, indeed, Long asserted, every reason to believe that black women regularly admitted such animals to their embraces. Such a union, he reported, had occurred in England itself. Thus, he wrote,
"how freely may it not operate in the more genial soil of Afric [sic], that parent of every thing that is monstrous in nature, where . . . the passions rage without controul; and the retired wilderness presents
opportunity to gratify them without fear of detection!" Third, the English condemned the Africans as unchristian. This "defective religious condition" was part of a much larger problem once the English
discovered that the world was abounding with "heathen" peoples. The Africans' "primitive" religions offered one more indication of their failure to approximate English norms; it was another symptom of their
blackness and their barbarism. For an Englishman of the sixteenth century, Jordan asserted, Christianity was interwoven into his conception of his own nationality, and he was therefore inclined to regard the
Negroes' lack of true religion as part of theirs. Being a Christian was not merely a matter of subscribing to certain doctrines; it was a quality inherent in oneself and in one's society. It was interconnected with all
the other attributes of normal and proper men: as one of the earliest English accounts distinguished Negroes from Englishmen, they were 'a people of beastly living, without a God, lawe, religion, or common
wealth. . . .' In an important sense, then, heathenism was for Englishmen one inherent characteristic of savage men. To be Christian, according to the English, was to be civilized. Yet, the English did not attribute
such deficiencies to blacks alone. They also regarded the Irish as wild, subhuman, uncivilized, dangerous brutes. In English eyes, the Irish were "more uncivill, more uncleanly, more barbarous and more brutish in
their customs and demeanures [demeanor], then in any other part of the world that is known." As Nicholas P. Canny has demonstrated in "The Ideology of English Colonization: From Ireland to America" (1983),
the Indians were the New World equivalent of the "wilde Irish." Poor whites fared little better, for the "giddy multitude" seemed to pose an additional threat to social order. The English fit Africans into these
established stereotypes in a way that enabled them to make sense of peoples so apparently different that one might expect to find them on another planet. Africans and Europeans were "bound to one another
without mingling," wrote French writer Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America (1835). It "is equally difficult for them to separate completely or to unite. . . . The Negro transmits to his descendants at birth
the external mark of his ignominy. The law can abolish servitude, but only God can obliterate its traces. . . . You can make the Negro free, but you cannot prevent him facing the European as a stranger." For
Tocqueville, the unavoidable and irrevocable certainty of black skin remained, forever intruding itself upon the European consciousness. Most Englishmen and Europeans, and later the majority of white
The reality
upon which race purports to rest, the natural and permanent inequality of human beings, is
utterly false. Biologically, there is only one race: the human race. The most striking attributes of racial appearance--color of skin, texture of hair, shape of nose, eyes, lips, and ears--can all be
Americans, assumed that race is a fixed and observable physical reality. It is not. Race, instead, is an idea, an ideological construct, a historical phenomenon, not a biological fact.
gradually transformed or radically altered by repeated instances of miscegenation (race mixing). Although not a biological fact, race is nonetheless real, for it embodies in thought actual social relations.
Paradoxically, the reality of race lies in appearances and the meanings that human beings attach to them. What Europeans once defined as racial differences between themselves and Africans reveals less about
This racial ideology existed prior to the

enslavement of Africans and did not emerge as a consequence of slavery. Yet, it was not without
consequences. As Tocqueville reflected: From the moment when Europeans took their slaves from a race
different from their own, which many of them considered inferior to the other human races, and
assimilation with whom they all regarded with horror, they assumed that slavery would be
eternal, for there is no intermediate state that can be durable between the excessive inequality
who Africans were than it does about who Europeans thought that they were at a particular moment in history.
created by slavery and the complete equality which is the natural result of independence . The Europeans
have vaguely sensed this truth but have not admitted it. In everything concerning the Negroes, either interest or pride or pity has dictated their behavior. Tocqueville accurately predicted that racial animosity
would intensify with the abolition of slavery. Perhaps more remarkable, the modification or removal of the racial characteristics that had so absorbed the European imagination did nothing to eradicate slavery or
even to alter the status of individual slaves. The variations in skin color that emerged as the result of miscegenation, blacks' acquisition of learning and culture, and the conversion of slaves to Christianity did not
effect emancipation. Race was an important element in New World slavery, but it proved not to be essential.
Ideology
Civil society is built on a grammar of anti-black violence class
struggle is formed between the antagonisms of race
Wilderson 10 (Frank B. Wilderson III, Associate Professor at UC Irvines Department of Drama
and African American Studies, BA in government and philosophy from Dartmouth College, MA in Fine
Arts from Columbia University, PhD in Rhetoric and Film Studies from UC Berkeley
, Red, White & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms, 2010, Pg. 1-7, **WE DO NOT
ENDORSE ABLEIST LANGUAGE, CHANGES MARKED WITH STRIKE THROUGH**, arh)
Leaving aside for the moment their state of mind, it would seem that the structure, that is to say the
rebar, or better still the grammar of their demandsand, by extension, the grammar of their
sufferingwas indeed an ethical grammar. Perhaps their grammars are the only
ethical grammars available to modern politics and modernity writ large, for they
draw our attention not to the way in which space and time are used and abused by
enfranchised and violently powerful interests , but to the violence that underwrites the
modern worlds capacity to think, act, and exist spatially and temporally. The violence that robbed her
of her body and him of his land provided the stage upon which other violent and consensual dramas
could be enacted. Thus, they would have to be crazy, crazy enough to call not merely the actions of
the world to account but to call the world itself to account, and to account for them no less! The
woman at Columbia was not demanding to be a participant in an unethical network of distribution: she
was not demanding a place within capital, a piece of the pie (the demand for her sofa
notwithstanding). Rather, she was articulating a triangulation between, on the one hand, the loss of
her body, the very dereliction of her corporeal integrity, what Hortense Spillers charts as the transition
from being a being to becoming a being for the captor (206), the drama of value (the stage upon
which surplus value is extracted from labor power through commodity production and sale); and on the
other, the corporeal integrity that, once ripped from her body, fortified and extended the corporeal
integrity of everyone else on the street. She gave birth to the commodity and to the Human, yet she
had neither subjectivity nor a sofa to show for it. In her eyes, the worldand not its myriad
discriminatory practices, but the world itselfwas unethical. And yet, the world passes by her without
the slightest inclination to stop and disabuse her of her claim. Instead, it calls her crazy. And to what
does the world attribute the Native American mans insanity? Hes crazy if he thinks hes getting any
money out of us? Surely, that doesnt make him crazy. Rather it is simply an indication that he does
not have a big enough gun.
What are we to make of a world that responds to the most lucid enunciation of ethics with
violence? What are the foundational questions of the ethico-political? Why are these
questions so scandalous that they are rarely posed politically, intellectually, and
cinematicallyunless they are posed obliquely and unconsciously, as if by accident? Return Turtle
Island to the Savage. Repair the demolished subjectivity of the Slave. Two simple sentences, thirteen
simple words, and the structure of U.S. (and perhaps global) antagonisms would be dismantled. An
ethical modernity would no longer sound like an oxymoron. From there we could busy ourselves with
important conflicts that have been promoted to the level of antagonisms: class struggle, gender
conflict, immigrants rights.
When pared down to thirteen words and two sentences, one cannot but wonder why
questions that go to the heart of the ethico-political, questions of political ontology,
are so unspeakable in intellectual meditations, political broadsides, and even
socially and politically engaged feature films. Clearly they can be spoken, even a child could
speak those lines, so they would pose no problem for a scholar, an activist, or a filmmaker. And yet,
what is also clearif the filmographies of socially and politically engaged directors, the archive of
progressive scholars, and the plethora of Left-wing broadsides are anything to go byis that what can
so easily be spoken is now (five hundred years and two hundred fifty million Settlers/Masters on) so
ubiquitously unspoken that these two simple sentences, these thirteen words not only render their
speaker crazy but become themselves impossible to imagine. Soon it will be forty years since radical
politics, Left-leaning scholarship, and socially engaged feature films began to speak
the unspeakable.ii In the 1960s and early 1970s the questions asked by radical
politics and scholarship were not Should the U.S. be overthrown? or even Would
it be overthrown? but rather when and howand, for some, whatwould come in
its wake. Those steadfast in their conviction that there remained a discernable
quantum of ethics in the U.S. writ large (and here I am speaking of everyone from Martin Luther
King, Jr., prior to his 1968 shift, to the Tom Hayden wing of SDS, to the Julian Bond and Marion Barry
faction of SNCC, to Bobbie Kennedy Democrats) were accountable, in their rhetorical machinations, to
the paradigmatic zeitgeist of the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement, and the
Weather Underground. Radicals and progressives could deride, reject, or chastise

armed struggle mercilessly and cavalierly with respect to tactics and the possibility
of success, but they could not dismiss revolution-as-ethic because they could not
make a convincing caseby way of a paradigmatic analysisthat the U.S. was an
ethical formation and still hope to maintain credibility as radicals and progressives.
Even Bobby Kennedy (a U.S. attorney general and presidential candidate) mused that the law and its
enforcers had no ethical standing in the presence of Blacks.iii One could (and many did) acknowledge
Americas strength and power. This seldom, however, rose to the level of an ethical assessment, but
rather remained an assessment of the so-called balance of forces. The political discourse of
Blacks, and to a lesser extent Indians, circulated too widely to credibly wed the U.S. and
ethics. The raw force of COINTELPRO put an end to this trajectory toward a possible hegemony of
ethical accountability. Consequently, the power of Blackness and Redness to pose the questionand
the power to pose the question is the greatest power of allretreated as did White radicals and
progressives who retired from struggle. The questions echo lies buried in the graves of young Black
Panthers, AIM Warriors, and Black Liberation Army soldiers, or in prison cells where so many of them
have been rotting (some in solitary confinement) for ten, twenty, thirty years, and at the gates of the
academy where the crazies shout at passers-by. Gone are not only the young and vibrant voices that
affected a seismic shift on the political landscape, but also the intellectual protocols of inquiry, and
with them a spate of feature films that became authorized, if not by an unabashed revolutionary
polemic, then certainly by a revolutionary zeitgeist. Is it still possible for a dream of unfettered ethics,
a dream of the Settlement and the Slave estatesiv destruction, to manifest itself at the ethical core of
cinematic discourse, when this dream is no longer a constituent element of political discourse in the
streets nor of intellectual discourse in the academy? The answer is no in the sense that, as history
has shown, what cannot be articulated as political discourse in the streets is doubly foreclosed upon in
screenplays and in scholarly prose; but yes in the sense that in even the most taciturn historical
moments such as ours, the grammar of Black and Red suffering breaks in on this foreclosure, albeit like
the somatic compliance of hysterical symptomsit registers in both cinema and scholarship as
symptoms of awareness of the structural antagonisms. Between 1967 and 1980, we could think
cinematically and intellectually of Blackness and Redness as having the coherence of full-blown
discourses. But from 1980 to the present, Blackness and Redness manifests only in the rebar of
cinematic and intellectual (political) discourse, that is, as unspoken grammars. This grammar can be
discerned in the cinematic strategies (lighting, camera angles, image composition, and acoustic
strategies/design), even when the script labors for the spectator to imagine social turmoil through the
rubric of conflict (that is, a rubric of problems that can be posed and conceptually solved) as opposed
to the rubric of antagonism (an irreconcilable struggle between entities, or positionalities, the
resolution of which is not dialectical but entails the obliteration of one of the
positions). In other words, even when films narrate a story in which Blacks or
Indians are beleaguered with problems that the script insists are conceptually
coherent (usually having to do with poverty or the absence of family values), the
non-narrative, or cinematic, strategies of the film often disrupt this coherence by posing the
irreconcilable questions of Red and Black political ontologyor non-ontology. The grammar of
antagonism breaks in on the mendacity of conflict. Semiotics and linguistics teach us that when we
speak, our grammar goes unspoken. Our grammar is assumed. It is the structure through which the
labor of speech is possible.v Likewise, the grammar of political ethicsthe grammar of
assumptions regarding the ontology of suffering which underwrite Film Theory and political
discourse (in this book, discourse elaborated in direct relation to radical action), and which underwrite
cinematic speech (in this book, Red, White, and Black films from the mid-1960s to the present) is also
unspoken. This notwithstanding, film theory, political discourse, and cinema assume an ontological
grammar, a structure of suffering. And the structure of suffering which film theory,
political discourse, and cinema assume crowds out other structures of suffering,
regardless of the sentiment of the film or the spirit of unity mobilized by the political
discourse in question. To put a finer point on it, structures of ontological suffering
stand in antagonistic, rather then conflictual, relation to one another (despite the
fact that antagonists themselves may not be aware of the ontological positionality
from which they speak). Though this is perhaps the most controversial and out-of-step claim of
this book, it is, nonetheless, the foundation of the close reading of feature films and political theory
that follows. The difficulty of a writing a book which seeks to uncover Red, Back, and White socially
engaged feature films as aesthetic accompaniments to grammars of suffering, predicated on the
subject positions of the Savage and the Slave is that todays intellectual protocols are not informed
by Fanons insistence that ontologyonce it is finally admitted as leaving existence by
the waysidedoes not permit us to understand the being of the black man [sic]
(Black Skin, White Masks 110). In sharp contrast to the late 60s and early 70s, we now live in a
political, academic, and cinematic milieu which stresses diversity, unity, civic participation,
hybridity, access, and contribution. The radical fringe of political discourse amounts to little more
than a passionate dream of civic reform and social stability. The distance between the protester and
the police has narrowed considerably. The effect of this upon the academy is that
intellectual protocols tend to privilege two of the three domains of subjectivity,

namely preconscious interests (as evidenced in the work of social science around
political unity, social attitudes, civic participation, and diversity,) and
unconscious identification (as evidenced in the humanities postmodern regimes of
diversity, hybridity, and relative [rather than master] narratives). Since the
1980s, intellectual protocols aligned with structural positionality (except in the work
of die-hard Marxists) have been kicked to the curb. That is to say, it is hardly fashionable
anymore to think the vagaries of power through the generic positions within a structure of power
relationssuch as man/woman, worker/boss. Instead, the academys ensembles of questions are
fixated on specific and unique experience of the myriad identities that make up those structural
positions. This would fine if the work led us back to a critique of the paradigm; but
most of it does not. Again, the upshot of this is that the intellectual protocols now in
play, and the composite effect of cinematic and political discourse since the 1980s,
tend to hide rather than make explicit the grammar of suffering which
underwrites the US and its foundational antagonisms. This state of affairs
exacerbatesor, more precisely, mystifies and veilsthe ontological death of the Slave and the
Savage because (as in the 1950s) cinematic, political, and intellectual discourse of the current milieu
resists being sanctioned and authorized by the irreconcilable demands of Indigenism and Blackness
academic enquiry is thus no more effective in pursuing a revolutionary critique than

the legislative antics of the loyal opposition. This is how Left-leaning scholars help
civil society recuperate and maintain stability . But this stability is a state of emergency for
Indians and Blacks.
Racism is the root cause of slavery ideological hierarchies and

Social Darwinism
UNESCO 1
(United Nations Educational, Social, and Cultural Organization, Slavery and
Racism, http://www.unesco.org/bpi/eng/unescopress/2001/01-91e.shtml, acc.
7/4/14, arh)
Durban (South Africa), September 4 (No.2001-91) - The transatlantic slave trade
saw the greatest deportation in history. From the mid 15th century to the closing
decades of the 19th century tens of millions of Africans were brutally wrenched from
their villages and transported to the plantations and mines of the Americas and
West Indies. The impact of this unprecedented movement is still burdening the
descendants of these stolen people, and the continent that was their home.
UNESCO is organizing a panel debate on The Slave Route: Slavery and Racism at
the World Conference against Racism and Xenophobia in Durban (South Africa). The
debate will examine the causes and consequences of the African slave trade along
with its ideological and legal foundations. It will also explore the links between
racism and slavery. Slavery is a universal phenomenon. The ancient Greeks first
institutionalised it, and countries and civilisations everywhere and throughout
history have practised it. Nonetheless, the transatlantic trade is unique in history.
Over four centuries it developed into a major industry that, in the 18th century,
fuelled the world economy. No-one really knows how many men, women and
children left Africa in the holds of slave ships, but historians agree that it changed
the continents demography. In the boom decade from 1783, with record prices
being fetched for black gold, French ports alone despatched more than 1,100
slave ships to the coasts of Africa. According to French historian Jean-Michel
Deveau, between 10 and 15 million Africans were deported in the 18th and 19th
centuries. Before that we dont know. And for every slave who made it to the New
World, several others died on the way. The death rate on the ships was 15 to 18%,
says Deveau, but many were killed during attacks on their villages or while they
were being marched to the coast. In some places, women about to be captured
killed their own children. The racial nature of this triangular trade between
Africa, Europe and the Americas also sets it apart. The trade was
supported by a racist ideology that saw white people as being the most
perfectly developed and blacks as being at the bottom of the ladder. This
was reinforced by the French Code Noir (Black Code). Published as an edict by Louis
XIV in March 1685, its 60-odd articles regulated the way black slaves lived and died
in French possessions in the West Indies and Indian Ocean. In 1724, the same
legislation was extended to cover the American territory of Louisiana. The code
clearly defines slaves a moveable property, people unfit to possess or contract in
their own right. Although racism against blacks was not born with the transatlantic
trade, it was legitimized by it and remains one of its most tragic legacies.
AT: Cap Root Cause
Enslavement
Capitalism may have been the initial reason why slaves were
captured, but racism serves as the grounds for how they were
enslaved
Maller No date (post 2011) (Katherine, William Macauly University,
http://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/kmaller/writing/academic/capitalism-slavery-and-thebirth-of-racism/, Post 2011, acc. 7/6/14, arh)
The results of this system become clear in The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah
Equiano, in which Equiano, among other hardships experienced as a slave, describes the Middle
Passage between African and America. The absolutely pestilential (Equiano, 424) conditions
in which the African slaves were kept were certainly inhumane, but the cruelty of the white
sailors exacerbated the misery. The slaves were not well fed, and when they sought their own
means of sustenance, they suffered some very severe floggings. (Equiano, 425) Given the
myth that slavery was always racialized , one would assume that this cruelty was the
product of the white sailors hatred of these black slaves. However, Equiano also describes an
incident in which the white sailors flogged [one of their own] unmercifully. (Equiano, 425)
This removes race as the motivation for cruelty. The inhumane treatment of slaves confirms
that slaves were viewed as commodities instead of people. The equally inhumane
treatment of a white sailor would then confirm that the sailors, too, were
commodities in the capitalist system that they served . They, along with the slaves they
shipped, were the laboring subjects of the Atlantic economy, (Linebaugh and Rediker, 111) the
slaves that were essential to the rise of capitalism. (Linebaugh and Rediker, 28)
False History
Their approach to antebellum slavery is reliant upon a false
history slavery was not founded upon racial antagonism but
rather economic exploitation
Alexander 10 (Michelle, associate professor of law, Ohio State University, Kirwan Institute
for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, former director of ACLUs Racial Justice Project, J.D.,
Stanford Law School, The new Jim Crow: Mass Incaceration in the Age of Colorblindness, The
New Press 2010, pg 23-25, wcp)
The concept of race is a relatively recent development . Only in the past few centuries,
owing largely to European imperialism, have the world's people been classified
along racial lines.4 Here, in America, the idea of race emerged as a means of reconciling
chattel slaveryas well as the extermination of American Indianswith the ideals of freedom
preached by whites in the new colonies. In the early colonial period, when settlements
remained relatively small, indentured servitude was the dominant means of securing cheap
labor. Under this system, whites and blacks struggled to survive against a common
enemy, what historian Lerone Bennett Jr. describes as "the big planter apparatus and a social
system that legalized terror against black and white bondsmen."5 Initially, blacks brought to
this country were not all enslaved; many were treated as indentured servants. As plantation
farming expanded, particularly tobacco and cotton farming, demand increased greatly for both
labor and land. bhe demand for land was met by invading and conquering larger and larger
swaths of territory. American Indians became a growing impediment to white European
"progress," and during this period, the images of American Indians promoted in books,
newspapers, and magazines became increasingly negative. As sociologists Keith Kilty and Eric
Swank have observed, eliminating "savages" is less of a moral problem than eliminating human
beings, and therefore American Indians came to be understood as a lesser raceuncivilized
savages thus providing a justification for the extermination of the native peoples.6 The
growing demand for labor on plantations was met through slavery. American Indians were
considered unsuitable as slaves, largely because native tribes were clearly in a position to fight
back. The fear of raids by Indian tribes led plantation owners to grasp for an alternative source
of free labor. European immigrants were also deemed poor candidates for slavery, not because
of their race, but rather because they were in short supply and enslavement would,
quite naturally, interfere with voluntary immigration to the new colonies.
Plantation owners thus viewed Africans, who were relatively powerless, as the ideal slaves. The
systematic enslavement of Africans, and the rearing of their children under bondage, emerged
with all deliberate speedquickened by events such as Bacon's Rebellion. Nathaniel
Bacon was a white property owner in Jamestown, Virginia, who managed to unite slaves,
indentured servants, and poor whites in a revolutionary effort to overthrow the planter elite.
Although slaves clearly occupied the lowest position in the social hierarchy and suffered the
most under the plantation system, the condition of indentured whites was barely better, and the
majority of free whites lived in extreme poverty. As explained by historian Edmund Morgan, in
colonies like Virginia, the planter elite, with huge land grants, occupied a vastly superior
position to workers of all colors.7 Southern colonies did not hesitate to invent ways to extend
the terms of servitude, and the planter class accumulated uncultivated lands to restrict the
options of free workers. The simmering resentment against the planter class created conditions
that were ripe for revolt. Varying accounts of Bacon's rebellion abound, but the basic facts are
these: Bacon developed plans in 1675 to seize Native American lands in order to acquire more
property for himself and others and nullify the threat of Indian raids. When the planter elite in
Virginia refused to provide militia support for his scheme, Bacon retaliated, leading an attack
on the elite, their homes, and their property. He openly condemned the rich for their
oppression of the poor and inspired an alliance of white and black bond laborers,
as well as slaves, who demanded an end to their servitude . The attempted revolution
was ended by force and false promises of amnesty. A number of the people who participated in
the revolt were hanged. The events in Jamestown were alarming to the planter elite, who were
deeply fearful of the multiracial alliance of bond workers and slaves. Word of Bacon's Rebellion
spread far and wide, and several more uprisings of a similar type followed. In an effort to
protect their superior status and economic position, the planters shifted their
strategy for maintaining dominance. They abandoned their heavy reliance on
indentured servants in favor of the importation of more black slaves. Instead of
importing English-speaking slaves from the West Indies, who were more likely to be familiar
with European language and culture, many more1 slaves were shipped directly from Africa.
These slaves would be far easier to control and far less likely to form alliances with poor whites.
Fearful that such measures might not be sufficient to protect their interests, the planter class
took an additional precautionary step, a step that would later come to be known as a "racial
bribe." Deliberately and strategically, the planter class extended special privileges to poor whites
in an effort to drive a wedge between them and black slaves. White settlers were allowed
greater access to Native American lands, white servants were allowed to police slaves through
slave patrols and militias, and barriers were created so that free labor would not be placed in
competition with slave labor. These measures effectively eliminated the risk of future alliances
between black slaves and poor whites. Poor whites suddenly had a direct, personal stake in the
bxistence of a race-based system of slavery. Their own plight had not improved by much, but at
least they were not slaves. Once the planter elite split the labor force, poor whites
responded to the logic of their situation and sought ways to expand their racially
privileged position.8
Anti-blackness is an incorrect understanding of slavery sole

focus on racial violence crowds out focus on the material
conditions that created the brutality prevents collective
organization
Reed 13 (Adolph, Django Unchained, or, The Help: How Cultural Politics Is Worse Than
No Politics at All, and Why, Nonsite Issue #9, February 25th,
http://nonsite.org/feature/django-unchained-or-the-help-how-cultural-politics-is-worse-thanno-politics-at-all-and-why, thx Gtown AM, wcp)
On reflection, its possible to see that Django Unchained and The Help are basically different
versions of the same movie. Both dissolve political economy and social relations into
individual quests and interpersonal transactions and thus effectively sanitize, respectively,
slavery and Jim Crow by dehistoricizing them. The problem is not so much that each film
invents cartoonish fictions; its that the point of the cartoons is to take the place of the actual
relations of exploitation that anchored the regime it depicts. In The Help the buffoonishly
bigoted housewife, Hilly, obsessively pushes a pet bill that would require employers of black
domestic servants to provide separate, Jim Crow toilets for them; in Django Unchained the
sensibility of 1970s blaxploitation imagines comfort girls and Mandingo fighters as
representative slave job descriptions. Its as if Jim Crow had nothing to do with cheap labor and
slavery had nothing to do with making slave owners rich. And the point here is not just that they
get the past wrongits that the particular way they get it wrong enables them to get the present
just as wrong and so their politics are as misbegotten as their history. Thus, for example, its
only the dehistoricization that makes each films entirely neoliberal (they could have been
scripted by Oprah) happy ending possible. The Help ends with Skeeter and the black lead, the
maid Aibileen, embarking joyfully on the new, excitingly uncharted paths their bookan
account of the master-servant relationship told from the perspective of the servantshas
opened for them. But dehistoricization makes it possible not to notice the great distance
between those paths and their likely trajectories. For Skeeter the book from which the film takes
its name opens a career in the fast track of the journalism and publishing industry. Aibileens
new path was forced upon her because the book got her fired from her intrinsically precarious
job, more at-whim than at-will, in one of the few areas of employment available to working-class
black women in the segregationist Souththe precise likelihood that had made her and other
maids initially reluctant to warm to Skeeters project. Yet Aibileen smiles and strides ever more
confidently as she walks home because she has found and articulated her voice. The implication
is that having been fired, rather than portending deeper poverty and economic insecurity, was a
moment of liberation; Aibileen, armed with the confidence and self-knowledge conferred by
knowing her voice, was now free to venture out into a world of unlimited opportunity and
promise. This, of course, is pure neoliberal bullshit, of the same variety that permits the odious
Michelle Rhee to assert with a straight face that teachers defined-benefit pensions deny them
choice and thereby undermine the quality of public education. But who knows? Perhaps
Skeeter brought with her from the 2000s an NGO to arrange microcredit that would enable
Aibileen to start up a culturally authentic pie-making venture or a day spa for harried and
stressed domestic servants. In the Jackson, Mississippi of 1963, no such options would exist for
Aibileen. Instead, she most likely would be blackballed and unable to find a comparable menial
job and forced to toil under even more undesirable conditions. Django Unchained ends with the
hero and his lady fair riding happily off into the sunset after he has vanquished evil slave owners
and their henchmen and henchwomen. Django and Broomhildawhose name is spelled like
that of the 1970s comic strip character, not the figure in Norse mythology, presumably a
pointless Tarantino inside jokeare free. However, their freedom was not won by his prodigious
bloodletting; it was obtained within the legal framework that accepted and regulated property
rights in slaves. Each had been purchased and manumitted by the German bounty hunter who,
as others have noted, is the only character in the film to condemn slavery as an institution.
Django is no insurrectionist. His singular focus from beginning to end is on reclaiming his wife
from her slave master. Presumably, we are to understand this solipsism as indicative of the
depth and intensity of his love, probably also as homage to the borderline sociopathic style of
the spaghetti western/blaxploitation hero. Regardless, Djangos quest is entirely individualist;
he never intends to challenge slavery and never does. Indeed, for the purpose of buttressing the
credibility of their ruse, he even countermands his bounty hunter partners attempt to save
through purchase, of coursea recalcitrant Mandingo fighter from being ripped apart by dogs.
He is essentially indifferent to the handful of slaves who are freed as incidental byproducts of his
actions. The happy ending is that he and Broomhilda ride off together and free in a slavocracy
that is not a whit less secure at the moment of celebratory resolution than it was when Django
set out on his mission of retrieval and revenge. In both films the bogus happy endings are
possible only because they characterize their respective regimes of racial hierarchy in the
superficial terms of interpersonal transactions. In The Help segregationisms evil was smallminded bigotry and lack of sensitivity; it was more like bad manners than oppression. In
Tarantinos vision, slaverys definitive injustice was its gratuitous and sadistic
brutalization and sexualized degradation. Malevolent, ludicrously arrogant whites owned
slaves most conspicuously to degrade and torture them. Apart from serving a formal dinner in a
plantation houseand Tarantino, the Chance the Gardener of American filmmakers (and Best
Original Screenplay? Really?) seems to draw his images of plantation life from Birth of a Nation
and Gone With the Wind, as well as old Warner Brothers cartoonsand the Mandingo fighters
and comfort girls, Tarantinos slaves do no actual work at all; theyre present only to be
brutalized. In fact, the cavalier sadism with which owners and traders treat them belies the fact
that slaves were, first and foremost, capital investments. Its not for nothing that New Orleans
has a monument to the estimated 20,000-30,000 antebellum Irish immigrants who died
constructing the New Basin Canal; slave labor was too valuable for such lethal work. The Help
trivializes Jim Crow by reducing it to its most superficial features and irrational extremes. The
master-servant nexus was, and is, a labor relation. And the problem of labor relations particular
to the segregationist regime wasnt employers bigoted lack of respect or failure to hear the
voices of the domestic servants, or even benighted refusal to recognize their equal humanity. It
was that the labor relation was structured within and sustained by a political and institutional
order that severely impinged on, when it didnt altogether deny, black citizens avenues for
pursuit of grievances and standing before the law. The crucial lynchpin of that order was neither
myopia nor malevolence; it was suppression of black citizens capacities for direct participation
in civic and political life, with racial disfranchisement and the constant threat of terror intrinsic
to substantive denial of equal protection and due process before the law as its principal
mechanisms. And the point of the regime wasnt racial hatred or enforced disregard; its roots lay
in the much more prosaic concern of dominant elites to maintain their political and economic
hegemony by suppressing potential opposition and in the linked ideal of maintaining access to a
labor force with no options but to accept employment on whatever terms employers offered.
(Those who liked The Help or found it moving should watch The Long Walk Home, a 1990 film
set in Montgomery, Alabama, around the bus boycott. I suspect thats the film you thought you
were watching when you saw The Help.) Django Unchained trivializes slavery by reducing it to
its most barbaric and lurid excesses. Slavery also was fundamentally a labor relation. It was a
form of forced labor regulatedsystematized, enforced and sustainedthrough a political and
institutional order that specified it as a civil relationship granting owners absolute control over
the life, liberty, and fortunes of others defined as eligible for enslavement, including most of all
control of the conditions of their labor and appropriation of its product. Historian Kenneth M.
Stampp quotes a slaveholders succinct explanation: For what purpose does the master
hold the servant? asked an ante-bellum Southerner. Is it not that by his labor, he,
the master, may accumulate wealth?1 That absolute control permitted horrible,
unthinkable brutality, to be sure, but perpetrating such brutality was neither the
point of slavery nor its essential injustice. The master-slave relationship could, and did,
exist without brutality, and certainly without sadism and sexual degradation. In Tarantinos
depiction, however, it is not clear that slavery shorn of its extremes of brutality would be
objectionable. It does not diminish the historical injustice and horror of slavery to note that it
was not the product of sui generis, transcendent Evil but a terminus on a continuum of bound
labor that was more norm than exception in the Anglo-American world until well into the
eighteenth century, if not later. As legal historian Robert Steinfeld points out, it is not so much
slavery, but the emergence of the notion of free laboras the absolute control of a worker over
her personthat is the historical anomaly that needs to be explained.2 Django Unchained
sanitizes the essential injustice of slavery by not problematizing it and by focusing instead on the
extremes of brutality and degradation it permitted, to the extent of making some of them up,
just as does The Help regarding Jim Crow. The Help could not imagine a more honest and
complex view of segregationist Mississippi partly because it uses the period ultimately as a prop
for human interest clich, and Django Unchaineds absurdly ahistorical view of plantation
slavery is only backdrop for the merger of spaghetti western and blaxploitation hero movie.
Neither film is really about the period in which it is set. Film critic Manohla Dargis, reflecting a
decade ago on what she saw as a growing Hollywood penchant for period films, observed that
such films are typically stripped of politics and historical factand instead will find meaning in
appealing to seemingly timeless ideals and stirring scenes of love, valor and compassion and
that the Hollywood professionals who embrace accuracy most enthusiastically nowadays are
costume designers.3 That observation applies to both these films, although in Django concern
with historically accurate representation of material culture applies only to the costumes and
props of the 1970s film genres Tarantino wants to recall. To make sense of how Django
Unchained has received so much warmer a reception among black and leftoid commentators
than did The Help, it is useful to recall Margaret Thatchers 1981 dictum that economics are the
method: the object is to change the soul.4 Simply put, she and her element have won. Few
observersamong opponents and boosters alikehave noted how deeply and thoroughly both
films are embedded in the practical ontology of neoliberalism, the complex of unarticulated
assumptions and unexamined first premises that provide its common sense, its lifeworld.
Objection to The Help has been largely of the shooting fish in a barrel variety: complaints about
the films paternalistic treatment of the maids, which generally have boiled down to an objection
that the master-servant relation is thematized at all, as well as the standard, predictable litany of
anti-racist charges about whites speaking for blacks, the films inattentiveness to the fact that at
that time in Mississippi black people were busily engaged in liberating themselves, etc. An
illustration of this tendency that conveniently refers to several other variants of it is Akiba
Solomon, Why Im Just Saying No to The Help and Its Historical Whitewash in Color Lines,
August 10, 2011, available at:
http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/08/why_im_just_saying_no_to_the_help.html.
Defenses of Django Unchained pivot on claims about the social significance of the narrative of a
black hero. One node of this argument emphasizes the need to validate a history of autonomous
black agency and resistance as a politico-existential desideratum. It accommodates a view that
stresses the importance of recognition of rebellious or militant individuals and revolts in black
American history. Another centers on a notion that exposure to fictional black heroes can
inculcate the sense of personal efficacy necessary to overcome the psychological effects of
inequality and to facilitate upward mobility and may undermine some whites negative
stereotypes about black people. In either register assignment of social or political importance to
depictions of black heroes rests on presumptions about the nexus of mass cultural
representation, social commentary, and racial justice that are more significant politically than
the controversy about the film itself. In both versions, this argument casts political and
economic problems in psychological terms. Injustice appears as a matter of disrespect and
denial of due recognition, and the remedies proposedwhich are all about images projected and
the distribution of jobs associated with their projectionlook a lot like self-esteem engineering.
Moreover, nothing could indicate more strikingly the extent of neoliberal ideological hegemony
than the idea that the mass culture industry and its representational practices constitute a
meaningful terrain for struggle to advance egalitarian interests. It is possible to entertain that
view seriously only by ignoring the fact that the production and consumption of mass culture is
thoroughly embedded in capitalist material and ideological imperatives. That, incidentally, is
why I prefer the usage mass culture to describe this industry and its products and processes,
although I recognize that it may seem archaic to some readers. The mass culture v. popular
culture debate dates at least from the 1950s and has continued with occasional crescendos ever
since.5 For two decades or more, instructively in line with the retreat of possibilities for
concerted left political action outside the academy, the popular culture side of that debate has
been dominant, along with its view that the products of this precinct of mass consumption
capitalism are somehow capable of transcending or subverting their material identity as
commodities, if not avoiding that identity altogether. Despite the dogged commitment of several
generations of American Studies and cultural studies graduate students who want to valorize
watching television and immersion in hip-hop or other specialty market niches centered on
youth recreation and the most ephemeral fads as both intellectually avant-garde and politically
resistive, it should be time to admit that that earnest disposition is intellectually shallow and
an ersatz politics. The idea of popular culture posits a spurious autonomy and organicism that
actually affirm mass industrial processes by effacing them, especially in the putatively rebel,
fringe, or underground market niches that depend on the fiction of the authentic to announce
the birth of new product cycles. The power of the hero is a cathartic trope that connects mainly
with the sensibility of adolescent boysof whatever nominal age. Tarantino has allowed as
much, responding to black critics complaints about the violence and copious use of nigger by
proclaiming Even for the films biggest detractors, I think their children will grow up and love
this movie. I think it could become a rite of passage for young black males.6 This response
stems no doubt from Tarantinos arrogance and opportunism, and some critics have denounced
it as no better than racially presumptuous. But he is hardly alone in defending the film with an
assertion that it gives black youth heroes, is generically inspirational or both. Similarly, in a
January 9, 2012 interview on the Daily Show, George Lucas adduced this line to promote his
even more execrable race-oriented live-action cartoon, Red Tails, which, incidentally, trivializes
segregation in the military by reducing it to a matter of bad or outmoded attitudes. The ironic
effect is significant understatement of both the obstacles the Tuskegee airmen faced and their
actual accomplishments by rendering them as backdrop for a blackface, slapped-together
remake of Top Gun. (Norman Jewisons 1984 film, A Soldiers Story, adapted from Charles
Fullers A Soldiers Play, is a much more sensitive and thought-provoking rumination on the
complexities of race and racism in the Jim Crow U.S. Armyan army mobilized, as my father, a
veteran of the Normandy invasion, never tired of remarking sardonically, to fight the racist
Nazis.) Lucas characterized his film as patriotic, even jingoistic and was explicit that he
wanted to create a film that would feature real heroes and would be inspirational for teenage
boys. Much as Django Unchaineds defenders compare it on those terms favorably to Lincoln,
Lucas hyped Red Tails as being a genuine hero story unlike Glory, where you have a lot of white
officers running those guys into cannon fodder. Of course, the film industry is sharply tilted
toward the youth market, as Lucas and Tarantino are acutely aware. But Lucas, unlike
Tarantino, was not being defensive in asserting his desire to inspire the young; he offered it
more as a boast. As he has said often, hed wanted for years to make a film about the Tuskegee
airmen, and he reports that he always intended telling their story as a feel-good, crossover
inspirational tale. Telling it that way also fits in principle (though in this instance not in practice,
as Red Tails bombed at the box office) with the commercial imperatives of increasingly degraded
mass entertainment. Dargis observed that the ahistoricism of the recent period films is
influenced by market imperatives in a global film industry. The more a film is tied to historically
specific contexts, the more difficult it is to sell elsewhere. That logic selects for special effectsdriven products as well as standardized, decontextualized and simplisticuniversalstory
lines, preferably set in fantasy worlds of the filmmakers design. As Dargis notes, these films find
their meaning in shopworn clichs puffed up as timeless verities, including uplifting and
inspirational messages for youth. But something else underlies the stress on inspiration in the
black-interest films, which shows up in critical discussion of them as well. All these filmsThe
Help, Red Tails, Django Unchained, even Lincoln and Glorymake a claim to public attention
based partly on their social significance beyond entertainment or art, and they do so because
they engage with significant moments in the history of the nexus of race and politics in the
United States. There would not be so much discussion and debate and no Golden Globe, NAACP
Image, or Academy Award nominations for The Help, Red Tails, or Django Unchained if those
films werent defined partly by thematizing that nexus of race and politics in some way. The
pretensions to social significance that fit these films into their particular market niche dont
conflict with the mass-market film industrys imperative of infantilization because those
pretensions are only part of the show; they are little more than empty bromides, product
differentiation in the patter of seemingly timeless ideals which the mass entertainment
industry constantly recycles. (Andrew OHehir observes as much about Django Unchained,
which he describes as a three-hour trailer for a movie that never happens.7) That comes
through in the defense of these films, in the face of evidence of their failings, that, after all, they
are just entertainment. Their substantive content is ideological; it is their contribution to the
naturalization of neoliberalisms ontology as they propagandize its universalization across
spatial, temporal, and social contexts. Purportedly in the interest of popular education cum
entertainment, Django Unchained and The Help, and Red Tails for that matter, read the
sensibilities of the present into the past by divesting the latter of its specific historicity. They
reinforce the sense of the past as generic old-timey times distinguishable from the present by
superficial inadequaciesoutmoded fashion, technology, commodities and ideassince
overcome. In The Help Hillys obsession with her pet project marks segregations petty
apartheid as irrational in part because of the expense rigorously enforcing it would require; the
breadwinning husbands express their frustration with it as financially impractical. Hilly is a
mean-spirited, narrow-minded person whose rigid and tone-deaf commitment to segregationist
consistency not only reflects her limitations of character but also is economically unsound, a fact
that further defines her, and the cartoon version of Jim Crow she represents, as irrational. The
deeper message of these films, insofar as they deny the integrity of the past, is that there is no
thinkable alternative to the ideological order under which we live. This message is reproduced
throughout the mass entertainment industry; it shapes the normative reality even of the fantasy
worlds that masquerade as escapism. Even among those who laud the supposedly cathartic
effects of Djangos insurgent violence as reflecting a greater truth of abolition than passage of
the Thirteenth Amendment, few commentators notice that he and Broomhilda attained their
freedom through a market transaction.8 This reflects an ideological hegemony in which students
all too commonly wonder why planters would deny slaves or sharecroppers education because
education would have made them more productive as workers. And, tellingly, in a glowing
rumination in the Daily Kos, Ryan Brooke inadvertently thrusts mass cultures destruction of
historicity into bold relief by declaiming on the segregated society presented in Django
Unchained and babbling onwith the absurdly ill-informed and pontifical self-righteousness
that the blogosphere enablesabout our need to take responsibility for preserving racial
divides if we are to put segregation in the past and fully fulfill Dr. Kings dream.9 Its all an
indistinguishable mush of bad stuff about racial injustice in the old-timey days. Decoupled from
its moorings in a historically specific political economy, slavery becomes at bottom a problem of
race relations, and, as historian Michael R. West argues forcefully, race relations emerged
as and has remained a discourse that substitutes etiquette for equality .10 This is the
context in which we should take account of what inspiring the young means as a justification
for those films. In part, the claim to inspire is a simple platitude, more filler than substance. It
is, as Ive already noted, both an excuse for films that are cartoons made for an infantilized,
generic market and an assertion of a claim to a particular niche within that market. More
insidiously, though, the ease with which inspiration of youth rolls out in this context resonates
with three related and disturbing themes: 1) underclass ideologys narrativesnow all
Americans common sensethat link poverty and inequality most crucially to (racialized)
cultural inadequacy and psychological damage; 2) the belief that racial inequality stems from
prejudice, bad ideas and ignorance, and 3) the cognate of both: the neoliberal rendering of social
justice as equality of opportunity, with an aspiration of creating competitive individual
minority agents who might stand a better fighting chance in the neoliberal rat race rather than a
positive alternative vision of a society that eliminates the need to fight constantly against
disruptive market whims in the first place.11 This politics seeps through in the chatter about
Django Unchained in particular. Erin Aubry Kaplan, in the Los Angeles Times article in which
Tarantino asserts his appeal to youth, remarks that the most disturbing detail [about slavery] is
the emotional violence and degradation directed at blacks that effectively keeps them at the
bottom of the social order, a place they still occupy today. Writing on the Institute of the Black
World blog, one Dr. Kwa David Whitaker, a 1960s-style cultural nationalist, declaims on
Djangos testament to the sources of degradation and unending servitude [that] has rendered
[black Americans] almost incapable of making sound evaluations of our current situations or the
kind of steps we must take to improve our condition.12 In its blindness to political economy,
this notion of black cultural or psychological damage as either a legacy of slavery or of more
indirect recent origine.g., urban migration, crack epidemic, matriarchy, babies making babies
comports well with the reduction of slavery and Jim Crow to interpersonal dynamics and bad
attitudes. It substitutes a politics of recognition and a patter of racial uplift for politics and
underwrites a conflation of political action and therapy. With respect to the nexus of race and
inequality, this discourse supports victim-blaming programs of personal rehabilitation and selfesteem engineeringinspirationas easily as it does multiculturalist respect for difference,
which, by the way, also feeds back to self-esteem engineering and inspiration as nodes within a
larger political economy of race relations. Either way, this is a discourse that displaces a politics
challenging social structures that reproduce inequality with concern for the feelings and
characteristics of individuals and of categories of population statistics reified as singular groups
that are equivalent to individuals. This discourse has made it possible (again, but more
sanctimoniously this time) to characterize destruction of low-income housing as an uplift
strategy for poor people; curtailment of access to public education as choice; being cut adrift
from essential social wage protections as empowerment; and individual material success as
socially important role modeling. Neoliberalisms triumph is affirmed with unselfconscious
clarity in the ostensibly leftist defenses of Django Unchained that center on the theme of slaves
having liberated themselves. Trotskyists, would-be anarchists, and psychobabbling identitarians
have their respective sectarian garnishes: Trotskyists see everywhere the bugbear of
bureaucratism and mystify self-activity; anarchists similarly fetishize direct action and
voluntarism and oppose large-scale public institutions on principle, and identitarians
romanticize essentialist notions of organic, folkish authenticity under constant threat from
institutions. However, all are indistinguishable from the nominally libertarian right in their
disdain for government and institutionally based political action , which their common
reflex is to disparage as inauthentic or corrupt.
Their use of a false history prevents the development of

accurate accounts of oppression renders their strategy
useless
Wilki 12 (Assistant Professor of Cultural and Digital Studies U Wisconsin-La Crosse,
Capitalisms Posthuman Empire, The Red Critique Vol. 14, Fall/Winter, thx Gtown AM, wcp)
Despite their differences, what each film relies on in re-writing the contradictions of race and
class as an epistemological confrontation between human and animal is what Derrida theorizes
as "the gaze of the absolute other" (11); that is, the "gaze of the animal" which "offers to my sight
the abyssal limit of the human: the inhuman or the ahuman" (12). For example, during his time
on the farm Lurie begins to work at the local rescue shelter/veterinary hospital and, as part of
his transition to an "ethical" posthumanist, helps to euthanize the dogs and take them to the
incinerator. Most significantly in this context, since it ultimately reflects the "realization" that
Lurie undergoes over the course of the film, the attack on Lucy and him occurs after he has just
told a story about the "ignobility" of a male dog that was beaten until he hated his own desire. As
part of the attack the young men shoot Lucy's dogs, which is meant to signal a sharp contrast to
Lurie's adopting of an "ethical" approach at the veterinary clinic. What he ultimately comes to
see is that recasting his identity in the new post-Apartheid landscape will mean, in his words,
being "humiliated like a dog." This, however, is meant to indicate not simply a personal
humiliation, but, by the end of the film, an inversion of his previous egoist "self" and, through
identification with animals perspective, the full recognition of the epistemological conditions
which produce otherness. When, at the conclusion of the film, Lurie leaves his car at the top of
the mountain and walks down to Lucy's farm for tea, giving up on his silent protest at the "deal"
that Lucy has made with Petrus to become her "wife" in exchange for protection from future
attacks, the viewer has been positioned to see him as no longer able to act on his desires and
thus having been reduced to being "a dog." In this way, we are meant to see the deep connection
that Lurie makes between humans and animals. He sees that to be other, whether human or
animal, means being "humiliated" by those in power. Of course, the image of the white professor
who is powerless in the face of the black farmers completely inverts the reality of social relations
in South Africa, in which unemployment is listed as anywhere from 31% to 42%, falling largely
on the black population (Zeiling and Ceruti). But this, I argue, is the point. Posthumanism is an
ideology which separates culture from reality and, instead, posits that regardless of the
economic, social reality is always driven by divisions which violently classify those whose desires
place them outside the "normal" bounds of society. In District 9 the relationship between race
and class is represented through the relay of science fiction. In the film, we learn that the
extraterrestrials literally emerge from nowhere, as their ship suddenly appeared without
warning in the sky over Johannesburg. It is only when the humans cut into the ship and find the
aliens living in deplorable conditions with no seeming purpose that "first contact" is made.
While later in the film we learn that MNU is one of the world's leading arms manufacturers and
their interest in managing the situation is obtaining the alien's weapon technology, there is no
reason given for the initial segregation of the aliens into townships except their "animal-like"
difference. In other words, like the post-historical conclusion of Disgrace, District 9 turns the
modern history of exploitation and oppression into an ahistorical fear of the other driven by the
instrumental desire to "capture" all life in reductive classifications. Similar to Lurie's taking up
of the dog's perspective, it is through Wikus' adopting of the "prawns'" perspective that we learn
that it is "bad" to "capture" or "impose" upon life conditions which are alien to its existencejust
as Derrida and Agamben suggestbutalso like Agamben and Derridanot where these terms
come from. Wikus' decision at the film's conclusion to sacrifice his own life to make sure that
Christopher Johnson and his son escape is thus meant to signify the posthumanist realization
that social change hinges on the individual decision of how one approaches the other. There is
no broad social movement, no social collectivity, only the ethical acts of one for the other, one in
debt to the other. Thus, Wikus (and the viewer) end the film with the hope that the future will be
different, simply through the act of individual ethics. This is the limit of the posthumanist theory
of "difference." Insofar as it defines otherness, oppression, and exploitation as the effect of an
instrumental logic of classification which is endemic to all social relations, it denies that there is
any history to the ways in which people live. Instead, transformative theory becomes an "ethical"
praxis that, in the words of Agamben, "must face a problem and a particular situation each and
every time" (What is An Apparatus? 9). In this way, it becomes impossible to suggest that
exploitation and oppression are inherent to capitalism or would be any different under any
alternative mode of production. In fact, Hardt and Negri argue precisely this when they declare
that "Socialism and capitalismare both regimes of property that exclude the common" (ix).
The consequence is that posthumanism effectively naturalizes capitalism by denying what Marx
calls "species-being"the basis of human freedom in the collectivity of laborand replacing it
instead with what Agamben calls "special being" or that which "without resembling any other
represents all others" (Profanations 59). When Agamben proclaims that, "To be special [far
specie] can mean to surprise and astonish (in a negative sense) by not fitting into established
rules, but the notion that individuals constitute a species and belong together in a homogeneous
class tends to be reassuring" (59) he replicates the bourgeois theory of difference which, as Marx
writes, is based upon "an individual separated from the community, withdrawn into himself,
wholly preoccupied with his private interest and acting in accordance with his private caprice"
such that "far from being considered, in the rights of man, as a species-being; on the contrary,
species-life itselfsocietyappears as a system which is external to the individual and as a
limitation of his original independence" (On the Jewish Question 43). In other words, the very
nature of the division of labor under capitalism causes workers to blame ahistorical notions of
"society" and "government" for the contradictions which reside in the economic and, in turn,
seek refuge in the "freedom" of individuality which bourgeois society promises. In this way,
when Agamben writes that "The transformation of the species into a principle of identity and
classification is the original sin of our culture, its most implacable apparatus [dispositivo]" (60),
he reproduces the sense with which people respond to capitalist exploitation by blaming the very
idea of "society," rather than the society of exploitation. By taking the question of identity and
difference out of the social, Agamben turns exploitation into an existential crisis which can only
be resolved by the ethical recognition of difference on its own terms, leaving the contradictions
of society intact. This is how the posthumanist theories of identity return to the same structures
of representation they claim to oppose because their opposition does not move beyond the
economic structures of capitalism. Both the Hegelian theory of "recognition" and the posthuman
theory of "singularity" are ultimately theories of the isolated individual, which is an ideological
fiction arising alongside capitalism (a la "Robinson Crusoe") as a result of the economic shift
toward wage-labor. They consequently substitute for more radical theories of freedom from the
market the freedom of the individual in the market, as if rigid structures of social interpretations
and not the system of wage-labor were holding the individual back. If we are to truly see the
world differently, not just as isolated individuals, but as a united community
which uses new technologies for freeing people from the drudgery of wage labor
and its corresponding ideologies of racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms
of oppression, what is necessary is a social transformation that ends the
exploitation of labor upon which capitalism is based. Pluralizing identities doesnt
challenge the logic of exploitation, but actually expands it since private property establishes
individual responsibility as the very basis of one's "natural" existence by stripping people of any
means of survival outside of wage-labor. Thus, retreating into individualism is merely the
ideological mask which is placed over the subsumption of all life under the profit motive.
However, as Marx writes, regardless of appearances, "the individual is the social being. His life,
even if it may not appear in the direct form of a communal life carried out together with others
is an expression and confirmation of social life" (86). Although posthumanism turns the
alienation of the worker under capitalism into the very pre-condition of all culture, I argue that
it is only by freeing labor from the restrictions of capitalist exploitation that, we can, as Marx
writes, end racial oppression and find a "genuine resolution of the conflict between man and
nature and between man and manthe true resolution of the strife between existence and
essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between
the individual and the species" (84).
Ignorance
Framing racism in terms of economic structures is inadequate
ignores oppression outside of the workplace
West 93 [Abanes Cornel West, University Professor at Princeton University, M.A. and Ph.D in Philosophy,
Princeton University, graduated Magna Cum Laude in philosophy from Harvard, Prophetic Fragments, Towards a
Socialist Theory of Racism p. 97-?, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1993, http://books.google.com/books?id=2bwdrt5sigC&source=gbs_navlinks_s]
basic conceptions of racism in the Marxist tradition . The first subsumes

racism under the general rubric of working-class exploitation. This viewpoint tends to ignore
forms of racism not determined by the workplace . At the turn of the century, this position was put forward by
There are four
many leading figures in the Socialist party, particularly Eugene Debs. Debs believed that white racism against peoples of color was solely a "divide-andconquer strategy" of the ruling class and that any attention to its operations "apart from the general labor problem" would constitute racism in reverse. My
aim is not to castigate the Socialist party or insinuate that Debs was a racist. The Socialist party had some distinguished black members, and Debs had a
any analysis that confines itself to oppression in the workplace

overlooks racism's operation in other spheres of life. For the Socialist party, this yielded a "color-blind"
strategy for resisting racism in which all workers were viewed simply as workers with no specific identity or problems. Complex racist
practices within and outside the workplace were reduced to mere strategies of the
ruling class. The second conception of racism in the Marxist tradition acknowledges the specific
operation of racism within the workplace (for example, job discrimination and structural
inequality of wages) but remains silent about these operations outside the
workplace. This viewpoint holds that peoples of color are subjected both to general working-class
exploitation and to a specific "super-exploitation" resulting from less access to jobs and lower wages. On the practical plane,
this perspective accented a more intense struggle against racism than did Debs' viewpoint, and yet it still limited this
struggle to the workplace. The third conception of racism in the Marxist tradition, the so-called
"Black Nation thesis ", has been the most influential among black Marxists. It claims that the operation of racism is best
understood as a result of general and specific working-class exploitation and national
oppression. This viewpoint holds that Afro-Americans constitute, or once constituted, an oppressed nation in the Black Belt South and an
long history of fighting racism. But
oppressed national minority in the rest of American society. There are numerous versions of the Black Nation Thesis. Its classical form was put forth by the
American Communist party in 1928, was then modified in the 1930 resolution and codified in Harry Haywood's Negro Liberation (1948). Some small
Leninist organizations still subscribe to the thesis, and its most recent reformulation appeared in James Forman's Self-Determination and the AfricanAmerican People (1981). All of these variants adhere to Stalin's definition of a nation set forth in his Marxism and the National Question (1913) which
states that "a nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life and
psychological make-up manifested in a common culture." Despite its brevity and crudity, this formulation incorporates a crucial cultural dimension
overlooked by the other two Marxist accounts of racism. Furthermore, linking racist practices to struggles between dominating and dominated nations (or
peoples) has been seen as relevant to the plight of Native Americans, Chicanos, and Puerto Ricans who were disinherited and decimated by white colonial
settlers. Such models of "internal colonialism" have important implications for organizing strategies because they give particular attention to critical
linguistic and cultural forms of oppression. They remind us that much of the American West consists of lands taken from Native Americans and from
Mexico. Since the Garveyite movement of the 1920s, which was the first mass movement among Afro-Americans, the black left has been forced to take
black nationalism
seriously the cultural dimension of the black freedom struggle. Marcus Garvey's
rendered most black Marxists "protoGramscians" in at least the limited sense that they took cultural concerns more seriously than many other Marxists. But this concern with cultural life was
did inspire many impressive struggles against

racism by the predominantly white left, particularly in the 1930s, its ahistorical racial definition
of a nation, its purely statistical determination of national boundaries (the South was a black
nation because of its then black majority population), and its illusory conception of a distinct black national
economy ultimately rendered it an inadequate analysis . The fourth conception of racism in
the Marxist tradition claims that racist practices result not only from general and specific
working-class exploitation but also from xenophobic attitudes that are not strictly
reducible to class exploitation. From this perspective, racist attitudes have a life and
logic of their own, dependent upon psychological factors and cultural practices. This
limited by the Black Nation Thesis itself. Although the theory
viewpoint was motivated primarily by opposition to the predominant role of the Black Nation Thesis on the American and Afro-American left. Its most
Marxist theory
is indispensable yet ultimately inadequate for grasping the complexity of racism as
a historical phenomenon. Marxism is indispensable because it highlights the relation
of racist practices to the capitalist mode of production and recognizes the crucial
role racism plays within the capitalist economy. Yet Marxism is inadequate because
it fails to probe other spheres of American society where racism plays an integral
prominent exponents were W. E. B. DuBois and Oliver Cox. This brief examination of past Marxist views leads to one conclusion.
role especially the psychological and cultural spheres. Furthermore, Marxist views tend to
assume that racism has its roots in the rise of modern capitalism . Yet, it can easily be
shown that although racist practices were shaped and appropriated by modern
capitalism, racism itself predates capitalism . Its roots lie in the earlier encounters between the civilizations of Europe,
Africa, Asia, and Latin America, encounters that occurred long before the rise of modern capitalism.
Intensification
Racism intensifies the effects of capitalismcontrols the root cause
Andersen and Collins 92 M.A., Ph. D., University of Massachusetts, Amherst; B.A., Georgia
State University, Atlanta AND MA Harvard, Graduate school of education and phD brandeis
university, sociology (Margaret L. and Patricia Hill, Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology,
6th edition, chapter 15// SRSL)
I met Frank and Suzanne Conway during the late-afternoon rush hour at a restaurant in Los Angeles. Recently laid off from a
communications marketing firm and now taking courses to become certified to teach elementary school, Frank arrived after picking
up their daughter, Logan, from day care. Suzanne arrived from her job as an operations supervisor for a money management
company. The Conways loved their home in the diverse urban neighborhood ofJefferson Park, near the University of Southern
California, but were gravely concerned about sending Logan to weak public schools. They talked to me at length over coffee about
this community-school dilemma, their high educational hopes, and their future plans. The Conways' story and their solution to
their dilemma turned out to be more common than anticipated. Because they receive generous help from their families, they are
considering moving to a suburban community with highly regarded schools. Home prices there start at four times those where they
live now, and Logan would grow up and go to school in a far more homogenous community-family wealth makes these decisions
logical and desirable for some families. Of course, as with the nearly one in three American families without financial assets, many of
the family interviews did not brim over with optimistic choices and options but rather turned on how lack of family wealth severely
restricts community, housing, and schooling opportunities. Like the Conways, Alice and Bob Bryant work at professional jobs and
earn a middle- class income, but they do not have access to family wealth-they are asset- poor. Living in the working-class
Dorchester section of Boston, they are frustrated about their inability to afford to move to a neighborhood with better schools. Doing
the best they can, they are highly aware that their son. Mathew, attends only "halfway decent schools" and is not getting the "besteducation." The Bryants' hopes for Mathew are no different from the Conways for Logan. What is different is their capacity to follow
through on their hope and deliver opportunities. The Conways are white and the Bryants are black. Because their incomes,
professional status, and educations are nearly identical. conventional wisdom suggests that race should be at most a minor factor in
opportunities available to these two families, but we will see tangible connections between family assets and
race. Differing family asset capacity, which has more to do with race than with merits or
accomplishments, most likely will translate into different worlds for Mathew and Logan.
Demonstrating the unique and diverse social circumstances that blacks and whites face is the
best way to understand racial differences in wealth holding. The ideas I develop ... also push the sociology of
wealth in another important direction, namely, an exploration of how the uses of wealth perpetuate
inequality. Together, wealth accumulation and utilization highlight the ways in which the
opportunity structure contributes to massive racial wealth inequality that worsens racial
inequality. My argument is grounded in three big ideas. First, I argue that family inheritance and continuing
racial discrimination in crucial areas like homeownership are reversing gains earned in schools
and on jobs and making racial inequality worse. Family inheritance is more encompassing than money passed at
death, because for young adults it often includes paying for college, substantial down-payment assistance in buying a first home, and
other continuing parental financial assistance. Consequently , it is virtually impossible for people of color to earn
their way to equal wealth through wages. No matter how much blacks earn, they cannot preserve
their occupational status for their children; 'they cannot outearn the wealth gap. Many believe that
African Americans do not do as well as whites, other minorities, or immigrants because they spend too much money rather than save
and invest in the future. They are unable to defer gratification, do not sacrifice for the future, and consume excessively. We will see
how the facts speak otherwise. Second, these inheritances frequently amount to what I call transformative
assets. This involves the capacity of unearned, inherited wealth to lift a family economically and
socially beyond where their own achievements, jobs, and earnings would place them. These
head-start assets set up different starting lines, establish different rules for success, fix different
rewards for accomplishments, and ultimately perpetuate inequality. Third, the way families use
head-start assets to transform their own lives-within current structures that reward them for
doing so- has racial and class consequences for the homes they buy, the communities they live
in, and the quality of schools their children attend. The same set of processes typically advantages whites while
disadvantaging African Americans. My family interviews point to critical mechanisms of denial that insulate whites from privilege.
Homeownership is one of the bedrocks of the American Dream, and I explore homeownership as a prime way of delving into these
big ideas. We are a nation of homeowners. In 2002 the homeownership rate was 68 percent, a historic high. Homeownership
is by far the single most important way families accumulate wealth. Homeownership also is the way
families gain access to the nicest communities, the best public services, and, most important for my argument, quality education.
Homeownership is the most critical pathway for transformative assets; hence examining
homeownership also keeps our eyes on contemporary discrimination in mortgage markets, the
cost of home loans, residential segregation, and the way families accumulate wealth through
home appreciation, all of which systematically disadvantage blacks. Homeownership appears critical to
success in other areas of life as well, from how well a child does in school to better marital stability to positive civic participation to
de- creased domestic violence.1 How young families acquire homes is one of the most tangible ways that
the historical legacy of race plays out in the present generation and projects well into future.
Understanding how young families can afford to buy homes and how this contributes greatly to
the racial wealth gap brings us back full circle to the importance of family legacies . These big ideas
help us understand one of the most important issues facing America as we start the twenty-first century. African Americans were
frozen out of the mainstream of American life over the first half of the last century, but since 1954 the civil rights movement has won
many battles against racial injustice, and America has reached a broad national consensus in favor of a more tolerant, more inclusive
society. Yet we live with a great paradox: Why is racial inequality increasing in this new era? To fully
appreciate the decisions American families like the Conways and Bryants face, we need to understand the extent, causes, and
consequences ofthe vast increase in inequality that has taken place since the early 1970s . Inequality has increased
during both Democratic and Republican administrations. Those at the top of the income
distribution have increased their share the most. In fact, the slice of the income pie received by the top 1 percent of
families is nearly twice as large as it was 30 years ago, and their share now is about as large as the share of the bottom 40 percent.
This is not news. In Nickel and Dimed, liberal critic Barbara Ehrenreich tells her story of working at low-skill jobs in America's
booming service sector, jobs like waitressing, cleaning houses, and retail sales. These are the fastest-growing jobs in America, and
they highlighc our current work-to-welfare reform strategy. Ehrenreich's experiences illustrate how hard it is to get by in America
on poverty wages. More than anything else, perhaps, Ehrenreich's personal experiences demonstrate that in toda} America more
than hard work is necessary for economic success. I talked to many families who live these lives for real, and we will see how rising
inequality makes assets even more critical for success. In Wealth and Democracy, conservative strategist Kevin Phillips argues that
current laissez-faire policies are pretenses to further enrich wealthy an powerful families. Rather than philosophical principles,
conservative polici of tax cuts for the wealthy, gutting the inheritance tax, and less business regulation favor wealth and property at
the expense of middle-class success. T he Bush administration's gradual phase-out of the estate tax privileges unearned. inherited
wealth over opportunity, hard work, and accomplishment. Presi- dent Bush's 2003 tax stimulus package carved 39 percent of the
benefits for the wealthiest 1 percent. I will broaden the discussion of rising inequality by bringing family wealth back into the picture.
Phillips concludes his book with a dire warning: "Either democracy must be renewed, with politics brough back to life, or wealth is
likely to cement a new and less democratic regime- plutocracy by some other name. An ideology that equated personal gain with
benefits to society accompanied the great economic boom of the last part of the twentieth century. Even though inequality
increased in the past 20 years, despite loud words and littl action, policies such as affordable
housing and equitable school funding tha challenged that mindset simply had no chance of
getting off the ground. Iron- ically, historically low unemployment rates went hand-in-hand with
rising inequality in an America where hard work no longer means economic success . Success includes
harder work, less family time, and probably more stress. T he average middle-income, two-parent family now works the equivalent
of 1 more weeks than it did in 1979 due to longer hours, second jobs, and workin::- spouses.2 The years of economic stagnation
subsequent to the boom produced a dramatic increase in the number of working poor, and working homeless families are a
growing concern.3 Since late 2001, in a period marke by a declining stock market and rising unemployment, an abundance of da has
provided strong evidence that lpwer-income households are under severe economic stress: Personal bankruptcies, automobile
repossessions, mortgage foreclosures, and other indicators of bad debt all reached records in 2002.~ What is the role ofwealth and
inheritance in rising inequality? The batJ:- boom generation, which grew up during a long period of economic prosperity right after
World War II, is in the midst of benefiting from the greates inheritance of wealth in history. One reliable source estimates that paren
will bequeath $9 trillion to their adult children between 1990 and 2030.: Given this fact, it is no wonder that an already ineffective
estate tax (due to tax planning, family trusts, and loopholes), which takes 50 percent of estates worth more than $1 million, came
under such ferocious political attack during the second Clinton administration and has been effectively repealed by the Bush
administration. This wealth inheritance will exacerbate already rising inequality. Economists Robert Avery and Michael Rendall
presented a benchmark statistical study in 1993 showing that most inherited wealth will be pocketed by only a few. 6 According to
the study, one-third of the money will go to 1 percent of the baby boomers, who will receive about $1.6 million apiece. Another third,
representing an average bequest of $336,000, will go to the next 9 percent. The final slice, divided by the remaining 90 percent of
the generation, will run about $40,000 apiece. We will see how this baby boomer inheritance not only fuels inequality but also
intensifies racial inequality. Few people now talk about the profound effects-economic, social, and political-of that widening gap. We
can argue for the privilege of passing along more unearned inequality, or we can take a stand for fairness and equality. THE
CONTEXT OF RACIAL INEQUALITY Writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, historian W.E.B. Du Bois
emphatically declared that the problem of the century was the problem of the color line. Writing
again at midcentury, Du Bois reviewed what African Americans had accomplished in education, civil
rights, voting rights, occupation, income, housing, literature and arts, and science. African
Americans had made progress, he noted, although it was unequal, incomplete, and accompanied by wide gaps and temporary retreats. At about the same time that Du Bois was penning his assessment in a
black newspaper, the Pittsburgh Courier, the Nobel economist Gunnar Myrdal published the widely read An American Dilemma.
This influential and lengthy study documented the living conditions for African Americans
during the first half of the century, revealing to many for the first time the impact of systematic
discrimination in the United States. These two giants helped to define racial inequality in terms
of equal opportunity and discrimination and to place these issues at the heart of a nation's
concern. The twisted, politically narrow, and bureaucratically unfortunate notion of "affirmative action" substituted for equal
opportunity by century's end, and affirmative action continues to frame our hopes and distrust regarding race. Even though the
struggle for equal opportunity is far from completed, the single-minded and narrow focus on affirmative action forces compromises
with our past, obscures our present understanding of racial inequality, and restricts policy in the future. Du Bois and Myrdal
correctly identified a color line of opportunity and discrimination at the core of the twentieth-century racial equality agenda in the
United States. The agenda in the twenty-first century must go further to include the challenge of
closing the wealth gap, which currently is 10 cents on the dollar, if we are to make real progress
toward racial equality and democracy. Understanding the racial wealth gap is the key to
understanding how racial inequality is passed along from generation to generation. The enigma of
racial inequality is still a festering public and private conversation in American society. After the country's dismantling of the most
oppressive racist policies and practices of its past, many have come to believe that the United States has moved beyond race and that
our most pressing racial concerns should center now on race-neutrality and color-blindness. Proclaim- ing the success of the civil
rights agenda and the dawning of a postracial age in America, books by Shelby Steele, Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom, and others
influenced not only the academic debates but elite and popular opinion as well.7 Indeed, a review of the record shows impressive
gains, most particularly in the areas oflaw, education, jobs, and earnings. Even though progress is real, this new political sensibility
about racial progress and equality incorporates illusions that mask an enduring and robust racial hierarchy and continue to hinder
efforts to achieve our ideals of democracy and justice. . In fact, we can consider seriously the declining economic significance of
race because the measures we have traditionally used to gauge racial inequality focus almost exclusively on salaries. The blackwhite earnings gap narrowed considerably throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The earnings gap has remained relatively stable since
then, with inequality rising again in the 1980s and closing once more during tight labor markets in the 1990s.8 The average black
family earned 55 cents for every dollar earned by the average white family in 1989; by 2000 it reached an all-time high of 64 cents
on the dollar.9 For black men working full-time, the gains are more impressive, as their wages reached 67 percent of those of fully
employed white men, up from 62 percent in 1980 and only 50 percent in 1960.10 How much the racial wage gap has closed, why it
has closed, and what it means are the subjects of academic and political debate. One study, for example, argues that the racial
wage gap is really 23 percent higher than the official figures because incarceration rates hide low wages and joblessness among
blacks.11 At comparable incomes, more African American family members work to earn the same money as white families.
Working longer hours and more weeks per year means that middle-income black families worked the equivalent of 12 more weeks
than white families to earn the same money in 2000. The tremendous growth of the black middle class often is cited as a triumphant sign of progress toward racial equality. Indeed, the raw numbers appear to justify celebration: In 1960 a little more than
three-quarters of a million black men and women were employed in middle-class occupations; by 1980 the number increased to
nearly three and a third million; and nearly seven million African Americans worked in middle-class jobs in 1995.13 T his impressive
growth in achieving upward mobility, however, does not tell the whole story, as some argue that stagnating economic conditions and
blacks' lower-middle-class occupational profile have stalled the march into the middle class since the mid-1970s. The real story of
the meaning of race in modern America, however, must include a serious consideration of how one generation passes advantage and
disadvantage to the next-how individuals' starting points are determined. While ending the old ways of outright exclusion,
subjugation, segregation, custom, discrimination, racist ideology, and violence, our nation continues to reproduce racial inequality,
racial hierarchy, and social injustice that is very real and formidable for those who experience it. In law, in public policy, in custom,
in education, in jobs, in health, indeed, in achievements, one could argue that America is more equal today than at any time in our
past. Analysts and advocates scour the annual release of official government statistics on income
to detect the latest trends in racial inequality. Traditional measures of economic well-being and inequality, such as
income, education, and jobs, show authentic and impressive progress toward racial equality from the mid-1960s through the early
1980s and stagnation since.15 This is not to suggest by any stretch of the imagination that we have seen
the dawning of the age of racial parity in the United States, because, indeed, wide racial gaps and
discrimination persist in all of these domains. Employment discrimination, educational discrimination,
environmental discrimination, and discriminatory immigration, taxation, health, welfare, and transportation policies continue.16
Despite the passage of major civil rights reforms, most whites and blacks continue to live in
highly segregated communities. To achieve perfectly integrated communities, two-thirds of
either all black or all white residents would have to move across racial boundaries . The same
indicators show too that progress toward racial equality has halted since the early 1980s. Vast wealth differences and
hence enormous disparities in opportunities remain between equally achieving and
meritorious white and black families. Progress made since the early 1960s has stalled short of equality. Familiar for Du
Bois and Myrdal is the dilemma that, despite narrowed gaps in so many important areas, new generations of whites and blacks still
start with vastly different sets of options and opportunities. An asset perspective examines a modern element of
the American dilemma: Similar achievements by people of similar abilities do not yield
comparable results.
Capitalism is just a magnifier for the effects of racismracism

is the root cause of the discrimination
Andersen and Collins 92 M.A., Ph. D., University of Massachusetts, Amherst; B.A.,
Georgia State University, Atlanta AND MA Harvard, Graduate school of education and phD
brandeis university, sociology (Margaret L. and Patricia Hill, Race, Class, and Gender: An
Anthology, 6th edition, chapter 15// SRSL)
Much of the research and media attention on African Americans is on the black poor. Welfare
debates, discussions of crime and safety, urban policy initiatives, and even the cultural uproar
over things like rap music are focused on the situation of poor African Americans . With more than
one in four African Americans living below the official poverty line (versus approximately one in nine whites), this
is a reasonable and warranted bias. But rarely do we hear the stories of the other three-fourths, or the
majority of African Americans, who may be the office secretary, the company's computer technician, a project manager down the hall, or the person who .teaches our children .
The growth of the black middle class has been hailed as one of the major triumphs of the civil
rights movement, but if we have so little information on who makes up this group and what their
lives are like, how can we be so sure that triumphant progress is the full story ? The optimistic assumption of
the 1970s and 1980s was that upwardly mobile African Americans were quietly integrating formerly all-white occupations, businesses, neighborhoods, and social clubs. Black
middle- and working-class families were moving out of all-black urban neighborhoods and into the suburbs. With these suppositions, the black middle class dropped from
under the scientific lens and off the policy agenda, even though basic evidence suggests that the public celebration of black middle-class ascendance has perhaps been too hasty.
, that a more appropriate socioeconomic label for members of the black middle class
is "lower middle class." The one black doctor who lives in an exclusive white suburb and the few African American lawyers who work at a large firm are not
We know, for example
representative of the black middle class overall (but neither are their experiences identical to those of their white colleagues). And although most white Americans are also not
doctors or lawyers, the lopsided distribution of occupations for whites does favor such professional and managerial jobs, whereas the black middle class is clustered in the sales
African Americans have lower earnings. Yet the inequalities

run even deeper than just income. Compound and exponentiate the current differences over a history of slavery and Jim Crow, and the nearly
fourteenfold wealth advantage that whites enjoy over African Americans-regardless ofincome, education, or occupation-needs little explanation . We also know
that the black middle class faces housing segregation to the same extent as the black poor.
African Americans are more segregated from whites than any other racial or ethnic group. In fact,
the black middle class likely faces the most blatant racial discrimination, in that many in its
ranks can actually afford to pay for housing in predominantly white areas . Real estate agents and apartment
and clerical fields. Because one's occupation affects one's income,
managers can easily turn away poor African Americans by simply quoting prohibitive home costs or high rents. It takes more purpo- sive creativity, however, to consistently
steer middle-class blacks into already established African American neighborhoods by such tactics as disingenu- ously asserting that an apartment has just been rented when the
prospective renters who show up at the property manager's door are, to his or her surprise, black. Racial segregation means that racial inequalities in employment, education,
. Predominantly white neighborhoods benefit from the historically

determined and contemporarily sustained edge that whites enjoy. Finally, we know that middle-class African Americans do
income, and wealth are inscribed in space
not perform as well as whites on standardized tests (in school or in employment); are more likely to be incarcerated for drug offenses; are less likely to marry, and more likely to
have a child without being married; and are less likely to be working. Liberals bumble when addressing these realities because, unlike housing segregation or job
discrimination, of which middle-class African Americans are the clear victims, earning low grades in school or getting pregnant without a husband can easily be attributed to
the bad behaviors of blacks themselves. For middle-class blacks, who ostensibly do not face the daily disadvantages of poverty, it is even more difficult to explain why they do
not measure up to whites. To resolve this quandary it is essential to continuously refer back to the ways in which the black middle class is not equal to the white middle class....
The lives of the families in Groveland* provide some answers to these questions. Groveland's approximately ninety square blocks contain a population of just under twelve
thousand residents, over 95 percent of whom are African American. The 1990 median annual family income in the neighborhood is nearly $40,000, while the comparable
figure for Chicago as a whole is just over $30,000. More than 70 percent of Groveland families own their own homes. By income and occupational criteria, as well as the
American dream of homeownership, Groveland qualifies as a "middle-class neighborhood." Yet this sterile description does not at all capture the neighborhood's diversity,
which is critical to correctly portraying the neighborhood context of the black middle class. Groveland's unemployment rate is 12 percent, which is higher than the citywide rate,
but lower than the percentage of unemployed residents in the neighborhoods that border Groveland. Twelve percent of Groveland's families are poor, which again makes it a bit
more advantaged than the surrounding areas, but worse off than most of Chicago's predominantly white neighborhoods. The geography of Groveland is typical of black middleclass areas, which often sit as a kind of buffer between core black poverty areas and whites. Contrary to popular discussion, the black middle class has not out-migrated to
unnamed neighborhoods outside of the black community. Instead, they are an overlooked population still rooted in the contemporary "Black Belts" of cities across the country.
Some of the questions about why middle-class blacks are not at parity with middle-class whites can be answered once this fact is recognized. ... By the end of my research
tenure in Groveland, I had seen three groups .of eighrh-graders graduate to high school, high school kids go on to college and college graduates start their careers. I also heard
too many stories and read too many obituaries of the teenagers who were jailed or killed along the way. The son of a police detective in jail for murder. The grandson of a teacher
shot while visiting his girlfriend's house. The daughter of a park supervisor living with a drug dealer who would later be killed at a fast-food restaurant. These events were
jarring, and all-too-frequent, discontinuities in the daily routine of Groveland residents. Why were some Groveland youth following a path to success, while others had concocted
a recipe for certain failure? After all, these are not the stories of poor youth caught in a trap of absent opportunities, low aspirations, and harsh environments. Instead Groveland
is a neighborhood of single-family homes, old stately churches tree-lined streets, active political and civic organizations, and concerned parents trying to maintain a middleclass way of life. These black middle-class families are a hidden population in this country's urban fabric. The evening news hour in every major American city is filled with reports of urban crime and violence. Newspapers fill in the_gaps of the more sensational tragedies about which the television could provide only a few sound bites. Rounding out
the flow ofurban Armageddon stories are the gos- sip and hearsay passed informally between neighbors, church friends, and drinking buddies. For many middle-class white
Americans, the incidents they hear about in distant and troubled inner cities provide a constant symbolic threat, but an infrequent reality. For the families who live on the corner
of the crime scene-overwhelmingly black or Latino, and poor-daily life is organized to avoid victimization. In the middle of these two geographically and socially distant groups
lives the black middle class. African American social workers and teachers, secretaries and nurses, entrepreneurs and government bureaucrats are in many ways the buffer
between the black poor and the white middle class. When neighborhoods are changing, white middle-class families may find themselves living near low-income black families,
More than thirty years after the civil

rights movement, racial segregation remains a reality in most American cities. Middle-income
black families fill the residential gap between the neighborhoods that house middle-class
whites and the neighborhoods where poor African Americans live. Unlike most whites, middle-class black families must
but one group is inevitably displaced. The neighborhood becomes, once again, racially homogeneous.
contend with the crime, dilapidated housing, and social disorder in the deteriorating poor neighborhoods that continue to grow in their direction. Resi- dents attempt to fortify
their neighborhoods against this encroachment, and limit their travel and associations to other middle-class neighborhoods in the city and suburbs. Yet even with these efforts,
residents of black middle-class neighborhoods share schools, grocery stores, hospitals, nightclubs, and parks with their poorer neighbors, ensuring frequent interaction within
and outside the neighborhood. The in-between position of the black middle class sets up certain cross- roads for its youth. This peculiar limbo begins to explain the disparate
outcomes of otherwise similar young people in Groveland. The right and wrong paths are in easy reach of neighborhood youth. Working adults are models of success. Some
parents even work two jobs; while still others combine work and school to increase their chances of on-the-job promotions. All of the positive knowledge, networking, and rolemodel benefits that accrue to working parents are operative for many families in Groveland. But at the same time the rebellious nature of adolescence inevitably makes the
wrong path a strong temptation, and there is no shortage of showy drug dealers and cocky gang members who make dabbling in deviance look fun. Youth walk a fine line between preparing for success and youthful delinquent experimentation, the consequences ofwhich can be especially serious for blackyouth.... ...
The black middle
class is connected to the black poor through friendship and kinship ties, as well as
geographically. Policies that hurt the black poor will ultimately negatively affect the black
middle class. At the same time, the black middle class sits at the doorstep of middle-class privilege. Contin- ued affirmative action, access to higher education, a plan
to create real family- wage jobs, and the alleviation of residential segregation should be at the forefront of policy initiatives to support the gains already made by the black
middle class.... "Middle class" is a notoriously elusive category based on a combination of socioeconomic factors (mostly income, occupation, and education) and normative
judgments (ranging from where people live, to what churches or clubs they belong to, to whether they plant flowers in their gardens). Among African Americans, where there has
historically been less income and occupational diversity, the question of middle-class position becomes even more murky.... Conversations with Groveland residents ...
underscore the fluid and complex nature of class categories among African Americans. Although most Groveland residents settle on a label somewhere between "lower middle
class" and "middle class" to describe their own class position, the intermediate descriptors are plentiful. Some classification schemes focus on inequality. One resident resolved
that there are the "rich," and everyone else falls into the categories of "poor, poorer, and poorest." Other words, like ghetto, bourgie (the, shortened version of bourgeois), and
uppity are normative terms that Grovelandites use to describe the intersection of standard socioeconomic measures and normative judgments of lifestyles and attitudes. Still
other people talk about class in geographic terms, delineating a hierarchy of places rather than of incomes or occupations.... . . . Despite continuing social and political ties, the
reality of class schisms cannot be ignored. In The Declining Significance ofRace (1978), William Julius Wilson argued that the African American community was splitting in two,
with middle-class blacks improving their position relative to whites, and poor blacks becoming ever more marginalized. Civil rights legislation, especially affirmative action,
worked well for African Americans poised to take advantage of educational and employment opportunities. The unsolved problem was what to do about African Americans in
poverty. They were doing poorly not primarily because they were black, Wilson argued, but because they were unskilled and because the structure of the labor market had
changed around them. Grounded in the conviction that social structure influences the nature of race relations, Wilson saw the growth in high-wage employment and the rise of
political liberalism as fueling the diminution of race as a factor in the stratification process. The life chances of blacks were becoming more dependent on their class position.
African Americans with a college education were positioned to take advantage of jobs in a service-producing economy- jobs in trade and finance, public management, and social
services. And because of affirmative action legislation, firms were motivated to hire these qualified blacks. At the same time, the situation for the black poor was stagnating, if
no- deteriorating. Black unemployment began to rise in the 1950s. There was no much difference in the unemployment rate for blacks and whites in 1930, bu- by the mid-1950s
the ratio of black to white unemployment reached 2 to~ (Farley 1985). These changes, Wilson and others argued, were the result o- shifts in the mode of production. The number
of well-paying manufacturing jobs in the central city had declined as a result of both technologica.; changes and relocation. These changes permanently relegated unskilled
bla~ to low-wage, nienial, and dead-end jobs, or pushed theni out of the workforce altogether. Wilson's contribution was to direct attention to changes in the nature of
production that disadvantaged unskilled blacks. His prognosis for the black niiddle class was relatively optiniistic, a position for which he was criticized by other African
American scholars. Wilson's critics rushed to prove hini wrong and show that members of the new black middle class continued to face obstacles because of their race (Pinkney
1984; Willie 1979; Washington 1979, 1980; see Morris 1996 for a review). .. . To be sure, the obstacles faced by poor blacks in a changing economy and the persistence of black
poverty more generally are intolerable facts that merit considerable research and government resources. However, the research pendulum swung to the extreme, virtually
The declining interest in the status of nonpoor blacks was

premature. The African American community was in a short time transformed from a
population almost uniform in its poverty to one with a nascent niiddle class- this as recently as
the 1950s. But racial disparities in occupation, income, and intergenerational mobility were not eradicated by the few years of progress. The brief period of growth
ignoring the majority of African Americans who are not poor. ... ..
spawned a kind of dismissive optimism, but the economic and social purse strings were once again pulled tight, stalling the advances made by some African Americans. The
continuing inequalities between middle-class whites and African Americans attest to the persistence of racism and discrimination, albeit in quite different forms than in the
Jim Crow era (Bobo, Kluegel, and Smith 1997).. .. The same stages that characterize the socioeconomic past and present of African Americans-overwhelming disadvantage,
followed by progress and optimism, followed by stagnation and retrenchment-are mirrored in the spatial history (the where) of the black niiddle class.... While some black
families have integrated white neighborhoods as many commentators had predicted, the black middle class overall remains as segregated from whites as the black poor (Farley
1991). This means that the search for better neighborhoods has taken place within a segregated housing market. As a result, black middle-class neighborhoods are often located
next to predominantly black areas with much higher poverty rates. Blacks of all socioeconomic statuses tend to be confined to a limited geographic space, which is formally
designated by the discriminatory practices of banks, insurance companies, and urban planners, and synibolically identified by the formation of cultural and social
institutions.... .. . Historic and contemporary black residential patterns suggest the following. African Americans have long attempted to translate socioeconomic success into
residential mobility, making them similar to other ethnic groups (Massey and Denton 1985). They desire to purchase better homes, safer neighborhoods, higher quality schools,
Out-migration has been a constant process. The black middle class

has always attempted to leave poor neighborhoods, but has never been able to get very far. However,
when the relative size of the black middle class grew, the size of its residential enclaves grew as
well. The increase in the number ofblack middle-classpersons has led to growth in the size ofblack middle-class enclaves, which in turn increases the spatial distance
and more amenities with their increased earnings.
between poor and middle-class African Americans. This greater physical separation within a segregated black community accounts for the popular belief that black middleclass out-migration is a recent and alarming trend. . . . The problems confronting middle-class African Americans are not solved by simply moving away from a low-income
black family and next door to a middle-class white family. The fact that a neighborhood's racial makeup is frequently a proxy for the things that really count-quality of schools,
security, appreciation of property values, political clout, and availability of desirable amenities-attests to the ways in which larger processes of discrimination penalize blacks
Racial inequalities perpetuate the higher poverty rate among blacks and ensure
that segregated black communities will bear nearly the full burden of such inequality. The argument for
at the neighborhood level.
residential integration is not to allow the black middle class to easily abandon black neighborhoods. Instead, more strict desegregation laws would also open the door for lowincome blacks to move to predominantly white neighborhoods, where jobs and resources are unfairly clustered. Yet we need not wait for whites to accept blacks into their
Aggressive measures must be taken to improve the

socioeconomic conditions of African Americans where they are, by highlighting where the black middle class lives, it becomes apparent
neighborhoods, and think ofintegration as the panacea for current problems.
that concentrated urban poverty has repercussions not only for poor African Americans, but for middle-class blacks as well, while a majority of middle-class whites move farther
. A comprehensive an- tipoverty agenda would have positive benefits for African
Americans as a group, and therefore for the residential environs of the black middle classalthough it leaves unchallenged the desire of many blacks and even more whites to live with
others of the same race.
into the hinterlands
No correlation
Cap does not rely on racism they have nothing to do with
each other. Capitalists and African Americans can and do live
peacefully together
Capitalism No Date Does capitalism cause racism? http://capitalism.org/racism/does-capitalismcause-racism/ (MG)
A common complaint about capitalism is that all the capitalist sees is money.
Given that this is true, observe that anyone who only cares about money, doesnt
care about the color of the person where their money comes from . Capitalism is a
system of individual rights it is a necessary political condition to the banishment
of racism, where it results in the violation of individual rights. The only protection a
man needs from racism is the protection of his rights specifically protection from
the initiation of force, whether it be a knife held at ones throat by a Black Panther, or the noose held by a
member of the KKK. Observe the great American melting pot where the warring tribes
of Europe who were busy killing each other in their homeland, were able to live
relatively peacefully together. What principle was the cause of this? Politically, the
principle of individual rights the foundation of capitalism . This principle of
individualism is gradually being eroded as the racists of today are advocating that
people be rewarded political privileges, based on ones race, i.e., so called
affirmative action the affirmation of racist policies. Under capitalism, such evil
racist policies carried out by the power of government would be outlawed.
Under capitalism, the only form of judgment is the method of individualism
judging each man as an individual, i.e., by the content of ones character, and not
the color of his skin (ancestry) as racists like Jesse Jackson clamor for.
AT: Prejudice + Power

Their understanding of racism is based on a simplistic
understanding of power violence occurs regardless of power
structures
Townhead 13 (Daniel Townhead interdisciplinary Human Studies at Bradford, The Hidden Struggle,
Dysophia: Anarchist Debates on Privilege, vol. 4 (November 2013), pp. 43 // JJ)
there are several different arguments used to justify this kind

of assertion. One you may come across is that racism is impossible without 'power'
supporting it, and as 'people of colour' have no power due to the structure of
society and the institutions that compose it a). holding all the power and b).
systematically privileging white people and un-privileging 'people of colour', it is
impossible for them to exercise racism. The problem with this is that power is not just held
by the institutions of society; every human being holds potential power, which can
be exercised towards other human beings in various ways including love, aid, direct violence,
Regarding the second point,
manipulation, creativity, etc. To take the negative example, one human being can kill another independently of a
power structure, because they possess physical power either in the form of weaponry or being bigger, stronger or
more skilled than the other. If you think this example is too individualised,
a group of humans can
also exercise said physical power over other humans for various reasons
and motivations that again are not directly tied to any white-privileging power
structure or discourse, including practical competitive reasons, cultural conflict, or ideological motivations
that they have developed themselves.
Identity Politics
Good
Voice
Even if imperfect, identity politics is the only and most
effective means for minority groups to gain a voice
individuals sometimes identify as a group in order to struggle for a share

of power against others with whom they disagree and to whom they are
subordinated. Black women, for instance, vote in a higher percentage and more
consistently than any other identity group for the Democratic Party . They do not do so in
order merely to assert a different perspective as an identity group; they do so instead because they
understand how their interests, as a collective group, place them in peril if they do
otherwise. Their group identity is the most effective means for them
On the one hand,
to take sides in an ongoing argument in which others constantly

attempt to distort and diminish their share of political, economic,
and social resources. If they do not see how their collective interests pivot on
asserting their collective identity , then they shall not be able to see the argument
before them, much less the ideology operating to buttress that argument. Their collective
identity clarifies which side of the argument they have to be on in order to have a
political voice. On the other hand, sometimes groups exploit a rational disagreement, creating oversimplified
bilateral sides in order to em power themselves as a group by subordinating others as a group. Every time
politicians attack "welfare mothers," they manufacture a bilateral argument of us against them, sometimes a very
rationalist one, just to enhance their own political power within the status quo. The interplay between opinion and
identity is neither either/or nor both/and but all at once.
Rational arguments can be used to mask

ideology, and contrarily they can be used to bring it to light, just as the appeal to
identity can be exploited to reveal a true difference of opinion or exploited to fabricate a rational
disagreement in order to win the upper hand in a competition among groups. Finally, limiting ideology to a
rational disagreement of opinion seems to cover over the naked reality of what it
means to take sides in any argument not purely defined by rationality , which no
argument can be. Such words as "side" and "stance," exploited by Professor Michaels because they are
inescapable in our deliberative discourses , again remind us that "left" and "right" are oblique
references to the human body, and I would suggest, as such, they are also references not to just individual stray
People take stancesthey take sides

because they stand somewhere, and where they always stand in taking a side is in some identityformation, assumed or affirmed, normalized or marginalized, politic or politicized,
covered or exposed by the supposed reasonableness of the side they choose to take. If
bodies, but to collectivities of bodies comprising the body politic.
politics were a forum among equals, like the relative equality of colleagues at some academic conference, the
attractiveness of Professor Michaels's argument would be undeniable. Politics, however, is a struggle exactly
Ideology is not just the content or

substance that thought takes in politics, defined as the struggle for power; it is
moreover the form (including point of view) and direction (including point of view) that thought
takes as it structures and is structured by politics. Contrary to Professor Michaels's assertions,
therefore, point of view is not extrinsic to an argument ; instead it is an intrinsic facet of an
because inequality exists among individuals constituted as groups.7
argument as it helps to shape that argument's form, direction, and content. Although it is much more than this,
"identity
politics" is, to some extent, about what point of view is available to (and is
those engaged in a struggle for power, and about how that power will be
exercised. It is a matter not just of what is being said, but also who is saying it about whom, and directed toward
occupied by)
whose individual and collective benefit and/or detriment.
Movements
We must act within identity politics as the only effective method to coalesce against
oppression
Another reason we may be restless inside identity theory is because, according to the institutional
expectations of academe, we hunger for a new, attention-grabbing paradigm to market
at the moment that the sexiness of a new method seems to wear off. Anti-identity advocates can smell that
moment approaching and are eager to capitalize on it to demote race, gender, and sexuality and the identity
groups that these categories supposedly represent. This sort of academic restlessness is a bit underhanded,
given that we have been studying solely the intellectual identity of Aristotle for nigh 2400 years, and yet there is no movement to
clamp down on those who take pleasure in the study of Aristotelian physics, metaphysics, posterior analytics, ethics, and poetics,
This kind of academic restlessness

can also take place within such an identity discipline like feminism or queer studies.
even though these have ceased to provide a living paradigm for modernity.
As Wiegman suggests, certain feminists are anxious to return to a universal woman because they have grown tired of others'
Otherwise instructive queer theorists like Freeman in her contribution here or Lauren
to make family or church automatic signifiers of unqueer conservatism
blocking the progress of queer theory and politics . This has the effect of dismissing a
strong tendency among Black lesbians, gays, and bisexuals to identify with church
and family as sites of transformation, actual and potential, central to their sexual identity as
Blacks and to their racial identity as men-loving men and women-loving women .
Such restlessness within an identity discipline frequently tends also to assume that stigma,
marginality, and typingmobilized as key terms in Palumbo-Liu's contributionmust dominate the study
of the representation of intersecting identities , such that it becomes impossible to understand, for
"identity politics."
Berlant10 strive
instance, the pleasures of identification that enable Black sexual minorities to find in the Black church and the Black family, not only
in particular cases but also as institutions, magnets for progressive "identity politics," rather than a common enemy that can unite
Instead of assuming that something is astray

with anyone who identifies with these "reproductive" institutions,
we need to investigate and theorize the economies of pleasure
operating in such familial and familiar identity attractions . If we
queers across race, class, and gender.
abandon the study of identity "inside" academe in the clamor for a new paradigm, "out there" identity
politics and pleasures will continue and probably intensify . The more self-consciously
pleased and disturbed that we become in our affirmed and enforced identities, the
more restless we become "inside" them. Even intensified self-consciousness, however, does not seem to get
us closer to the dance of identification as we experience it pleasurably and disturbingly "inside" and "across" our bodies' persons,
individually and collectively considered. Our recourse to more externalized structureslike the sides of an argument or the solidity
of economic classespromises some reprieve, but we grow no less restless "outside" our personal and collective selves, as though
individuals and their dis/affectionate affiliations are emptied of their identity, mere meanings and patterns bereft of that inner
motivating vitality. As "identity
politics" is not dead, is
in fact
thriving, so I'd suggest we get on with making its theory
and practice thrive in our intellectual institutions, accompanied by less nervousness and as much pleasure as possible .
Nealon's examination of "affect" as queer reception history is a good instance of

this.11 By insisting on pleasure as a face/t of identification, I realize that I risk others'
diminishing the political struggle at stake in the disciplining of identity forms. I
would not sacrifice one to the other. If identity is always political, the economies of
pleasure at work in identification also cannot escape the play for powe r, in shared or
monopolistic versions. In fact, it is the activity of pleasure on and across subjects of identity
that makes identity such a forceful vehicle for oppressive politics , and likewise this
pleasure functions in collective assaults against oppression . The pleasures of thinking that one
belongs to a superior white race must be reckoned as interfused with the obligations, confusions, fears, and privileges afforded by
such a sweep ing, compelling identity. Fortunately for us,
the pleasure in identifying against
dominance cannot be delimited by acts of domination . Belonging to a

group formed through others' domination and one's own subordination
paradoxically affords its own peculiar pleasures aimed at upsetting the norms of
power. These are the potentially liberating pleasures of identification that the
domineering cannot rescind, however much they may practice to outlaw or outpace them. Of identity's
politics and pleasures there is no end, and as for the "identity politics" besetting us
at the present time, we are only now beginning to learn the rudimentary steps of
the dance.
Pre-Req to Cap
Direct confrontation with issues of race is a precondition to
movements against capitalism.
Taylor 11 (Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, on the editorial board of the International

Socialist Review and a doctoral student in African American Studies at Northwestern
University; Race, class and Marxism, SocialistWorker.org,
http://socialistworker.org/2011/01/04/race-class-and-marxism .nt)
Marxists believe that the potential for that kind of unity is dependent on battles and
struggles against racism today. Without a commitment by revolutionary
organizations in the here and now to the fight against racism, working-class unity
will never be achieved and the revolutionary potential of the working class will
never be realized. Yet despite all the evidence of this commitment to fighting racism
over many decades, Marxism has been maligned as, at best, "blind" to combating
racism and, at worst, "incapable" of it. For example, in an article published last
summer, popular commentator and self-described "anti-racist" Tim Wise
summarized the critique of "left activists" that he later defines as Marxists. He
writes: [L]eft activists often marginalize people of color by operating from a
framework of extreme class reductionism, which holds that the "real" issue is class,
not race, that "the only color that matters is green," and that issues like racism are
mere "identity politics," which should take a backseat to promoting class-based
universalism and programs to help working people. This reductionism, by ignoring
the way that even middle class and affluent people of color face racism and colorbased discrimination (and by presuming that low-income folks of color and lowincome whites are equally oppressed, despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary)
reinforces white denial, privileges white perspectivism and dismisses the lived
reality of people of color. Even more, as we'll see, it ignores perhaps the most
important political lesson regarding the interplay of race and class: namely, that the
biggest reason why there is so little working-class consciousness and unity in the
Untied States (and thus, why class-based programs to uplift all in need are so much
weaker here than in the rest of the industrialized world), is precisely because of
racism and the way that white racism has been deliberately inculcated among white
working folks. Only by confronting that directly (rather than sidestepping it as class
reductionists seek to do) can we ever hope to build cross-racial, class based
coalitions. In other words, for the policies favored by the class reductionist to work-be they social democrats or Marxists--or even to come into being, racism and white
supremacy must be challenged directly.
Identity Politics Bad
Generic
Turn their politics furthers antagonism by elevating group
identity to the level of the individual
Gergen 99 (Kenneth J. Gergen American psychologist and professor at Swarthmore College, Social
Construction and the Transformation of Identity Politics, End of knowing: A new developmental way of learning
(1999) // JJ)
identity politics is a descendent of western, individualist ideology. No,

is not the single individual who commands our interest. Rather, as we have seen,
individual identity is conflated with group identity: individual and group interests
(and rights) are one. In this way, the group replaces the individual as the center of
concern, but the discourse of individuality is not thereby disrupted. Rather , the
In important degree,
it
group is treated in much the same way discursively as the individual :

imbued with good and evil intent, held blameworthy, deemed worthy of rights, and
so on. In spite of the shift toward the social, we thus inherit the problems of individualism yet once again simply one step removed. Rather than a society of isolated and alienated individuals - a
potential war of all against all in the individualist sense - we have a battlefield of
antagonistic groups. As James Hunter's (1991) puts it, we are now engaged in "culture
wars." Advocates of identity politics are now becoming keenly aware of the
problematics of separation. As they point out, the dominant culture is already prone
toward objectification of the Other. In du Preez' (1980) terms, the other is forced into
identity traps that confirm the dominant culture's sense of superiority and selfrighteousness. It is in this light that we can understand the attempt by black intellectuals to blur the
distinction between self and other. For example, in his volume, Race Matters, Cornel West warns against the
delineation of a distinct black culture, and seeks a "frank acknowledgment of the basic humanness and
Americanness of each of us." Similarly, Stanley Crouch in Notes of a Hanging Judge, argues that politics must
involve African-Americans "not as outsiders" - a distinct group unto itself - but as participants in broad-ranging
enclaves of society, for example as "voters, taxpayers, and sober thinkers." In a similar vein, Todd Gitlin (1993)
speaks of commonality politics, oriented around understanding differences "against the background of what is not
different, what is shared among groups."(p.173)
Alterity
Self-writing and identity politics contribute to the regulation
and objectification of alterity
Chow 98 (Rey Chow Anne Firor Scott Professor of Literature, Duke University, Ethics After Idealism: Theory,
Culture, Ethnicity, Reading, Theories of Contemporary Culture, Indiana University Press (1999), pp. 30-32 // JJ)
The machines of surveillance here are not war airplanes but the media
the networks of communication, which, in the academic world, include the
classroom, conferences, publications, funding agencies, and even letters of
recommendation. With the large number of students (rightly) eager for alternative histories, of academic
conferences (rightly) devoted to the constructions of differences, and of publishers (rightly) seeking to publish new,
unexplored materials, fascism has reasserted itself in our era. And, as even my brief discussion
shows, fascisms new mode is very much complicated by postcoloniality. The question facing intellectuals in the
contemporary West is how to deal with peoples who were once colonized and who are now living and working in the
In the early days of colonialism, when actual territorial conquests

were made and relocation from the mother country to the colonies was a fact of
life for those from what eventually came to be called the first world, the questions
for white people finding themselves removed from home were questions of what Nancy Armstrong and
Leonard Tennenhouse call the imaginary puritan: how to preserve whiteness while in the brown
and black colonies? How to stay English in America? How to fabricate a respectable
national origin against the onslaught of barbaric nativesthat is, how to posture as
the invaded and colonized while invading and colonizing others? All in all, these questions
first world as others.
amount to: how not to go native? As Armstrong and Tennenhouse argue, the English novel, which was
conceptually based not so much on previous cultural developments in Europe but rather on the captivity narratives
that found their way back to Europe from the New World, bears symptoms of this white anxiety about cultural
purity. In this sense, the English novel is perhaps the earliest exampleto use Fredric Jamesons classic
Toward the end of the twentieth

century, as the aftermath of the grand imperialism eras brings about major physical
migrations of populations around the globe, it is no longer a question of white
people going to the colonies, but rather of formerly colonized peoples settling
permanently in their former colonizers territories. The visible presence of these
formerly colonized peoples in the first world leads to violent upheavals in
Western thought. The overriding preoccupation among first world intellectuals has
now become: how to become other? How to claim to be a minorityto claim to
pronouncement on third world literatureof a national allegory.
be black, Native American, Hispanic, or Asian, even if one has only 1/64th
share of these other origins? In other words, how to go native? Instead of
imagining themselves to be a Pamela or Clarissa being held captive, resisting rape, and writing volumes in order to
preserve the purity of their souls (and thus their origins),
first world intellectuals are now
overtaken by a new kind of desire: Make me other!
And so, with expediency, we
witness the publication of essays which are studded with names of nations and territories in order to convey a
profile of cosmopolitanism; journals which amass the most superficial matierials about lesser known cultures and
ethnicities in the name of being public, global, or trans-national; and book series which (en)list indigenous
while so-called postcolonial

criticisms of former European imperialist strategies of representing,
histories and narratives in the manner of a world fairall this,
objectifying, and exhibiting the other are going on.
Liberal identity politics reinforce alterity by producing identity

as contrary to the hegemonic we
Brown 93 (Wendy First Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, Wounded
Attachments, Political Theory, Vol. 21, No. 3 (August 1993), pp. 390-410 // JJ)
The tension between particularistic "I's" and a universal "we" in liberalism is sustainable as long as the
constituent terms of the "I" remain unpoliticized indeed, as long as the "I" itself remains unpoliticized on one
hand, and the state (as the expression of the ideal of political universality) remains unpoliticized on the other.
the latent conflict within liberalism between universal representation and

individualism remains latent, remains unpoliticized, as long as differential powers in
civil society remain naturalized and as long as the "I" is subordinated to the
abstract "we" encoded in the state's guarantee of universal freedom and equality.
This subordination is achieved either by the "I" abstracting from itself in its political
representation, thus trivializing its "difference" so as to remain part of the "we" (as
in homosexuals who are "just like everyone else except for whom we sleep with") or by the "I" accepting
its construction as a supplement, complement, or partial outsider to the "we" (as in
That is,
homosexuals who are just "a little different," a bit "queer"). The history of liberalism's management of its
inherited and constructed "others" could be read as a history of variations on and vacillations between these two
strategies. The abstract character of liberal political membership and the ideologically naturalized character of
liberal individualism together work against politicized identity formation in liberal regimes. A formulation of the
political state and of citizenship that, as Marx put it in the "Jewish Question," abstracts from the substantive
conditions of our lives, works to prevent recognition or articulation of differences as political-as effects of power-in
their very construction ad organization; they are at most the stuff of divergent political or economic interests.2
Equally important, to the extenthat political membership in the liberal state involves abstracting from one's social
being, it involves abstracting not only from the contingent productions of one's life circumstances but from the
identificatory processes constitutive of one's social construction and position. Whether read from the frontispiece
of Hobbes' Leviathan, in which the many are made one through the unity of the sovereign, or from the
formulations of tolerance codified by John Locke, John Stuart Mill, and, more contemporaneously, George Kateb, in
which the minimalist liberal state is cast as precisely what enables our politically unfettered individuality, we are
invited to seek equal deference-equal blindness from-but not equalizing recognition from the state, liberalism's
universal moment.3 As Marx discerned in his critique of Hegel, the universality of the state is ideologically
achieved by turning away from and thus depoliticizing, yet at the same time presupposing our collective
"the political" in
liberalism is precisely not a domain for social identification: expected to recognize
our political selves in the state, we are not led to expect deep recognition there.
Indeed, in a smooth and legitimate liberal order, the particularistic "I's" must
remain unpoliticized, and the universalistic "we" must remain without specific
content or aim, without a common good other than abstract universal
representation or pluralism. The abstractness of the "we" is precisely what
particulars, not by embracing them, let alone emancipating us from them.4 In short,
insists upon, reiterates, and even enforces the depoliticized nature of the
"I." In Ernesto Laclau's formulation, "if democracy is possible, it is because the universal
does not have any necessary body, any necessary content.'"5 Although this detente
between universal and particular within liberalism is potted with volatile conceits, it is rather thoroughly unraveled
by two features of late modernity, spurred by developments in what Marx and Foucault, respectively, reveal as
liberalism's companion powers: capitalism and disciplinarity. On one side, the state loses even its guise of
universality as it becomes ever more transparently invested in particular economic interests, political ends, and
social formations. This occurs as it shifts from a relatively minimalist "night watchman" state to a heavily
bureaucratized, managerial, fiscally complex, and highly interventionist welfare-warfare state, a
transmogrification occasioned by the combined imperatives of capital and the autoproliferating characteristics of
a range of economic and political forces increasingly

disinter the liberal subject from substantive nation-state identification:
deterritorializing demographic flows; disintegration from within and invasion from
without of family and community as (relatively) autonomous sites of social
production and identification; consumer capitalism's marketing discourse in which
individual (and subindividual) desires are produced, commodified, and mobilized
as identities; and disciplinary productions of a fantastic array of behavior-based
identities ranging from recovering alcoholic professionals to unrepentant crack mothers. These
bureaucracy.6 On the other side,
disciplinary productions work to conjure and regulate subjects through

classificatory schemes, naming and normalizing social behaviors as social
positions. Operating through what Foucault calls "an anatomy of detail," "disciplinary power"
produces social identities (available for politicization because they are deployed for purposes of political
regulation) that crosscut juridical identities based on abstract right. Thus, for example, the welfare state's
production of welfare subjects-themselves subdi- vided through the socially
regulated categories of motherhood, disability, race, age, and so forth-potentially
produce political identity through these categories, produce identities as these
categories.
Capitalism
Identity politics only has the potential to advance the self
within a system of values created by capitalism, and thus
guarantees class-based oppression.
Libcom 12 (Blogging site that focuses on political/social issues. Identity, politics,

and anti-politics: a critical perspective May 17, 2012
http://libcom.org/library/identity-politics-anti-politics-critical-perspective .nt)
Introduction I am a _______________ who seeks the destruction of class society. That
blank can be filled with a variety of words, from worker to queer to individual to
mixed-race person to anarchist. What each of these terms has in common is that
they each signify a certain identity. While identity politics have gained traction in
both anarchist/radical scenes and society more generally, the very idea of
identity politics is a problem. Identity politics , as a political force, seeks
inclusion into the ruling classes, rather than acting as a revolutionary
force for the destruction of class society. However, this does not mean we
should dismiss identity or identity-based organizing and action. The institutions
that create and enforce class society (capital, work, the state, police) rely on
identities in their strategy of control, by attacking some identities and
not others, or by pitting various identities at odds to compete for access
to the privilege of acceptance by the dominant classes. In their use of repression
based on identities, those in power also create affinity among the dominated. Let
this be made clear: I do not contend that every person who identifies with or is
identified by a particular social identity has a common experience. Similarly, I do
not argue that these identities are anything other than socially constructed.
However, I do argue that people who share an identity can find stronger
affinity with others who share that identity. This is due to the ways that
capitalism and the state enforce identities. While these identities are socially
constructed, this does not lessen their importance or their reality. Indeed, it is
critical in the struggle for total liberation to understand the ways
identities are constructed to subjugate people. The academics have been
speaking for years of the Other as the most abstract identity, defined in
opposition to the dominant forces. While this abstraction works in the most general
comparisons of various identities, it is in the specificities of distinct identities that
affinities are built. A discussion of every socially-enforced identity would be
impossible; instead, I will focus on an analysis of queer identity. Specifically, I will
attempt to articulate an anti-assimilationist and anarchist/communist perspective
on queer identity, with implications for other identities as well. This is a perspective
critical of identity politics as well as a false unity under any one identity (citizen,
human race, proletariat). It is critical of assimilationist politics and practice, and
perhaps most importantly, it is explicitly anti-state and anti-capitalist. 1: Social
construction and social facts To understand identity in the context of the present
social order, one must understand the concept of social construction . This
concept, in short, refers to the ways in which social institutions establish, regulate,
and enforce various identities. One especially telling example is the way in
which those labeled insane are then forced into institutions which
serve only to reaffirm a supposed insanity. Homosexuality was once
considered a mental disorder, after all. The term socially constructed carries an
unfortunate connotation, however. It is assumed that if an identity is socially
constructed, then it differs in some way from a more authentic, natural identity. This
assumption resembles religious dogma in that we are asked to accept an
unchanging human nature as defined by someone else. In reality, to say identity
is a social construction means that identities are defined and enforced by
social institutions such as governments and businesses . Thus, identity
becomes social fact in the sense that it materially affects people . From
queer-bashing to abortion bans, certain identities carry with them material disadvantages. From property rights to Jim Crow, certain identities carry with them
material advantages. These identities are socially constructed, and thus become
social facts. These inequalities are not expressions of some pre-existing natural
order. Instead, the cause of these material inequalities can be traced to the socioeconomic context in which they existed. This context is determined by the
dominant social order, which continues to be that of capitalism and state
power. Not every act of discrimination or oppression, however, can be considered
a direct act of the state or capital. This is particularly true when one considers
specific manifestations of patriarchy. Sexual assault and domestic violence are often
considered interpersonal disputes, rather than having a larger meaning in the
context of a deeply patriarchal social order. However, even if there is not an agent
of the state or an agent of capital directly involved, one cannot ignore the social
framework which normalizes such behavior. One must only consider the fact that
the institution of marriage was originally a property relationship, and even until
recent decades rape was acceptable, as long as it was in the context of marriage.
This is not to say that perpetrators have any excuse. They still enforce the social
system of patriarchy, despite (usually) not acting in an official capacity on behalf of
the state or capital. We can thus trace identity-based oppression to either
the official business of state power and capitalism , or else to the power of
the statist, capitalist social order. The distinction, however, becomes academic. The
problem clearly lies in this society, in the social order and the institutions that
create, maintain, and enforce it. Much as identity is social, so is the oppression
around it: it is a result of human interactions, not any sort of higher power. The term
social construction means also that identity is not fixed, but rather changes
according to a variety of factors. Particularly, there exists a tension between those
who benefit from inequality, and those who are oppressed by inequality. In the
United States, this tension is demonstrated by the range of identity-liberation
movements that have been active in the United States. With a few notable exceptions (womens suffrage being one), identity-movements rose to prominence in
the 1960s, as chants of black power, gay is good, and sisterhood is powerful
became fixtures at demonstrations and protests. These demonstrations and
conflicts were sites of struggle over what was meant when the terms black, gay, or
woman were used. To be assigned any of these terms meant that one was
not fully human, that there was a defect that nobody could correct . The
Black Power, Queer Liberation, and Womens Liberation movements contested the
idea that people were to be defined by these identities and thus undeserving of
equality. These contestations (as each movement was, to a large degree, focused
only on one specific identity) meant that not only could political inequality be
challenged, but also the very definitions of identity. In other words, people began
to actively and consciously construct their identities and explore identity
in relationship to the larger social structure. The initial exploration of identity
proved useful, providing a greater understanding of the ways in which domination
and its specific manifestations (racism, sexism, homophobia) are connected to the
state and capitalism. The 1960s were also years of resistance and uprising more
generally. These events did not happen separately; instead, they were a part of a
larger discontent with society as a whole. However, much as the energy of the
1960s was dissipated into the traditional, rigid forms of activism and managed
dissent, so was the revolutionary potential of exploring identity. Over time, these
movements have left us with organizations such as the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Human Rights Campaign (HRC), and
National Organization for Women (NOW) as the self-proclaimed leaders in the
struggle for equality under the law. However, what is interesting to note is that
these organizations serve as explicitly political organizations, seeking political
equality through political processes. These groups can thus be understood to
engage in identity politics. 2: Identity Politics and Anti-Identity Politics Given the
political effectiveness of these organizations, their model has been
emulated by others seeking to reform the current socio-economic order .
This has led to identity politics becoming a central part of the
contemporary United States political order . This is especially true in the
liberal reformist movement, where organizations such as the NAACP, HRC, and NOW
are prominent. With their successes in political reform, they (and many other
identity-politics organizations ) have become embedded in the dominant
political discourse. It is here that we encounter one of the main problems
of identity politics: the groups which sought to challenge identity-based
oppression have instead merely entered into a partnership with those
who benefit from oppression . This partnership concerns the ability to define the
political agenda for a certain identity. This is clearly demonstrated in the queer
community by the HRC, with their push for hate crime laws, marriage, and military
service. These demands show that the HRC has accepted the logic of and requested
partnership in the government and the marketplace. Essentially, the HRC is fighting for assimilation into, rather than the destruction of, a system that
creates and enforces the very oppression they are allegedly struggling
against. However, even identity politics does not have unfettered power in the
political mainstream. Even the appearance of altering power relations in this society
is, to some, a threat. These reactionaries claim that identity politics seeks special
rights for certain groups. This flawed logic rests on the idea that, since people are
guaranteed equality under the Constitution, then the problem of legal inequality is
non-existent. Even if one accepts the logic of the state, the discrepancy between
legal/political equality and social equality is telling. Another reaction to the
Lefts adoption of identity politics is the rise of hard-Right identity
politics. This leads to absurdities such as mens rights movements, white rights
movements, and groups dedicated to preserving Christian culture and identity. One
can see a connection between these two reactionary positions, despite
their apparent contradictions. Each position represents a different tactic
towards the same goal: maintaining a class-based society along with the
homophobic, white-supremacist, and patriarchal structures that uphold it. This
stands in contrast to identity politics, which seeks to mildly reform class
society and its institutions.
Identity politics inherently creates antagonism within the

greater structure of those oppressed by capitalism - this
allows the oppressive upper class to continue ruling unopposed.

As the experience of the 1960s shows, it is not necessary to personally
experience a form of oppression to become committed to opposing it . Yet
the central premise of the theory of identity politics is based on precisely
the opposite conclusion: Only those who actually experience a particular
form of oppression are capable of fighting against it. Everyone else is
considered to be part of the problem and cannot become part of the
solution by joining the fight against oppression . The underlying
assumption is that all men benefit from womens oppression, all straight
people benefit from the oppression of the LGBT6 community, and all
whites benefit from racism. The flip side of this assumption, of course, is the
idea that each group that faces a particular form of oppressionracism, sexism, or
homophobiais united in its interest in ending it. The theory of identity politics
locates the root of oppression not with a capitalist power structure but
with a white male power structure. The existence of a white male
power structure seems like basic common sense since , with rare exceptions,
white men hold the reigns of the biggest corporations and the highest
government posts. That is true, but it only tells half the story . It would be
highly inaccurate to assume that all oppressed people are powerless in
U.S. society today . Since the movements of the 1960s and 1970s, a significant
number of women, gays, Blacks, and other racially oppressed minorities have
managed to climb up the corporate and political ladder and become absorbed into
various power structures. These individuals have achieved a fair amount of power in
their own right. In the upcoming 2008 presidential election, the two Democratic
Party frontrunners are a woman (Hillary Rodham Clinton) and an African American
(Barack Obama). The speaker of the House of Representatives is a woman, Nancy
Pelosi. The U.S. secretary of state is a Black woman, Condoleezza Rice. One of the
most powerful politicians in Washington is openly gay Congressman Barney Frank.
Whose interests have these women, gays, and African Americans
represented once they have achieved some power within the system ? The
answer is fairly plain to seenot necessarily by believing their rhetoric, but by
judging their actions. Rather than fighting against the racist, sexist, and
homophobic policies of the system, they become part of enforcing them .
For example, when the city of San Francisco began handing out same-sex marriage
licenses in 2005, did openly gay Barney Frank embrace it as a step forward for civil
rights? On the contrary, Frank called a press conference to attack gay marriage as
divisive.7 Has Senator Barack Obama rushed forward to defend the six Black
youths victimized by racists in Jena, Louisiana? The candidate did not make an
appearance at the historic civil rights protest in Jena on September 20, 2007.8 Yet
Obama has devoted ample time on his recent speaking circuit to exhort Black men
to become better fathers, as he did in June 2005 addressing Black worshippers at
Chicagos Christ Universal Temple: There are a lot of folks, a lot of brothers,
walking around, and they look like men...they might even have sired a child.... But
its not clear to me that theyre full-grown men.9 If a white politician had delivered
a similar lecture, it would have immediatelyand accuratelybeen denounced as
utterly racist. Nor does Condoleezza Rice hesitate to perform her duty as she
wanders the globe in her role as U.S. imperialisms key international enforcer
traveling to the Middle East, for example, to enforce Israels racist apartheid policies
against its occupied Palestinian population. Iranian people will be no better off if and
when the U.S. decides to bomb them if Clinton or Obama occupy the White House
than Iraqi people were when the Bush administration decided to invade their
country. What all of these examples show is that there is no such thing as a
common, fundamental interest shared by all people who face the same
form of oppression . Oppression isnt caused by the race, gender, or
sexuality of particular individuals who run the system, but is generated
by the very system itselfno matter whos running it. It goes without saying
that we must confront incidents of sexism, racism, and homophobia whenever
they occur. But that alone is not going to change the racist, sexist, and
homophobic character that dominates the entire system.
Cooption
Their plea for solidarity in the face of victimization coopts the
struggle of those who lack the privilege to even speak
Chow 93 (Rey Chow Anne Firor Scott Professor of Literature, Duke University, Writing Diaspora: Tactics of
Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies, Indiana University Press (1993) // JJ)
While the struggle for hegemony remains necessary for many reasonsespecially in
cases where underprivileged groups seek equality of privilegeI remain skeptical of
the validity of hegemony over time, especially if it is a hegemony formed through
intellectual power. The question for me is not how intellectuals can obtain
hegemony (a question that positions them in an oppositional light against dominant
power and neglects their share of that power through literacy, through the culture
of words), but how they can resist, as Michel Foucault said, "the forms of power that
transform [them] into its object and instrument in the sphere of 'knowledge,' 'truth,'
'consciousness,' and 'discourse.'" 26 Putting it another way, how do intellectuals struggle
against a hegemony which already includes them and which can no longer be divided into the
state and civil society in Gramsci's terms, nor be clearly demarcated into national and transnational spaces?
Because "borders" have so clearly meandered into so many intellectual issues that the more stable and
conventional relation between borders and the "field" no longer holds, intervention cannot simply be thought of in
terms of the creation of new ''fields." 27 Instead, it is necessary to think primarily in terms of bordersof borders,
that is, as parasites that never take over a field in its entirety but erode it slowly and tactically. The work of Michel
de Certeau is helpful for a formulation of this parasitical intervention. De Certeau distinguishes between "strategy"
and another practice "tactic"in the following terms. A strategy has the ability to "transform the uncertainties of
history into readable spaces" (de Certeau, p. 36). The type of knowledge derived from strategy is "one sustained
and determined by the power to provide oneself with one's own place" (de Certeau, p. 36). Strategy therefore
belongs to "an economy of the proper place" (de Certeau, p. 55) and to those who are committed to the building,
growth, and fortification of a "field." A text, for instance, would become in this economy "a cultural weapon, a
private hunting preserve," or "a means of social stratification" in the order of the Great Wall of China (de Certeau, p.
171). A tactic, by contrast, is "a calculated action determined by the absence of a proper locus" (de Certeau, p. 37).
Betting on time instead of space, a tactic "concerns an operational logic whose models may go as far back as the
ageold ruses of fishes and insects that disguise or transform themselves in order to survive, and which has in any
case been concealed by the form of rationality currently dominant in Western culture" (de Certeau, p. xi).
Why
are "tactics" useful at this moment? As discussions about "multiculturalism,"

"interdisciplinarity," "the third world intellectual," and other companion issues
develop in the American academy and society today, and as rhetorical claims to
political change and difference are being put forth , many deeprooted, politically
reactionary forces return to haunt us. Essentialist notions of culture and history
conservative notions of territorial and linguistic propriety, and the "otherness"
ensuing from them unattested claims of oppression and victimization that
are used merely to guilttrip and to control sexist and racist reaffirmations of
sexual and racial diversities that are made merely in the name of righteousness all
these forces create new "solidarities" whose ideological premises remain unquestioned. These new solidarities are
often informed by a strategic attitude which repeats what they seek to overthrow. The weight of old ideologies
We need to remember as intellectuals that the

battles we fight are battles of words. Those who argue the oppositional standpoint
are not doing anything different from their enemies and are most certainly not
directly changing the downtrodden lives of those who seek their survival in metropolitan
and nonmetropolitan spaces alike. What academic intellectuals must confront is thus not
their "victimization" by society at large (or their victimization insolidaritywiththeoppressed), but the power, wealth, and privilege that ironically accumulate from
their "oppositional" viewpoint, and the widening gap between the professed contents of their words and
being reinforced over and over again is immense.
the upward mobility they gain from such words. (When Foucault said intellectuals need to struggle against
becoming the object and instrument of power, he spoke precisely to this kind of situation.) The predicament we
face in the West, where intellectual freedom shares a history with economic enterprise, is that "if a professor
wishes to denounce aspects of big business, he will be wise to locate in a school whose trustees are big
Why should we believe in those who continue to speak a language of

alterityaslack while their salaries and honoraria keep rising? How do we resist the
businessmen." 28
turningintopropriety of oppositional discourses , when the intention of such

discourses has been that of displacing and disowning the proper? How do we prevent what
begin as tacticsthat which is ''without any base where it could stockpile its winnings" (de Certeau, p. 37)from
turning into a solidly fencedoff field, in the military no less than in the academic sense?
Turn the affirmatives attempt to define and politicize identity

will inevitably be coopted by the dominant discourse
The story of the emergence of contemporary identity politics could be told in many
other ways-as the development of "new social antagonisms" rooted in consumer
capitalism's commodification of all spheres of social life, as the relentless
denaturalization of all social relations occasioned by the fabrications and border
violations of postmodern technologies and cultural productions, as a form of
political consciousness precipitated by the black Civil Rights movement in the U nited
States. 12 I have told the story this way in order to emphasize the discursive political comext of its emergence, its
disciplinary, capitalist. and liberal parentage, and this in order to comprehend politicized identity's
genealogical structure as comprising and not only opposing these very modalities
of political power. Indeed, if the ostensibly oppositional character of identity politics
also render them something of the "illegitimate offspring" of liberal, capitalist,
disciplinary discourses, their absent fathers are not, as Donna Haraway suggests.
"inessential" but are installed in the very structure of desire fueling identity-based
political claims: the psyche of the bastard child is hardly independent ofits family of origin. 13 And if we
are interested in developing the politically subversive or transformative clements
of idenritv-based claims, we need to know the implications of the particular
genealogy and production conditions of identity's desire for recognition. We need to
be able to ask: Given what produced it, given what shapes and suffuses it, what
does politicized identity want? We might profitably begin these investigations with a reflection on their
curious elision by the philosopher who also frames them, Michel Foucault. For Foucault, the constraints
of emancipatory politics in late modern democracy pertain to the ubiquity and
pervasiveness of power- the impossibility of eschewing power in human affairs-as
well as to the ways in which subjects and practices are always at risk of
being resubordinated through the discourses naming and politicizing
them.
Best known for his formulation of this dual problem in the domain of sexual liberation, Foucault offers a
more generic theoretical account in his discussion of the disinterment of the "insurrectionary knowledges" of marginalized populations and practices: Is the relation of forces today still such as to allow these disinterred
knowledges some kind of autonomous life? Can they be isolated by these means from every subjugating
Is it not perhaps the case that these

fragments of genealogies are no sooner brought to light, that the particular
clements of the knowledge that one seeks to disinter are no sooner accredited and
put into circulation, than they run the risk of re-codification, re-colonisation' In fact,
those unitary discourses which first disqualified and then ignored them when they
made their appearance are, it seems, quite ready now to annex them, to take them
back within the fold of their own discourse and to invest them with everything this
implies in terms of their effects of knowledge and power. And if we want to protect
these only lately liberated fragments, are we not in danger of ourselves
constructing, with our own hands, that unitary discourse? l 4 Foucault's caution about
relationship' What force do they have taken in themselves? ...
the annexing, colonizing effects of invariably unifying discourses is an important

one. But the question of the emancipatory orientation of historically subordinated
discourse is not limited to the risk of cooptation or resubordination by extant or
newly formed unitary discourses-whether those of humanism on one side, or of cultural studies,
multiculturalism, subaltern studies, and minority discourse on the other. Nor is it reducible to that unexamined
Frankfurt School strain in Foucault, the extent to which the Fouc:mltian subject originally de- sirous of freedom
comes to will its own domination, or (in Foucault's rubric) becomes a good disciplinary subject. Rather, I think that
for Foucault, insofar as power always produces resistance, even the disciplinary subject is perversely capable of
resistance, and in practicing it, practices freedom. Discernible here is the basis of a curious optimism, even
volunteerism in Foucault, namely his oddly physicalist and insistently non psychic account of power, practices, and
subject formation. His removal of the "will to power" ti-om Nietzsche's complex psychology of need, frustration,
impotence, and compensatory deeds is what permits Foucault to feature resistance as always possible and as
equivalent to practicing freedom.
Turn the idealization of endangered experiences furthers

their exploitation
the problem of the native is also the problem of modernity

and modernity's relation to "endangered authenticities." 28 The question to ask is not whether
As an issue of postcoloniality,
we can return the native to her authentic origin, but what our fascination with the native means in terms of the
irreversibility of modernity. There are many commendable accounts of how the native in the nonWestern world has
been used by the West as a means to promote and develop its own intellectual contours. 29 According to these
accounts, modernism, especially the modernism that we associate with the art of Modigliani, Picasso, Gauguin, the
novels of Gustave Flaubert, Marcel Proust, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Henry Miller, and so forth, was possible
only because these "first world" artists with famous names incorporated into their "creativity" the culture and
while Western artists continue to receive attention

specifically categorized in time, place, and name, the treatment of the works of non Western peoples continues to partake of systemic patterns of exploitation and
distortion. Apart from the general attribution of "anonymity" to native artists, "native works"
have been bifurcated either as timeless (in which case they would go into art museums) or as
historical (in which case they would go into ethnographic museums). While most cultural critics today are alert
to the pitfalls of the ''timeless art" argument, many are still mired in efforts to invoke "history,"
"contexts," and "specificities" as ways to resurrect the native. In doing so, are they
restoring to the native what has been stolen from her? Or are they in fact
artwork of the peoples of the nonWest. But
avoiding the genuine problem of the native's status as object by

providing something that is more manageable and comforting namely, a
phantom history in which natives appear as our equals and our images, in
our shapes and our forms? Nancy Armstrong summarizes our predicament this way: The new wave
of culture criticism still assumes that we must either be a subject who partakes in
the power of gazing or else be an object that is by implication the object of a
pornographic gaze. The strategy of identifying people according to "subject positions" in a vast and intricate
differential system of interests and needs is perhaps the most effective way we now have of avoiding the problem
incurred whenever we classify political interests by means of bodies inscribed with signs of race, class, and gender.
But even the "subject" of the critical term "subject position" tends to dissolve too readily back into a popular and
sentimental version of the bourgeois self. By definition, this self grants priority to an embodied subject over the
body as an object. To insist on being "subjects" as opposed to "objects" is to assume that we must have certain
powers of observation, classification, and definition in order to exist these powers make "us" human. According to
the logic governing such thinking as it was formulated in the nineteenth century, only certain kinds of subjects are
really subjects to be human, anyone must be one of "us." 30 As we challenge a dominant discourse by
"resurrecting" the victimized voice/self of the native with our readingsand such is the impulse behind many "new
historical" accountswe step, far too quickly, into the otherwise silent and invisible place of the native and turn
ourselves into living agents/witnesses for her. This process, in which we become visible, also neutralizes the
untranslatability of the native's experience and the history of that untranslatability. The hasty supply of original
"contexts" and "specificities" easily becomes complicitous with the dominant discourse, which achieves hegemony
precisely by its capacity to convert, recode, make transparent, and thus represent even those experiences that
resist it with a stubborn opacity. The danger of historical contextualization turning into cultural corporations is what
leads Clifford to say: I do not argue, as some critics have, that nonWestern objects are properly understood only
with reference to their original milieux.
Ethnographic contextualizations are as
problematic as aesthetic ones, as susceptible to purified, ahistorical

treatment . 31
The problem of modernity, then, is not simply an "amalgamating" of "disparate experience"
32 but rather the confrontation between what are now called the "first" and "third" worlds in the form of the
in order
for her experience to become translatable, the "native" cannot simply "speak" but
must also provide the justice/justification for her speech, a justice/justification that
has been destroyed in the encounter with the imperialist. 33 The native's victimization
diffrend, that is, the untranslatability of "third world" experiences into the "first world." This is because,
consists in the fact that the active evidencethe original witnessof her victimization may no longer exist in any
Rather than saying that the native has already spoken because
the dominant hegemonic discourse is split/hybrid/different from itself, and rather
than restoring her to her "authentic" context, we should argue that it is the
intelligible, coherent shape.
native's silence which is the most important clue to her displacement.

That silence is at once the evidence of imperialist oppression (the naked
body, the defiled image) and what, in the absence of the original witness to
that oppression, must act in its place by performing or feigning as the
preimperialist gaze.
Exploitation
Identity politics desire to subjectify means embracing the
conditions of ones own subordination that only furthers
exploitation
Butler 97 (Judith Butler Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at
the University of California, Berkeley, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection, Stanford University Press,
pp. 9-10 // JJ)
If the subject is produced through foreclosure, then the subject is produced by a

condition from which it is, by definition, separated and differentiated. Desire will aim at
unraveling the subject, but be thwarted by precisely the subject in whose name it operates. A vexation of
desire, one that proves crucial to subjection, implies that for the subject to persist,
the subject must thwart its own desire. And for desire to triumph, the subject
must be threatened with dissolution.
A subject turned against itself (its desire) appears, on
To desire the conditions of ones

subordination is thus required to persist as oneself. What does it mean to embrace
the very form of powerregulation, prohibition, suppressionthat
this model, to be a condition of the persistence of the subject.
threatens one with dissolution in an effort, precisely, to persist in ones own

existence. It is not simply that one requires the recognition of the other and that a form of recognition is
conferred through subordination, but rather that one is dependent on power for ones very
formation, that that formation is impossible without dependency, and that the
posture of the adult subject consists precisely in the denial and reenactment of this
dependency. The I emerges upon the condition that it deny its formation in dependency, the conditions of its
own possibility. The I, however, is threatened with disruption precisely by this denial, by its unconscious pursuit of
its own dissolution through neurotic repetitions that restage the primary scenarios it not only refuses to see but
predicated on what it refuses to

know, it is separated from itself and can never quite become or remain itself.
cannot see, if it wishes to remain itself. This means, of course, that,
Facism
The idealizing, submissive tendencies inherent in identity
politics recreate fascism turns case
Chow 98 (Rey Chow Anne Firor Scott Professor of Literature, Duke University, Ethics After Idealism: Theory,
Culture, Ethnicity, Reading, Theories of Contemporary Culture, Indiana University Press (1999), pp. 30-32 // JJ)
If there is one thing that unites the early territorial colonialism and the
contemporary white liberalist intellectual trends that I am describing, it is the notion of a
clear demarcation between self and other, between us and thema
demarcation that is mediated through the relations between consciousness and
captivity. The myth, in the days of territorial colonialism, was that (white) consciousness had to be
established in resistance to captivityeven while whites were holding other people and lands captive
so that (white) cultural origins could be kept pure. In the postcolonial era, by contrast,
the myth is that (white) consciousness must itself surrender to or be held captive
by the otherthat (white) consciousness is nothing without this captivity called
otherness. In both cases, however, what remains constant is the belief that we are not
them, and that white is not other. This belief, which can be further
encapsulated as we are not other, is fascism par excellence. Emerging in
postcoloniality, the new desire for our others displays the same positive, projectional
symptoms of fascism that I discussed in the preceding pagesa rebelliousness and a monstrous aesthetics,
but most of all a longing for a transparent, idealized image and an identifying
submission to such an image. Like the masses embrace of a Hitler or a
Mussolini, this fascism seeks empowerment through a surrender to the other as film
as the film that overcomes me in the spell of an unmediated experience. The
indiscriminate embrace of the peoples of color as correct regardless of their
differences and histories is ultimately the desire for a pure-otherness-inpristine-luminosity that is as dangerous as the fascism of hateful
discrimination from which we all suppose we are safely distanced. The genealogical affinity
of these two fascisms is perhaps best exemplified by the art of a Leni Riefenstahl, who progressed from embracing
the controversial label

fascism is indeed useful, as I think it is, for a radical critique of the contemporary intellectual culture in the
West, it is because it helps us identify and problematize the good conscience and noble
obligations of the new liberal fascism with its multiculturalist modes and its
sophisticated enterprises of visibility. Some will no doubt want to disavow such ongoing fascist
Nazi racism to embracing the beautiful Nuba men of the southern Sudan. If
longings in our midst; others, hopefully, will not.
Attempts to increase the visibility of the other only reify

exploitation visual representations are, by nature, laid bare
and on display
In the politics of identifying "authentic" natives, several strands of the word

"identification" are at stake: How do we identify the native? How do we identify with
her? How do we construct the native's "identity"? What processes of identification
are involved? We cannot approach this politics without being critical of a particular
relation to images that is in question. In his volume of essays exploring film culture, Fredric Jameson
writes that "The visual is essentially pornographic. Pornographic films are only the
potentiation of films in general, which ask us to stare at the world as though it were
a naked body." 4 This straightforward definition of the visual image sums up many of the problems we
encounter in cultural criticism today, whether or not the topic in question is film. The activity of watching
is linked by projection to physical nakedness. Watching is theoretically defined as
the primary agency of violence, an act that pierces the other, who inhabits the
place of the passive victim on display . The image, then, is an aggressive sight
that reveals itself in the other it is the site of the aggressed. Moreover, the image
is what has been devastated, left bare, and left behind by aggression
In
many critical discourses, the image is implicitly the place where battles are fought
and strategies of resistance negotiated. Such discourses try to inhabit this imagesite by providing
alternative sights, alternative ways of watching that would change the image. Thus one of the most
important enterprises nowadays is that of investigating the "subjectivity" of the
otherasoppressedvictim. "Subjectivity" becomes a way to change the defiled image,
the stripped image, the imagereducedtonakedness, by showing the truth
behind/beneath/around it. The problem with the reinvention of subjectivity as such
is that it tries to combat the politics of the image, a politics that is conducted on
surfaces, by a politics of depths, hidden truths, and inner voices . The most
important aspect of the imageits power precisely as image and nothing elseis
thus bypassed and left untouched. 5 It is in this problematic of the image as the bad thing to be
hence Jameson's view that it is naked and pornographic. For many, the image is also the site of possible change.
replaced that I lodge the following arguments about the "native.'' The question in which I am primarily interested is:
Is there a way of "finding" the native without simply ignoring the image, or substituting a "correct" image of the
ethnic specimen for an "incorrect" one, or giving the native a "true" voice "behind" her "false" image? How could
we deal with the native in an age when there is no possibility of avoiding the reduction/abstraction of the native as
image? How can we write about the native by not ignoring the defiled, degraded image that is an inerasable part of
her statusi.e., by not resorting to the idealist belief that everything would be all right if the inner truth of the
I want to highlight the

nativenowadays often a synonym for the oppressed, the marginalized, the
wrongedbecause I think that the space occupied by the native in postcolonial
discourses is also the space of error, illusion, deception, and filth. How would we
write this space in such a way as to refuse the facile turn of sanctifying the
native is restored because the inner truth would lead to the "correct" image?
defiled image with pieties and thus enriching ourselves precisely with what can
be called the surplus value of the oppressed, a surplus value that results from
exchanging the defiled image for something more noble?
Homogenization
Their act of breaking silence turns individual experiences
into regulatory discourses that homogenize resistance
Brown 96 (Wendy Brown First Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley,
Constitutions and 'Survivor Stories': In the 'folds of our own discourse' The Pleasures and Freedoms of Silence, The
University of Chicago Law School Roundtable (1996), lexis // JJ)
the problem I am seeking to delineate is not specific to

MacKinnon or even feminist legal reform. Rather, MacKinnon's and kindred efforts at
bringing subjugated discourses into the law merely constitute examples of what
Foucault identified as the risk of re-codification and re- colonisation of
Again, let me emphasize that
"disinterred knowledges" by those "unitary discourses, which first

disqualified and then ignored them when they made their appearance ." n23
the work of breaking silence can metamorphose into new techniques
of domination, how our truths can become our rulers rather than our emancipators,
how our confessions become the norms by which we are regulated . If, taken together, the
They exemplify how
two passages from Foucault we have been considering call feminists to account in our compulsion to put
everything about women into discourse, they do not yet exhaust the phenomenon of being ensnared 'in the folds of
the problem I have been discussing is easy enough to see-indeed, largely familiar to those who track techniques of co-optation--at the level of
legal and bureaucratic discourse, it is altogether more disquieting when it takes the
form of regulatory discourse in our own sub- and counter-cultures of resistance . . .
when confessing injury becomes that which attaches us to the injury, paralyzes us
within it, and prevents us from seeking or even desiring a status other than injured.
our own discourses.' For if
In an age of social identification through attributes marked as culturally significant--gender, race, sexuality, and so
forth--confessional
discourse, with its truth-bearing status in a post-epistemological

universe, not only regulates the confessor in the name of freeing her as
Foucault described that logic, but extends beyond the confessing individual
to constitute a regulatory truth about the identity group. Confessed
truths are assembled and deployed as "knowledge"
about the group. This
phenomenon would seem to undergird a range of recurring troubles in feminism, from the "real woman" rejoinder to
post-structuralist deconstructions of her, to totalizing descriptions of women's experience that are the inadvertent
effects of various kinds of survivor stories. Thus, for example, the porn star who feels miserably exploited, violated
and humiliated in her work invariably monopolizes the truth about sex work; as the girl with math anxieties
constitutes the truth about women and math; as eating disor- ders have become the truth about women and food;
even as
feminism aims to affirm diversity among women and women's experiences,
confession as the site of production of truth and its convergence with feminist
suspicion and deauthorization of truth from other sources tends to reinstate a
unified discourse in which the story of greatest suffering becomes the true story of
woman. (I think this constitutes part of the rhetorical power of MacKinnon's work; analytically, the
as sexual abuse and violation occupy the knowledge terrain of women and sexuality. In other words,
epistemological superiority of confession substitutes for the older, largely discredited charge of false
consciousness). Thus, the adult who does not suffer from her or his childhood sexual experience, the lesbian who
does not feel shame, the woman of color who does not primarily or "correctly" identify with her marking as such--
figures are excluded as bonafide members of the categories which also claim
them. Their status within these discourses is that of being "in denial," "passing" or
being a "race traitor." This is the norm-making process in feminist traditions of "breaking
silence" which, ironically, silence and exclude the very women these traditions mean
to empower. (Is it surprising, when we think in this vein, that there is so little feminist writing on heterosexual
pleasure?) But if these practices tacitly silence those whose experiences do not parallel those whose suffering
these
also condemn those whose

sufferings they record to a permanent identification with that suffering. Here, we
experience a temporal ensnaring in 'the folds of our own discourses' insofar as we
identify ourselves in speech in a manner that condemns us to live in a present
dominated by the past. But what if speech and silence aren't really opposites? Indeed, what if to speak
is most marked (or whom the discourse produces as suffering markedly), they
incessantly of one's suffering is to silence the possibilities of overcoming it, of living beyond it, of identifying as
What if this incessant speech not only overwhelms the

experiences of others, but alternative (unutterable? traumatized? fragmentary? inassimilable?)
zones of one's own experience? Conversely, what if a certain modality of silence
about one's suffering--and I am suggesting that we must consider modalities of silence as varied as
modalities of speech and discourse--is to articulate a variety of possibilities not otherwise
available to the sufferer?
something other than it?
Self-identification inevitably reinforces homogenized

conceptions of culture
the University of California, Berkeley, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge, pp. 8486 // JJ)
iv. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification The foregoing analyses of Lacan,Riviere,and Freuds The Ego
and the Id offer competing versions of how gender identifications workindeed, of whether they can be said to
work at all. Can gender complexity and dissonance be accounted for by the multiplication and convergence of a
is all identification constructed through the

exclusion of a sexuality that puts those identifications into question? In the first instance,
variety of culturally dissonant identifications? Or
multiple identifications can constitute a nonhierarchical configuration of shifting and overlapping identifications
that call into question the primacy of any univocal gender attribution.In the Lacanian framework,identification is
understood to be fixed within the binary disjunction of having or beingthe Phallus,with the consequence that
the excluded term of the binary continually haunts and disrupts the coherent posturing of any one.The excluded
term is an excluded sexuality that contests the self-grounding pretensions of the subject as well as its claims to
feminist critics concerned with the

psychoanalytic problematic of identification have often focused on the question of
a maternal identification and sought to elaborate a feminist epistemological
position from that maternal identification and/or a maternal discourse evolved
from the point of view of that identification and its difficulties. Although much of that
work is extremely significant and clearly influential, it has come to occupy a
hegemonic position within the emerging canon of feminist theory. Further, it tends
know the source and object of its desire. For the most part,
to reinforce precisely the binary, heterosexist framework that carves up

genders into masculine and feminine and forecloses an adequate description
of the kinds of subversive and parodic convergences that characterize gay and
lesbian cultures. As a very partial effort to come to terms with that maternalist discourse, however, Julia
Kristevas description of the semiotic as a maternal subversion of the Symbolic will be examined in the following
chapter. What critical strategies and sources of subversion appear as the consequence of the psychoanalytic
accounts considered so far? The recourse to the unconscious as a source of subversion makes sense, it seems,
only if the paternal law is understood as a rigid and universal determinism which makes of identity a fixed and
phantasmatic affair. Even if we accept the phantasmatic content of identity,there is no reason to assume that the
As opposed to
the founding Law of the Symbolic that fixes identity in advance, we might
reconsider the history of constitutive identifications without the presupposition of a
fixed and founding Law.Although the universalityof the paternal law may be contested within anthropolaw which fixes the terms of that fantasy is impervious to historical variability and possibility.
logical circles, it seems important to consider that the meaning that the law sustains in any given historical context
is less univocal and less deterministically efficacious than the Lacanian account appears to acknowledge. It should
be possible to offer a schematic of the ways in which a constellation of identifications conforms or fails to conform
to culturally imposed standards of gender integrity.
The constitutive identifications of an
autobiographical narrative are always partially fabricated in the telling .
Lacan claims that
we can never tell the story of our origins, precisely because
language bars the speaking subject from the repressed libidinal origins
of its speech ; however, the foundational
moment in which the paternal law institutes the subject seems to
function as a metahistory which we not only can but ought to tell, even though the founding moments of the
The
alternative perspective on identification that emerges from psychoanalytic theory
suggests that multiple and coexisting identifications produce conflicts,
convergences, and innovative dissonances within gender configurations which
contest the fixity of masculine and feminine placements with respect to the paternal law. In
subject, the institution of the law, is as equally prior to the speaking subject as the unconscious itself.
effect, the possibility of multiple identifications (which are not finally reducible to primary or founding
identifications that are fixed within masculine and feminine positions) suggests that the Law is not deterministic
and that thelaw may not even be singular.
Lack of culture leads to identity crisis
While I agree that there is no such thing as 'white culture' per se, there are white
cultures. It is particularly important, given the scenario of continuing UK white working
class racism (exacerbated, as I have argued throughout this volume by sections of the tabloid press), that educators do not
deny the existence ofwhite working class cultures. Indeed, as I have argued
elsewhere with respect to such cultures (Cole, 2007c, 2008c), educational institutions
should be centrally involved in helping to identify and develop strategies to promote
good inclusive practice for all pupils/students, including the white working class,
non-racialized as well as racialized (see below). Sections of the white working class in
England have voted for the fascist British National Party (BNP) at recent elections precisely
because they feel that they are treated with less equality than other s. Ifwe were to teach
white working class young people that they have no culture, or indeed if we were to treat them as if they had no culture, that would
be racist, would alienate white working class children even more, and would not be conducive to effective socialist practice. The
notion of such a lack of culture, which would surely lead to identity crises (a point that
fellow 'white abolitionist' Ricky Lee Allen (2007, p. 65 ) seems to revel in when he states that critical
educators need to create an environment which creates this) would also rightly be
massively contested, including by most ofthe Left in the United Kingdom.
Polticization
The affirmatives call for recognition reinscribes the
traumatized subject by politicizing pain
Revenge as a "reaction," a substitute for the capacity to act, produces identity as both bound
to the history that produced it and as a reproach to the present that embodies that
history. The will that "took to hurting" in its own impotence against its past becomes (in the form of an
identity whose very existence is due to heightened consciousness of the immovability of
its "it was," its history of subordination) a will that makes not only a psychological but a political
practice of revenge, a practice that reiterates the existence of an identity whose present
past is one of insistently unredeemable injury. This past cannot be redeemed unless
the identity ceases to be invested in it, and it cannot cease to be invested in it
without giving up its identity as such, thus giving up its economy of avenging and
at the same time perpetuating its hurt-"when he then stills the pain of the wound, he at the same
time reinfects the wound."32 In its emergence as a protest against marginalization or
subordination, politicized identity thus becomes attached to its own exclusion both
because it is premised on this exclusion for its very existence as identity and
because the formation of identity at the site of exclusion , as exclusion, augments or "alters
the direction of the suffering" entailed in subordination or marginalization by finding a site of blame for it. But in so
doing,
it installs its pain over its unredeemed history in the very foundation
of its political claim , in its demand for recognition as identity. In locating a site of
blame for its powerlessness over its past, as a past of injury, a past as a hurt will, and
locating a "reason" for the "unendurable pain" of social powerlessness in the present, it converts this
reasoning into an ethicizing politics, a politics of recrimination that seeks to avenge
the hurt even while it reaffirms it, discursively codifies it. Politicized identity thus
enunciates itself, makes claims for itself, only by entrenching, dramatizing, and
inscribing its pain in politics and can hold out no future-for itself or others-that
triumphs over this pain. The loss of historical direction, and with it the loss of futurity characteristic of
the late modern age, is thus homologically refigured in the structure of desire of the dominant political expression
of the age-identity politics. In the same way, the generalized political impotence produced by the ubiquitous yet
discontinuous networks of late modern political and economic power is reiterated in the investments of late
modern democracy's primary oppositional political formation.
Reduction
Intersectionaltiy reduces identity to a mere social role
externalizing theories of the body,

spectatorship, performativity, hybridity, resistance, and intersectionality . Such theories
tend to reduce identities to social roles that can be put on and taken off, mixed and matched, almost
at will. Or they overdetermine exceptional cases of passing to explain the rules of
racial identification, or they credential closeting, crossdressing, and trans-sexuality
to explain all the rules of sexual identification . As others have pointed out, such theories
silently rely on the solidity of the sexual anatomy beneath the poses and custom (e)
s and on the substratum of racial embodiment against which passing identity can
seem playfully deconstructive. Although such theories, to their credit, occasionally highlight
the delights of cross identification, they do so at the expense of understanding the
intractability of identity norms, many of which remain untouched by crossdressers, passers, and the like.
Identities may not be fixed and static, but they are ingrained and iterative . Even
cross-dressers repeat the same maneuvers, styles, attitudes over generationsironically forging
normative expectations for putatively abnormal gender-bending . If these theories do not
take us far enough "behind" the social roles that they critique, Palumbo Liu's attempt to siphon off social
roles from identity, the collective form from the individual "inside," does not go far enough
inside the institutionality of the individual.
Perhaps Palumbo-Liu, understandably, feels restless hemmed in by
Identity politics bad their approach is premised on realism,

essentialism, and ethical foundationalism
Gergen 99 (Kenneth J. Gergen American psychologist and professor at Swarthmore College, Social
Construction and the Transformation of Identity Politics, End of knowing: A new developmental way of learning
(1999) // JJ)
identity politics were not sufficiently embattled by the vicissitudes of cultural history, it has also
begun to feel a certain suffocating presence from its constructionist paramour. For,
while social constructionism supplies vibrant discursive resources for building
internal strength and undermining the opposition, it also plays havoc with central
tenets of identity politics. In particular, constructionism offers strong arguments against the realism,
If
essentialism, and ethical foundationalism endemic to much of the discourse of identity politics. In the first
social critiques developed within identity politics are typically lodged

within a realist discourse, a discourse which privileges its critique with the
instance, the
capacity for truth beyond perspective. In characterizing the barriers of class,

the glass ceiling, homo-phobia, the effects of pornography on rape, and the
embryonic fetus as a human being, for example, claims are being about the state of
nature independent of our interpretive proclivities . For the constructionist, of course, the such
claims are not so much reflections of nature as the outcome of social process .
The descriptions are inherently positioned both historically and culturally, and myriad alternatives are both
possible and creditable from other societal locations. The realist posture is all the more ironic, the constructionist
The
constructed character of the dominant discourse is used by the identity politician to
pave the way for the marginalized alternative, with the latter position then treated
as if transparent. Closely related to a problematic realism is the essentialist
presumption implicit in much identity politics. To make claims for the rights of
reasons, because such critiques are often coupled with a deconstruction of the opposition's objectivity.
women, children, the aged, the poor, the insane, and so on typically implies the
existence of an essential entity a group unified by its distinctive
features . The group name is treated as referential - derived from characteristics
existing in nature, independent of the name itself. For the constructionist, of course, reference is
preeminently a social achievement and thus inherently defeasible. The reality of history, ethnicity, class, and so on
is generated within contemporary cultural life, and could be otherwise. As Henry Louis Gates (1994) proposes,
blackness is "not a material object, an absolute, or an event," but only "a trope." And lodging the argument in
"Race is only a sociopolitical category, nothing more." As this

sociopolitical category is applied to individuals it also acts as a reductive agent,
social process, he goes on,
circumscribing one's identity, and reducing one's potential to be

otherwise . In his Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby, Stephen Carter proposes that such labels
operate as problematic stereotypes, covering over complexities and generating
misleading social policies.(See also Calhoun, 1994) Finally, constructionist thought also
militates against the claims to ethical foundations implicit in much identity politics -
that higher ground from which others can so confidently be condemned as inhumane, self-serving, prejudiced, and
Constructionist thought painfully reminds us that we have no transcendent

rationale upon which to rest such accusations, and that our sense of moral indignation
is itself a product of historically and culturally situated traditions. And the constructionist
unjust.
intones, is it not possible that those we excoriate are but living also within traditions that are, for them, suffused
with a sense of ethical primacy? As we find, then, social constructionism is a two edged sword in the political
arena, potentially as damaging to the wielding hand as to the opposition.
Regulation
Turn their confessional discourse fails to liberate instead, it
regulates identity by universalizing specific experiences
Foucault's concern is less with disrupting the conventional modernist equation of power with speech
with the ways in which insurrectionary
discourse borne of exclusion and marginalization can be colonized by that which
produced it much as counter-cultural fashion is routinely commodified by the
corporate textile industry. While "disqualified" discourses are an effect of
domination, they nevertheless potentially function as oppositional when they are
deployed by those who inhabit them. However, when " annexed" by those "unitary"
discourses which they ostensibly oppose, they become a particularly potent source of
Here,
on one side, and oppression with silence on the other, than
regulation, carrying as they do intimate and detailed knowledge of their

subjects . Thus, Foucault's worry would appear to adhere not simply to the study of but to the overt political
mobilization of oppositional discourses. Consider the way in which the discourse of
multiculturalism has been annexed by mainstream institutions to generate new
modalities of essentialized racial discourse; how "pre-menstrual syndrome" has been
rendered a debilitating disease in medical and legal discourses ; n17 how "battered
women's syndrome" has been deployed in the courtroom to defend women who
strike back at their assailants by casting them as sub-rational, egoless victims of
male violence; n18 or how some women's response to some pornography was
generalized by the Meese Commission on pornography as the violence done to all
women by all pornography. n19 Consider, more generally, attempts at codifying feminist discourses of
women's experience in the unitary and universal discourse of the law. What happens when legal universalism's
silence about women, when its failure to recognize or remedy the material of women's subordination, is remedied
with discourses specifying women's experience and codifying the category of women through this specification? In
pursuing this question, I will focus briefly on Catharine MacKinnon's work, but the questions I am raising about this
MacKinnon expressly aims to write

"women's experience into law," but as so many other feminists have remarked,
this begs the question of which women's experience(s) , drawn from which
kind of feminist legal reform are not limited to her work. n20
historical moments, culture, race, and class strata . n21 Indeed, what does it mean to
write historically and culturally circumscribed experience into an ahistorical discourse, the universalist discourse of
law? Is it possible to do this without rendering "experience" as ontology, "perspective" as Truth, and without
encoding this ontology and this Truth in law as the basis of women's rights? What if, for example, the identity of
women as keyed to sexual violation is an expressly late twentieth century and white middle-class construction of
femininity, consequent to a radical deprivatization of sexuality on the one side, and the erosion of other elements of
Moreover,
does a definition of women as sexual subordination, and the encoding of this
definition in law, work to liberate women from sexual subordination, or does it,
paradoxically, legally reinscribe femaleness as sexual violability? If the law produces
the subjects it claims to protect or emancipate, how might installation of women's
experience as "sexual violation" in the law reiterate rather than repeal this identity?
And might this installation be particularly unemancipatory for women whose lived
experience is not that of sexual subordination to men but, for example, that of
sexual outlaw? These questions suggest that in legally codifying a fragment of an
insurrectionary discourse as a timeless truth, interpellating women as unified in
their victimization, and casting the "free speech" of men as that which "silences" and thus subordinates
compulsory heterosexuality n22 --such as a severely gendered division of social labor--on the other?
intensifies the
regulation of gender and sexuality in the law, abetting rather than contesting the
production of gender identity as sexual . In short, as a regulatory fiction of a
women, MacKinnon not only opposes bourgeois liberty to substantive equality, but potentially
particular identity is deployed to displace the hegemonic fiction of

universal personhood, the discourse of rights converges insidiously with the
discourse of disciplinarity to produce a spectacularly potent mode of juridicalregulatory domination .
By seeking subjectivity through external recognition, their

politics regulate and govern identity
the University of California, Berkeley, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection, Stanford University Press,
pp. 21-22 // JJ)
How is it that the subject is the kind of being who can be exploited, who is, by virtue of its own formation,
vulnerable to subjugation?
Bound to seek recognition of its own existence in
categories, terms, and names that are not of its own making , the subject
seeks the sign of its own existence outside itself, in a discourse that is at once
dominant and indifferent. Social categories signify subordination and existence at
once. In other words, within subjection the price of existence is subordination. Precisely at the moment in which
choice is impossible, the subject pursues subordination as the promise of existence. This pursuit is not choice, but
neither is it necessity. Subjection exploits the desire for existence, where existence is always conferred from
Assuming terms of power that

one never made but to which one is vulnerable on which one depends in order to be, appears to
elsewhere; it marks a primary vulnerability to the Other in order to be.
be a mundane subjection at the basis of subject formation. Assuming power is no simple process, however, for
Instead, on being assumed, power runs

the risk of assuming another form and direction. If conditions of power do not unilaterally produce
power is not mechanically reproduced when it is assumed.
subjects, then what is the temporal and logical form that the assumption of power takes? A redescription of the
domain of psychic subjection is needed to make clear how social power produces modes of reflexivity oat the same
to the extent that norms operate as psychic

phenomena, restricting and producing desire, they also govern the
time as it limits forms of sociality. In other words,
formation of the subject and circumscribe the domain of a livable

sociality. The psychic operation of the norm offers a more insidious route for
regulatory power than explicit coercion, one whose success allows its tacit operation
within the social. And yet, being psychic, the norm does not merely reinstate social power,
it becomes formative and vulnerable in highly specific ways. The social
categorizations that establish the vulnerability of the subject to language
are themselves vulnerable to both psychic and historical change. This view
counters an understanding of a psychic or linguistic normativity (as in some versions of the
Symbolic) that is prior to the social or sets constraint on the social. Just as the subject is
derived from conditions of power that precede it, so the psychic operation of the norm is derived, though not
mechanically or predictably, from prior social operations.
The confessional nature of standpoint identity discourse

obscures the way in which identities are constructed,
assigned, and regulated
DCruz 8 (Carolyn DCruz Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University, Melbourne,
Identity Politics in Deconstruction; Calculating with the Incalculable, Ashgate Publishing Ltd (2008) // JJ)
Despite the practical, political and philosophical impossibility of articulating a

unified identity from which to base its emancipatory projects, identity movements
continue to situate the problem of essences and foundations as something that they
can overcome. One of the more enduring debates around this problem has its roots in how particular historians
have responded to what has been described as the linguistic turn in the humanities and social sciences, and finds
its focal point of contention emerging from Joan Scotts widely cited and commented upon essay, The Evidence of
Experience. Joan Scott delivered and published her paper on experience in an environment in which marginalised
identities seeking to resurrect their lost voices in the dominant narratives of history had become prevalent. Scott
identifies such corrective writing in Samuel Delaneys autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water, where the
latter reveals a cognitive dissonance between the prevailing representation of homosexuals in the 1950s as
isolated perverts and his experience of entering a bathhouse in 1963, which suggested a much more pervasive
population of (well adjusted) gay men. Scott describes Delaneys revelation in terms that readily fit identity based
movements aim to bring to visibility previously suppressed perspectives in the construction of reality in this case,
the construction of homosexuality. It also fits well with narratives of consciousness-raising, recently revived for
But while such corrective accounts of history open

the door to alternative perspectives that enlarge and challenge normative
narratives in the history of sexuality, Scott argues that such evidence still accepts a
referential account of history. For Scott, the concept of experience, as what one has
lived through, becomes the origin of knowledge, which fails to account for the
constructed nature of experience. Scott claims that Delaneys approach renders
experience as transparent and does not challenge the ideological systems that
presume a natural opposition between heterosexuality and homosexuality, sexual
practices and sexual conventions. In order to challenge rather than reproduce the
repressive mechanisms of ideology, Scott calls for attending to how historical
processes are bound to discourses that position and produce a subjects
experiences. While Scott does not explicitly define discourse, it appears that she is employing the term in the
critical analysis among post-positivist realists.
Foucauldian sense as described in the previous chapter. This alliance to Foucault is evident in Scotts conclusion,
the formers genealogical approach to history as the most

productive way for the historian to relate the past not by presuming the capacity
to re-enact somebodys past experience, but through analysing changing concepts
that make possible the evidence by which experience can be grasped . 11 Scott settles
where she advocates
on this discursive approach after surveying various other historians approaches to experience. What Scott finds
problematic in the approaches of Raymond Williams, E. P Thompson and C. G. Collingwood is that they assume that
experience is something that one has rather than asking how the experiences of subjects themselves are
produced. It might have been useful at this point to distinguish between personal lived experiences Erlebnis, on
the one hand and Erfahrung, the traditions to which this subjugated identity have been inserted, on the other. For
even if one concedes that experiences are produced which might a collective identity it is hard to remove the
grammar of experience, to borrow Peggy Kamufs phrase from a different context, which occur[s] most readily in
This is perhaps why Scotts criticisms of previous

accounts of experience were read as if the production of experience discounted
the ability to talk about ones own lived experience. This interpretation is captured in the bizarre
clauses with the verb to have. 12
title of Laura Downss article, If Woman is Just an Empty Category, Then Why Am I Afraid to Walk Alone at Night?
Identity Politics Meets the Postmodern Subject. 13 Focusing on the title alone, we might wonder how Scotts call to
analyse the substitution of one interpretation for another in the history of the interplay between identity and
experience could suggest that (any) identity is an empty category. On the contrary, it seems that Scott is indicating
interpretations of identity and experience are in fact rife with multiple and
contradictory meanings. Moreover, to make any sense of Downss title at all, we would have to presume a
that
totally reducible relationship between the level of conceptuality (such as with the concept of woman) and the order
this chapter comes up against the impossibility of

reducing the relationship between the ideality of a concept and the materiality of
bodies to an essentialised and generalised form that can name a point of origin that
privileges one order either the material or the ideal over the other. Scott does not
of actuality (lived experience). As we will see,
appear to pursue this question, so I will leave it for now and return to her article. Scott further argues that the
aforementioned historians fail to put into question the foundational status of experience as a means for social
Whether the historian is concerned with women or African-American or

lesbian or homosexual [or] working class, the problem is the same. 14 This is to say,
corrective history often equates personal experience with an automatic
transformation.
position from which to direct a politics of resistance.
To give this criticism a wider
context, I will outline its applicability to proponents of feminist standpoint theory, which despite undergoing
several revisions over the last three decades, maintains the same basic premise that the lived experiences of the
With its Marxist

roots, standpoint theory began by extending the category of industrial labour
which invests the interests of oppressed workers with a privileged perspective from
which to transform the world to include the category of domestic labour, predominantly comprised of
women. Revisions of standpoint theory attempted to rectify previous feminist
blindness to issues of race, and sexuality by attempting to add these perspectives
of devalued and neglected lives into a stronger concept of objectivity from that
associated with the master position (identified as white, capitalist and male) . 17
Despite protests to the contrary, standpoint theory unwittingly implies that the
subject with the most markers of oppression would occupy the most privileged
perspective to construct objective knowledge (a black, third world lesbian with a disability, for
instance). For Scott, such investments in privileging perspectives from the lived
subjugated are the best sources for constructing a socially transformative knowledge. 15
experiences of the subjugated obscures the contradictory and contested

process by which [such categories were themselves] conceptualised and
by which diverse kinds of subject positions were assigned, felt, contested, or
embraced.
Identity politics reify hegemonic structures by defining and

regulating identities as distinct from an idealized majority
Contemporary politicized identity contests the terms of liberal discourse insofar as

it challenges liberalism's universal "we" as a strategic fiction of historically
hegemonic groups and asserts liberalism's "I" as social-both relational and constructed by powerrather than contingent, private, or autarkic. Yet it reiterates the terms of liberal discourse
insofar as it posits a sovereign and unified "I" that is disenfranchised by an
exclusive "we." Indeed, I have suggested that politicized identity emerges and obtains its
unifying coherence through the politicization of exclusion from an ostensible
universal, as a protest against exclusion, a protest premised on the fiction of an
inclusive/universal community, a protest that reinstalls the humanist ideal- and a
specific white, middle-class, masculinist expression of this ideal-insofar
as it premises itself on exclusion from it. Put the other way around, politicized
identities generated out of liberal, disciplinary societies, insofar as they are
premised on exclusion from a universal ideal, require that ideal, as well as their
exclusion from it, for their own perpetuity as identities. 3 Politicized identity is also
potentially reiterative of regulatory, disciplinary society in its configuration of a
disciplinary subject. It is both produced by and potentially accelerates the
production of that aspect of disciplinary society that "ceaselessly
characterizes, classifies, and specializes," that works through
"surveillance, continuous registration, perpetual assessment, and
classification," through a social machinery "that is both immense and minute."
14 A recent example from the world of local politics makes clear politicized identity's imbrication in disciplinary
disciplinary power "infiltrates" rather

than replaces liberal juridical modalities.'5 Last year, the city council of my town reviewed an
power, as well as the way in which, as Foucault reminds us,
ordinance, devised and promulgated by a broad coalition of identity-based political groups, which aimed to ban
discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations on the basis of "sexual orientation,
transsexual- ity, age, height, weight, personal appearance, physical characteristics, race, color, creed, religion,
a perfect instance of the

universal juridical idea of liberalism and the normalizing principle of disciplinary
regimes conjoined and taken up within the discourse of politicized identity. This
national origin, ancestry, disability, marital status, sex or gender."'6 Here is
ordinance- variously called the "purple hair ordinance" or the "ugly ordinance" by national news media-aims to
count every difference as no difference, as part of a seamless whole, but also to count every potentially subversive
rejection of culturally enforced norms as themselves normal, as normaliz- able, and as normativizable through law.
Indeed, through the definitional, procedural, and remedies section of this ordinance
(e.g., "sexual orientation shall mean known or assumed homosexuality, heterosexuality, or bisexual- ity"),
persons are reduced to observable social attributes and practices; these

are defined empirically, positivistically, as if their existence were intrinsic
and factual, rather than effects of discursive and institutional power ; and
these positivist definitions of persons as their attributes and practices are written
into law, ensuring that persons describable according to them will now become
regulated through them. Bentham couldn't have done it better. Indeed, here is a perfect
instance of how the language of unfreedom, how articulation in language, in the
context of liberal and disciplinary discourse, becomes a vehicle of subordination
through individualization, normaliza- tion, and regulation, even as it strives to
produce visibility and acceptance. Here, also, is a perfect instance of the way in which differences
that are the effects of social power are neutralized through their articulation as attributes and their circulation
through liberal administrative discourse: what do we make of a document that renders as juridical equivalents the
denial of employment to an African American, an obese man, and a white middle-class youth festooned with
tattoos and fuschia hair?
Turn their performance of identity reinforces regulatory,

universalized notions of culture
the University of California, Berkeley, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge, pp.
172-174 // JJ)
The redescription of intrapsychic processes in terms of the surface politics of the body implies a corollary
redescription of gender as the disciplinary production of the figures of fantasy through the play of presence and
absence on the bodys surface, the construction of the gendered body through a series of exclusions and denials,
signifying absences.But
what determines the manifest and latent text of the body politic?
What is the prohibitive law that generates the corporeal styliza- tion of gender, the
fantasied and fantastic figuration of the body? We have already considered the incest taboo and
the prior taboo against homosexuality as the generative moments of gender identity, the prohibitions that
produce identity along the culturally intelligible grids of an idealized and
compulsory heterosexuality.That disciplinary production of gender effects a false
stabilization of gender in the interests of the heterosexual construction and
regulation of sexuality within the reproductive domain. The construction of coherence
conceals the gender discontinuities that run rampant within heterosexual, bisexual,
and gay and lesbian contexts in which gender does not necessarily follow from
sex, and desire, or sexuality generally, does not seem to follow from genderindeed,
where none of these dimensions of significant corporeality express or reflect one another.When the
disorganization and disaggregation of the field of bodies disrupt the regulatory
fiction of heterosexual coherence, it seems that the expressive model loses its
descriptive force. That regulatory ideal is then exposed as a norm and a
fiction that disguises itself as a developmental law regulating the sexual
field that it purports to describe . According to the understanding of
identification as an enacted fantasy or incorporation, however, it is clear that
coherence is desired, wished for,idealized,and that this idealization is an effect of a

corporeal signification. In other words, acts, gestures, and desire produce the effect of an internal core or
substance,but produce this on the surface of the body, through the play of signifying absences that
suggest, but never reveal, the organizing principle of identity as a cause . Such acts,
gestures,enactments,generally construed,are performative in the sense that the
essence or identity that they otherwise purport to express are fabrications
manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive
means.That the gendered body is performative suggests that it has no ontological status apart from the
various acts which constitute its reality.This also suggests that if that reality is fabricated as an interior essence,
that very interiority is an effect and function of a decidedly public and social discourse, the public regulation of fantasy through the surface politics of the body,the gender border control that differentiates inner from outer, and so
institutes the integrity of the subject.In other
words, acts and gestures, articulated and
enacted desires create the illusion of an interior and organizing gender

core, an illusion discursively maintained for the purposes of the
regulation of sexuality within the obligatory frame of reproductive
heterosexuality . If the cause of desire, gesture, and act can be localized within
the self of the actor,
then the political regulations and disciplinary practices which produce that ostensibly coherent gender are
effectively displaced from view.The
displacement of a political and discursive origin of

gender identity onto a psychological core precludes an analysis of the political
constitution of the gendered subject and its fabricated notions about the ineffable
interiority of its sex or of its true identity.
The privileging of embodied pain narratives replicates

colonialist ideologies that regulate authenticity
Tuck and Yang 14 (Eve Tuck Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations and Coordinator of Native
American Studies at the State University of New York at New Paltz, K. Wayne Yang Assistant Professor of Ethnic
Studies and Affiliated Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of California, San Diego, R-Words:
Refusing Research, Humanizing Research, pp. 223-247 // JJ)
settler colonial ideology believes that , in fiction author Sherril

Jaffes words, scars make your body more interesting , (1996, p. 58). Jaffes work of short, short of
fiction bearing that sentiment as title captures the exquisite crossing of wounds and curiosity
and pleasure. Settler colonial ideology, constituted by its conscription of others,
holds the wounded body as more engrossing than the body that is not wounded
(though the person with a wounded body does not politically or materially benefit
for being more engrossing). In settler colonial logic, pain is more compelling than
privilege, scars more enthralling than the body unmarked by experience. In settler
colonial ideology, pain is evidence of authenticity, of the verifiability of a lived
An initial and partial answer is because
life . Academe, formed and informed by settler colonial ideology, has developed
the same palate for pain. Emerging and established social science researchers set out to document the
problems faced by communities, and often in doing so, recircu- late common tropes of dysfunction, abuse, and
neglect. Scholars of qualitative research Alecia Youngblood Jackson and Lisa Mazzei (2009) have critically
the privileging of voice in qualitative research, because voice is

championed as true and real, and almost a mirror of the soul, the essence of
self, (p. 1). The authors interpret the drive to make voices heard and understood,
bringing meaning and self to consciousness and creating tran-
excavated
scendental, universal truths as gestures that reveal the primacy of voice in

conventional qualitative research (p. 1). We contend that much of what counts as voice and makes
voice count is pain. In an example drawn from outside of social science research, in Waynes work as a writing
instructor with Southeast Asian refugee students, he learned from them that much of the writing they were
encouraged to do followed a rarefied narrative pattern of refugee-as-victim. As it were, youth and young adults
refugee-victim stories are solicited by

well-intentioned ESL teachers who argue that such narratives are poetic, powerful,
and represent the authentic voice of the student. Similarly, Robin Kelley (1997), speaking
learn these narratives in schools, in which time and again
about the Black experience in Harlem in the 1960s, describes White liberal teachers as foot soldiers in the new
soliciting stories from their students about pain in their lives

and unwittingly reducing their students to cardboard typologies who fit neatly into
their own definition of the underclass (p. 17). Such examples of teachers solicitations of youth
ethnographic army (p. 20),
narratives of pain confirm the deep relationship between writing or talking about wounds, and perceptions of
authenticity of voice.
Traumatization
Their representations idealize trauma and thus reify the
traumatized subject turns case
Levi offers drowning as a metaphor for the initial

experience of entering concentration camps, particularly for those who did not speak German or
Polish: " . . . filled with a dreadful sound and fury signifying nothing: a hubbub of people
without names or faces drowned in a continuous, deafening background noise from
In The Drowned and the Saved, n24 Primo
which, however, the human word did not surface." n25 This is a drowning in a world of unfa- miliar as well as
terrifying words and noise, a world of no civil structure but so much humanity that one's own becomes a question.
Levi thus makes drowning function as a symbol for a lost linguistic order and as
a sign of a lost civil order, for being at sea in words which do not communicate and
by which one cannot communicate. n26 In a radically different context, Adrienne Rich also relates
Primo
drowning to speech: "your silence today is a pond where drowned things live." n27 Allowing, perhaps perversely,
the Rich to rest on the Levi, I wonder if Rich's line need only be read in its most obvious meaning-- as an injunction
to speak or die, a mandate to speak in order to recover the drowned things, recover life. What if the accent marks
were placed differently so that silence becomes a place where drowned things live, a place where Levi's drowning
inmates survive despite being overwhelmed by the words which fill and consume the air necessary for life? What if
the drowned things live in the pond, where it is silent, as they could not survive if brought back into the exposure of
light and air, the cacophony of the Camp? What if silence is a reprieve from drowning in words which do not
communicate or confer recognition, which only bombard or drown? n28 Of course, this possibility is heavy with
paradox insofar as drowning already signals death and a pond where drowned things live therefore harbors death
perhaps there are dead

or deadening (anti-life) things which must be allowed residence in that pond of
silence rather than surfaced into discourse if life is to be lived without being claimed
by their weight. Certain experiencesconcentration camp existence or childhood
abusemay conservatively claim their subjects when those experiences are
incessantly remembered in speech, when survivors can only and always speak of
what they almost did not survive and thus cannot break with that threat to
rather than life. But this paradox may also serve the other point I am after here:
live in a present not dominated by it . And what if this endless speaking about
one's past of suffering is a means of attempting to excoriate guilt about what one
did not do to prevent the suffering, an attempt which is doomed insofar as the
speaking actually perpetuates by disavowing the guilt? n29 If to speak repeatedly of
a trauma is a mode of encoding it as identity , it may be the case that drowned things must be
consigned to live in a pond of silence in order to make a world--a future--that is other than them. Put slightly
"a memory evoked too often, and in the form of a story, tends to
become fixed in a stereotype . . . crystallized, perfected, adorned, installing itself
differently by Primo Levi,
in the place of the raw memory and growing at its expense ." n30 Many feminist
narratives of suffering would seem to bear precisely this character; rather than working through the
"raw memory" to a place of an emancipation, our discourses of survivorship become
stories by which we live, or refuse to live, in the present. There is a fine but critical
distinction here between on the one hand, re-entering a trauma, speaking its unspeakable
elements, even politicizing it, in order to reconfigure the trauma and the
traumatized subject, and on the other, retelling the trauma in such a way as to
preserve by resisting the pain of it, and thus to preserve the traumatized subject.
While such a distinction is probably not always sustainable, it may be all that secures the possibility that we dwell in
neither a politics of pain nor of pain's disavowal.
Cant Solve
Identity politics cedes potential for radical change to
decentralized, horizontal forms of action.
Marcus 12 (David editor of Dissent Magazine. The Horizontalists Fall 2012
Dissent Magazine http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-horizontalists)
accessed 7/13/14 .nt)
The seemingly spontaneous movement that emerged after the first general
assemblies in Zuccotti Park was not, then, sui generis but an elaboration of a much
larger turn by the Left. As occupations spread across the country and as activists
begin to exchange organizational tactics, it was easy to forget that what was
happening was, in fact, a part of a much larger shift in the scale and plane of
Western politics: a turn toward more local and horizontal patterns of life, a growing
skepticism toward the institutions of the state, and an increasing desire to seek out
greater realms of personal freedom. And although its hibernation over the summer
has, perhaps, marked the end of the Occupy movement, OWS has also come to
represent an importantand perhaps more lastingbreak. In both its ideas and
tactics, it has given us a new set of desires autonomy, radical democracy,
direct action that look well beyond the ideological and tactical tropes of
socialism. Its occupations and general assemblies, its flash mobs and street
performances, its loose network of activists all suggest a bold new set of
possibilities for the Left: a horizontalist ethos that believes that
revolution will begin by transforming our everyday lives. It can be argued
that horizontalism is , in many ways, a product of the growing
disaggregation and individuation of Western society; that it is a kind of
free-market leftism: a politics jury-rigged out of the very culture it hopes
to resist. For not only does it emphasize the agency of the individual, but
it draws one of its central inspirations from a neoclassical image: that of
the self-managing societythe polity that functions best when the state
is absent from everyday decisions. But one can also find in its antiinstitutionalism an attempt to speak in todays language for yesterdays goals. If
we must live in a society that neither trusts nor feels compelled by
collectivist visions, then horizontalism offers us a leftism that attempts to
be , at once, both individualist and egalitarian , anti-institutional and
democratic, open to the possibilities of self-management and yet also concerned
with the casualties born out of an age that has let capital manage itself for far too
long. Horizontalism has absorbed the crisis of knowledgewhat we often call
postmodernismand the crisis of collectivismwhat we often call
neoliberalism. But instead of seeking to return to some golden age before our
current moment of fracture , it seeks for better and worse to find a way to
make leftist politics conform to our current age of anti-foundationalism
and institutionalism. As Graeber argued in the prescriptive last pages of his
anthropological epic, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Capitalism has transformed the
world in many ways that are clearly irreversible and we therefore need to give up
the false choice between state and market that [has] so monopolized political
ideology for the last centuries that it made it difficult to argue about anything else.
We need , in other words, to stop thinking like leftists. But herein lies the
problem. Not all possible forms of human existence and social interaction,
no matter how removed they are from the institutions of power and
capital, are good forms of social organization. Although it is easy to look
enthusiastically to those societiesancient or modern, Western or non-Western
that exist beyond the structures of the state, they, too, have their own
patterns of hierarchy , their own embittered lines of inequality and injustice.
More important, to select one form of social organization over the other is
always an act of exclusion. Instituting and then protecting a particular way of
life will always require a normative commitment in which not every value system is
respectedin which, in other words, there is a moral hierarchy. More
problematically, by working outside structures of power one may
circumvent coercive systems but one does not necessarily subvert them.
Localizing politics stripping it of its larger institutional ambitionshas, to be
sure, its advantages. But without a larger structural vision, it does not go far
enough . Bubbles of freedom , as Graeber calls them, may create a larger
variety of non-institutional life. But they will always neglect other crucial
avenues of freedom: in particular, those social and economic rights that
can only be protected from the top down . In this way, the antiinstitutionalism of horizontalism comes dangerously close to that of the
libertarian Right. The turn to previous eras of social organization, the desire to
locate and confine politics to a particular regional space, the deep skepticism
toward all forms of institutional life not only mirror the aspirations of
libertarianism but help cloak those hierarchies spawned from noninstitutional forms of power and capital. This is a particularly pointed irony for
a political ideology that claims to be opposed to the many injustices of a noninstitutional marketin particular, its unregulated financial schemes. Perhaps this is
an irony deeply woven into the theoretical quilt of autonomy: a vision that, as a
result of its anti-institutionalism, is drawn to all sites of individual liberationeven
those that are to be found in the marketplace. As Graeber concludes in Debt,
Markets, when allowed to drift entirely free from their violent origins, invariably
begin to grow into something different, into networks of honor, trust, and mutual
connectedness, whereas the maintenance of systems of coercion constantly do
the opposite: turn the products of human cooperation, creativity, devotion, love and
trust back into numbers once again. In many ways, this is the result of a set of
political ideas that have lost touch with their origins . The desire for
autonomy was born out of the socialistif not also often the Marxisttradition and
there was always a guarded sympathy for the structures needed to oppose
organized systems of capital and power. Large-scale institutions were, for thinkers
such as Castoriadis, Negri, and C.L.R. James, still essential if every cook was truly to
govern. To only try to create spaces of freedom alongside of the State
meant , as Castoriadis was to argue later in his life , to back down from the
problem of politics. In fact, this was, he believed, the failure of 1968: the
inability to set up new, different institutions and recognize that there is
no such thing as a society without institutions. This is and will be a
problem for the horizontalist Left as it moves forward. As a leftism ready-made
for an age in which all sides of the political spectrum are arrayed against the
regulatory state, it is always in danger of becoming absorbed into the very
ideological apparatus it seeks to dismantle . For it aspires to a
decentralized and organic politics that, in both principle and practice,
shares a lot in common with its central target. Both it and the free market
are anti-institutional. And the latter will remain so without larger vertical measures.
Structures, not only everyday practices, need to be reformed. The
revolution cannot happen only on the ground; it must also happen from
above. A direct democracy still needs its indirect structures, individual
freedoms still need to be measured by their collective consequences, and
notions of social and economic equality still need to stand next to the
desire for greater political participation. Deregulation is another regulatory
regime, and to replace it requires new regulations: institutions that will limit the
excesses of the market. As Castoriadis insisted in the years after 1968, the Lefts
task is not only to abolish old institutions but to discover new kinds of
relationship between society and its institutions . Horizontalism has come to
serve as an important break from the static strategies and categories of analysis
that have slowed an aging and vertically inclined Left. OWS was to represent its
fullest expression yet, though it has a much longer back story and stillone hopes
a promising future. But horizontalists such as Graeber and Sitrin will struggle
to establish spaces of freedom if they cannot formulate a larger vision for
a society. Their vision is notas several on the vertical left have suggestedtoo
utopian but not utopian enough: in seeking out local spaces of freedom, they
have confined their ambitions; they have, in fact, come, at times, to
mirror the very ideology they hope to resist. In his famous retelling of the
turtle parable, Clifford Geertz warned that in the search of all-too-deep-lying
turtles, we have to be careful to not lose touch with the hard surfaces of
lifewith the political, economic, stratificatory realities within which men
are everywhere contained. This is an ever-present temptation, and one
that, in our age of ever more stratification, we must resist.
A politics of pain forecloses any chance of resistance if

victimhood becomes the prerequisite for change, then
inversely, agency represents a threat
Tuck and Yang 14 (Eve Tuck Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations and Coordinator of Native
American Studies at the State University of New York at New Paltz, K. Wayne Yang Assistant Professor of Ethnic
Studies and Affiliated Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of California, San Diego, R-Words:
Refusing Research, Humanizing Research, pp. 223-247 // JJ)
Elsewhere, Eve (Tuck, 2009, 2010) has argued that educational research and much of social science research has
been concerned with documenting damage, or empirically substantiating the oppression and pain of Native
Damage-centered
researchers may operate, even benevolently, within a theory of change in which
harm must be recorded or proven in order to convince an outside adjudicator that
reparations are deserved. These reparations presumably take the form of additional resources,
settlements, affirmative actions, and other material, political, and sovereign adjustments. Eve has described
this theory of change 1 as both colonial and flawed, because it relies upon
Western notions of power as scarce and concentrated , and because it
communities, urban communities, and other disenfranchised communities.
requires disenfranchised communities to position themselves as both

singularly defective and powerless to make change (2010). Finally, Eve has observed
that won reparations rarely become reality, and that in many cases, communities are left
with a narrative that tells them that they are broken. Similarly, at the center of the analysis in
this chapter is a concern with the fixation social science research has exhibited in eliciting pain stories from com-
Academes demonstrated fascination

with telling and retelling narratives of pain is troubling, both for its voyeurism and
for its consumptive implacability. Imagining itself to be a voice, and in some
disciplinary iterations, the voice of the colonised (Simpson, 2007, p. 67, emphasis in the
original) is not just a rare historical occurrence in anthropology and related fields. We
observe that much of the work of the academy is to reproduce stories of oppression in
its own voice. At first, this may read as an intolerant condemnation of the academy, one that refuses to
munities that are not White, not wealthy, and not straight.
forgive past blunders and see how things have changed in recent decades. However, it is our view that while many
individual scholars have chosen to pursue other lines of inquiry than the pain narratives typical of their
disciplines, novice researchers emerge from doctoral programs eager to launch pain-based inquiry projects
The collection of
pain narratives and the theories of change that champion the value of such
narratives are so prevalent in the social sciences that one might surmise that they
are indeed what the academy is about. In her examination of the symbolic violence of the academy,
bell hooks (1990) portrays the core message from the academy to those on the
margins as thus: No need to hear your voice when I can talk about you
because they believe that such approaches embody what it means to do social science.
better than you can speak about yourself. No need to hear your voice. Only
tell me about your pain. I want to know your story. And then I will tell it back to you
in a new way. Tell it back to you in such a way that it has become mine, my own.
Re-writing you I write myself anew. I am still author, authority. I am still colonizer
the speaking subject and you are now at the center of my talk. (p. 343) Hookss words
resonate with our observation of how much of social science research is concerned with providing recognition to
the presumed voiceless, a recognition that is enamored with knowing through pain. Further, this passage
the researchers voice is constituted by, legitimated by,

animated by the voices on the margins. The researcher-self is made anew by telling
back the story of the marginalized/subaltern subject. Hooks works to untangle the almost
imperceptible differences between forces that silence and forces that seemingly
liberate by inviting those on the margins to speak, to tell their stories. Yet the forces
that invite those on the margins to speak also say, Do not speak in a voice of
resistance. Only speak from that space in the margin that is a sign of deprivation, a
describes the ways in which
wound, an unfulfilled longing. Only speak your pain (hooks, 1990, p. 343). The costs of a
politics of recognition that is rooted in naming pain have been critiqued by recent
decolonizing and feminist scholars (Hartman, 1997, 2007; Tuck, 2009). In Scenes of Subjection, Sadiya
Hartman (1997) discusses how recognizing the personhood of slaves enhanced the power
of the Southern slave- owning class. Supplicating narratives of former slaves were
deployed effectively by abolitionists, mainly White, well-to-do, Northern women, to
generate portraits of abuse that ergo recognize slaves as human (Hartman, 2007). In
response, new laws afforded minimal standards of existence, making personhood coterminous with injury
(Hartman, 1997, p. 93), while simultaneously authorizing necessary violence to suppress slave agency. The slave
emerges as a legal person only when seen as criminal or a violated body in need of limited forms of protection
Recognition humanizes the slave, but is predicated upon her or his

abjection. You are in pain, therefore you are. [T]he recognition of humanity require[s] the event of
(p. 55).
excessive violence, cruelty beyond the limits of the socially tolerable, in order to acknowledge and protect the
slaves person (p. 55). Furthermore, Hartman describes how
slave-as-victim as human
accordingly establishes slave-as-agent as criminal . Applying Hartmans analysis, we

note how the agency of Margaret Garner or Nat Turner can only be viewed as outsider violence that humane
society must reject while simultaneously upholding the legitimated violence of the
state to punish such outsider violence. Hartman asks, Is it possible that such recognition effectively
forecloses agency as the object of punishment . . . Or is this limited conferral of humanity merely
a reinscription of subjugation and pained existence ? (p. 55).
Inevitable
Identity politics are inevitablewe necessarily impute some
form of an identity on every person we meet
I am told that I'm the "spittin' image" (a colloquial corruption of "spit and
of my father. I often see the spittin' image of my "blood relatives" in Blacks whom
I encounter far from home. I see the spittin' image of movie stars in ordinary people on the
street. Walking around London, I see the spittin' image of members of the royal family
everywhere. Whether resulting from a trick of the mind's eye or from actual
meta/physical resonances forced upon the mind by the eye, I cannot deny the constant
recurrence of such facial echoes as a commonplace deja vu . And upon such facial
echoes rest the mountains of racial and other identity ideologies , the weight of
which "identity politics" seeks to lift. Our fate is not that presence is always already
beyond our metaphysical grasp, as Jacques Derrida would have it, but instead that we can
handle only the physics of presences , even when caught within that gap between the personal
encounter and the person's absence? the gap that we variously call touching, seeing, knowing,
imaging, or reading. Those contributors I have not met in person , therefore, must
necessarily possess face/ts of identitymetonymic facesmore or less see able,
knowable, imaginable, readable to me. This is because, given the lack of such
"evidence" supposedly offered by the actual person's face , in the effort to reckon what they
are saying and why, I necessarily must impute some kind of identity to who they are and
why they say what they're saying. All of these contributors I have met in print, as we like to say, and
And why shouldn't they be?
image")
the more print that I've read by them, the more cohesivethe less inchoateis my sense of an identity for them. 3
My identification of them is not merely a projection , although we cannot disallow a degree of

this, but more aptly, it is a matter of a dialectic between what they project to me and
what I take from that projection. All of this is to assert that the most basic act of
"seeing" or "knowing" or "imaging" or "reading" is itself a kind of face-off that we
now call "identity politics," but that was no doubt called by other names before. And this is so not
merely because we live in a moment in which what we call "identity politics" is rife ,
or is anticipated as waning because too fluent. When we cannot deal with persons face to face,
we always deal with face/ts, the disembodied parts that connect them to larger
abstract, but no less material and actual, categories readily available to us. When we
do meet someone face to face, we still deal only with face/ts, with bodied parts that
we can classify according to what makes sense to us from our own limited identity
experiences. Identities are not like the faces in facets; they are face/ts . When we
therefore talk about the politics of identityno matter how much more
sophisticated we try to make it soundwe are really talking about the politics of our
face/ts.
Where there is identity, there is the struggle for power

On the surface, where we like to think that faces exist (note the "face" lurking in "surface"),
this equation of "identity politics" with face/ts may sound pretty innocuous. And in a sense it is. It
certainly does not sound scandalous enough to compel the question, "Is there life after identity politics?" My point is
that
before "identity politics," however we date the emergence of that, there was
identity, and wherever there is identity, there is a struggle over power of some sort.
In our farfetched prehistory, this may have meant my clan against yours, your tribe against someone else's, or their
kinfolk against one another. It may have meant a seemingly simple division of social roles between menfolk and
women folk, whereby the pressure of utilitythe need for divisions of laborinexplicably enables one group to
The face/t nature of identityour tendency to observe real

(in other words, essential) categories in the surfaces of uniquely materialized faces
constantly reminds us that we judge others' facets by their sur/face s, even when we've
assume priority over the other.4
never encountered them in person. This fact (of history, not "science") understandably creates a great deal of
After all, centuries of

chattel slavery, sexual bondage, ethnic exclusion, colonial theft, warfare, economic
exploitation, internment, apartheid, lynching, rape, and downright genocide have
revolved around fixing faces into categories based on face/ts of identity. Given that
thanks to "identity politics"we now, most of us, acknowledge these horrific
practices as historical facts, it is easy to forget that the feat of making them horrible
facts of history is a hard-won and fragile victory based as much in the face/ts of
identity as in these genocidal practices themselves . Given these horrifying facts of history, it is
also too easy to forget to what extent we can and do find pleasure in our group
identifications, even in, or perhaps especially in, those identities historically burdened
by the divisive politics of identity. In other words, it makes a difference that there was a
politics of identity before the "identity politics" that we supposedly are about to lose forever. At the
risk of splitting hairs, I want to suggest that it is absolutely necessary to distinguish between
this longer human history of the politics of identity and the current episode of
"identity politics" at issue among these contributors. If, for a moment, we accept the notion that "identity
frustration and anxiety, intellectual and otherwise, in the essays of this volume.
politics" is a brief episode, a particular object quickly fading from the sight-lines of amorphous faces, even if we
accept this particular narrative of identity, then we are still faced with (yes that metonymy face again) a politics for
It is a monstrous mistake to think that

the politics of identity is something that happened only recently and is on the
decline just because we have a name, "identity politics ," for a local, putatively short lived
phenomenona phenomenon that in actuality arises out of a long, uncharted human history in which "identity"
has always been the heart of "politics ," if not self-consciously politicized in now
familiar ways. If the politics of identity has been with us since at least the
beginnings of recorded human history, then I must ask again, why the urge to
prophesy the death of "identity politics"?
identity before this particular episode of "identity politics."
Black-White Binary
Bad
Black white binary impoverishes racial discourse and prevents
coalitions among POC
Darren Lenard Hutchinson, Critical Race Histories: In and Out Professor of Law, Washington College of Law,
American University. B.A., University of Pennsylvania; J.D., Yale Law School. American University Law Review
Volume 53 | Issue 6 2004,
MM
A third area of critical race innovation involves multiracial politics. Internal critics
have argued that racial discourse in the United States fixates upon black/white
racial issues, thereby marginalizing Latino, Native American, and Asian American
experiences.95 Empirically, this observation is indisputable. Race theorists lack a
full understanding of the breadth of racial injustice. The inclusion of the
experiences of Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans in racial discourse
can improve CRT in several ways. First, a multiracial discourse permits a full
accounting of the problem of racial inequality and allows for the
construction of adequate remedies for racial subordination. 96 Although all
people of color suffer racism, often in similar ways, racial hierarchies impact
communities of color in diverse ways. A narrow focus on black/white subjugation
severely limits the reach of antiracist remedies. The black/white paradigm also
prevents persons of color from engaging in coalition politics.97 By treating racism
as a problem that affects blacks primarily (or exclusively), racial discourse in the
United States divides persons of color who could align to create formidable political
forces in the battle for racial justice. Binary racial discourse also causes persons of
color to compete for the attention of whites, as marginalized racial groups treat
racial justice as a zero-sum game.98 Instead of recognizing the pervasiveness and
complexity of racial injuries, binary racial discourse leads to the tyranny of
oppression ranking and to competing demands for centrality in a
marginalized space of racial victimization.
Binary shatters alliances and fuels backlash

Darren Lenard Hutchinson, Critical Race Histories: In and Out Professor of Law, Washington College of Law,
American University. B.A., University of Pennsylvania; J.D., Yale Law School. American University Law Review
Volume 53 | Issue 6 2004,
MM
Ultimately, however, the exclusive deployment of a binary black/white paradigm
artificially narrows racial discourse and harms racial justice efforts. In order to
construct adequate antiracist theories and to develop effective remedies for racial
injustice, Critical Race Theorists must excavate the multidimensional harms that
racial injustice causes, including harms that are racial but not endured by blacks.
Furthermore, progressive racial politics can only survive with broad
political support. The most likely support for progressive racial change comes
from persons of color. Yet, the deep divisions that result from binary racial politics
hinders the formation of helpful antiracist alliances. Finally, a multiracial discourse
may help blacks demonstrate the pervasiveness of racial inequality. Whites tend to
view racism as a relic of prior generations, and they often respond to blacks claims
of ongoing racial injustice with suspicion.108 Moreover, in a white-supremacist
culture, binary racial discourse obscures the experiences of discrimination

experienced by Latinos and Asian Americans.109 As a result, whites argue that
blacks should emulate model minorities, usually Asian Americans, who either do
not suffer from racism or do not believe that racism injures them enough to oppose
it on a political level.110 Binary racial discourse therefore allows whites to discredit
blacks claims of racism by offering Asian Americans as proof that the United States
has eradicated racial injustice, or that blacks can easily overcome what little
racism still exists. Multiracial discourse, however, offers a powerful rebuttal to this
negative and deceitful discourse. By portraying the complexity of racial inequality,
Critical Race Theorists can counter a white-supremacist narrative that disparages
blacks assertions of racial injustice by deploying model minority constructs.111
The aff reduces the world into black or whitebut the borderline
European exists and doesnt have a place in the world of the aff
there were/are what he refers to as '"borderline Europeans"-"the Irish,

Slavs, Mediterraneans, and above all, of course, Jews "' (Mills, 1997, pp. 78-79), and, elsewhere (Mills, 2007, p. 249)
that the Irish may have been 'the first systematically racialized group in history'. He
also notes there also existed 'intra-European varieties of"racism"' (p. 79; see also Perea et al.). However,
he argues that, while there remain 'some recognition of such distinctions 'in popular culture'he gives examples of an '"Italian" waitress' in the TV series Cheers, calling a WASP
character 'Whitey' and a discussion in a 1992 movie about whether Italians are
really white (p. 79)-he relegates such distinctions primarily to history. While he is
prepared to 'fuzzify' racial categories (p. 79) with respect to 'shifting criteria prescribed'
by the evolving Racial Contract' (p. 81) and to acknowledge the existence of 'off-white'
people at certain historical periods (p. 80), he maintains that his
categorization-'white/nonwhite, person/subperson' 'seems to me to map the
essential features of the racial polity accurately, to carve the social reality at its
ontological joints' (p. 78), whereby white = person; non-white = non-person . It is my view that this
Mills acknowledges that
does not address current reality. The exclusive fore- fronting of people of color militates against an understanding of non-color- coded-racism. Marxist 'race' theorist Robert
Miles (1987, p. 75) argues that racialization is not limited to skin color: The characteristics signified vary historically and, although they have usually been visible somatic
I would like to make a couple of

amendments to Miles' position. First, I would want to add 'and culturaF after,
'biological'. Second, the common dictionary definition of 'somatic' is 'pertaining to
the body', and, given the fact that people can be racialized on grounds of symbols
features, other non-visible (alleged and real) biological features have also been signified.
(e.g., the hijab), I would also want this to be recognized in any discussion of social collectivities and the construction of racialization. Miles' Marxist analysis of racism is
discussed at length later in this chapter. Racism directed at white people is not new and has a long history. To take the case of Britain, for example, there has been a long history
of non-color- coded racism directed at the Irish (e.g., Mac an Ghaill, 2000)6, at the Gypsy Roma Traveler (GRT) communities (e.g., Puxon, 2005)-the fastest growing minority
ethnic constituency in Europe (Doughty, 2008), and increasingly at the Muslim communities or those perceived to be Muslim.
White Supremacy
White supremacy is the manifestation of the relationship between
capitalism and racism
chapter 2, pg 25, 2009//SRSL)
While, for Marxists, it is certainly the case that there has been a continuity of racism for
hundreds of years, the concept of 'white supremacy' does not in itself explain this continuity,
since it does not need to connect to modes of production and developments in capitalism. It is
true that Mills (1997) provides a wide-ranging discussion of the history of economic
exploitation, and that Preston (2007) argues that CRT needs to be considered alongside
Marxism. However, unlike Marxism, there is no a priori need in CRT formulations to connect
with capitalist modes of production. In Marxist parlance, the mode of production refers to the
combination of forces (human labor power and the means of production) and the relations of
production (primarily the relationship between the social classes). This combination means that
the way people relate to the physical world and the way people relate to each other are bound
together in historically specific, structural and necessary ways. As Marx (1859) put it: The
totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real
foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond
definite forms ofsocial consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the
general process of social, political and intellectual life. Critical Race Theorists do not analyze
these crucial relationships. Thus Gillborn (e.g., 2005, 2006a) is able to make the case for
CRT and 'white supremacy' without providing a discussion of the relationship of
racism to capitalism. The Marxist concept of racialization, however, does articulate with
modes of production. Examples of the ways in which it does this are discussed later in this
chapter.
Bad
Criticla Race Theory
Alternative
Alt Solves
Racism
Criticizing the Black-white framework allows us to find an
effective strategy for vanquishing the evil of racism
Andersen and Collins 92 M.A., Ph. D., University of Massachusetts, Amherst; B.A.,
Georgia State University, Atlanta AND MA Harvard, Graduate school of education and phD
brandeis university, sociology (Margaret L. and Patricia Hill, Race, Class, and Gender: An
Anthology, 6th edition, chapter 15// SRSL)
The racial and ethnic landscape has changed too much in recent years to view it with the same eyes as before. We are looking at a multi-dimensional reality in which race,
ethnicity, nationality, culture and immigrant status come together with breathtakingly new
results. W e are also seeing global changes that have a massive impact on our domestic situation,
especially the economy and labor force. For a group of Korean restaurant entrepreneurs to hire Mexican cooks to prepare Chinese dishes for mainly African-American
customers, as happened in Houston, Texas, has ceased to be unusual. The ever-changing demographic landscape compels those
struggling against racism and for a transformed, non-capitalist society to resolve several
strategic questions. Among them: doesn't the exclusively Black-white framework discourage the
perception of common interests among people of color and thus sustain White Supremacy ? Doesn't the
view that only African Americans face serious institutionalized racism isolate them from potential allies ? Doesn't the Black-white model encourage
people of color to spend toop much energy understanding our lives in relation to whiteness,
obsessing about what white society will think and do? That tendency is inevitable in some ways:
the locus of power over our lives has long been white (although big shifts have recently taken place in the color of capital, as we see in Japan,
Singapore and elsewhere). The oppressed have always survived by becoming experts on the oppressor's ways.
But that can become a prison of sorts, a trap of compulsive vigilance. Let us liberate ourselves, then,
from the tunnel vision of whiteness and behold the many colors around us ! Let us summon the courage to
reject outdated ideas and stretch our imaginations into the next century . For a Latina to urge recognizing a variety of racist
models is not, and should not be, yet another round in the Oppression Olympics. We don't need more competition among different social
groups for the gold medal of "Most Oppressed." We don't need more comparisons of suffering
between women and Blacks, the disabled and the gay, Latino teenagers and white seniors, or
whatever. Pursuing some hierarchy of oppression leads us down dead-end streets
where we will never find the linkage between different oppressions and how to
overcome them. To criticize the exclusively Black-white framework , then, is not some
resentful demand by other people of color for equal sympathy, equal funding,
equal clout, equal .patronage or other questionable crumbs . Above all, it is not a devious
way of minimizing the centrality of the African-American experience in any analysis of racism .
The goal in re-examining the Black-white framework is to find an effective strategy for
vanquishing an evil that has expanded rather than dimin- ished. Racism has expanded partly as
a result of the worldwide economic recession that followed the end of the post-war boom in the
early 1970s, with the resulting capitalist restructuring and changes in the international division
of labor. Those developments generated feelings of insecurity and a search for scapegoats. In the United States racism has also escalated
as whites increasingly fear becoming a weakened, minority population in the next century. The stage is set for decades of ever more vicious divide-and-conquer tactics. What has been the
response from people of color to this ugly White Supremacist agenda? Instead of uniting, based
on common experience and needs, we have often closed our doors in a defensive, isolationist
mode, each community on its own. A fire of fear and distrust begins to crackle, threatening to
consume us all. Building solidarity among people of color is more necessary than ever -but the
exclusively Black-white definition of racism makes such solidarity more difficult
than ever . We urgently need twenty-first-century thinking that will move us beyond the Black-white framework without negating its historical role in the construction of U.S. racism . We
need a better understanding of how racism developed both similarly and differently for various
peoples, according to whether they experienced genocide, enslavement, colonization or some
other Structure of oppression. At stake is the building of a united anti-racist force strong enough to resist
White Supremacist strategies of divide-and-conquer and move forward toward social justice for
all. ... ... African Americans have reason to be uneasy about where they, as a people, will find themselves politically, economically and socially with the rapid numerical growth of other folk of color. The issue is
not just possible job loss, a real question that does need to be faced honestly. There is also a feeling that after centuries of fighting for
simple recognition as human beings, Blacks will be shoved to the back of history again (like the back of the
bus). Whether these fears are real or not, uneasiness exists and can lead to resentment when there's
talk about a new model of race relations. So let me repeat: in speaking here of the need to move beyond
the bipolar concept, the goal is to clear the way for stronger unity against White Supremacy .
The goal is to identify our commonalities of experience and needs so we can build
alliances . The commonalities begin with history, which reveals that again and again peoples of
color have had one experience in common: European colonization and/or neo-colonialism with its accompanying exploitation. This is true for
all indigenous peoples, including Hawaiians. It is true for all Latino peoples, who were invaded and ruled by Spain or Portugal. It is true for people in Africa, Asia and the Pacific
Islands, where European powers became the colonizers. People of color were victimized by colonialism not only externally but
also through internalized racism-the "colonized mentality." Flowing from this shared history are our contemporary commonalities. On the
poverty scale, African Americans and Native Americans have always been at the bottom, with Latinos nearby. In 1995 the U.S. Census found that Latinos have the highest poverty rate, 24 percent. Segregation may
have been legally abolished in the 1960s, but now the United States is rapidly moving toward resegregation as a result of whites moving to the suburbs. This leaves people of color-especially Blacks and Latinoswith inner cities that lack an adequate tax base and thus have inadequate schools. Not surprisingly, Blacks and Latinos finish college at a far lower rate than whites. In other words, the victims of U.S. social ills
With
greater solidarity, justice for people of color could be won. And an even bigger prize would be
possible: a U.S. society that advances beyond "equality," beyond granting people of color a
respect equal to that given to Euro-Americans. Too often "equality" leaves whites still at the
center, still embodying the Americanness by which others are judged, still defining the national
character.... ... Innumerable statistics, reports and daily incidents should make it impossible to exclude Latinos and other non-Black populations of color when racism is discussed, but they don't. Police
come in more than one color. Doesn't that indicate the need for new, inclusive models for fighting racism? Doesn't that speak to the absolutely urgent need for alliances among peoples of color?
killings, hate crimes oy ra individuals and murders with impunity by border officials should mak impossible, but they don't. With chilling regularity, ranch owners com migrant workers, usually Mexican, to repay
the cost of smuggling them i;:; the United States by laboring the rest of their lives for free. The 45 La..:- and Thai garment workers locked up in an El Monte, California, facto . working 18 hours a day seven days a
week for $299 a month, can also be co::::- sidered slaves (and one must ask why it took three years for the Immigra and Naturalization Service to act on its own reports about this horror) Francisco Examiner,
August 8, 1995). Abusive treatment of migrant work~ can be found all over the United States. In Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for e:i- ample, police and federal agents rounded up 150 Latino workers in 19W, inked
These experiences cannot be

attributed to xenophobia, cultural prejudi-- or some other, less repellent term than racism . Take the
numbers on their arms and hauled them off to jail in patrol cars and horse trailer full of manure (Los Angeles Times, September 6, 1997).
case of two sm Latino children in San Francisco who were found in 1997 covered from heac to toe with flour. They explained they had hoped to make their skin white enough for school. There is no way to
understand their action except as the result of fear in the racist climate that accompanied passage of Proposition 187, which denies schooling to the children of undocumented immigrants. Another example:
Mexican and Chicana women working at a Nabisco plant in Oxnard, California, were not allowed to take bathroom breaks from the . assembly line and were told to wear diapers instead. Can we really imagine
white workers being treated that way? (The Nabisco women did file a suit and won, in 1997.) No "model minority" myth protects Asians and Asian Americans from hate crimes, police brutality, immigrant-bashing,
stereotyping and everyday racist prejudice. Scapegoating can even take their lives, as happened with the murder ofVincent Chin in Detroit some years ago.... WHY THE BLACK-WHITE MODEL? A bipolar model
of racism has never been really accurate for the United States. Early in this nation's history. Benjamin Franklin perceived a tri-racial society based on skin color-"the lovely white" (Franklin's words), the Black, and
the "tawny," as Ron Takaki tells us in Ir~n Cages. But this concept changed as capital's need for labor intensified in the new nation and came to focus on African slave labor. The "tawny" were decimated or
forcibly exiled to distant areas; Mexicans were not yet available to be the main labor force. As enslaved Africans became the crucial labor force for the primitive accumulation of capital, they also served as the
foundation for the very idea of whiteness-based on the concept of blackness as inferior. Three other reasons for the Black-white framework seem obvious: numbers, geography and history. African Americans
have long been the largest population of color in the United States; only recently has this begun to change. Also, African Americans have long been found in sizable numbers in most parts of the United States,
including major cities, which has not been true of Latinos until recent times. Historically, the Black-white relationship has been entrenched in the nation's collective memory for some 300 years- whereas it is only
150 years since the United States seized half of Mexico and incorporated those lands and their peoples. Slavery and the struggle to end it formed a central theme in this country's only civil war-a prolonged,
momentous conflict. Above all, enslaved Africans in the United States and African Americans have created an unmatched heritage ofmassive, persistent, dramatic and infinitely courageous resistance, with
individual leaders of worldwide note. We also find sociological and psychological explanations ofthe Black-white model's persistence. From the days ofJefferson onward, Native Americans, Mexicans and later the
Asian/Pacific Islanders did not seem as much a threat to racial purity or as capable of arousing white sexual anxieties as did Blacks. A major reason for this must have been Anglo ambiguity about who could be
called white. Most of the Mexican ranchero elite in California had welcomed the U.S. takeover, and Mexicans were partly European-therefore "semi-civilized"; this allowed Anglos to see them as white, unlike
lower-class Mexicans. For years Mexicans were legally white, and even today we hear the ambiguous U.S. Census term "Non-Hispanic Whites." Like Latinos, Asian Americans have also been officially counted as
white in some historical periods. They have been defined as "colored" in others, with "Chinese" being yet another category. Like Mexicans, they were often seen as not really white but not quite Black either. Such
ambiguity tended to put Asian Americans along with Latinos outside the prevailing framework of racism. Blacks, on the other hand, were not defined as white, could rarely become upper-class and maintained an
almost constant rebelliousness. Contemporary Black rebellion has been urban: right in the Man's face, scary. Mexicans, by contrast, have lived primarily in rural areas until a few decades ago and "have no MauMau image,'' as one Black friend said, even when protesting injustice energetically. Only the nineteenth-century resistance heroes labeled "bandits" stirred white fear, and that was along the border, a limited area.
Latino stereotypes are mostly silly: snoozing next to a cactus, eating greasy food, always being late and disorganized, rolling big Carmen Miranda eyes, shrug- ging with self-deprecation "me no speek good
eengleesh." In other words, not serious. This view may be altered today by stereotypes of the gangbanger, criminal or dirty immigrant, but the prevailing image of Latinos remains that of a debased white, at best. ...
Among other important reasons for the exclusively Black-white model, sheer ignorance leaps to mind. The oppression and exploitation of Latinos (like Asians) have historical roots unknown to most Americans.
People who learn at least a little about Black slavery remain totally ignorant about how the United States seized half ofMexico or how it has colonized Puerto Rico... One other important reason for the bipolar
model of racism is the sm born self-centeredness of U.S. political culture. It has meant that the nati~ lacks any global vision other than relations of domination. In particular. me United States refuses to see itself
as one among some 20 countries in a hem:- sphere whose dominant languages are Spanish and Portuguese, not Engli-:~ It has only a big yawn of contempt or at best indifference for the people languages and
issues of Latin America. It arrogantly took for itself alone the name of half the western hemisphere, America, as was its "Manifest Destiny." of course. So Mexico may be nice for a vacation and lots of Yankees like
tacos, b- the political image of Latin America combines incompetence with absurdir: fat corrupt dictators with endless siestas. Similar attitudes extend to Latinos within the United States. My parents, both
Spanish teachers, endure decades ofbeing told that students were better offlearning French or German. The mass media complain that "people can't relate to Hispanics (or Asians .- It takes mysterious masked
rebels, a beautiful young murdered singer or sal outselling ketchup for the Anglo world to take notice of Latinos. If there weren't a mushrooming, billion-dollar "Hispanic" market to be wooed, the Anglo world
might still not know we exist. No wonder that racial paradigm sees orily two poles. The exclusively Black-white framework is also sustained by the "mode minority" myth, because it distances Asian Americans
from other victims o; racism. Portraying Asian Americans as people who work hard, study hard. obey the established order and therefore prosper, the myth in effect admon- ishes Blacks and Latinos: "See, anyone
can make it in this society if you try hard enough. The poverty and prejudice you face are all your fault." The "model" label has been a wedge separating Asian Americans from others of color by denying their
commonalities. It creates a sort of racia! bourgeoisie, which White Supremacy uses to keep Asian Americans from joining forces with the poor, the homeless and criminalized youth. People then see Asian
Americans as a special class of yuppie: young, single, college- educated, on the white-collar track-and they like to shop for fun. Here is a dandy minority group, ready to be used against others. The stereotype of
Asian Americans as whiz kids is also enraging because it hides so many harsh truths about the impoverishment, oppression and racist treatment they experience. Some do come from middle- or upper-class
families in Asia, some do attain middle-class or higher status in the U.S., and their community must deal with the reality of class privilege where it exists. But the hidden truths include the poverty of many
Asian/Pacific Islander groups, especially women, who often work under intolerable conditions, as in the sweatshops.... Yet another cause of the persistent Black-white conception of racism is dualism, the
philosophy that sees all life as consisting of two irreducible elements. Those elements are usually oppositional, like good and evil, mind and body, civilized and savage. Dualism allowed the invaders, colonizers and
enslavers of today's United States to rationalize their actions by stratifying supposed opposites along race, color or gender lines. So mind is European, male and rational; body is colored, female and emotional.
Dozens of other such pairs can be found, with their clear implications of superior-inferior. In the arena of race, this society's dualism has long maintained that if a person is not totally white (whatever that can
mean biologically), he or she must be considered Black.... Racism evolves; our models must also evolve. Today's challenge is to move beyond the Black-white dualism that has served as the foundation of White
. In taking up this challenge, we have to proceed with both boldness and infinite care.
Talking race in these United States is an intellectual minefield; for every observation, one can
find three contradictions and four necessary qualifications from five different racial groups.
Making your way through that complexity, you have to think: keep your eyes on the prize.
Supremacy
Racism exists in different forms, from day to day lives
Growing up in Bristol, a key pivot of the slave trade in the eighteen.th and early nineteenth centuries, my first recollection of the
manifestations ofrac- ,. ism was encapsulated in a childhood saying. The saying, obviously directed at girls, was that 'ifyou step on
the lines between the stones-on the pave- ment, when you grow up you'll marry a black man'. I also recall going for a walk with my
grandmother, and her pointing out with surprise, 'look there's a black man!'.1A little later in my childhood, I
think it the late 1950s, as immigration was increasing, I remember being told
(although I do not know whether it was true) that a well-known chain store had a
policy of not employing black labor. As a young child, the racist norms of the society must
already have affected me. Having seen black women working in Woolworths, I remember thinking that
this other popular chain store must be in some way superior because ofits operation
ofthis 'color bar'. About the same time I remember my cousin remarking to me
disapprovingly that 'Jamaicans' spent more money on their cars than on their
homes. At the time it was commonly accepted that black people ate Kit E Kat (a
popular cat food) because they knew no different . At school, in the early 1960s if I recall correctly, I
found myself being driven home from school by a medical doctor, who happened to
be the father of a friend. As we passed near St. Pauls, an area with a long-standing black population, he told me that
that was where the 'jungle bunnies' live. One of my best friends at college in London in the late
1960s (where I studied for and failed a sociology degree) was a Trinidadian of
Asian2 heritage. Our friendship continued as I embarked on a teacher education
course at another college. We used to meet up regularly to drink beer and eat curry in a couple of rooms in which I
lived in Kew Gardens, in the southwest of London. I remember vividly the reaction of the landlady, on discovering his presence: 'it's
not right having a black man in a white house'. When challenged, she responded by stating, 'it's not
so bad him being in your kitchen, but I do object to cleaning the toilet after him' (we
had our own kitchen, but shared the toilet with the landlady). By the 1970s, I was teaching in a
primary school in Ladbroke Grove in west London, determined that I would use my role as a teacher to challenge racism, and all the
other inequalities that, as a Marxist educator, I had decided was one of my main goals. The opening remarks about
my final year primary class (ten- to eleven-year-olds) from the Deputy Head before
my first meeting with the class was 'you won't get anything out of them'. Determined to
prove her wrong, I decided to change the order of things somewhat. During morning assembly, the (overwhelmingly) AfricanCaribbean children were forced by the Head to sit cross-legged on the floor and to listen to western classical music, while the Deputy
Head moved around the hall and coerced them into order and silence. I insisted that on the first day at the
school (I was employed by the Inner London Education Authority on an enhanced

salary to work temporarily in schools that were having difficulty retaining staff) that
I would not teach the whole class, but would meet all the children, either
individually or in pairs. At these meetings, several were surprised that we had a mutual interest in reggae music. I
suggested to some ofthem that they bring in some records the following day. One of the first deals I negotiated with my class on that
day was that, if we worked through the day, we could play some reggae in our classroom at the end of the afternoon.3 Some months
after I started teaching, six of the children's poems were published in the popular and highly respected community newspaper,
West Indian World. Some poems were about nostalgia for Dominica, the country of origin of most of the children; others were angry
tirades against the racism and class exploitation in their lives. One of the many things that sticks in my mind is a girl of Dominican
origin in my class telling me that there were too many rats in her flat, and about the white man who drove round every Friday in his
Rolls Royce to collect the rent.
CTR centralizes on the question of racethat is key for any successful

program of emancipation
chapter 2, pgs 33 -35, 2009//SRSL)
, the key formative event in the establishment of CRT was the CRT
workshop in 1989 which made clear CRT's location in critical theory, and crucially
'race', racism and the law. Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995, p. 62) underline the CRT belief in 'race' as
primary by aligning their scholarship and activism with the philosophy of Marcus
As noted in chapter 1 of this volume
Garvey, who believed that any program of emancipation would need to be built
around the question of 'race' first . As they observe, Garvey is clear and unequivocal: In a world of wolves one
should go armed, and one of the most powerful defensive weapons within reach of
Negroes is the practice of race first in all parts of the world. (cited in ibid.) Similarly, Mills (2003, p. 156)
rejects both what he refers to as the 'original white radical orthodoxy (Marxist)' for
arguing that social class is the primary contradiction in capitalist society, and the
'present white radical orthodoxy (post-Marxist/postmodernist)' for its rejection ofany
primary contradiction. Instead, for Mills (ibid.) 'there is a primary contradiction,
and ... it's race'. For Crenshaw et al. (1995b, p. xxvi) 'subsuming race under class' is 'the typical Marxist error'. Mills (2003, p. 157) states that '[r]ace [is] the central identity around
which people close ranks' and that there is 'no transracial class bloc'. Given the way in which neoliberal global capitalism unites capitalists throughout the world on lines that are not necessarily color-coded, this
statement seems quite extraordinary. 'Race', Mills goes on, is 'the stable reference point for identifying the 'them' and 'us' which override all other 'thems' and 'us's' (identities are multiple, but some are more
central than others)', (Mills, 2003, p.157) while for Crenshaw et al. (1995b, p. xxvi), although they acknowledge that 'race' is socially constructed, something with which Marxists would fully concur,12 'race' is 'real'
For
Marxists, it is capitalism that does this . Mills (1997, p. 111) argues that '[w]hite
Marxism [is] predicated on colorless classes in struggle', and suggests that
'European models ofradical- ism, predicated on a system where race is much less
domestically/internally important (race as the external relation to the colonial
world), operate with a basically raceless (at least nominally) conceptual
apparatus'(Mills, 2003, pp. 157-158). 'Race', he states, 'then has to be "added on"'
(p. 158). Claiming that Marxism is 'largely seen as dead' (Mills, forthcoming,
2009),13 Mills states that he would like to think that 'a modified historical
materialism that takes race seriously instead of seeing it as merely epiphenomena!
to class' can explain 'white supremacy' (ibid.). Ifso, such a Marxism, he concludes, 'does have to be a theoretically revised one' (ibid.), not 'the
since 'there is a material dimension and weight to being "raced" in American society'. 'Race', Mills concludes is 'what ties the system together, and blocks progressive change' (Mills, 2003, p.157).
class-reductionist Marxism' that he designates as '"white Marxism", a Marxism that fails to recognize the import and social reality of race' (ibid.). My response to Mills' desire for Marxism to explain 'white
supremacy', for which in the closing paragraph of Mills, 2003 (p. 247) Mills states that he has 'left open the door' but is unsure if it can (Mills, forthcoming, 2009), is that I do not believe there will be a Marxist
explanation of 'white supremacy', since, as outlined in the previous section of this chapter, the concept is incompatible with Marxism. With respect to Mills' call for a non 'class-reductionist Marxism', and his
proclaimed sympathy with the idea that Marxism 'ultimately provides the most promising theoretical tool for understanding the genesis and persistence of racism' (forthcoming, 2009), I would answer in the
following way. Mills use of the adverb 'ultimately' and his statement that 'this seems more of a project in progress that a successfully completed one' (Mills, forthcoming, 2009) does not do justice to longstanding and wide ranging US-based (e.g., Torres and Ngin, 1995; Zarembka, 2002; Darder and Torres, 2004; Marable, 2004; Scatamburlo- D'Annibale and McLaren, 2004, 2008, 2009), and UK-based Marxist
analyses of 'race' and racialization (e.g., Miles, 1982, 1984, 1987, 1989, 1993; Sivanandan, 1982, 1990; Callinicos, 1993; Cole, 2004a, 2004d, 2006a, 2006b, 2008c, 2008d, 2009a, 2009d; Cole and Virdee, 2006;
Virdee, 2009a, 2009b). (The Marxist concepts of racialiazation and xeno-racialization are discussed in more depth later in this chapter; see also chapter 4 of this volume for a discussion ofMarxism and
antiracism, and chapter 5 for a discussion of Marx and 'race'.) Mills (2003, p. 158) invites readers to Imagine you're a white male Marxist in the happy prefeminist, pre-postmodernist world of a quarter-century
ago. You read Marcuse, Miliband, Poulantzas, Althusser. You believe in a theory of group domination involving something like the following: The United States is a class society in which class, defined by
relationship to the means ofproduction, is the fundamental division, the bourgeoisie being the ruling class, the workers being exploited and alienated, with the state and the juridical system not being neutral but
part of a superstructure to maintain the existing order, while the dominant ideology naturalizes, and renders invisible and unobjectionable, class domination. This all seems a pretty accurate description ofthe
United States in the twenty- first century, but for Mills (ibid.) it is 'a set of highly controversial propositions'.Hejustifiesthisassertionbystatingthatalloftheabove'wouldbe disputed by mainstream political
While this is
true, my response to this would be, well, ofcourse it would be disputed by mainstream philosophers, pluralist political scientists, neoclassical economists and
functionalist sociologists, all ofwhich, unlike Marxists, are, at one level or another,
apologists for capitalism.
philosophy (liberalism), political science (pluralism), economics (neoclassical marginal utility theory), and sociology (Parsonian structural-functionalism and its heirs)' (ibid.).
Critical race theorists are also committed to social justice on a larger

scalerace, gender, class, sexual orientation, disability and other
forms of oppression
While Marxists would disagree with certain assertions, for example racism is
permanent and central, I have broad agreement with the suggestions for classroom
practice of Daniel and Tara Yosso (2005, pp. 70-72). Their brief is higher education, but it is my
view that these suggestions apply equally to elementary/primary/junior and
secondary/high schools. Solorzano and Yasso (p. 70) argue that 'race' and racism should be discussed in
the classroom, that racism intersects with other forms of oppression, and that
racism is not a black/white binary (p. 70). They go on to stress that CRT in the classroom
must challenge the dominant ideology of 'objectivity, meritocracy, color-blindness,
race neutrality, and equal opportunity' (ibid.). Critical Race Theorists, they argue,
are committed to social justice and liberation with respect to 'race',
gender and class
(p. 71). To this, I would wish to
add sexual orientation and disability and
other forms of oppression . I am, ofcourse, in full agreement with their wish to eliminate poverty and empower underrepresented groups
(ibid.), and with their acknowledgment that educational institutions 'operate in contradictory ways, with their potential to oppress and marginalize coexisting with their
To their argument that the experiential knowledge of people

of color is 'legitimate, appropriate, and critical to understanding, analyzing, and
teaching about racial subordination' (ibid.), I would want to incorporate, as argued in chapter 3 ofthis volume, Leonardo's (2004) call
to integrate this focus on subjectivity with Marxist objectivism. I would further wish
to insist that the voice and experiential knowledge of those racialized on non-colorcoded grounds (see chapter 2 ofthis volume) is also legitimate, appropriate and critical, as is indeed
the experience and voice ofthe exploited and oppressed non-racialized white
working class pupils/students (and I use 'working class' in its sociological sense here). Finally, Solorzano and Yosso (2007, p. 70) claim that CRT
'challenges ahistoricism' and is transdisciplinary With respect to 'ahistoricism', I have suggested in chapter 5 ofthis volume that not all CRT analyses
incorporate this challenge. As far as a transdiciplinary knowledge base is concerned,
I would fully endorse the need to utilize various curriculum subject areas to
understand and undermine racism and other inequalities. I ndeed, I have attempted just this in Cole (2009b) (see
chapter 4, note 14 of this volume). I would also agree with Marvin Lynn (2007, p. 131), in his discussion of 'Critical Race Theory and its
Links to Education' that there is a need 'to look analytically at the failure of the
educational system ... to properly educate the majority of culturally and racially
subordinated students', and to examine 'racial sorting' where schools put
pupils/students of color in lower tracks (streams), are over-represented in 'special' schools
and pushed out of certain schools (ibid.). But again, I would want to stress that certain pupils/ students who are racialized in non-colorpotential to emancipate and empower' (ibid.).
coded ways may be on the receiving end of similar processes, and that non-racialized white working class (again in the sociological sense) pupils/students also get 'sorted' in
ways that are to their detriment (Lynn also refers to this, but only in passing (ibid.)). I would further agree with Lawn (ibid.) when he refers to 'the systematic annihilation
ofBlack and Brown students' through the whole education system (ibid.), although I would use the phrase 'structural and systematic' and would include the other
claim that CRT

in education 'seeks to identify, analyze, and transform those structural, cultural, and
interpersonal aspects of education that maintain the subordination of Students of
Color', and, in addition, that it 'asks such questions as: what roles do schools
themselves, school processes, and school structures play in helping to maintain
racial, ethnic and gender subordination ' (Solorzano and Yosso, 2000, p. 40, cited in Lynn, 2007, p. 131). Finally Lynn suggests, also
following Solorzano an Yosso, 2000 that 'CRT can be utilized as a point from which to begin the
dialogue about the possibilities for schools to engage in the transformation of
society' (Lynn, 2007, p. 131). The transformation of society is of course the guiding principle of Marxism, but whereas, for Marxists, transformation entails a social
constituencies I refer to immediately above. Lynn concludes his discussion of'CRT and Education' by citing Solorzano and Yosso's (2000, p. 42)
revolution and transition to socialism, Critical Race Theorists in general, like poststructuralists and postmodernists in toto (see Cole, 2008d, Chapter 5), lack a clear vision of a
transformed society or, indeed, a transformed world. Marx was suspicious ofphilosophers (and I am sure would be equally suspicious of Critical Race Theorists) who had 'interpreted the world in many ways', whereas for him, the point was 'to change it' ([1845] [1976], p. 123). I return to a discussion ofthis limitation ofCRT in the Conclusion to this
volume. For a discussion of Marxist ideas about socialist transformation, and a consideration of twenty-first century socialism, see chapter 7 of this volume. Lynn (2007, pp.
137) concludes his analysis in typical CRT fashion by stressing the existence ofwhite supremacy 'in the United States and in the world'. With respect to the notion of 'white
As far as claims for its

ubiquitous presence are concerned, I have also argued that 'white supremacy' is a
most valid historical descriptor for certain societies but not an informative current
one, and also that world racism takes a number offorms which are not related to
skin color.
supremacy' per se as a useful descriptor ofeveryday racism I have critiqued this in chapter 2 and elsewhere in this volume.
Liberation
Racial liberation is the the most significant objective for CRT
the CRT view of education: "'racial" liberation [is] embraced as

not only the primary but as the most significant objective of any emancipatory
vision of education in the larger society' (ibid.). According to Krenshaw et al. (1995b, p. xiii) Critical Race
Theorists also share 'an ethical commitment to human liberation' but 'often disagree
among [themselves], over its specific direction' (ibid.). Thus often in CRT the
solution is vague. To take an example, introducing their edited collection, Critical Race Theory in Education, Dixson and Rousseau (2006b) talk about 'the
Darder and Torres (2004, p. 98) observe, in
struggle' (pp. 2-3); 'a vision of hope for the future' (p. 3); 'social action toward liberation and the end ofoppression' (p. 3); 'the broader goal of ending all forms of oppression' (p.
To take another example, Dixson and Rousseau

(2006, pp. 2-3) argue that 'CRT scholars acknowledge the permanence of racism'
but that this should lead to 'greater resolve in the struggle'. They also refer to a CRT
focus on 'praxis', which incorporates 'a commitment not only to scholarship but also
to social action toward liberation and the end of oppression' (p. 3). They talk of 'eliminating racial oppression
4); and 'the ultimate goal of C R T - social transformation' (p. 7).
as part of the broader goal of ending all forms of oppression' (p. 4), and state that the 'ultimate goal of CRT [is] social transformation'. However, no indication is given ofwhat
Mills is
somewhat clearer. As we saw in chapter 2 of this volume, for him (1997, p. lll)
'[w]hite Marxism [is] predicated on colorless classes in struggle'. He argues that if
socialism is to come then 'white supremacy/ majoritarian domination' must be
overthrown first in 'the struggle for social democracy'. Only after 'white supremacy' has been overthrown, and 'social
democracy' established is the next stage-socialism-possible. This seems to be in line with Mills' argument that 'a
non-white-supremacist capitalism is morally and politically preferable to ... whitesupremacist capitalism' (reiterated in Pateman and Mills, 2007, p. 31 and Mills, 2007, p. 243), something with which I
would totally concur. However, given the massive advantages to capitalism of
racialized capitalism, capitalism without racism (or sexism) is almost inconceivable.
they are struggling towards, what liberation means to them, or what is envisioned by social transformation and the end of all forms of oppression.
Whether, in the light of the current 'credit crunch' (a euphemism for the inherent contradictions in capitalism) capitalist politicians globally will adopt long-term a more 'social
democratic' as opposed to 'neoliberal' form (they have already adopted interventionist measures in the short-term) remains to be seen. Certainly a number of commentators are
urging this (e.g., Elliott, 2008; Irvin, 2008). Whatever happens, it is Marxism, I believe, that provides the possibility of a viable equitable future. In chapter 7, I posited
Though currently a
capitalist state, with a government enacting social democratic measures, Chavez is
promoting socialist values and forms of organization. In the barrios of Caracas, and everywhere else where the poor
developments in South America, specifically Venezuela, as providing one possible future direction for twenty-first-century socialism.
live, and the spark of socialism has been lit, people are not celebrating Max Weber or post-structuralism; they are not embracing postmodernism, transmodernism or Critical
Instead they are engaging with the possibility of a

practical democratic socialism, a socialism that is truly inclusive, with respect to
'race', but also with respect to gender, sexual orientation, disability, age and other
forms of exploitation and oppression.
Race Theory (for these are largely academic pursuits).
Breaking from CRT is a way to give people of color a voice rather than
just analyzing race
In chapter 1, I outlined the central tenets of Critical Legal Studies, pointing out its location in
economic and social class analyses, and indicated its essentially socialist credentials. I also
recounted the break from CLS of CRT, primarily because ofthis emphasis, but also
because a number ofpeople ofcolor needed a voice, hitherto not available, to bring
'race' firmly to the center of analysis. In the twenty-first century, CRT is now firmly
established, while CLS has essentially disbanded. In chapter 2, I pointed out that
Richard Delgado had argued for the importance of social class some five years ago.
Perhaps a re-alignment of CLS and CRT might be worth considering as a fruitful

partnership in the important, indeed crucial, tasks that lie ahead for all progressive
people, a partnership which, as I stressed in chapter 2, would need to centralize
capitalism and capitalist social relations. I would like to appeal to Critical Race
Theorists and Critical Legal Studies scholars to join me in productive antiracist
dialogue in order to see ifwe can agree how to move theory and action (praxis)
forward. On a more societal level, can we return to Duncan Kennedy's strategy, outlined in
chapter 1, of building an inclusive mass movement for the radical transformation ofAmerican
Society? And indeed the world.
Pedagogy
Understanding white privelage comes through teacher training
cause causes the abolition of whiteness into classroom pedagogy
'the abolition of whiteness', 'white supremacy' (and attendant

'white privilege'). While Vaught and Castagno (2008, p. 102) argue that
understanding white privilege must be an element of 'teacher training' , John Preston makes
the case for the 'abolition ofwhiteness' to part of classroom pedagogy. 'Abolition of
whiteness' needs to be anchored theoretically within the broader 'Whiteness
Studies' movement. Preston (2007, p. 6), following Byrne (2006) and Hill (1997), describes two phases ofwork on Whiteness Studies
The first is the 'pre-political' phase, where whiteness is seen to be just another form
ofidentity, from which certain social advantages arise. Writers in the first phase
were mainly scholars of color. Preston lists Franz Fanon, Du Bois, and Sojourner Truth among others (p. 7). In the second phase, discussed in
chapter 2 of this volume, 'whiteness becomes a political category in that a structural apparatus
of oppression is posited' (ibid.), entailing white privilege within an overarching
system of 'white supremacy' (ibid.). In this second phase, not only is whiteness
interrogated as an identity, but the consequences of'acting white' are made
visible' (ibid.). In this second phase, white supremacy is considered critically only in the sense of
white identity and white privilege (ibid.). Preston cites the work of Peggy Mcintosh (Mcintosh, 1988) (discussed earlier in this
volume) as being part of this phase, as well as Cheryl Harris (1998) (also discussed earlier in this volume). In this second phase, Preston concludes, Whiteness
Studies became more 'critical' in that whiteness is considered not just an 'identity',
but an identity where certain practices lead to 'white privilege' . Preston then identifies a third phase (p. 8).
In this phase, there is both a critique questioning the basis and direction of the second
phase, and 'wish to radicalize it towards the abolition ofwhiteness or white
supremacy' (pp. 8-9). It is this phase which is most associated with CRT, and this phase on which Preston's classroom pedagogies are based. With respect to
In chapter 2 of this volume, I discussed
Preston's choice of the word, 'pedagogy', Terry Wrigley and Peter Hick (forthcoming, 2009) have argued that the word pedagogy is relatively new in English-speaking countries,
and that it is often used with limited understanding. In most European languages and education systems, they argue the concept means more than just teaching methods. It
requires 'an articulation of educational aims and processes in social, ethical and affective as well as cognitive terms, and involves reflection about the changing nature ofsociety
or the value ofhuman existence' (Wrigley and Hick, forthcoming, 2009). It is the European sense that Preston (2007) seems to be adopting since, he attempts to provide a way
in which such 'critical theory' might be introduced into schools. Preston (2007, p. 198) concludes his book by advocating neo-abolitionist (the word is prefixed with 'neo' to
Given that the

undoubtedly good intentions of the 'abolition of whiteness' arguments are regularly
misunderstood by academics (Preston, 2007, passim), its introduction in the school curriculum is a most worrying and counter-productive
differentiate the abolition of whiteness from the earlier abolition of slavery) pedagogies ('abolition of whiteness' teaching) in the classroom.
suggestion. That whiteness (not 'white people') should be abolished is advocated by Preston for the following reasons, based on the work ofNoel Ignatiev and John Garvey: 1.
'whiteness is a false form ofidentity and ... there is no such thing as white culture'; 2. 'whiteness, in terms of a structural system of white supremacy, is oppressive ... [and]
'whiteness divides humanity

against itself and therefore is not in the genuine interests even of white people';
4. 'class, gender and sexuality are important in understanding oppression but race
is central to understanding why other forms of political activity are not possible,
particularly in the US' (Preston, 2007, p. 10) I am not sure what Preston means by proposition 4, but will consider each of these other propositions in
whiteness is only false and oppressive and ... there is no possibility of 'redemption' or reformation of whiteness'; 3.
turn.
We must talk about CRT pedagogy as a prerequisite to abolishing

whiteness pedagogy
Before dealing with issues of educational theory, I need to set the scene. In chapter 1, therefore,
I begin by briefly tracing the relationship between postmodernism,
transmodernism and CRT with respect to the voices of the Other. I then examine CRT's historical origins
in Critical Legal Studies (CLS) in the United States, noting how CRT was in part a response to the
perception that the analyses ofCLS were too class-based and underestimated the
centrality of 'race' as the major form of oppression in society . I conclude with a consideration of CRT's various
ethnic identity-specific varieties. In the second chapter, I go on to critique from a Marxist perspective two ofCRT's
central tenets, namely the favoring ofthe concept of'white supremacy' over
racism, and the prioritizing of 'race' over class as the primary form of oppression in
society. During the course of the chapter, I offer my own wide-ranging definitions of racism and the Marxist concept of racialization,
arguing that these formulations are better suited in general to understanding and
combating racism in the modern world, than is the CRT concept of 'white
supremacy'. In this chapter, I also address the contemporaneous manifestations of non-color-coded racism. In chapter 3, I examine what I perceive to be some
ofthe strengths ofCRT, namely the use of the concept of property to explain historically segregation in the United States; the all-pervasive existence of racism in the world; the
importance of voice; the concept of chronicle; interest convergence theory; transposition and CRT and the law in the United States. These strengths, however, are not without
limitations, and I suggest ways in which some of these strengths could be enhanced by Marxist analysis. Chapter 3 includes an appendix which features a chronicle that attempts
to subvert and question the validity of the CRT concept of 'white supremacy'. In chapter 4, I look at multicultural education in the United States and in the United Kingdom,
and at the respective antiracist responses (based on Marxism) in each country. I begin by discussing three forms of reactionary multicultural education in the United States
identified by Peter McLaren. I go on to analyze McLaren's advocacy, in his postmodern phase, of 'critical resistant multiculturalism', a form of multiculturalism favored by
Critical Race Theorist Gloria Ladson-Billings. I conclude the section of the chapter on the United States by appraising McLaren's promotion, since he returned to the Marxist
problematic, of 'revolutionary multiculturalism'. Turning to the United Kingdom, I begin by discussing the ongoing, but now protracted, debate over the relative merits
ofmulticultural and antiracist education. In chapter 2, I identified a threat to antiracism and in chapter 3 a threat to the acknowledgement of the existence of institutional
racism, in both cases from state and other official rhetoric and policy. I conclude chapter 4 by suggesting that gains made by antiracists are further under threat from a 'hard'
version of the concept of 'community cohesion', currently advocated by the UK Government. In chapter 5, I address the relatively recent arrival of CRT in educational
theorizing in the United Kingdom. In so doing, I focus on the latest book by influential United Kingdom 'race' and education theorist David Gillborn in the beliefthat the growing
body ofwork by Gillborn in the field ofCRT is highly likely to consolidate its presence in the United Kingdom. Specifically, I critically discuss Gillborn's views on Marxists; on
Marx and slavery; on Marx and cspecies essence'; on cWhite powerholders'; on racist inequalities in the UK education system; on education policy; on ability; on institutional
racism; on cmodel minorities'; on whiteness; on conspiracy; and on cstruggling where we are' against cthe powers that be'. Globalization from both CRT and Marxist
perspectives is examined in chapter 6, where I also look at globalization and its relationship to the new U.S. imperialism, arguing that, as well as Marxism, some transmodern
concepts but not others can aid our understanding ofthese processes and movements. I conclude chapter 6 with some comments on the U.S. imperialist occupation of Iraq,
five years on. I then in chapter 7 begin by addressing myself to some common objections to Marxism, followed by a Marxist response. Next I examine the alternative to
capitalism oftwenty-first century democratic socialism, referring to ongoing developments in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. I focus on the impressive social democratic
changes happening there and the possibilities ofa transition to socialism. To counter CRT claims ofan incompatibility between Marxism and antiracism, I conclude this
areas of agreement between

Marxistsand certain U.S.-based Critical Race Theorists on suggestions for classroom
practice, before critiquing the 'abolition ofwhiteness' pedagogy of a leading UK
Critical Race Theorist. I then make some suggestions for practice based on Marxist theory, namely anti-imperialist antiracist education. I conclude with
chapter with a discussion of antiracism in practice in that country. In chapter 8, I begin by looking at some
a call for implementing 'the last taboo', namely, to include discussions about capitalism and socialism in the school curriculum. Chapter 8 has an appendix that describes Marx's
Labour Theory of Value (LTV), a theory that Marxists believe explains precisely the way in which workers are exploited under capitalism. Finally, in the Conclusion, I begin by
suggesting that CRT, while making calls for liberation and the end of oppression, in fact offers no concrete solutions for this. I reiterate that Marxism does provide a solution.
Having recon- firmed that the purpose of this book is not to divide, but to unite, I look back to the struggles of Martin Luther King, in particular his attraction to socialist
Critical Race Theorists might

reconsider a realignment with Critical Legal Studies, thus forming a potentially
fruitful partnership in the tasks that lie ahead for all progressive people. None of the criticisms of
principles in the later part of his life. I conclude by suggesting that, now that CRT is firmly established,
the work of others in this book should be read as personal. Indeed, I have great respect for the various people I critique. My purpose in this book is unequivocal: namely to
While
the concerns of this book are with 'race', twenty-first century socialism must, of
course, address all forms of exploitation and oppression and be fully cognizant with
and address all forms of inequality.
attempt to align us all around the project ofdemocratic socialism for the twenty-first century, an objective socialist struggle that is fully attuned to the needs ofus all.
Awareness affects how group politics are constructed

David Gillborn (2008, p. 13) may be right when he asserts that 'the best critical race theorists are
passionate about ... classism'. But while challenging the oppression of people that is
based on their social class (classism) is extremely important, and is championed by
Marxists, the fundamental point is to also challenge the exploitation of workers at
the point of production, for therein lies the economic relationship that sustains and
nurtures the capitalist system. While I am critical of CRT, I would like to reiterate that the purpose of this book is
to not to divide, but to unite. My intention has not been to question the ideological or political
integrity of Critical Race Theorists, but to open up comradely discussion in the light
ofthe entry ofCRT into British Academia. In chapter 5 of this volume, I discussed David Gillborn's reluctance
to engage in debate with Marxists. However, there seem to be some contradictions in his position, because he has also argued that
'the best way ahead may simply be to make use of analytical tools as and when they seem most revealing' (Gillborn, 2008, p. 38).
This is followed up by the assertion that Marxists (presumably) will not be amenable
to this. He states: 'this will not satisfy people who seek to fetishize a single concept
or theory above all else' (ibid.) He then goes on to emphasize what he sees as central tenets of CRT. He quotes
Kimberle Crenshaw (1995, p. 377) as follows: Through an awareness of intersectionality, we can
better acknowledge and ground the differences among us and negotiate the means
by which these differences will find expression in constructing group politics (cited in
Gillborn, 2008, p. 38) To make matters even more confusing, Gillborn (ibid.) then cites David Stovall (2006, p. 257) as stating that
'[a]rguing across conference tables is useless', that our work must be done 'on the frontline with communities committed to change'
and that 'neither race nor class exists as static phenomena'. For Marxists, there is a need for both arguing across conference tables
and working on the frontline with communities committed to change. Dare I urge Gillborn, in a comradely way, to reconsider this
reluctance to talk with Yiarxists, and, in so doing, perhaps address himself to some of the strengths of Marxism? As noted in the
Introduction to this volume, it was Max Weber who is credited as being the first prominent sociologist to dispute Marx's arguments
in a serious way. Since then, there have been many other academics who have sought
ways to challenge Marx and Marxism, Critical Race Theorists, being among the most
recent. There will no doubt be many others. Marxists will continue to meet these
challenges. Marxism is not, as some would have it, a moribund set of beliefs and practice. On the contrary, as noted in chapter
5 of this volume, Jean-Paul Sartre (1960) has described Marxism as a 'living philosophy'. To Sartre's observation, Crystal Bartolovich
(2002, p. 20) has added, Marxism is not 'simply a discourse nor a body of (academic) knowledge' but a living project. As I have
stressed, the Bolivarian Misiones are classic examples ofsocial democracy rather than socialism. It is important to recognize that no
one can foresee what direction the Bolivarian Revolution will take. Like other revolutions, it may be defeated or it could be hijacked.
However, the Bolivarian Revolution is firmly placed in the dialectics of socialist struggle, and its full effect on Cuba, and the
emerging struggles in other parts of South America and possibly the rest of the world are yet to be seen. Whether or not the
Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela remains a capitalist country, or proves to be a concrete example of an attempt to nurture the
living project of Marxism remains to be seen. It will certainly not be the last such attempt. The struggle against
capital and empire was important historically, continues unabated in the present,
and will be mounted against any empire of the future. As Hugo Chavez put it in a speech to the United
Nations (cited in Ali, 2008, p. 293): We reaffirm our infinite faith in humankind. We are thirsty for peace and justice in order to
survive as a species. Simon Bolivar, founding father of our country and guide to our revolution swore to never allow his hands to be
idle or his soul rest until he had broken the shackles which bound us to the empire. Now is the time not to allow
our hands to be idle or our souls to rest until we save humanity.
Movements
The only choice is the new social movementits try or die
*is there any way to rephrase try or die as efficiently? try or die feels as if its
inherently operating under a utilitarian/consequentialist framing
l.gong
In every era, from slavery to advanced capitalism, racism arose out of oppressive and
exploitative economic arrangements in which wealth was concentrated in a
dominant class. This class played a leading role in generating discourse and
ideology to legitimize these oppressive arrangements and to convince other classes to support
the established order. This class also used the state to protect these arrangements. This discourse,
ideology, and state action sustained oppressive arrangements and contributed to the
formation of racist culture. Changes in modes of production generated changes in forms of
oppression and types of racism. Also, shifts in political power precipitated changes in
the role of the state and in the formation of racist culture . The old racism died with the
disintegration of the sharecropping system and the relative success of the civil rights movement. Nevertheless, a
new form of racism emerged out of new exploitative and oppressive arrangementsmetaracism. T he
old
exploitative mechanism of industrial capitalism and the Fordist period gave way to new
postFordist, exploitative processes. The corporate sector found new ways to extract
more surplus value from labor, new ways to reduce the costs of labor , and new ways to diminish
the power of labor unions. In their drive to accumulate wealth, corporations engaged
in more flexible capital investment strategies. They closed down many production
facilities where labor costs were high and unions strong. They relocated in areas of cheap
labor and nonexistent unions. They subcontracted with peripheral firms and eliminated core sector
jobs. They used mergers and bankruptcy to undermine unions and reduce labor costs. They attacked
unions directly at the negotiating table. These economic changes contributed to the rise of the
new racism in several ways. First, economic changes influenced shifts in political power. These changes
contributed to greater concentrations of wealth in the upper stratum and the decline of organized labor. These
changes meant a weakening of civil rights forces and a strengthening of conservative forces. The corporate sector
conservative think tanks

committed to generating studies and ideas supporting the established orde r. Some of
the works from these research institutes contributed to the formation and dissemination of racist ideology. The
corporate sector also supports political leaders who have used racist imagery and
discourse in ways that encouraged the rise of racism. Second, these economic changes,
is now more politically active than ever before. It contributes more resources to
combined with institutional practices, produced new racially oppressive arrangements characterized by black
poverty substantially concentrated in inner cities. This concentrated black poverty is not simply a function of
This poverty is associated

with the uneven economic development of advanced capitalism. It is the result of the
impact of the shift from the Fordist to the postFordist period. It is related to deliberate decisions of
corporate leadersdecisions calculated to depress wages and weaken labor power .
These decisions affected black workers most severely. Also, Squires (1990, p. 202) contended that the
corporate sector deliberately avoided locating new industrial development in areas
with large black populations: Industrial development specialists in several state governments have
impersonal market forces nor the unintended effects of a global economy.
reported that managers of corporations seeking locations for new sites often request that areas with substantial
The stated concerns are that blacks are

more susceptible to union organizing drives and that if there are fewer minorities there
will be fewer equal opportunity obligations with which to contend . PostFordist
changes, uneven development, and an aversion to locating industrial development
in central cities have contributed to the marginalization of black workers . These factors, in
minority populations be eliminated from consideration.
conjunction with housing segregation and labor market discrimination, produced

black poverty, substantially concentrated in inner cities. This visible aspect of racial oppression
contributed directly to the formation of the new racism, especially when political leaders justified this poverty in
ways that further denigrated African Page 242 Americans. Third, co nservative
forces contributed to
racist discourse in the process of justifying the growth of concentrated black
poverty. This discourse alienated poor blacks from the larger community and desensitized its members to the
plight of the poor. This discourse involved images of black welfare queens, dangerous black
males addicted to drugs and driven by uncontrollable rage, incompetent blacks given undeserved jobs
through affirmative action, lazy black males who prefer to hang out on street corners, and other
denigrating figures. This discourse contributed to the formation of the new racist culture, as it was
popularized in the media. It influenced most sectors of societyclasses, groups, and
institutionswhich in turn operate to maintain existing racially oppressive
arrangements. The culture encourages the maintenance of racial segregation in metropolitan areas and of
racial discrimination in urban labor markets. Fourt h, postFordist changes generated a pervasive
sense of anxiety and insecurity, especially among middleclass workers . This anxiety and
insecurity made people more susceptible to new forms of racism. It contributed to scapegoatingpure
hostility against blacks. It has fueled the assault on affirmative action . In the final analysis,
exploitative and oppressive economic arrangements contributed to the formation of racial politics and racist culture.
This racism will continue into the 21st century unless there is
another major social movement or unless shifts in political
power occur that counterbalance the dominant position of the
corporate sectorthe sector today most resistant to fairer
ways of distributing societal resources.
Pre-req
Racism is a pre-requisite, it is better to have non-white
supremacist capitalism than white supremacist capitalism

As we have seen, for Mills (2003: 160), White Marxism [is] predicated on colorless
classes in struggle. Mills argues that if socialism is to come then white
supremacy/majoritarian domination must be overthrown first in the struggle for
social democracy. Only after white supremacy has been overthrown and social
democracy established is the next stage socialism possible. This seems to be in
line with Mills argument that a non-whitesupremacist capitalism is morally and
politically preferable to . . . whitesupremacist capitalism (Mills, cited in Pateman
and Mills, 2007: 31), something with which I would totally concur. However, given
the massive advantages to capitalism of racialized capitalism, capitalism without
racism (or sexism), as I have suggested earlier, is almost inconceivable. Mills argues
that part of the process of achieving the necessary consciousness to move forward
is to place side by side with the existing political structures familiar to all of us . . .
an unnamed global political structure global white supremacy (Mills, 1997: 125).
Until the system is named and seen as such, no serious theoretical appreciation of
[its] significance . . . is possible (Mills, 1997: 125). The Racial Contract sees that
race and white supremacy are . . . critical theoretical terms that must be
incorporated into the vocabulary of an adequate sociopolitical theory (Mills, 1997:
126).
At: Stop talking

Openness to criticism is critical to progressive social
movements
Hutchinson 4 (Darren, Critical Race Histories: In and Out, University of Florida Levin
College of Law, http://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1405&context=facultypub, pp. 1187-88, acc. 7/8/14, arh)
Cultural critic bell hooks has observed that progressive social movements mature in response to
critical inquiry from within their ranks. Hooks notes that "any progressive political movement
grows and matures only to the degree that it passionately welcomes and encourages, in both
theory and practice, diversity of opinion, new ideas, critical exchange, and dissent., 72 This
assertion certainly holds true in the context of CRT, as its evolution has depended largely upon
very vigorous internal criticism. Although Critical Race Theorists have not always passionately
welcomed such critiques,73 the relative openness of CRT has allowed for substantial innovation
of its intellectual agenda. Internal critics have also challenged Critical Race Theorists, and their
arguments have shaped the direction of critical race analysis as well-if only by generating
rebuttals to these very critiques. This Part discusses the influence of internal and external
critiques upon critical race analysis and then responds directly to some important critiques with
which Critical Race Theorists have not yet exhaustively engaged.
At: Privilege
Privilege theory undermines revolutionary action- empirical
track record shows its ineffective, makes future generations of
activists ineffective
Sabcat 13 (Writer for dysphoria, an anarchist publication, Privilege Theory. The Politics of
Defeat, http://sabcat.com/privilege-theory-the-poltics-of-defeat/, 1/1/13, acc. 7/9/14, arh)

Ive been blissfully ignorant of these ideas of privilege and the concept of checking it until very
recently. It came across my radar after the fall out of a twitter row. A set of ideas were put
forward, and argument was made. The response to this argument boiled down to the person was
writing it from a perspective of white male privilege. The issues were side stepped. I assumed
that this was an abuse of a theory that I didnt understand, that privilege theory wasnt simply a
handy tool to dismiss an argument because you dont like the person making it. I asked on
twitter for some links so I could find out what this theory was really about. The most interesting
and by interesting I mean the most infuriating was A Class Struggle Anarchist Analysis of
Privilege Theory from the Womens Caucus. Before I explain my problems with the theory and
its uses Ill first briefly explain where Im coming from. Im a socialist. I believe in and strive for
a universally applied set of values that can be simply described as equality and freedom. For a
more complete explanation of these values AFEDs own aims and principles is as good place to
look. These aims and principles provide a lense to view the world through and a yard stick to
measure the validity or otherwise of ideas against. People Act in Their Material Interest The
AFED Aims and principles criticism of unions touches on this, the interests of union leadership
are often at odds with the interests of their members. The overthrow of the wage system, of
capitalism while in the interests of the members is not in the interests of the leadership .
Privilege theory takes no account of shifting material interests and instead is
concerned with fixed categories of identity. Once analysis moves away from the
material and into identity its almost impossible to reconcile it with class struggle
in all but the most crude terms. In their analysis of privilege theory AFED abandon class
struggle almost completely: The term privilege has a complex relationship with class struggle,
and to understand why, we need to look at some of the differences and confusions between
economic and social class. Social class describes the cultural identities of working class, middle
class and upper class. These identities, much like those built on gender or race, are socially
constructed, created by a society based on its prejudices and expectations of people in those
categories. Economic class is different. It describes the economic working and ruling classes, as
defined by Marx. It functions through capitalism, and is based on the ownership of material
resources, regardless of your personal identity or social status. This is why a wealthy, knighted
capitalist like Alan Sugar can describe himself as a working class boy made good. He is clearly
not working class if we look at it economically, but he clings to that social identity in the belief
that it in some way justifies or excuses the exploitation within his business empire. He confuses
social and economic class in order to identify himself with an oppressed group (the social
working class) and so deny his own significant privilege (as part of the economic ruling class).
Being part of the ruling class of capitalism makes it impossible to support struggles against that
system. This is because, unlike any other privileged group, the ruling class are directly
responsible for the very exploitation they would be claiming to oppose. This idea that the middle
class and working class are nothing more than socially constructed cultural identities is
convenient for privilege theory. Its reduced the class struggle in the material sense to Alan
Sugar and other owners of material resources oppressing everyone else. The middle class are
part of the oppressed group, its an identity no more or less significant than another. Its
complete none sense. The middle class and working class as well as cultural difference
experience different material conditions. The material and the cultural feed into each other in
the form of connections and opportunities for the middle class that the working class dont
enjoy. The interests of the working class and middle class are very different. People act on the
basis of their material interests. Just as the union leaderships dont share the same interests as
their membership, depending on the existing order for their material advantage and power so
the middle class exist and enjoy material advantage in the same way. Item 3 from Afeds aims
and principles: We believe that fighting systems of oppression that divide the working class,
such as racism and sexism, is essential to class struggle. Anarchist-Communism cannot be
achieved while these inequalities still exist. In order to be effective in our various struggles
against oppression, both within society and within the working class, we at times need to
organise independently as people who are oppressed according to gender, sexuality, ethnicity or
ability. We do this as working class people, as cross-class movements hide real class differences
and achieve little for us. Full emancipation cannot be achieved without the abolition of
capitalism. The twin issues of division and oppression are very real and need to be tackled. The
important part of that is We do this as working class people, as cross-class movements hide real
class differences and achieve little for us. The reason is that class is unique, other identity
categories can feed into the material conditions and interests of a person but on a shifting basis.
Thats not to say that patriarchy or racism are not real or that they can be dismissed but its not
possible except on single, narrowly framed issues to equate the interests of any group across
class lines. AFED claim this can achieve little for us. I go further and say that it ensures that
struggles rooted in identity and not class can never feed into a wider struggle against capitalism
because they are made up of people who dont share the same interests, class interests. The
overthrow of capitalism is not in the interests of the middle class whether theyre a cisgendered
white male or not. In their analysis of Privilege Theory AFED touch on racism: At other times
the benefits are more subtle and invisible, and involve certain pressures being taken off a
privileged group and focused on others, for example black and Asian youths being 28% more
likely to be stopped and searched by the police than white youths. The point here is not that
police harassment doesnt happen to white youths, or that being working class or a white
European immigrant doesnt also mean youre more likely to face harassment; the point is that a
disproportionate number of black and Asian people are targeted in comparison to white people,
and the result of this is that, if you are carrying drugs, and you are white, then all other things
being equal you are much more likely to get away with it than if you were black. In the UK, white
people are also less likely to be arrested or jailed, or to be the victim of a personal crime. Black
people currently face even greater unemployment in the UK than they do in the USA. The point
of quoting this is not to suggest we want a society in which people of all races and ethnicities face
equal disadvantage we want to create a society in which nobody faces these disadvantages. But
part of getting there is acknowledging how systems of oppression work, which means
recognising that, if black and ethnic minority groups are more likely to face these disadvantages,
then by simple maths white people are less likely to face them, and that means they have an
advantage, a privilege, including the privilege of not needing to be aware of the extent of the
problem. As they say, black and Asian youths are more likely to face police oppression, their
example that a white person is more likely to be able to carry drugs and not get
caught is odd and isnt privilege unless the police are harassing someone at all
times and if they stop doing so on grounds of race white people are at higher risk.
The unemployment statistics make more sense, black people are oppressed in this way. Thinking
of this in terms of privilege for white people isnt useful in terms of understanding it and is
positively counter productive in tackling it. What is described is a material reason for solidarity.
Theres a pile and some people are at the bottom of it, they belong to a variety of identity
categories. The only way out of this is recognition that the injustice is the existence
of the pile itself. Describing this in terms of white people being privileged fails to
recognise the material conditions at the root of the issue , that the real issue is a class
issue. Viewing it in terms of race only perpetuates the problem, the problem being the pile itself.
Capitalism. The last race riots in the UK were in 2005 in the Lozells area of Birmingham. The
fight between black and Asian people was caused by the multicultural policy of allocating
resources based on ethnicity. This is explored by Kenan Malik in his essay How to Make a Riot:
Once political power and financial resources became allocated by ethnicity, then people began to
identify themselves in terms of their ethnicity, and only their ethnicity. People are forced into a
very one-dimensional view of themselves by the way that equality policies work, says Joy
Warmington of the Birmingham Race Action Partnership, a council-funded but independent
equalities organization. People mobilize on the basis of how they feel they will get the resources
to tackle the issues important to them. And in Birmingham it helps to say youre campaigning
for the needs of your ethnic or faith community, because policies have tended to emphasize
ethnicity as a key to entitlement. If somebody in Handsworth or Lozells wants a community
centre or a health centre it is often easier to get funding if they say We want an Asian
community centre or We want an African-Caribbean health centre. They are forced to see
themselves in terms of their ethnicity, their race, their culture and so on rather than in broader
terms that might bring people together. The racism, the division of working class people had at
its roots material resources. The real grievances of those people who saw themselves as missing
out were not racial they were class issues. Privilege Theory does nothing to help us
understand let alone tackle this because there is no one with any actual privilege.
Privilege Theory is a tool for middle class people to tell people with no discernible privilege to
check their privilege. It provides nothing of any use to a working class movement and
undermines solidarity. It formalises an ad hominem argument when the issues arent
convenient to discuss. We dont need it, we have a set of ideas and values by which to measure
arguments against. What we dont have, as working class people is much in the way of privilege
unlike our middle class friends playing at being radical. Its not a game.
Privilege checking reinforces capitalist divisions and

stigmatizes activism
Bast and McClure 12 (Tabitha and Hannah, writers for Dsyphoria periodical,
http://libcom.org/book/export/html/45500, September 2012, acc. 7/8/14, arh)
Privilege. Now theres a word we are hearing a lot. The concept and finger-pointing of privilege
is coming to increasingly concern us as a problem and a poor semblance within the alternative
left. We feel not only embarrassed by the simplicity of this undisclosed and undefined
overarching theory but concerned that it further leads a stagnant movement down more dire
dead ends. And yet our disquiet is not because we believe interpersonal politics are less worthy
of our attention, nor because we are without awareness and rage about the oppressive power
structures within our lives and political milieus. We do not believe that these are minor details
that can wait til after the revolution. Whilst we are currently organising what is suspiciously like
a womens consciousness raising group, we dismiss those laughable and cringeworthy lists that
have gone viral in the social networking world. These might appear as conflicting positions, but
as we hope to explain, we do not find them so. As mentioned , we are confronted with
endless lists asking us to Check our Privilege . We have encountered the heterosexual
privilege checklist the cis privilege checklist and the able bodied checklist. (examples of
these checklists are included at the end of the article- the Eds.) We think you get the picture?
Soon we will be carrying around score cards wishing to be the most victimised person in the
world. This sort of privilege scorekeeping is tallied in our everyday encounters but most often
called out in a certain political context, such as a political meeting, discussion or lecture. We
now are presented with the manarchist who uses his male privilege taking up space in
meetings. Taking up space is not seen as only about the amount a person of privilege speaks but
often the language used. We see a growth in these subcultural movements in the UK of an
adherence to a new political language and analysis with a centrality of privilege as an
overarching ideology. We find an anti-intellectualism where both theorising and militancy are
seen as a privilege in and of themselves, as if acting on the front line as WELL as analysis are
only weapons of the oppressive rather than weapons of the oppressed. We find this dangerous
because it evokes that the most oppressed are helpless and weak, encourages a lack of activity
and analysis away from make do and mend circles, and further rarefies the notion of resistance.
Another vagary is the self-flagellating groups emerging that prop up a culture of shame. For
example, recent workshops have emerged under the theme of Men dealing with their
patriarchal shit. Whilst we want individuals to examine, analyse and challenge their own
behaviour in political terms these punkier than thou equal ops sessions reinforce the holier than
thou attitude of the attendees.and the ones who could do with it rammed down their hairy
throats wouldnt dream of attending. These examples of new emerging themes demonstrate that
on one side of the coin you have a points based oppression outlook (weve made the complexities
of power into a handy ticklist for you!) and on the other you have individualised guilt and selfvictimisation (which is another way of re-focusing on the more privileged ironically). This focus
on the individual and self as the problem is a product of privilege leading us nowhere. Its a dead
end. We feel a political lens of privilege is divisive and unhelpful when we are part and parcel of
a system that already thrives on the division of the working classes, through gender, class and
sexual oppression.
Privilege checks focus on who speaks rather than what they

say- annihilates resistance
We recognise the well meaningness of checking your privilege. We too understand that people
are silenced not just as individuals but due to identities. However, we perceive wrong footed
attempts to right this balance. In meetings we witness call outs where someone will announce
that six men have spoken and no women. This is an attempt to expose the hidden subtleties of
patriarchy and male dominance, and to empower women. We have never seen this work
to readdress power relations . This call of male privilege may serve to quieten the six men
who have spoken, but it does not give more voice to the silenced. More awkwardly, it is often
uncomfortable for the women in the group who may feel, as we do in this scenario, an obligation
to speak, but with it comes an unnatural sense of representation. The opposite usually
takes place; a silencing of people rather than the growth of new conversations .
One that is forced, fake and full of disdain. Whilst the next person, woman, is to speak but feels
an artificial pressure of representation that we are supposed to be speaking on behalf of all
women, from an identity as woman, and only as woman. And when we, or she, speaks, it is of
course as a woman within patriarchy and to a room where she is being observed and judged by
the six men who have spoken, under a political male gaze. Because of these things, and more, we
do not see these clumsy attempts moving any steps toward challenging sexist oppression. To do
that we need first to acknowledge intersectionality of power, history and privilege. With a
singular identification of privilege we reduce the myriad of power relations within the group to a
straightforward visible one. We dont want a politics that reduces and simplifies
power into an ideology of privilege. Intersectionalities of power, oppression and
privilege need to be examined mixed with relations of capital . Analysing and

pinpointing privilege to an obsessive extent in political circles can be demobilising as well as
futile. But most damaging of all, these performances of privilege call out, mislead us
into believing that challenging patriarchy within our interpersonal relations
occurs within the formalities of a meeting and it is who speaks rather than what
they say.
Privilege creates new restrictive identity binaries - reinforces

oppression and greases the wheels for capitalist exploitation
Because ultimately, it is not womans voice we should be seeking but feminist voice. A feminist
voice is not one based on identity but rather on a shared transformative politics. A feminist voice
is a stance rather than a given. As bell hooks reminds us; feminism is the struggle to end sexist
oppression. We suggest this will often be best realised through those most facing sexist
oppression but also we are vigilant to note that not all oppressed are resisting, subverting or
fighting this oppression, nor are those who seem to benefit in ways from it always or
automatically in alignment with the oppressive forces. So where does that leave identity and
privilege in the struggle for freedoms? Understanding politics through the lens of privilege is
intrinsically entangled with identity politics. And, for reasons stated, we find identity politics a
monolithic and restrictive way to understand the world. We are our identities but we are never
just one identity, we are a complexity of them. And identities do not line up in a straightforward
ABC of oppression, no matter how much the privilegists want them to. This just falls into
binaries that we are attempting to escape from, or creates more. The queer movement
challenges the notions of men and women yet seems to be opting instead for cis or trans
giving new permanence and boundaries to our gender. This is not to downplay the struggles but
we believe that these fixed linear positions are not just unhelpful but often false. Cis gender may
not seem intrinsically a privilege to the women killed by domestic violence or childbirth. Nor
male privilege to a gay Ugandan. The relationality of power has to be optimistically understood
if we are to move beyond an idle determinism and singular identity code. But, also, to resist we
must understand our power; the strength in our collective power rather than this frugal analysis
of power where privilege divides us into mundane categories of oppression. We need to
galvanise on our power as a class, as this class being fucked over by capital within all its facets of
everyday life. Rather than creating new prisons and new boxes to further tear ourselves to pieces
within, we need to analyse and act with fluidity and creativity in terms of our intersectional
identities in the kitchens, the bedrooms, the meeting spaces, the pubs and in the streets we
demand to occupy.
AT: Afropes
Racism isnt permanent an effective resistance requires the
commitment of all peoples
Camp 13 (Jordan, Johns Hopkins University, Black Radicalism, Marxism, and Collective
Memory: An Interview with Robin D. G. Kelley, pp. 216-218, acc. 7/7/14, arh)
Second, that even the most ardent racists are not fixed in their ideology . People can
be transformed in the struggle. Racism is definitely a fetter to multiracial organizing, but
Hammer and Hoe shows how people built a movement across the color line in the most racist
place of all. Anyone watching footage of Bull Connor in Ingram Park in 1963 could not believe
that thirty years before that there had been an interracial group of five thousand people in
Birmingham standing on the street demanding relief, jobs, and an end to police brutality. Third,
that class politics are alive and well. But any class politics that pretend that race and also
gender get in the way of class organizing miss the point altogether. You can actually build
white support for antiracism, male support for antisexism, and black support for
white working-class justice.
People can and do cross the boundaries that historians and scholars impose on people. The levels of empathy that
many of the people in Hammer and Hoe showedthe fact that people were willing to be beaten or die for othersis an extremely important lesson. We spend so much time
theorizing race, class, and gender and wondering whether or not you can get people of a particular identity to move, but we dont even ask the question Can you get Steve to risk
his life for Hosea Hudson? It is not that Steve is supporting Hosea Hudson because he is black and male; Steve is supporting Hosea Hudson because he is part of a movement
. Collective struggle is the only answer to solving all of our problems, and
your problem is mine. Camp: Hammer and Hoes excavation of interracial class militancy has been less well noted. A story that stood out for me was about
that says, solidarity is the only answer
Clyde Johnson, a white Communist whom you describe as an able and militant labor leader sensitive to the needs of black workers and someone who was a key figure in the
Share Croppers Union (SCU). Can you talk about these race and class dynamics? Kelley: This is a huge question. To be a white Communist in Alabama was an incredible act of
what it meant to be a white comrade depended on

where you were and what choices you made. Clyde was unique in that he chose to work primarily, almost exclusively with African
bravery, but in all honesty not quite as brave as being a black Communist. Still,
Americans. He took over the Share Croppers Union and worked in the Piedmont and black belt counties with large black majorities. On the other hand, there were white
Communists in the upcountry counties who really only organized white farmers, many of whom came out of the Klan. Many of these folks did not deal directly with black
comrades, but those who did faced culture shock. They not only had to listen to working-class black folks, they also had to take criticism and even direction from them. Of
course, in the long history of the United States, this isnt unprecedented. During Reconstruction there were similar circumstances. In the 1880s and 1890s when interracial
Of course, the race and class dynamics mean

nothing outside the sexual and gender dynamics. This is why the state made much more of white
womens involvement in a movement full of assertive black men. Women like Jane Speed and Mary Leonard and other
movements were still alive in the South, there were a few black leaders in mixed company.
white women were either treated as potential victims of rape or dismissed as prostitutes for their mere proximity to black men. Recall that the largest civil rights struggles
involving the Party at the time had to do with the defense of black men falsely accused of raping white women. Even the rural areas had their own racial-sexual dynamics
notably, sharecropper wives often negotiated the end-of-the-year settlements. Landlords would send their wives presumably to negotiate with black male sharecroppers, who in
turn could not contradict them without calling a white woman a liar! Camp: How did Antonio Gramscis work inform your methodological approach to analyzing politics and
culture in Hammer and Hoe? Kelley: My sister, Makani Themba, and I had been reading Gramsci since about 19811982. Specifically, the Prison Notebooks distinguishes
between organic intellectuals and traditional intellectuals, and elaborates the idea of cultural hegemony, which is that the state cant rule by force alone, but has to generate an
This common sense defined what was considered natural: of course black
people earn less money, of course the depression means you are going to be out of work,
there is nothing you can do, this is the way life is, and quit complaining . This common sense of the dominant
ideology of common sense.1
culture was challenged by the counterhegemonic culture that the Communist Party created through the Young Pioneers, the Young Communist League, and newspapers like the
They provided information about struggles that were outside Alabama and across the
Atlantic and Pacific world, which opened up a sense of possibility. That possibility is precisely
what put a crack in cultural hegemony.
Southern Worker.
AT: Body
Fixation on bodily aesthetics as the basis for identity politics
replicates visualist exploitation
Champagne 95 (John Champagne Associate Professor of English, University of Pittsburgh, Ph.D. in
Critical and Cultural Studies, The Ethics of Marginality: A New Approach to Gay Studies, University of Minnesota
Press (1995), pp. 115-116 // JJ)
When recounting how the film text might have engaged more fully with the problematic of presenting a
hooks suggests that Livingstons

physical presence in the film might have allowed viewers to recognize that they are
watching a work shaped and formed from a perspective and standpoint specific to
Livingston (62). hooks suggests that because we hear Livingston ask questions of her
subjects but never see her, the film assumes an imperial overseeing position that
is in no way progressive or counterhegemonic. The implication here is that the
bodily presence of Livingston in the film would have disrupted its colonizing
impulses, as if the problems of representation of the Other could be
representation of Black culture to a largely white audience,
overcome with recourse to a spectatorial experience of Livingston the

historical person. A certain faith in the visible is operating here, a realist ontology of
the photographic image that is at odds with hookss own state intellectual project, which is the attempt to
call into crisis the truth of Livingstons documentary representation. Although hookss analysis wants to marshal
the passive, voyeuristic

pleasure of the spectator must be disrupted if theoretical reflection is to occur, the
analysis concurrently relies on a faith in the ontological power of the image , a
faith interrupted by this same film theory. Here we see another instance of the limits
of what I have discussed earlier as an identity-politics-inflected deconstruction of
the real. My critique of hookss project should not obscure her important insistence that Livingstons project is
necessarily implicated in the project of imperialism, nor her contention that the current trend in
producing colorful ethnicity for the white consumer appetite makes it possible for
blackness to be commodified in unprecedented ways, and for whites to appropriate
black culture without interrogating whiteness or showing concern for the displeasure
of blacks (63). One of the major differences between hookss perspective and my own is that although she
faults Livingston for approaching her subject matter as an outsider looking in (62), I
would insist that no other vantage point is available to her from which to view drag-ball culture.
here the suggestion form a feminist- and Brechtian-inflected film theory that
hookss faith in the category of originating experience makes possible the suggestion that Livingston could
somehow have gotten sufficiently inside the world of the drag balls to overcome certain problems of racism and
classism. I would instead critique the film by proposing that its highly complicated discursive circumstances perhaps
require a greater attentiveness to the (discursive) constraints operating in the genre of the testimonial than the film
seems willing to allow. Nonetheless, hookss queries regarding questions of the location of the filmmaker, as well as
the films intended audience, remain.
Alt Fails
Generic
CTR will only be tolerated as long as it doesnt challenge the US
seriouslyif the aff is serious it will fail
genesis
of CRT was that tireless and irrepressible cam- paigner against racism, Martin Luther
King Jr. At the time of writing (Summer 2008), it is the fortieth anniversary of King's
assassination. King, a reformer, pacifist and Baptist minister rather than a revolutionary socialist (Martin, 2008a), is quite accurately known for his gradualism
It is worth recalling that, at the beginning of this volume, I recounted that one ofthe people cited by Delgado and Stefancic (2001, p. 4) as being influential in the
and his reformism. However, it is significant that in the year preceding his death King became notably radicalized. Charles Steele, 2008 president of the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC) (King was the first president) has emphasized that, towards the end ofhis life, King had moved on from purely 'racial' issues, and that his final
campaigns were focused on fighting poverty and on labor disputes (cited in Harris, 2008).1 Steele believes that King, who came to Memphis in 1968 in support of striking
[i]fyou
thought having a talk about race was difficult in America, then having one about
class is even harder' (cited in ibid.). Paul Harris (2008) concludes that '40 years ago King tried to start that debate as well. A bullet cut
short his ambitions' (Harris, 2008).2 The implications for the subject matter of this book are
clear. As long as CRT centralizes 'race' rather than class, and as long as it voices no
serious challenge to United States and world capitalism, it will be tolerated. As Roland
Sheppard (2006, p. 7) notes, Martin Luther King had a different perspective at the time of his death
to the 1963 'I have a dream' speech: 'he had begun to view the struggle for equality
as an economic struggle and the capitalist economic system as the problem'. As King, who
by 1967 believed that the total elimination of poverty was now a practical responsibility (Sheppard, 2006, p. 8), put it in a speech to the SCLC in August, 1967: We've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the
workers (Harris, 2008), 'was killed [there] because he had started to focus on poor folks, regardless oftheir colour' (cited in ibid.). As Jerald Podair puts it, '
discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised.
'Who owns this oil? ...Who owns the iron ore? ... Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two- thirds water?' (cited in Sheppard, 2006, p. 8) However,
perhaps Martin Luther King's most unequivocal declaration of a firm change of direction came earlier, in remarks to his staff at the SCLC on November 14, 1966. King
proclaimed that the civil rights reforms ofthe early 1960s 'were at best surface changes' that were 'limited mainly to the Negro middle class'. He went on to add that demands
must now be raised to abolish poverty (cited in Martin, 2008a): You can't talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You
can't talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You're really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with
... Now this means that we are treading in difficult water,

because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong...with
capitalism.... There must be a better distribution ofwealth and maybe America must
move toward a democratic socialism. (cited in The Democratic Socialists of Central Ohio, 2008)3
folk then. You are messing with captains of industry .
CTR is lacking in a direction for moving humankind forward

progressively
I began this book by discussing the origins of CRT in Critical Legal Studies (CLS). I
went on to juxtapose the CRT concepts of 'white supremacy and "race" as primary'
with Marxist analyses of social class and racialization. While recognizing that CRT
has a number of strengths, I argued that Marxist analysis enhanced these
strengths. I then addressed multicultural education in the United States and United
Kingdom respectively, and discussed antiracist responses (based on Marxism) in
each country. Having made a number of references to neoliberal global capitalism and imperialism, I went to examine these issues conceptually and materially. I then did the same for Marxism
and twenty-first-century socialism. Finally, I looked at some areas of agreement between Critical Race
Theorists and Marxist's regarding classroom practice, before critiquing one specific
Critical Race theorist's classroom pedagogies. I contrasted these with some
suggestions based on Marxism. Like Weberianism, post-structuralism,
postmodernism, and transmodernism, CRT appears to me to be ultimately lacking
in a direction for moving humankind forward progressively. As far as Weber is concerned, he believed that socialism would
A common criticism of post-structuralism and

postmodernism is that, in focusing on deconstruction, they have no solutions,
while for transmodernist, Enrique Dussel, as noted in the Introduction to this
volume, the solution is an 'ex nihilo utopia'.
be even more rationalized, and bureaucratic than capitalism and thus more alienating.
Color-coded Racism
CRT fails, racialization is not only based on skin color
Non-colour-coded racism Colour-coded racism in the UK is indicative of a capitalist
society, with a continuity of racism from its imperialist past, rather than a white
supremacist society. In the 21st century, such racism continues unabated with
respect to the descendants of the people of the former colonies, both black people
and Asian people. Elsewhere, I have documented colour-coded racism and its
relationship with developments in capitalism and imperialism from the days of
Empire, through the postwar period, up to the present, both in general terms (e.g.
Cole and Virdee, 2008), and with respect to education (e.g. Cole, 2004a; Cole and
Blair, 2008). However, there is also the highly significant dimension of non-colourcoded racism. Mills acknowledges that there were/are what he refers to as
borderline Europeans the Irish, Slavs, Mediterraneans, and above all, of
course, Jews (Mills, 1997: 789), and that there also existed intra-European
varieties of racism (Mills, 1997: 79; see also Perea et al., 2007). However, he
argues that, while there remains some recognition of such distinctions in popular
culture he gives examples of an Italian waitress in the TV series Cheers, calling
a WASP character Whitey and a discussion in a 1992 movie about whether Italians
are really white (Mills, 1997: 79) he relegates such distinctions primarily to
history.6 While Mills is prepared to fuzzify racial categories with respect to shifting
criteria prescribed by the evolving Racial Contract, and to acknowledge the
existence of off-white people at certain historical periods, he maintains that his
categorization white/nonwhite, person/subperson seems to me to map the
essential features of the racial polity accurately, to carve the social reality at its
ontological joints (Mills, 1997: 7881). It is my view that this does not address
current reality. Robert Miles (1987: 75) argues that racialization is not limited to skin
colour: The characteristics signified vary historically and, although they have usually
been visible somatic features, other non-visible (alleged and real) biological features
have also been signified. I would like to make a couple of amendments to Miles
position.7 First, I would want to add and cultural after, biological. Second, the
common dictionary definition of somatic is pertaining to the body, and, given the
fact that people can be racialized on grounds of symbols (e.g. the hijab), I would
also want this to be recognized in any discussion of social collectivities and the
construction of racialization (Cole, 2008b). In contemporary Britain, there continues
to be non-colour-coded racism directed at the Irish (e.g. Mac an Ghaill, 2000) and at
Roma Gypsy Traveller communities (e.g. Puxon, 2005). There is also Islamophobia
and xeno-racism.
Critical Race Theorys color coded philosophy fails to account

for Islamophobia, which dehumanizes prisoners to the point
where they are worse than the animal

Islamophobia Since the suicide bombings of 7 July 2005 (7/7) when a coordinated
attack was made on Londons public transport system during the morning rush
hour, there has been an upsurge in Islamophobia in the UK (Cole and Maisuria,
2007, 2009). People who appear to be of Islamic faith are immediately identified as
potential terrorists and are five times more likely to be stopped and searched than a
white person (Dodd, 2005). It is important to underline the fact that Islamophobia is
not necessarily triggered by skin colour, and is often sparked off by one or more
(perceived) symbols of the Muslim faith. Much of the world in the 21st century is
imbued with the vestiges of the old (British) and the new (US) imperialism. Thus
there coexists the longstanding denigration of Asian cultures and the more recent
intensification of Islamophobia, which is directly related to US foreign policy. As
living testimony to the two imperialisms, Benjamin Zephaniah states: . . . when I
come through the airport nowadays, in Britain and the US especially, they always
question me on the Muslim part of my name. They are always on the verge of taking
me away because they think converts are the dangerous ones. (Zephaniah, 2004:
19) Zephaniahs experience was by no means an isolated one, with thousands of
Asian people being given special attention at security checkpoints. The actors in
the highly acclaimed film The Road to Guantanamo were stopped at an airport after
returning to England from Germany where the movie had been awarded the Silver
Bear Award. They were treated with intimidation about making further political
movies, refused access to legal aid, had personal belongings, including a mobile
phone, confiscated, and were verbally abused (BBC, 2006). Islamophobia, like other
forms of racism, can be colour-coded: it can be biological (normally associated with
skin colour). But it can also be cultural DEBATE Downloaded from etn.sagepub.com
at UNIV OF MICHIGAN on July 13, 2014 (not necessarily associated with skin colour),
or it can be a mixture of both. Echoing the quote from old UK school textbooks,
where Asia was denigrated as a continent of dying nations rapidly falling back in
civilisation (MacKenzie, 1988: 184), and where reference was made to the barbaric
peoples of Asia (Chancellor, 1970: 122), the former head of the Anglican Church,
the Archbishop of Canterbury, defended a controversial speech in which he
criticized Islam as a faith associated with violence throughout the world (Reynolds,
2004). At the Gregorian University in Rome, he said that Islam was resistant to
modernity, and that Islamic societies had contributed little to world culture for
hundreds of years. A more biological Islamophobic racism is revealed by Jamal alHarith, a British captive freed from Guantanamo Bay, who was perceived as
subhuman inferior to a dog. He informed the British tabloid paper, the Daily Mirror,
that his guards told him: You have no rights here. al-Harith went on: After a while,
we stopped asking for human rights we wanted animal rights. In Camp X-Ray my
cage was right next to a kennel housing an Alsatian dog. He had a wooden house
with air conditioning and green grass to exercise on. I said to the guards, I want his
rights and they replied, That dog is [a] member of the US army. (Prince and Jones,
2004) Such treatment is sustained by racialization. Indeed, the a priori racialization
of Muslims as subhumans and terrorists serves to facilitate and legitimize torture,
rape, humiliation and degradation. US imperialism exacerbates such abuse. In the
pursuit of global hegemony, the killing and torture of the enemy has to be
normalized. Moreover, soldiers on the ground become brutalized by the whole
experience and the enemy, in being racialized, becomes dehumanized. US soldier
Lynndie England, serving at the Abu Ghraib camp in Iraq, was charged with
seriously abusing detainees by forcing them to stack naked in a human pyramid.
The BBC (2004) reported that there were numerous incidents of sadistic and
wanton abuse. . . . Much of the abuse was sexual, with prisoners often kept naked
and forced to perform simulated and real sex acts. This is particularly humiliating
for Muslims who place importance on covering and not exposing flesh. Racialization,
under conditions of imperialism, is fired by what Dallmayr (2004: 11) has described
as the intoxicating effects of global rule that anticipates corresponding levels of
total depravity and corruption among the rulers. Global rule, of course, is first and
foremost, about global profits, and serves to relate old and new imperialisms. In
being colour-coded, CRT is ill-equipped to analyse multifaceted Islamophobia, and
its connection to capital, national and international.
Destroys Marxism
The abolition of whiteness fails to be a political unifier and
would undermine the Marxist Project

White supremacy as a unifier and political rallying point Here is the platform of Race
Traitor (2005), a journal that takes the dangers of white supremacy to their limits
and that calls for the abolition of whiteness: What We Believe The white race is a
historically constructed social formation. It consists of all those who partake of the
privileges of the white skin in this society. Its most wretched members share a
status higher, in certain respects, than that of the most exalted persons excluded
from it, in return for which they give their support to a system that degrades them.
The key to solving the social problems of our age is to abolish the white race, which
means no more and no less than abolishing the privileges of the white skin. Until
that task is accomplished, even partial reform will prove elusive, because white
influence permeates every issue, domestic and foreign, in US society. The existence
of the white race depends on the willingness of those assigned to it to place their
racial interests above class, gender, or any other interests they hold. The defection
of enough of its members to make it unreliable as a predictor of behavior will lead to
its collapse. RACE TRAITOR aims to serve as an intellectual center for those seeking
to abolish the white race. It will encourage dissent from the conformity that
maintains it and popularize examples of defection from its ranks, analyze the forces
that hold it together and those that promise to tear it apart. Part of its task will be to
promote debate among abolitionists. When possible, it will support practical
measures, guided by the principle, Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity. I
have argued elsewhere (Cole, 2008c) that the style in which Race Traitors
ideological position is written is worryingly reminiscent of Nazi propaganda, and
seriously open to misinterpretation; that it could be interpreted as meaning the
abolition of white people. In fact, it is made clear in the book of the same name
(Ignatiev and Garvey, 1996) that this is not the case.10 However, when one taps in
Race Traitor on a Google search, it is the above statement written by the
proprietors of Race Traitor, which comes up first. I am not questioning the sincerity
of the protagonists of the abolition of whiteness, nor suggesting in any way that
they are anti-white people merely questioning its extreme vulnerability to
misunderstanding. Anti-racists have made some progress, in the UK at least, after
years of establishment opposition, in making anti-racism a mainstream rallying
point, and this is reflected, in part, in legislation (e.g. the 2000 Race Relations
Amendment Act).11 Even if it were a good idea, the chances of making the
abolition of whiteness a successful political unifier and rallying point against racism
are virtually non-existent. And yet, for John Preston (2007: 13), The abolition of
whiteness is . . . not just an optional extra in terms of defeating capitalism (nor
something which will be necessarily abolished 254 ETHNICITIES 9(2) Downloaded
from etn.sagepub.com at UNIV OF MICHIGAN on July 13, 2014 255 post-capitalism)
but fundamental to the Marxist educational project as praxis. Indeed, for Preston
(2007: 196) The abolition of capitalism and whiteness seem to be fundamentally

connected in the current historical circumstances of Western capitalist
development. From a Marxist perspective, coupling the abolition of whiteness to
the abolition of capitalism is a worrying development that, if it gained ground in
Marxist theory in any substantial way, would most certainly undermine the Marxist
project, even more than it has been undermined already (for an analysis of the
success of the Ruling Class in forging consensus to capitalism in the UK, see Cole,
2008c). Implications of bringing the abolition of whiteness into schools are
discussed later.
Pedagogy
Critical Race Theory Pedagogy fails It needs to recognize
white culture and realize that capitalism is the cause of
division and oppression
Prestons classroom pedagogies John Preston (2007) provides a way in which such
critical theory might be introduced into schools. Preston (2007: 198) concludes his
book by advocating neo-abolitionist (the word is prefixed with neo to differentiate
the abolition of whiteness from the earlier abolition of slavery) pedagogies
(abolition of whiteness teaching) in the classroom. Given that the undoubtedly
good intentions of the abolition of whiteness arguments are regularly
misunderstood by academics (Preston, 2007), its introduction in the school
curriculum is a most worrying and counterproductive suggestion. That whiteness
(not white people) should be abolished is advocated for the following reasons: 1.
Whiteness is a false form of identity and . . . there is no such thing as white
culture; 2. Whiteness, in terms of a structural system of white supremacy, is
oppressive . . . [and] whiteness is only false and oppressive and . . . there is no
possibility of redemption or reformation of whiteness; 3. Whiteness divides
humanity against itself and therefore is not in the genuine interests even of white
people; 4. Class, gender and sexuality are important in understanding oppression
but race is central to understanding why other forms of political activity are not
possible, particularly in the US (Preston, 2007: 10). I consider each of these
propositions in turn. Whiteness is a false form of identity and . . . there is no such
thing as white culture While I agree that there is no such thing as white culture per
se, there are white cultures. It is particularly important, given the scenario of
continuing white working-class racism, that educators do not deny the existence of
white working-class cultures. Indeed, as I have argued elsewhere with respect to
such cultures, educational institutions should be centrally involved in helping to
identify and develop strategies to promote good inclusive practice for all
pupils/students, including the white working class. Sections of the white working
class in England have voted for the fascist British National Party (BNP) at recent
elections precisely because they feel that they are treated with less equality than
others. If we were to teach white working-class young people that they have no
culture, that would be racist, would alienate white working-class children even
more, and would not be conducive to effective socialist practice. The notion would
also rightly be massively contested, including by most of the Left in the UK.
Whiteness is a structural system of oppression and there is no possibility of
redemption or reformation of whiteness I would argue that it is capitalism, not white
supremacy, that is a structural system of oppression. With capitalisms overthrow,
there is every possibility that the colour of ones skin will be irrelevant and racism
(which, as I have argued, is not necessarily based on skin colour) abolished. While it
may well be the intention of Critical Race Theorists to make skin colour irrelevant, it
is my view that encouraging young people in schools to think along these lines is
also not conducive to effective socialist practice. I refer later to current
developments in Venezuela (see also Cole, 2009), which point to a revolutionary
process where whiteness is not redeemed, or reformed or abolished but, in the
context of major ameliorative projects, rendered irrelevant in an anti-racist struggle
for 21st-century socialism. Whiteness divides humanity against itself and therefore
is not in the genuine interests even of white people A belief that a division of
whiteness divides humanity is not surprising, given Prestons claims that whiteness
is an objective power structure. For Chakrabarty and Preston (2006: 1), likewise,
white supremacy, along with capitalism itself, has the status of an objective
inhuman [system] of exploitation and oppression. From a Marxist perspective, it is
capitalism that is the objective system that divides humanity against itself, and is
against the interests of all workers. For Marxists, it is this message that should be
considered in the school curriculum (see later for a discussion; see also Cole, 2009).
Class, gender and sexuality are important in understanding oppression but race is
central to understanding why other forms of political activity are not possible,
particularly in the US While it is true that Marxism has a history of not taking on
board issues of equality other than social class, 21st-century Marxism most
definitely does relate to other equality issues. I have argued earlier against making
race rather than class central to analysis. I am not totally sure what Preston means
by other forms of political activity are not possible, particularly in the US.
CRT K/2 Education

CRT is critical for an educational system that supports multiple
backgrounds and is key to taking down the standards of
evaluation set by the white, middle-class society
Yosso & Solrzano 5 (Tara J. Yosso & Daniel G. Solrzano, Ph.D., University of
California, Education, Ph.D., is the director of UC/ACCORD and a professor of social
science and comparative education in the Graduate School of Education and
Information Studies at the University of California, 2005, Conceptualizing a Critical
Race Theory in Sociology, http://dl2af5jf3e.search.serialssolutions.com/?
ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info%3Aofi%2Fenc%3AUTF8&rfr_id=info:sid/summon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:bo
ok&rft.genre=book%20item&rft.title=Blackwell+Companions+to+Sociology
%3A+The+Blackwell+Companion+to+Social+Inequalities&rft.atitle=Conceptualizin
g+a+Critical+Race+Theory+in+Sociology&rft.date=2005-0101&rft.pub=Blackwell+Publishers&rft.isbn=9780631231547&rft.externalDocID=102
62924.)//ky
Challenging Racism, Revealing Cultural Wealth Because we have described CRT as
an analytical framework with at least five main tenets, it is helpful to think about
these tenets as a guiding lens that can inform our research in communities of color.
Specifically, CRT can be utilized as a primary lens to address research questions,
teaching approaches, and our policy recommendations regarding social inequality.
Indeed, CRT is grounded in the experiences and knowledge of communities of color.
Such a theory unapologetically centers the research lens on race and racisms
intersections with other forms of subordination. As we look through a CRT lens, we
critique deficit theorizing and data that may be limited by its omission of the voices
of people of color. We assert that CRT helps researchers, teachers, and policy
makers see the cultural wealth (as opposed to deficits) in marginalized
communities. Yet CRT also insists that we take the responsibility to build reciprocity
in to our research, teaching, and policy so that we do not attempt to disrespectfully
mine these culturally wealthy communities. Deficitinformed research often sees
deprivation in communities of color. Utilizing CRT as an analytical lens helps us
approach research with a critical eye to identify, analyze, and challenge distorted
notions of people of color as we build on the cultural wealth already present in these
communities. Culture influences how society is organized, how the curriculum is
developed, and how pedagogy and policy are implemented. In sociology, the
concept of culture for students of color has taken on many divergent meanings.
Some research has equated culture with race and ethnicity, while other work clearly
has viewed culture through a much broader lens of characteristics and forms of
social histories and identities. We view the culture of students of color as a set of
characteristics that are neither fixed nor static. Culture refers to behaviors and
values that are learned, shared, and exhibited by a group of people. Culture is also
evidenced in material and nonmaterial productions of a people. For example, with
students of color, culture is frequently represented symbolically through language
and can encompass conceptualizing a critical race theory in sociology 127 identities
around immigration status, gender, phenotype, sexuality, and region, as well as
race and ethnicity. The cultures of students of color can nurture and empower them
(Delgado Bernal 2002). Focusing on research with Latina/o families, Luis C. Moll,
Cathy Amanti, Deborah Neff, and Norma Gonzalez (1992), Carlos Vlez-Ibez and
James Greenberg (1992), and Irma Olmedo (1997) assert that culture can form and
draw from communal funds of knowledge (Gonzalez et al. 1995; Gonzalez and Moll
2002). Likewise, Douglas Foley notes research revealing the virtues and solidarity
in African American community and family traditions as well as the deeply
spiritual values passed from generation to generation in most African American
communities (1997: 123). Our description of cultural wealth begins with a critique
of the ways sociologists Bourdieu and Passerons work (1977) has been used to
discuss social and racial inequity. In education, Bourdieus work has often been
called upon to explain why students of color do not succeed at the same rate as
Whites. According to Bourdieu, cultural capital refers to an accumulation of
cultural knowledge, skills, and abilities possessed and inherited by privileged groups
in society. Bourdieu asserts that cultural capital (i.e., education, language), social
capital (i.e., social networks, connections), and economic capital (i.e., money and
other material possessions) can be acquired two ways, from ones family and/or
through formal schooling. The dominant groups within society are able to maintain
power because access is limited to acquiring and learning strategies to use these
forms of capital for social mobility (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977). Therefore, while
Bourdieus work sought to provide a structural critique of social and cultural
reproduction, his theory of cultural capital has been used to assert that some
communities are culturally wealthy while others are culturally poor. This
interpretation of Bourdieu exposes White, middle-class culture as the standard by
which all others are judged. We argue that cultural capital is not just inherited or
possessed by the middle class, but rather it refers to an accumulation of specific
forms of knowledge, skills, and abilities that are valued by privileged groups in
society. For example, middle- or upper-class students may have access to a
computer at home and, therefore, can learn numerous computer-related vocabulary
and technological skills before arriving at school. These students have acquired
cultural capital because computer-related vocabulary and technological skills are
valued in the school setting. On the other hand, a working-class Chicana/o student
whose mother works in the garment industry may bring a different vocabulary,
perhaps in two languages (English and Spanish) to school, along with techniques of
conducting errands on the city bus and translating gas and electric bills for her/his
mother (see Faulstich Orellana 2003). This cultural knowledge is very valuable to
the student and her/his family, but not necessarily considered to carry any capital in
the school context. This leads us to ask: Are there forms of cultural capital that
marginalized groups bring to the table that traditional cultural capital theory does
not recognize or value? CRT shifts the center of our focus from White, middle-class
culture to the cultures of communities of color. In doing so, we also draw on the
work of sociologists Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro (1995) to better understand
how cultural capital is actually only one form of many different aspects that might
be considered valuable. They proposed a model to explain how the narrowing of the
income or 128 tara j. yosso and daniel g. solrzano earnings gap between people of
color and Whites is a misleading way to examine inequality. They argue that ones
income over a typical fiscal year focuses on a single form of capital and that the
income gap between Blacks and Whites is narrowing over time. On the other hand,
they examine separately the concept of wealth and define it as the total extent of
an individuals accumulated assets and resources (i.e., ownership of stocks, money
in bank, real estate, business ownership, and so on). They then argue that while the
income of Blacks may indeed be climbing and the Black/White income gap
narrowing, their overall wealth, compared to Whites, is declining and the gap is
diverging. Thus, traditional Bourdieuian cultural capital theory has parallel
comparisons to Oliver and Shapiros (1995) description of income in that it places
value on a very narrow range of assets and characteristics. This narrow view of
cultural capital, as defined by White, middle-class values, is more limited than
wealth ones accumulated assets and resources. We propose that cultural wealth
encompasses accumulated assets and resources found in communities of color (see
Villalpando and Solrzano in press). Cultural wealth includes various forms of capital
such as aspirational, navigational, social, linguistic, familial, and resistance capital
(see Auerbach 2001; Delgado Bernal 2001; Solrzano and Delgado Bernal 2001;
Stanton-Salazar 2001; Faulstich Orellana 2003; Villalpando and Solrzano in press).
Deficit scholars such as E. D. Hirsch (1988, 1996) bemoan the lack of cultural
capital, or what he terms cultural literacy, in low-income communities of color. As
previously discussed, research utilizing a deficit analytical lens places value
judgments on communities that often do not have access to White, middle- or
upperclass resources. In contrast, a CRT lens allows us to focus on and learn from
the cultural wealth of communities of color. CRT identifies individual indicators of
capital that have rarely been acknowledged and used as assets in examining the
cultural and social characteristics of communities of color. Cultural wealth is found
in the histories and lives of communities of color and has gone unrecognized and/or
unacknowledged. CRT centers the research, pedagogy, and policy lens on
communities of color and calls into question White middle-class communities as the
standard by which all others are judged. CRT therefore can begin to recognize
multiple forms of cultural wealth within communities of color. Figure 6.2
demonstrates that community cultural wealth is an array of cultural knowledge,
skills, abilities, and contacts possessed by socially marginalized groups that often go
unrecognized. Communities of color nurture cultural wealth through at least six
forms of capital: (1) Aspirational (i.e., dreams for the future, see Auerbach 2001);
(2) Familial (i.e., pedagogies of the home, see Delgado Bernal 2001); (3) Social (i.e.,
networks, see Stanton-Salazar 2001); (4) Navigational (i.e., maneuverability, see
Auerbach 2001); (5) Resistant (i.e., oppositional behaviors, see Solrzano and
Delgado Bernal 2001); and (6) Linguistic (i.e., language style and content, see
Faulstich Orellana 2003).8 Aspirational capital draws on the work of Patricia
Gndara (1982, 1995) and others who have shown that Chicanas/os experience the
lowest educational outcomes compared to every other group in the USA, but
maintain consistently high aspirations for their childrens future (Delgado-Gaitan
1992, 1994; Solrzano 1992; Auerbach 2001). These stories nurture a culture of
possibility as they represent the creation of a history that would break the links
between parents current occupaconceptualizing a critical race theory in sociology
129 tional status and their childrens future academic attainment (Gndara 1995:
55). Aspirational capital is evidenced in those who allow themselves, and their
children, to dream of possibilities beyond their present circumstances despite the
presence of real and perceived barriers and, often, without the resources or other
objective means to attain those goals. Social capital is directly connected to
navigational capital because it addresses the peer and other social networks
developed to assist in the movement through social institutions, such as schools
(Stanton-Salazar 2001). Scholars note that, historically, people of color have utilized
their social capital to maneuver through the system, but they often turned around
and gave the information and resources gained through the navigation process back
to their social networks. Mutualistas or mutual aid societies are an example of how,
historically, immigrants to the USA and, indeed, African Americans, even while
enslaved, created and maintained social networks (Gmez-Quiones 1973, 1994;
Gutman 1976; Snchez 1993; Stevenson 1996). In her book Teaching to Transgress,
bell hooks notes that this tradition was the motto of the National Colored Womens
Association, lifting as we climb (1994). Social capital can be understood as
networks of people and community resources that help one navigate through
societys institutions. Familial capital connects with a commitment to community
well-being and expands the concept of family to include a broader understanding of
kinship. Acknowledging the racialized, classed, and heterosexualized inferences that
comprise traditional understandings of family, familial capital is nurtured by our
extended family. It may include immediate family (living or long passed on) as
well as aunts, uncles, grandparents, and friends we might consider part of our
family. From these kinship ties, we learn the importance of emotional, moral,
educational, and occupational consciousness in maintaining a healthy connection to
ones community and its resources. Familial capital includes funds of knowledge
(Moll et al. 1992; Vlez-Ibez and Greenberg 1992) and pedagogies of the home
(Delgado Bernal 2002), as well as the emotional, moral, educational, and
occupational consciousness learned from our kin (Elenes et al. 2001; Lopez 2003).
Navigational capital refers to the ability to maneuver through social institutions not
created with communities of color in mind. Strategies to navigate through racially
hostile university campuses draw on the concept of academic invulnerability, or
students ability to sustain high levels of achievement, despite the presence of
stressful events and conditions that place them at risk of doing poorly at school and,
ultimately, dropping out of school (Alva 1991: 19). Scholars have examined
individual, family, and community factors that support Mexican American students
academic invulnerability their successful navigation through the educational
system (Alva 1995; Arrellano and Padilla 1996). In addition, resilience has been
recognized as a set of inner resources, social competencies, and cultural strategies
that permit individuals to not only survive, recover, or even thrive after stressful
events, but also to draw from the experience to enhance subsequent functioning
(Stanton- Salazar and Spina 2000: 229; see also Yosso 2003). This reflects the
process of developing critical navigational skills (Solrzano and Villalpando 1998).
We assert that academic invulnerability and resilience do not take place in a social
vacuum, but are influenced by ones social location (Zavella 1991). Navigational
capital, then, refers to a set of social-psychological skills that assist individuals and
groups to maneuver through structures of inequality. This acknowledges individual
agency within institutional constraints, but it also connects to social networks that
facilitate community navigation through places and spaces including schools, the
job market, and the health care and judicial systems (P. Williams 1997). Resistant
capital acknowledges the work of Tracy Robinson and Janie Ward (1991) in
examining a group of African American mothers who were consciously raising their
daughters as resisters. Through verbal and nonverbal lessons, these Black
mothers taught their daughters to assert themselves as intelligent, beautiful,
strong, and worthy of respect to resist the barrage of societal messages devaluing
Blackness and belittling Black women (Ward 1996). Similarly, Sofia Villenas and
Melissa Moreno (2001) discuss the contradictions Latina mothers face as they try to
teach their daughters to valerse por si misma (value themselves and be self-reliant)
within structures of inequality such as racism, capitalism, and patriarchy. In
analyzing students efforts to transform unequal conditions in urban schools, Daniel
Solrzano and Dolores Delgado Bernal (2001) reveal various forms of Chicana/o
student resistance and the continuity of this resistance as demonstrated by the

1968 East Los Angeles high school blowouts and the 1993 UCLA hunger strike for
Chicana/o Studies. Solrzano and Delgado Bernal (2001) show that resistance may
include different forms of oppositional behavior, such as self-defeating or conformist
strategies that feed back into the system of subordination. However, when informed
by a Freirean critical consciousness (1970), or recognition of the
strucconceptualizing a critical race theory in sociology 131 tural nature of
oppression, and the motivation to work toward social and racial justice, resistance
takes on a transformative form (see Solrzano and Yosso 2002c). Therefore,
resistant capital refers to the willingness to challenge inequalities (Giroux 1983).
Transformative resistant capital can be evidenced in those who recognize structures
of racism and are motivated to transform such oppressive structures (Pizarro 1998;
Villenas and Deyhle 1999). Linguistic capital learns from over 35 years of research
on bilingual education that emphasizes the value of supporting fluency in more than
one language and the connections between racialized cultural history and language
(Cummins 1986; Anzalda 1987; Garca and Baker 1995; Macedo and Bartolom
1999). Linguistic capital reflects the idea that students of color arrive at school with
multiple strengths, including language and communication skills. In addition, just as
there are different vocal registers we each draw on to whisper, whistle, or sing,
linguistic capital acknowledges that youth of color must often develop and draw on
various language registers, or styles, to communicate with different audiences. For
example, Marjorie Faulstich Orellana examines bilingual children who are often
called upon to translate for their parents or other adults and finds that these youth
gain multiple social tools of vocabulary, audience awareness, cross-cultural
awareness, realworld literacy skills, math skills, metalinguistic awareness, teaching
and tutoring skills, civic and familial responsibility, [and] social maturity (2003: 6).
Linguistic capital refers to these intellectual and social tools attained through
communication experiences in more than one language and/or style. As
demonstrated by this discussion of cultural wealth, CRT listens to and observes
people of color from the perspective that these individuals, families, and
communities are places with multiple strengths. Recognizing the knowledge
students of color bring with them from their homes and communities into the
classroom can also be facilitated through the tools of multiple disciplines. In
addition, CRT challenges scholars to strategically utilize interdisciplinary methods to
present research findings in unconventional and creative ways. Such research would
listen to and learn from those whose knowledges traditionally are excluded from
and silenced by academic research. A CRT approach to sociology, then, involves a
commitment to conduct research, teach, and develop social policy with a larger
purpose of working toward social and racial justice.
By engaging in counter narratives, we can begin to see the roots of racism in
education and allow the people of color to produce pedagogical case studies, which
empower them to shatter white, male, and class privilege
62924.)//ky
One of the methods of CRT that help analyze the role of race and racism through
the experiences of people of color is a technique with a long tradition in the social
sciences, humanities, ethnic studies, womens studies, and the law storytelling.
Richard Delgado (1989) uses a practice called counter-storytelling. Delgado argues
that counter-storytelling is both a method of telling the story of those experiences
that have not been told (i.e., those on the margins of society) and a tool for
analyzing and challenging the stories of those in power and whose story is a natural
part of the dominant discourse the majoritarian story.4 CRT can challenge deficit
majoritarian approaches to sociology through counter-storytelling, oral traditions,
historiographies, corridos, poetry, films, actos, and humor. CRT asks: Whose stories
are privileged in academic discourse, mass media, and social policy contexts and
whose stories are distorted and silenced? US history reveals that White
upper/middle-class stories are privileged and treated as normative while the stories
of people of color are marginalized (Gutirrez-Jones 2001). We further ask: What are
the experiences and responses of those whose stories are often distorted, silenced,
and marginalized? In documenting the voices of people of color, CRT in sociology
works to tell their stories. Although CRT scholarship arguably serves counternarrative functions in general, some scholars seek to be more explicit in presenting
their research through the genre of storytelling. There are at least three types of
such counter-stories evidenced in the CRT literature: autobiographical stories
(Espinoza 1990; Williams 1991; Montoya 1994), biographical stories (Lawrence and
Matsuda 1997; Fernndez 2002), and multimethod/composite stories (Bell 1987,
1992, 1996; Delgado 1995a,b, 1996, 1999, 2003; Solrzano and Yosso 2000, 2001,
2002a,b; Solrzano and Delgado Bernal 2001; Delgado Bernal and Villalpando
2002). Critical race counter-stories can serve several pedagogical functions: (1) they
can build community among those at the margins of society; (2) they can challenge
the perceived wisdom of those at societys center; (3) they can open new windows
into the reality of those at the margins by showing the possibilities beyond the ones
they live and by showing that they are not alone in their position; (4) they can teach
others that by combining elements from both the story and the current reality, one
can construct another world that is richer than either the story or the reality alone;
and (5) they can provide a context to understand and transform established belief
systems (Delgado 1989; Lawson 1995). Storytelling has a rich and continuing
tradition in the African American (Berkeley Art Center 1982; Bell 1987, 1992, 1996;
Lawrence 1992), Chicana/o (Paredes 1977; Delgado 1989, 1995b, 1996; Olivas
1990), Native American (Deloria 1969; Williams, R. 1997), and Asian American
(Wakatsuki Houston and Houston 1973; Hong Kingston 1976) communities. For our
purposes here, we focus on multimethod/composite stories. Composite counternarratives draw on multiple forms of data to recount the racialized, sexualized,
classed experiences of people of color. Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss assert,
The generation of theory requires that the analyst take apart the story within his
[/her] data (1967: 108). Our counter-stories add to the storytelling tradition and
address racism in higher education through composite characters that embody 124
tara j. yosso and daniel g. solrzano the patterns and themes evidenced in social
science data. Our approach to the critical race counter-story method borrows from
the works of Anselm Strauss and Juliet Corbin and Dolores Delgado Bernal. Strauss
and Corbin utilize a concept called theoretical sensitivity and refer to it as a

personal quality of the researcher . . . the attribute of having insight, the ability to
give meaning to data, the capacity to understand, and capability to separate the
pertinent from that which isnt (1990: 412). Delgado Bernals (1998) notion of
cultural intuition adds to Strauss and Corbins notion of theoretical sensitivity in
that it extends ones personal experience to include collective experience and
community memory, and points to the importance of participants engaging in the
analysis of data (1990: 5634). Using Strauss and Corbins theoretical sensitivity
and Delgado Bernals cultural intuition, we create counter-stories from: (1) the data
gathered from the research process itself, (2) the existing literature on the topic(s),
(3) our own professional experiences, (4) our own personal experiences, and (5) our
collective experiences and community memory. For example, in the following
counter-story excerpt, our first form of data came from primary sources, namely
focus-group interviews conducted with undergraduate and law students of color at
three major universities, in conjunction with the University of Michigan Affirmative
Action case (see Solrzano et al. 2000; Allen and Solrzano 2001; Solrzano and
Yosso 2002b). We searched and sifted through these data for examples of the
concepts we were seeking to illuminate, such as experiences with and responses to
racism and sexism (Glaser and Strauss 1967). Drawing on the experiences of
undergraduate and graduate African American, Native American, and Latina/o,
Chicana/o students, we sought to examine race, racism, White privilege, and the
racial tipping-point phenomenon. We also wanted to demonstrate how affirmative
action had been weakened from its original intent. The policy was initially developed
to serve as a means to remedy racial discrimination and, thereby, integrate true
racial diversity (pluralism) into higher education. Next, we looked to other sources
for secondary data analysis related to these concepts in the social sciences,
humanities, and legal literature. For this particular counter-story, we used the social
science data to analyze the legal documents leading up to and including the law
school case at the University of Michigan (e.g., opinions and dissents in the 1978
Bakke vs. University of California, the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education, and the
1947 Mendez vs. Westminster cases). In sifting through this literature, we began to
draw connections between our previous readings on desegregation and racial
tracking and the relevant focus-group interview data (Oakes 1985; Valencia 2003).
Finally, we added our own professional and personal experiences related to the
concepts and ideas. Here, we not only shared our own stories and reflections, but
we also drew upon the multiple voices of family, friends, colleagues, and
acquaintances. Once these various sources of data had been compiled, examined,
and analyzed, we created composite characters to help tell the counter-story. We
attempted to get the characters to engage in a real and critical dialogue about our
findings from the interviews, literature, and experiences. In the tradition of Freire
(1973), this dialogue emerged between the characters much like our own
discussions emerged through sharing, listening, challenging, and reflecting. We
share below an excerpt of this counter-story that engages Claudia,5 a Chicana civil
rights attorney and professor at a California university, in a dialogue with the
conceptualizing a critical race theory in sociology 125 late Justice Thurgood Marshall
and a community activist from the spirit-world, Ms. Ruby Puentes.6 These three
characters are attending a session of the University of Michigan Law School
affirmative action trial in January 2001.7 We ask the reader to approach the counterstory as a pedagogical case study, listen for the storys points and reflect on how
these points compare with her/his own version of reality (however conceived). We
bring the reader into this story already underway in a federal courthouse in Detroit,
Michigan as our three characters engage in dialogue about the continuities of
racism in US history: Justice Marshall interjected, History repeats itself, Claudia.
Remember Michael Olivas (1990) comments on Derrick Bells (1995) Space Traders
chronicle? He talks about how the USA has welcomed and rejected Mexicans and
Asians according to socio-political convenience. And this is like Bells (1987)
interest-convergence theory, because civil rights legislation has only been
implemented to the extent that Whites have benefited. Again I am reminded that
affirmative action as a social policy of limited goals and timetables only lasted for
10 years, from 1968 to 1978. In the 1954 Brown case, individual states took the
courts mandate to desegregate with all deliberate speed and focused on the word
deliberate rather than speed, to slow down and hinder racial integration of the
public schools. In contrast, as soon as Bakke (1978) was ruled on, many colleges
and universities couldnt move fast enough in their rush to dismantle the limited
set aside affirmative action programs they had in place. Whites had become
nervous. They felt threatened. Bakke ended that 10-year stint of set-aside
affirmative action programs, even though we had barely begun to see some results
from those goals and timetables. Despite the fact that in California limited
racebased affirmative action ended in 1997 (with passage of Proposition 209),
Whites still perceive students of color enrolling at universities to be less-qualified.
The legal debate hasnt even begun about the set-asides that are available to
Whites, just because they are White. The courts should be discussing the unequal
educational playing field leading up to university admissions processes. They should
also discuss why White students are given disproportionate access to AP/honors
classes, and an overall comprehensive college preparatory curriculum. And it would
also be important for the courts to note that White students benefit from the
tradition of family legacy admissions. . . . Ms. Puentes added, But instead of those
discussions, we will most likely hear more misinterpretations of Dr. Kings dream,
because ignoring the realities of racism and pretending that we live in a color-blind
society converges with the interests of those who benefit from racism. The
elimination of White privilege begins by educating and empowering people of color.
I nodded my head in agreement as I continued jotting down notes. I began to think
about ways to articulate Justice Marshall and Ms. Puentes comments for my own
opening remarks in the California case. I smiled at the thought that we made a
really great team. I felt humbled to have such prophetic colleagues. (see Solrzano
and Yosso 2002b) Margaret Montoya writes, Stories by and about Outsiders resist
the subordinating messages of the dominant culture by challenging stereotypes and
presenting and representing people of color as complex and heterogeneous (2002:
244). Our work attempts to tell such Outsider stories (Hill Collins 1986). This
counter-story excerpt demonstrates how we create dialogue that critically
illuminates concepts, ideas, and experiences, while incorporating the tenets of CRT.
We hear Justice Marshall describing that race matters because the legacy of racism
is a contemporary reality that shapes US society. We also listen to Ms. Puentes
concerns that 126 tara j. yosso and daniel g. solrzano discourse about racism has
not gone far enough. In addition, we reflect along with Claudia as she is trying to
digest this critical race analysis that challenges more traditional discussions of
affirmative action. Clara Lomas explains that this tradition of listening to and
recounting testimonios (life experiences) of subordinated groups is a genre of
action. She asserts that: a story does something to the storyteller; it does
something to the listeners/readers, the spectators: It has the capacity to transform
them . . . In making sense of the text as a whole the reader is forced to go outside
the text itself and examine the real world in relation to the text. (2003: 23) Lomas
describes storytelling as having the capacity to transform all those who engage the
text (e.g., visual, print, verbal). In format and content, our counter-stories attempt
to build on the transformative capacity of narratives. By offering a radically different
vision for communities of color, critical race counter-stories can shatter the
naturalness of White, male, and class privilege.
Performance Fails
The ontology of the black body is inherently shaped by slavery
through grammar and ghosts, making every performance occur
in a fog
Wilderson 9 (Frank B. Wilderson III, Ph.D. in Rhetoric/Film Studies, University of
California, Berkeley, 2009, GRAMMAR & GHOSTS: THE PERFORMATIVE LIMITS OF
AFRICAN FREEDOM,
http://journals.cambridge.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/action/displayFulltext?
type=1&fid=5476116&jid=TSY&volumeId=50&issueId=01&aid=5476108&bodyId=
&membershipNumber=&societyETOCSession=.) //ky
This easy, largely intuitive articulation of performance and emancipation was also
manifest in the declarations of performers themselves. On several occasions, artists
declared that they wanted to be known simply as artists and not as Africans or black
artists. As with any demand that is charged with high emotion, this one was not
always made with rhetorical scaffolding and extended explanationin part, because
such statements were often made during Q & A sessions or in the buzz between
sessions. As a critical theorist, it would be easy for me to deconstruct these cries
and demonstrate their dependency on outdated notions of a unitary self. Freud and
Marx, to name but two, have long ago compelled us to come to grips with the
partitioned nature of our existence. And Lacan pushed the prospects of selfknowing beyond hope of retrieval with his assertion that the wall of language
guarantees our capacity for relationality while simultaneously severing us from the
Real. There is no self to be known; hence, there is no artist whose status is free of
the taint of race and place. But if we think of this demand not as a wish to
disavow relationality, but as a wish to be imbued with relationality, then something
else emerges. Freud, Marx, and Lacans subjects dont suffer from the violence of
enslavement, which is an explicit interdiction against relationality; they suffer from
having imbibed the mystifications of the ruling class (Marx), the ego (Freud), or the
Imaginary (Lacan). There was something in the force of the performance artists cry
just to be artists that resonated with the force that first turned subjects into cargo.
Lest we think that this force is merely the grammar and ghosts of blacks in the
New World, that somehow Africans of the twentieth and twenty-first century have
an altogether different rebar of ontology, we should note Achille Mbembes
argument that, once Hegel (as a placeholder for all the punishing discourse of the
Maafa, or African Holocaust) renders Africa territorium nullius, the land of
motionless substance and of the blinding, joyful, and tragic disorder of creation,
even the African who was not captured was a slave in relation to the rest of the
world, his or her freedom from chains and distance from the Middle Passage
notwithstanding.3 Though this free African may know him/herself through
coherent cultural accoutrements unavailable to the black American or black
Caribbean, s/he is positioned, paradigmatically, as someone unable to attain[ ] to
immanent differentiation or to the clarity of self-knowledge.4 S/he is recast as an
object in a world of subjects. Even the status of free blacks, Saidiya Hartman
argues, is shaped and compromised by . . . slavery.5 Here, the prohibition against
attaining differentiation or self-knowledge rests, in the first ontological instance,
with a structural violence that removes black people from the world. The cry to be
known and appreciated as an artist and not as an African or black artist
operates on several levels, but the most profound recognizes (if only intuitively or
unconsciously) the damage of being marked as such, not in the sense of a
compromised artistic status, but a compromised existential status. The cry is not
the effect of a neurotic complex that refuses to live in a deconstructive relation to
the ego; it is a narrative strategy hoping to slip the noose of a life shaped and
compromised by slavery. No other gathering of artists and critics is overdetermined
by this dilemma. No slavery, no diaspora. No diaspora, no conference. Such
gatherings are always haunted by a shared sense that violence and captivity are the
grammar and ghosts of our every gesture. This is where performance meets
ontology. But all too often, such meetings take place not on a well-lit stage, but in a
fog.
Current discussions of race are destabilized as a result of

capitalism, racism still exists and results in exploitation,
oppression, and ignorance

62924.)//ky
Discussion of race and racism in the social sciences has a long tradition. W. E. B.
DuBoiss often quoted line from The Souls of Black Folk: the problem of the
twentieth century is the problem of the color-line (1989 [1903]: 29) takes the
discussion of race and racism back to at least the turn of the nineteenth century.
Indeed, a century after this great American social scientist predicted that racism
would continue to emerge as one of this countrys key social problems, researchers,
practitioners, and students are still searching for the necessary tools to effectively
analyze and challenge the impact of race and racism in US society. Discussions
about race and racism have been either pushed to the margins or effectively
destabilized. While those on the political right attempt to dismiss the permanence of
racism and strategically move the discourse toward a colorblind society, some
liberal and even leftleaning scholars criticize work that addresses issues of race,
stating that it is merely a social construction and a byproduct of capitalism. In this
context, we argue that we must discuss race because racism continues to have very
real consequences on US society at both the institutional (macro) and the individual
(micro) levels. Eurocentric versions of US history reveal race to be a socially
constructed category, created to differentiate racial groups and to show the
superiority or dominance of one race over another (Omi and Winant 1994; Banks
1995). Race can be viewed as an objective phenomenon until human beings
provide the social meaning. The social meaning applied to race is based upon and
justified by an ideology of racial superiority and White privilege. That ideology is
called racism and Audre Lorde defines racism as the belief in the inherent
superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance (1992:
496). Manning Marable defines racism as a system of ignorance, exploitation, and

power used to oppress African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, Pacific Americans,
American Indians, and other people on the basis of ethnicity, culture, mannerisms,
and color (1992: 5). Marables definition of racism is important because it shifts the
discussion of race and racism from a Black/White discourse to one that includes
multiple faces, voices, and experiences. Embedded in the Lorde and Marable
definitions of racism are at least three important points: (1) one group deems itself
superior to all others, (2) the group that is superior has the power to carry out the
racist behavior, and (3) racism benefits the superior group while it negatively
impacts the subordinate racial/ethnic groups. These two definitions take the position
that racism is about institutional power and people of color in the United States
have never possessed this form of power. Beverly Tatum further reminds us:
Despite the current rhetoric about affirmative action and reverse racism, every
social indicator, from salary to life expectancy, reveals the advantages of being
White (1997: 8). Harlon Dalton has argued that it is important for Whites to
conceive of themselves as members of a race and to recognize the advantages that
attach to simply having white skin (1995: 6). Andrew Hacker has raised the
question: Can we place a price on being White in the United States? (see 1992: 31
2). The racial/ethnic advantages and privileges of being White in the USA can be an
important part of the discussion and analysis in the sociology classroom (see Hacker
1992; Allen 1993; Scheurich 1993a,b; Sleeter 1993, 1994; Dalton 1995; Halewood
1995; Bonilla-Silva 2001). John Calmore (1997) asserts that what is noticeably
missing from the discussion of race is a substantive discussion of racism. We agree
that a conversation about race without talking about racism and White privilege
decontextualizes those places where race and racism enter our lives in macro and
micro ways (Lawrence 1987; Davis 1989). The field of sociology has consistently
been at the forefront of work asking critical questions about race, racism, and social
inequality. Our goals for this chapter are to provide readers with insight into how we
came to utilize critical race theory (CRT) as an analytical framework, and to
encourage sociological research on race and inequality to more explicitly draw on
this powerful analytical lens. We agree with Derrick Bell, who has asserted, it is
time to get real about race and the persistence of racism in America (1992: 5).
Race is key to every aspect of society, but is incompatible with

other forms of critical studies
62924.)//ky
Although social science has traditionally confirmed the salience of race in US
society, many critical race theorists are going beyond the view that race is a
dichotomy based on social construction or biological factors (Bell 1992; Delgado and
Stefancic 1995). They recognize that race is central to peoples lives and are
likewise placing race at the center of their work (Dalton 1987). These scholars are
not utilizing race as a variable that can be controlled, but instead are focusing on
the real impact that racism has had and continues to have within American society.
CRT draws from and extends a broad literature base, often termed critical theory,
in law, sociology, history, ethnic studies, and womens studies (Delgado and
Stefancic 1995). In paraphrasing Brian Fay (1987: 4), William Tierney has defined
critical theory as an attempt to understand the oppressive aspects of society in
order to generate societal and individual transformation (1993: 4). Kimberl
Crenshaw (2002) explains that in the late 1980s, various legal scholars felt limited
by work that separated critical theory from conversations about race and racism.
Alongside other Outsider scholars (Hill Collins 1986), Crenshaw was looking for
both a critical space in which race was foregrounded and a race space where critical
themes were central (Crenshaw 2002: 19). Mari Matsuda defined the CRT space as:
conceptualizing a critical race theory in sociology 119 the work of progressive legal
scholars of color who are attempting to develop a jurisprudence that accounts for
the role of racism in American law and that works toward the elimination of racism
as part of a larger goal of eliminating all forms of subordination. (1991: 1331) Figure
6.1 outlines CRTs family tree through our own lenses of experience. In prior work
we described a genealogy of CRT that links the themes and patterns of legal
scholarship with the social science literature that seems to have informed CRT
scholars (Solrzano and Yosso 2001). Here, we take a more personalized approach
that reflects our own intellectual history that led us to CRT and beyond. In its post1987 form, CRT emerged from criticisms of the Critical Legal Studies (CLS)
movement. One of the criticisms was the inability of the CLS scholars to incorporate
race and racism into their analysis. Indeed, these same critiques of critical studies
had been taking place in Ethnic Studies and Women Studies Departments. These
Departments were struggling to define and incorporate cultural nationalist
paradigms, internal colonial models, Marxist and neo-Marxist, and feminist
frameworks into their race- and gender-based intellectual and community work.
Critical race theorists began to pull away from CLS because the critical legal
framework restricted their ability to analyze racial injustice (Delgado 1988;
Crenshaw et al. 1995; Delgado and Stefancic 2001; Crenshaw 2002). Initially,
because CRT focused on civil rights legislation in terms of Black vs. White, other
groups have since expanded the CRT family tree to incorporate their racialized
experiences, as women, as Latinas/os, as Native Americans, and as Asian
Americans. For example, LatCrit, TribalCrit, and AsianCrit are natural outgrowths of
CRT, evidencing Chicana/o, Latina/o, Native American, and Asian American
communities ongoing search for a framework that addresses racism and its
accompanying oppressions beyond the Black/White binary (Ikemoto 1992; Chang
1993, 1998; Chon 1995; Delgado 1997; Williams, R. 1997; Brayboy 2001, 2002).
color have also challenged CRT to address feminist critiques of racism and classism
through FemCrit theory (Caldwell 1995; Wing 1997, 2000). In addition, White
scholars have expanded CRT with WhiteCrit, by looking behind the mirror to
expose White privilege and challenge racism (Delgado and Stefancic 1997). Our
work in CRT is informed by the scholarship of Latina/o Critical Race (LatCrit) theory.
LatCrit theory extends critical race discussions to address the layers of racialized
subordination that comprise Chicana/o, Latina/o experiences (Arriola 1997, 1998;
Stefancic 1998). LatCrit scholars assert that racism, sexism, and classism are
experienced amidst other layers of subordination based on immigration status,
sexuality, culture, language, phenotype, accent, and surname. Alongside these

scholars, we argue that the Black/White binary is a paradigm of understanding US
race relations in terms of the African American and White experience (Valdes 1997,
1998). The use of the word binary describes the two-dimensional limit that is
placed on discussions about race and racism. Like the work of Marable (1992), we
argue that racism in the United States intersects with other forms of subordination
described above (Crenshaw 1989, 1991; Montoya 1994; Espinoza and Harris 1998;
Johnson 1999). We recognize that African Americans have experienced a unique
history of racism and other forms of subordination in this country, yet we also
acknowledge that other people of color have their own histories that likewise have
been shaped by the intersecting forms of subordination. By offering a twodimensional discourse, the Black/White binary limits our understanding of the
multiple ways in which African Americans, Native Americans, Asian/Pacific Islanders,
Chicanas/os, and Latinas/os experience, respond to, and resist these forms of
oppression. Indeed, racism and its intersections with other forms of subordination
shape the experiences of people of color very differently than Whites (Bell 1986,
1998; Baca Zinn 1989; Essed 1991). Overall, the popular discourse in the USA, as
well as the academic discourse, continues to be limited by the Black/White binary.
We hope that a CRT in sociology will aid those whose efforts continue to expand this
dialogue to recognize the ways in which our struggles for social justice are limited
by discourses that omit and thereby silence the multiple experiences of people of
color (Ellison 1990). While we are informed by CRT and its genealogical branches,
we continue to draw on our interdisciplinary training and theoretical models whose
popularity may have waned since the 1960s and 1970s, but whose commitment to
speaking truth to power continues to speak to contemporary social realities.
Informed by scholars who continue to expand the literature and scope of
discussions on race and racism, we have developed a working definition of CRT in
education, adapted originally from the LatCrit Primer (1999) and that we adapt here
for the field of sociology: Critical race theory (CRT) is a framework that can be used
to theorize and examine the ways in which race and racism implicitly and explicitly
impact on the social structures, practices, and discourses that affect people of color.
Important to this critical framework is a challenge to the dominant ideology, which
supports deficit notions about communities of color while assuming neutrality and
objectivity. Utilizing the experiences of people of color, a CRT in sociology also
theorizes and examines that place where racism intersects with other forms of
subordination such as sexism, classism, nativism, monolingualism, and
heterosexism. CRT in sociology is conceived as a social justice project that attempts
to link theory with practice, scholarship with teachconceptualizing a critical race
theory in sociology 121 ing, and the academy with the community. CRT
acknowledges that social institutions operate in contradictory ways with their
potential to oppress and marginalize coexisting with their potential to emancipate
and empower. CRT in sociology is transdisciplinary and draws on many other
schools of progressive scholarship. From this working definition, at least five themes
of CRT inform our work as social scientists in the field of education:3 (1) The
intercentricity of race and racism; (2) the challenge to dominant ideology; (3) the
commitment to social justice; (4) the centrality of experiential knowledge; and (5)
the utilization of interdisciplinary approaches. These five tenets provide a guide to
developing a CRT in sociology.
Wilderson
Cap Turns
Settler Ontology
Marxist Revolutions represent the ontology of the Settler,
continuing Indian Land Dispossession and leads to autogenocide and the prevention of stewardship
California, Berkeley, March 19, 2010, Red, White & Black: Cinema and the Structure
of U.S. Antagonisms)//ky
Land In delineating Savage ontology through the element of land, indigenous
scholars emphasize that a relationship (a) to the land in general and (b) to the land
which any given tribe inhabited at the time of contact, is a relationship constituent
of ontology. Most writers are also quick to draw a distinction between their
relationship to the land and that of the Settler. In so doing, land becomes a pivotal
element in a semiotics of Savage loss and Settler gain: We are all land-based
peoplewho are attuned to the rhythms of our homelands in a way that assumes
both protection of, and an intimate belonging to, our ancestral places [But we are]
surrounded by other, more powerful nations thatwant our land and resources
[This is an] ongoing colonial relationship. (Trask 132-133) Savage sovereignty qua
land is distinguished from Settlerism in the way in which it imagines dominion and
use. Indigenous dominion is characterized by the idea of stewardship rather than
the idea of ownership: Indigenous philosophies are premised on the belief
that the earth was created by a power external to human beings, who
have a responsibility to act as stewards ; since humans had no hand in making
the earth, they have 237 Red, White, & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S.
Antagonisms no right to possess it or dispose of it as they see fitpossession of
land by man is unnatural and unjust. The stewardship principle, reflecting a spiritual
connection with land established by the Creator, gives human beings special
responsibilities within the areas they occupy as indigenous peoples, linking them in
a natural way to their territories. (Alfred 60-61) Stewardship impacts upon use in
that the landwhat Western metaphysics refers to as natureis viewed as source
rather than resource. This not only gestures to the unethical spiritual and political
character of the capitalist profit motive but also posits the idea of resource
development and industrialization as paradigms of dominion and use which are
irreconcilable with indigenisms paradigm of dominion and use. It not only marks a
conflict between indigenism and the heinous and exploitive desires of capitalism,
but also between indigenism and the emancipatory and revolutionary desires of a
Marxist proletarian dictatorship. Ward Churchill illustrates the split between Indians
and Marxists regarding conclusions to be drawn from analyses of what is wrong
with the capitalist process; with a vision of an alternative societythe redistribution
of proceeds accruing from a systematic rape of the earth is, at best, an irrelevancy
forIndians (Marxism and Native Americans 185). Throughout the metacommentaries of Savage ontology the point is made that Native people share and
watch over the land in concert with other creatures that inhabit it. Settlerisms
structural imposition on the indigenous system of relationality (one in which all
inhabitants of the land are the Indians relations) is tantamount to the dismantling
of indigenous subjectivity. This dismantling of subjectivity, Church and others point
out, cannot be repaired by a Marxist revolution (found, for example, in Negri
238 Red, White, & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms and Hardts
idea of time redeemed or the commons restored); for such a revolution
reinstates neither stewardship nor animate/inanimate kinship relations
back to the paradigm of dominion and use .lxii The Settlers ontological
degradation in the form of capitalism, and his/her emancipation in the form of
communism, portends the beginning and the continuation, respectively, of Indian
land dispossessiona dispossession far more profound than material larceny:
Abandonment of their land base is not an option for Native Americans, either in
fact or in theory. The result would simply be auto-genocide (Churchill,
Marxism and Native Americans 193).
Indigenism
Marxism erases original experience and is a threat to native
sovereignty
Deloria, Churchill, and others insist upon the incompatibility of both Marxist and
psychoanalytic utopianism as projects of emancipation for Native people. Churchill
goes so far as to say that Marxism [constitutes] as great a threat to native
sovereignty and self-determination as capitalism (Since Predator Came 6). In
addition, there seems to be a radical disarticulation between the Settlers and the
Savages topographies of the soul: the secular mediations and processes through
which a psychoanalyst punctuates (Lacan) the analysands empty speech, and
thereby guides the analysand to a non-egoic relationship with his/her
contemporaries (the attainment of full speech), are apparently 242 Red, White, &
Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms dumbstruck when confronted
by the mediations and processes through which the medicine man/woman heals the
tribal member and thereby re-harmonizes him/her with the universe and all its
relations. Vine Deloria links this besetting hobble of psychoanalysiss healing power
to the bankrupt ethics of Christianity: [T]he original [Christian] perception of reality
becomes transformed over a period of time into philosophies and theologies which
purport to give a logical and analytical explanation of ultimate reality [i.e., Freudian
psychoanalysis]. These explanations, of course, have eliminated the human
emotions and intuitive insights of the original experience and in their place have
substituted a systematic rendering of human knowledge concerning the natural
world. (The Metaphysics of Modern Existence 151) Here, Deloria glosses Leslie
Silkos assertion that Europeans are spiritual orphans. The ancestors had called
Europeans the orphan people and had noted that as with orphans taken in by selfish
and coldhearted people, few Europeans had remained whole. They failed to
recognize the earth as their mother (Silko The Almanac of the Dead 258). The
disturbing result of this abandonment is the European
Marxism encourages an unethical logic that is based on the

supremacy of the human, destroying indigenism
Sterling and Angelita advance across the novel bearing their grammar of suffering
and that grammar of sufferings incompatibility with the Settlers grammar of
suffering. Sterling is banished from his reservation because he facilitated the access
of a Hollywood film crew to a sacred site, though the very same elders who
banished him also allowed United States corporate mining interests onto the
reservation to mine uranium and, consequently, contaminate the minds and bodies
of the inhabitants. The people and places Sterling meets during his wandering exile,
as well as his internal monologues, catalyzed by his reminiscences, give Silko the
opportunity for extensive reflection regarding the spiritual impact of Laguna Pueblo
myth and lore on a colonized people; and on the intraindigenous tensions that arise
when cracks and fissures occur in the credibility of those charged with safekeeping
these traditions and those charged with continuing them. Angelitas struggle for her
own credibility within the Army of Justice and Redistribution and among the
indigenous peoples of southern Mexico provides Silko with the opportunity to
critique Marxism through an indigenous lens and thereby show how its secular
excesses (e.g. industrialization) are isomorphic with the religious excesses of
Christianity. Silkos argumentby way of Angelitas struggles with Bartolomeo and
her 319 Red, White, & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms
dialogues with her people and the eldersis that, at a certain level of abstraction,
both the emancipatory logic of Marxism and the conservative logic of Christianity
are unethical when confronted with the emancipatory logic of indigenism because
they are built upon the supremacy of a monolithic entity: either the Human being
(Marxism) or the one God (Christianity).
Inequality
The Settler forms an unequal relationship with the savage,
where the settler wreaks havoc on the savage and attempts to
wipe it out
Granted, the Savage relation to the Settler by way of libidinal economys structure
of exchange is far from isomorphic, at the level of content, with what Fanon calls
existence.xxi For example, there is indeed important and resounding dissonance
between the Indians spiritual/divine imagining of the subject in libidinal economy
and the Settler/Masters secular, or psychoanalytic, or even religious imaginings
(see Deloria, 1973: 217 and 1979: ix-xiii, 14-18, 86-101, and 118-120). But these
differences do not cancel each other out. That is, they are not differences with an
antagonistic structure, but differences with a conflictual structure; because
articulation, rather than a void, makes the differences legible. In other words,
Savage capacity is not obliterated by these differences. In fact, its interlocutory
life is often fortified and extended by such differences. The modern or post-modern
subject alienated within language, on one hand, and the Great Spirit devotee, or
child of Mother Earth, on the other hand, may in fact be elaborated by different
cosmologies (Deloria, 1973: 75-89), predicated on what Deloria has noted as
conflictual visions, but Lacans analysand (meaning a subjective capacity for full or
empty speech) does not require the Indian as its parasitic host, despite the fact that
the Indian was forcibly removed to clear a space for the analysts office. This is
because alienation is essential to both the Savage and the Settlers way of
imagining structural positionality; to the way Native American meta-commentaries
think ontology. Thus, the analysands essential capacity for alienation from being
(alienation that takes place in language) is not parasitic on the Savages capacity
to be alienated from the spirit world or the land (which for Indians are
cosmologically inseparable). Whereas historically, the secular imperialism which
made psychoanalytic imaginings possible wreaked havoc on the Savage at the
level of Fanonian existence, that contact did not wipe out his/her 63 Red, White, &
Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms libidinal capacityor Native
metaphysics. This is true not in some empirical sense, for as a Black I have no
access to the Indians spirit world. I am also barred from subjectivity in even the
most revolutionary schemata of White secularism (Lacanian psychoanalysis and
Negris Marxism). Rather, it is true because the most profound and unflinching
metacommentators on the Savage and libidinal economy (although Indians would
probably substitute spirit world for libidinal economy and replace the subject
with the soul) and the most unflinching meta-commentators on the Settler and
libidinal economy say it is true. Having communed around their shared capacity for
subjective alienation since the dawn of modernity (what Indians call contact), they
formed a community of interpretation. Even as the Settler began to wipe the Indian
out, s/he was building an interpretive community with the Savage the likes of
which the Master was not building with the Slave. In the 1530s, the Thomist
ecclesiastics of the School of Salamanca agreed that Indians possessed subjective
dominion in a way that slaves did not. Judy maintains that this claim was made
possible on the basis of ethnographic evidence which Cortes and others had
returned from the New World to Spain with. For the Thomists and the Spanish
explorers: Indians are humans and not animalsthey possessed a certain rational
order in their affairsCortess ethnographic datadescribed a culture with
extensive evidence of rationality and civility: a material culture capable of
constructing cities of stone, urbanization (society based on the polis), sophisticated
and hierarchical social organization, commerce, juridical institutions, and above all
highly ritualized religious practice 64 Red, White, & Black: Cinema and the
Structure of U.S. Antagonisms Forfeiture of the natural right of dominium, then,
would require that the Indian was truly irrational and so in violation of the law of
nature. In the face of overwhelming evidence of the Indians rationality and civility,
even the two most frequently cited acts of abomination held against Indians,
cannibalismand sacrificewere viewedas no more than singular temporary
aberrations of reason and so not evidence of true irrationality, which made them
insufficient grounds for denying the Indians possession of dominium. (Judy 80-81)
The black subjects positionality is ignored, being placed in

total subjectivity
California, Berkeley, 25 Aug 2010, Gramscis Black Marx: Whither the Slave in Civil
Society?,
http://www.tandfonline.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/doi/pdf/10.1080/135046303200010
1579.) //ky
Thus, the KhoiSans status within Discourse was not the status of an opponent or an
interlocutor, but was the status of an unspeakable scandal. His/her position within
the Discourse was one of disarticulation, for he/she did little or nothing to fortify and
extend the interlocutory life of the Discourse. Just as the KhoiSan presented the
Discourse of the Cape with an anthropological scandal, so the black subject in the
United States, the slave, presents both marxism and American social movement
practice with a historical scandal. Every group provides American discourse with
acceptable categories for the record (a play of signifiers, points of articulation)
except black Americans. How is black incoherence in the face of the Historical Axis
germane to the black experience as a phenomenon without analog? A sample list
of codes mapped out by an American subjects Historical Axis Downloaded by
[141.213.236.110] at 11:41 04 July 2014 236 Frank Wilderson, III include the
following. (1) Rights or Entitlements: here even Native Americans provide categories
for the record when one thinks of how the Iroquois constitution, for example,
becomes the American constitution. (2) Sovereignty: whether that state be one the
subject left behind, or one, once again as in the case of American Indians, which
was taken by force and dint of broken treaties. White supremacy has made good
use of the Indian subjects positionality: a positionality which fortifies and extends
the interlocutory life of America as a coherent (albeit genocidal) idea, because
treaties are forms of articulation, discussions brokered between two groups
presumed to possess the same kind of historical currency: sovereignty. The code of
sovereignty can have both a past and future history, if youll excuse the oxymoron,
when one considers that there are 150 Native American tribes with applications in
at the B.I.A. for federal recognition, that they might qualify for funds harvested from
land stolen from them.5 In other words, the curse of being able to generate
categories for the record manifests itself in Indians ability to be named by white
supremacy that they might receive a small cash advance on funds (land) which
white people stole from them. (3) Immigration: another code which maps the
subject onto the American Historical Axis narratives of arrival based on collective
volition and premeditated desire. Chicano/a subject positions can fortify and extend
the interlocutory life of America as an idea because racial conflict can be articulated
across the various contestations over the legitimacy of arrival, immigration, or of
sovereignty, i.e., the Mexican-American War. In this way, whites and Chicano/as
both generate data for this category. Slavery is the great leveller of the black
subjects positionality. The black American subject does not generate historical
categories of Entitlement, Sovereignty, and/or Immigration for the record. We are off
the record. To the data generating demands of the historical axis we present a
virtual blank, much like the KhoiSans virtual blank presented to the data generating
demands of the anthropological axis. The work of Hortense Spillers on black female
sexuality corroborates these findings. Spillers conclusions regarding the black
female subject and the discourse of sexuality are in tandem with ours regarding the
black ungendered subject and the question of hegemony and, in addition, unveil the
ontological elements which black women and men share: a scandal in the face of
New World hegemony. [T]he black female [is] the veritable nemesis of degree and
difference [emphasis mine]. Having encountered what they understand as chaos,
the empowered need not name further, since chaos is sufficient naming within itself.
I am not addressing the black female in her historical apprenticeship as inferior
being, but, rather, the paradox of non-being [emphasis mine]. Under the sign of this
particular historical order, black female and black male are absolutely equal.
(Spillers, 1984 p. 77) In the socio-political order of the New World the black body is
a captive body marked and branded from one generation to the next. A body on
which any hint or suggestion of a dimension of ethics, of relatedness between
human personality and its anatomical features, between one human Downloaded by
[141.213.236.110] at 11:41 04 July 2014 Gramscis Black Marx: Whither the Slave in
Civil Society? 237 personality and another, between human personality and cultural
institutions [is lost]. To that extent, the procedures adopted for the captive flesh
demarcate a total objectification, as the entire captive community becomes a living
laboratory. (emphasis mine, p. 68) The gratuitous violence begun in slavery, hand in
hand with the absence of data for the New World Historical Axis (Rights/Entitlement,
Sovereignty, Immigration) as a result of slavery, position black subjects in excess of
Gramscis fundamental categories, i.e. labour, exploitation, historical selfawareness; for these processes of subjectification are assumed by those with a
semiotics of analogy already in hand the currency of exchange through which a
dimensionof relatedness between one human personality and another, between
human personality and cultural institutions can be established. Thus, the black
subject imposes a radical incoherence upon the assumptive logic of Gramscian
discourse. S/he implies a scandal: total objectification in contradistinction to
human possibility, however slim, as in the case of working class hegemony, that
human possibility appears. It is this scandal which places black subjectivity in a
structurally impossible position, outside of the natural articulations of hegemony;
but it also places hegemony in a structurally impossible position because our
presence works back upon the grammar of hegemony and threatens it with
incoherence. If every subject even the most massacred subjects, Indians are
required to have analogues within the nations structuring narrative, and one very
large significant subject, the subject upon which the nations drama of value is built,
is a subject whose experience is without analogue then, by that subjects very
presence all other analogues are destabilised. Lest we think of the black body as
captive only until the mid-nineteenth century, Spillers reminds us that the marking
and branding, the total objectification are as much a part of the present as they
were of the past. Even though the captive flesh/body has been liberated, and no
one need pretend that even the quotation marks do not matter, dominant symbolic
activity, the ruling episteme that releases the dynamics of naming and valuation,
remains grounded in the originating metaphors of captivity and mutilation so that it
is as if neither time nor history, nor historiography and its topics, shows movement,
as the human subject is murdered over and over again by the passions of a
bloodless and anonymous archaism, showing itself in endless disguise. (1987, p. 68)
Herein, the concept of civil war takes on a comprehensive and structural, as
opposed to merely eventful, connotation.
Social movements fail and lead to slavery, exploitation, and

terror
California, Berkeley, 2003, The Prison Slave as Hegemony's (Silent) Scandal,
http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/stable/29768181?seq=6.) //ky
Any serious musing on the question of antagonistic identity formation ? a formation,
the mass mobilization of which can precipitate a crisis in the institu tions and
assumptive logic that undergird the United State of America ? must come to grips
with the contradictions between the political demands of radical social movements,
such as the large prison abolition movement, which seeks to abolish the prisonindustrial complex, and the ideological structure that under? writes its political
desire. I contend that the positionality of Black subjectivity is at the heart of those
contradictions and that this unspoken desire is bound up with the political
limitations of several naturalized and uncritically accepted categories that have
their genesis mainly in the works of Antonio Gramsci, namely, work or labor, the
wage, exploitation, hegemony, and civil society. I wish to theorize the symptoms of
rage and resignation I hear in the words of George Jackson, when he boils reform
down to a single word, "fascism," or in Assata's brief declaration, "i hated it," as well
as in the Manichean delirium of Fanon, Martinot, and Sexton. Today, the failure of
radical social movements to embrace symptoms of all three gestures is tantamount
to the reproduction of an anti-Black politics that nonethe? less represents itself as
being in the service of the emancipation of the Black prison slave. By examining the
strategy and structure of the Black subject's absence in, and incommensurability
with, the key categories of Gramscian theory, we come face to face with three
unsettling consequences: (1) The Black American subject imposes a radical
incoherence upon the assumptive logic of Gramscian discourse and on today's
coalition politics. In other words, s/he implies a scandal. (2) The Black subject
reveals the inability of social movements grounded in Gramscian discourse to think
of white supremacy (rather than capitalism) as the base and thereby calls into
question their claim to elaborate a comprehensive and decisive antagonism. Stated
another way, Gramscian discourse and coalition politics are indeed able to imagine
the subject that transforms itself into a mass of antagonistic identity formations,
formations that can precipitate a crisis in wage slavery, exploitation, and
hegemony, but they are asleep at the wheel when asked to provide enabling
antagonisms toward unwaged slavery, despotism, and terror. (3) We begin to see
how Marxism suffers from a kind of conceptual anxiety. There is a desire for
socialism on the other side of crisis, a society that does away not with the category
of worker, but with the imposition workers suffer under the approach of variable
capital. In other words, the mark of its conceptual anxiety is in its desire to
democratize work and thus help to keep in place and insure the coherence of
Reformation and Enlightenment foundational values of productivity and progress.
This scenario crowds out other postrevolutionary possibilities, i.e., idleness. The
scandal, with which the Black subject position "threatens" Gramscian and coalition
discourse, is manifest in the Black subject's incommensurability with, or
disarticulation of, Gramscian categories: work, progress, production, exploita? tion,
hegemony, and historical self-awareness. Through what strategies does the Black
subject destabilize ? emerge as the unthought, and thus the scandal of? historical
materialism? How does the Black subject function within the "American desiring
machine" differently than the quintessential Gramscian subaltern, the worker?
Capitalism Cant Solve
Slavery
The multitude fails to bring revolutionary change and instead
reinforces the slave estates foundation
In Monsters Ball, living time is redeemed from prison time by the power of love, the
liberal humanist event, rendered aesthetically through the character arc: the
Southern racists refusal of hate and his self-abandonment to the amorous embrace
of the Other. Also enabled by the power of the amorous, Michael Hardts living time
is redeemed from prison time through the event of revolutionary love,
ontologically rendered through the continuous movement of constituent power
(Prison Time 78) manifest in Hardts prescription to embrace and transpose Jean
Genets project of saintliness. In Empire Negri and Hardt ground this notion of a
common, constituent power in their belief that the post-industrial abstract and
transcendental evolution of private property coincides with the re-composition of
the proletariat into a global, more radical and profound commonality than has ever
been experienced in the history of capitalism (Empire 303). They call this recomposed, radical and profound commonality, which has been elaborated in the last
twenty to thirty years of capitalist exploitation and alienation, the multitude. 362
Red, White, & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms Just as Empire
in the spectacle of its force continually determines systemic recompositions, so too
new figures of resistance are composed through the sequences of the events of
struggle. This is another fundamental characteristic of the existence of the
multitude today, within Empire and against Empire. New figures of struggle and new
subjectivities are produced in the conjuncture of events, in the universal nomadism
[here Negri and Hardt are referring to the exponential rise in near-refugee status of
so many Third World people during globalization], in the general mixture and
miscegenation of individuals and populations, and in the technological
metamorphoses of the imperial biopolitical machine [The multitude] express,
nourish, and develop positively their own constituent projects; they work toward the
liberation of living labor, creating constellations of powerful singularitiesThe
multitude is the real productive force of our social world, whereas Empire is a mere
apparatus of capture that lives only off the vitality of the multitudeas Marx would
say, a vampire regime of accumulated dead labor that survives only by sucking off
the blood of the living. (Empire 61-62) And on the terrain of Empire (a terrain on
which private property is more and more abstract and transcendental, a terrain of
communicative and interactive production) a new notion of [the] commons will
have to emerge (Empire 303) from the constituent projects of the multitude,
their liberation of living labor (61). According Negri and Hardt, a new species of
political activist has been born of the multitude, paradoxical in its idealism in
that its: 363 Red, White, & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms
realistic course of action today is to demand what is seemingly impossible, that is,
something new. [The constituent projects of the multitude] do not provide a
practical blueprint for how to solve problems, and we should not expect that of
them. They seek rather to transform the public agenda by creating political desires
for a better futureOne of the most remarkable characteristics of these movements
is their diversity: trade unionists together with ecologist together with priests and
Communists. These movements evoke the opennesstoward new kinds of

exchange and new ideas (Hardt, The New Faces in Genoa Want a Different
Future. New York Times. Wednesday, July 25, 2001.) The emergence of a new
notion of the commons, a transformed political agenda by way of the creation of
political desires or a better future, is Negri and Hardts dream for the
transformation of capitalist cartography: the redemption of prison space. It goes
hand in hand with Hardts specific dream for new common names (303) by way of
Genets saintly project for the redemption of prison timehis simple affirmation
[that] we still do not know what bodies can do (73). For Hardt, Genets divinity
lies in his: revealing our common power to constitute reality, to constitute being.
The power of creation, the power to cause our own existence, is divine If we
recognize what is common to [the prisoners] body and our own, if we discover the
way [the prisoners] body agrees with our own and how our bodies together
compose a new body [the multitude re-composed from the worker], we can
ourselves cause that joyful encounter to return [hence the emancipatory event].
(Prison Time 73) 364 Red, White, & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S.
Antagonisms For both Forsters individual and Hardts multitudeboth subsumed by
prison timethe event or encounter in which time is re-deemed is inextricably
bound in the subjects capacity to be transformed, socially (Forster) and
ontologically (Hardt), by abandoning subjectivity to what in the words of Genet is
one long mating, burdened and complicated by a heavy, strange, erotic
ceremonial (The Thiefs Journal, 10) (74). And love is the driving force in this
constitution [of a new body, the multitude]. The organization of joyful encounters is
the increase in our power, our power to act and power to exist This eternal return
to the joyful encounter is a constitution of being, not in the sense that it fixes an
immobile identity (far from it), but rather in that it defines a movement, a
becoming, a trajectory of encounters, always open and unforeseeable, continuously
susceptible to the intervention of the new events. The return of the joyful encounter
is the first thread from which we will weave an alternative constituent time. (73-74)
Lest the structural correlation between Hanks susceptibility to the intervention of
the new events (his liaison with Leticia) and that same susceptibility of the
multitude, found in Hardt and Negris work, be read as an agreement between
Monsters Ball and Marxism at the level of the social, we should bear in mind Hardt
and Negris contrariness when confronted with the politics of individuated liberation.
Outside of a materialist, collective, and dynamic conception of time it is
impossible to conceive of revolution (Negri, Macchina tempo. Milan: Feltrinelli:
1982: 253) (70); which is to say, the social effect of Forsters amorous interracial
dream cannot have a structural impact on Hank Grotowski in his capacity as a
member of the multitude. Thus, for Hardt, Monsters 365 Red, White, & Black:
Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms Balls social politics would be weak at
best, reactionary at worst. I would agree with Hardt, but it is my task here to add
that the structural impact of Hardt and Negris amorous dream shakes not one pillar
on the slave estate and in fact strengthens, along with Forsters dream, the slave
estates foundation. Monsters Ball does, however, pose the question of redemption
both in terms of Hanks individuated amorous event, his liaison with Leticia, and in
terms of Hardts constituent (collective) revolutionary event, the problems posed by
both the image of civil societys organizers of hegemony trapped behind the glass
of the death chambers witness room and by the gathering of guards suffering on
death row. What is essential, however, is that the power to pose the question is
dependent and parasitic on Black presence, while simultaneously, the Black is
barred from the questions raised. From the organizers of hegemony locked behind
the glass of the witness room, we then cut back to Lawrence, the guards, and the
preparatory rituals. The opening shot here is cropped in such a way that an
asephalic, or headless, White guard appears. He is helping the condemned on with
his diaper. Like the high angle shot toward the beginning of this montage, the
asephalic subjectivity of the prison guard positions him in such a way that he
shares, with Lawrence Musgrove, not the fate of physical death, but the fate of
social death. It is as if they are positioned, both White guard and Black inmate, by
a fatal way of being alive (Marriott 15). The execution sequence, through a swift
succession of compilation shots (shots spliced together to give a quick impression of
the place where the rituals of shaving and diapering take place) cross-cuts Leticia
and Tyrell at home and Lawrence, Hank, and Sonny and the sketching Lawrence has
drawn; then back and forth among the sacred 366 Red, White, & Black: Cinema and
the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms shearing, the witness room, the hallway, the
incarceration of civil societys assemblage, and the electric chair itself. It moves us
through the death walk during which Sonny vomits, doubles over, and so takes
himself out of the proceedings; all the way to the execution itself and the final cut
which brings us back to the Musgrove residence where Leticia is now alone,
brushing her teeth (the image of her face split in two between a normal medicine
cabinet mirror and a magnifying mirror that extends out from the wall). On the face
of it, the argument of the sequence appears to be in tandem with the ontological
assumptive logic that I have suggested, shared by both the aesthetic gestures of
White cinema and meta-commentaries on proletarian ontology. In other words,
Monsters Ball, through the intentionality of its screenplay, seeks agreement with
the assumptive logic of Negri, Hardt, film theory, and the plethora of critical
attention the film received in local newspapers and magazines; its narrative
suggests that, though the experience of suffering varies from person to person
(some folks get executed while others grow morose at the thought of execution),
the grammar of suffering is universal because a carceral modality now permeates
the commons. As Michael Hardt would have it: My life too is structured through
disciplinary regimes. I live prison time in our free society, exiled from living
(Prison Time 67).
Violence results from the power relationship of the master and

the slave, which Marxism ignores and instead exile the slave
from the drama of value
My thesis with respect to the structure of U.S. antagonisms posits violence as an
idiom of power which marks the triangulated relationality of Modernity (Red, White,
and Black) as the broad institutional effect of the Western Hemisphere and most
pernicious expression of that institutionality, the United States of America. My claim,
building on the explanatory power of the Afro-Pessimists, is that violence is at the
heart of this idiom of power. Violence determines the essential contours of
Settler/Savage and Master/Slave relations. This notion of violence as a positioning
matrix weakens the heretofore consensual post-structuralist notions of film studies,
feminism, and Negri and Hardts post-industrial Marxism, all of which assume
symbolic negotiation (discourse) to be the essence of the matrix that positions
subjects. The thesis seeks to mark film studies, feminism, psychoanalysis, and
Marxism as White, and to de-essentialize the suffering which animates them,

humiliating them in the face of the Slave and that part of the Savage positioned,
ontologically, by genocide as opposed to sovereignty. 328 Red, White, & Black:
Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms In the preceding chapters there has
been little discussion of violent events (save a brief discussion of genocide
endured by Native Americans and ways in which the carceral continuum of Black life
morphs and shape-shifts through legislation). This is because the violence that is
constitutive of the idiom of power that positions one U.S. antagonist as
Settler/Master, another as Slave, and still another as Savage should not be
reduced to its spectacle. It is not an event but rather a matrix of elaboration upon
which temporal and spatial capacity is possible for the Settler/Master; is both
possible and impossible for the Savage; and is absolutely derelict for the Slave.
One can no more show the matrix of violence that positions the Slave than one
can show psychoanalysiss matrix of language, the large object A, the Symbolic
Order that castrates the infans and brings (positions) him/her into subjectivity, that
is, into a world of contemporaries. At the time of this writing, even the most
radical and overtly political gestures in film studies have as yet to engage Hardt and
Negris theories of political economy and its recomposed subject, the multitude.
But this shortcoming is one which plays out Master-to-Master, Settler-to-Settler: it is
an intra-human discussion inessential to the Slaves ethical dilemmas catalyzed by
accumulation and fungibility. (The Slave, however, is often brought into the
discussion not in an effort to advance the analysis but rather in an effort to avoid
embarrassment.) Still engaging either the assumptive logic of Foucauldian
disciplinary regimes (i.e., Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, Patrice Petro) or Gramscian
hegemony (i.e., Stuart Hall, Mary Ann Doane, Stephen Heath, and early Kaja
Silverman), film studies has either a minimalist agenda as regards the cinemas
socially transformative potential (that is, it is animated by notions of hybridity and
change within 329 Red, White, & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S.
Antagonisms the interstices of civil society), or it is hopeful for a realignment of
cinematic practice whose counter-hegemonic elements qualify as cultural
accompaniment for major social and political change. All this is to say that film
studies has yet to become underwritten by an ensemble of Negrian questions as
regards the status of the spectator and the cinematic diegesis in a world where now
(even) Whites are positioned more and more by what appears to Hardt and Negri as
gratuitous violence and less and less by what had appeared to Gramsci and
Foucault as contingent violence. But as poles apart as Negrian Marxism and film
studies may be, what binds Negri and Hardts unflinching paradigmatic analysis to
the most unflinching interpretive film theory is a largely unspoken and
unsubstantiated notion that all sentient beings (euphemistically referred to as
humansor bona fide subjects) possess the capacity to contest value in some
kind of dramain other words, faith in the notion that all people have the
capacity for history and anthropology, the power to transform time and space. The
drama of value, then, is underwritten by the inspiration of the personal pronoun
we. It is this inspiration that my efforts throughout this book have attempted to
deconstruct and humiliate. The inspiration of we, to use a term from film theory, is
a form of suture. It papers over any contemplation of violence as a structuring
matrixand weds us to the notion of violence as a contingent event. And the
inspiration of we also performs a suture between fields of study and political
motivations as seemingly far apart as Negrian Marxism and Gramscian/Lacanian
film studies; sutures them together by way of two basic assumptions: (1) that all
people have bodies and (2) that all people contest dramas of value. Thus, Marxism
and film theory operate like police actions: they police 330 Red, White, & Black:
Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms our ability to contemplate how the
Slave is not a lesser valued entity on a pole of higher valued entities but is instead
exiled from the drama of value. Acknowledgments of this exile are to be found, not
in White meta-commentary and not in White film theory but, oddly enough, in White
films themselves. Monsters Ball is a film that attempts to share the inspiration of
Marxism and White film theorys we but finds itself divided on the matter. It
cannot be inspired by the assumptive we of its screenplay, that is, its most
conscious narrative strategies, because at key moments its images and soundtrack
act contrapuntally to the screenplay. The next three chapters are predicated on a
claim that whereas the screenplay labors ideologically in support of a notion that
exploitation and alienation (the Humans grammar of suffering) explain the essential
antagonism of the paradigm, strategies of cinematic form (as well as the irruption of
contextual elements into the films production labor ideologically in support of a
notion that accumulation and fungibility (the Slaves grammar of suffering) explain
the essential antagonism of the paradigm (and, through this explanation, render
exploitation and alienation the touchstones of a conflict).
Sovereignty
Marxism is a threat to native sovereignty, making it
incompatible with emancipation for the native people
The notion of triumvirate articulation (connections, transfers, and displacements) is
borrowed from Peter Miller and Nikolas Roses article On Therapeutic Authority:
Psychoanalytical Expertise Under Advanced Liberalism. Miller and Rose reject the
241 Red, White, & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms trend in
scholarly writing about psychoanalysis that attempts to explain the discourse by
locating its origins in general social and cultural transformations. Their strategy of
analysis differs from dominant trends in scholarship in that they are concern[ed]
with therapeutics as a form of authority. This means that their analysis focuses on
the rhetorical strategies through which the discourse of psychoanalysis (in an
historical milieu of advanced liberalism) becomes authoritative. Their analysis is not
animated by the question why therapeutics but by the question how
therapeutics (31). Similarly, we have asked ourselves how, rhetorically, the
Settler/Masters grammar of exploitation and alienation functions: in what way is
this grammar authoritative in discourses as disparate as feminism, Marxism, and
Western aesthetics? lxv We asked ourselves why there is no articulation between
the Slaves grammar of suffering and the Settler/Masters grammar of suffering:
what prevents them from being simultaneously authoritative? Now, we find
ourselves faced with sovereignty as a modality of the Savages grammar of
suffering, with the network through which its authority functions, and with the
possibility or impossibility of its articulation with the Settler and/or the Slave.
Deloria, Churchill, and others insist upon the incompatibility of both Marxist and
psychoanalytic utopianism as projects of emancipation for Native people. Churchill
goes so far as to say that Marxism [constitutes] as great a threat to native
sovereignty and self-determination as capitalism (Since Predator Came 6). In
addition, there seems to be a radical disarticulation between the Settlers and the
Savages topographies of the soul: the secular mediations and processes through
which a psychoanalyst punctuates (Lacan) the analysands empty speech, and
thereby guides the analysand to a non-egoic relationship with his/her
contemporaries (the attainment of full speech), are apparently 242 Red, White, &
Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms dumbstruck when confronted
by the mediations and processes through which the medicine man/woman heals the
tribal member and thereby re-harmonizes him/her with the universe and all its
relations. Vine Deloria links this besetting hobble of psychoanalysiss healing power
to the bankrupt ethics of Christianity: [T]he original [Christian] perception of reality
becomes transformed over a period of time into philosophies and theologies which
purport to give a logical and analytical explanation of ultimate reality [i.e., Freudian
psychoanalysis]. These explanations, of course, have eliminated the human
emotions and intuitive insights of the original experience and in their place have
substituted a systematic rendering of human knowledge concerning the natural
world. (The Metaphysics of Modern Existence 151)
Exclusion
Ontological meditations do not explore the concept of the red
and black bodies as a product of genocide and portrays them
as a threat to civil society
My argument in Part III is that sovereignty, as one modality of the Savage
grammar of suffering, articulates quite well with the two modalities of the
Settler/Masters grammar of suffering, exploitation and alienation. The second
thrust of my argument is this: whereas the genocidal modality of the Savage
grammar of suffering articulates quite well within the two modalities of the Slaves
grammar of suffering, accumulation and fungibility, Native American film, political
texts, and ontological meditations are not predisposed to recognize, much less
pursue, this articulation. To put a finer point on it, one could safely say: 200 Red,
White, & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms 1. Savage
ontological meditations are animated by the network of connections, transfers, and
displacements between the constituent registers of indigenous sovereignty
(governance, land stewardship, kinship structure, custom, language, and
cosmology) and the constituent registers of Settler/Master meditations (Marxism,
environmentalism, and psychoanalysis); but these ontological meditations do not
explore the being of the Indian as a product of genocide (except in the work of a
handful of meta-commentators on ontology such as Ward Churchill and, to a lesser
extent, Leslie Silko). And these meditations are certainly not explorations of a
network of connections, transfers, and displacements between Red ontological
death and Black ontological death. 2. The small corpus of socially engaged films
directed by Native Americans privilege an ensemble of questions animated by
sovereign loss. However, the libidinal economy of cinema is so powerful that the
ensemble of questions catalyzed by genocide as a grammar of suffering often force
their way into the discourse of these films with a vengeance that exceeds their
meekor downright omittedappearance in the scripts; scripts which, nonetheless,
tend to exert their authority by policing the cinematic exploration of genocide with
the sovereign power of the narrative. Heretofore, little has been written which
comments on the disinclination of Savage ontological meditations to explore the
network of connections, transfers, and displacements between Red death and Black
death. This section will end with an analysis of this disinclination and its alarming
consequences for Savage cinema. Most alarming 201 Red, White, & Black: Cinema
and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms is the fact that nearly half of the seven or
eight feature films directed by Native Americans within the past thirty years, Follow
Me Home (1996), Sioux City (1994), The Business of Fancydancing (2002) and Skins
(2002), are not content to balance the pathos of their ethical dilemmas solely on the
back of White supremacy. In other words, in these films the aesthetic argument as
regards the history (and continuation) of Native extinction rests as much upon the
iconography and symbolism of Blackness as it does upon the iconography and
symbolism of White supremacy. When I say as much I do not mean to imply a
quantitative one for one pilgrims progress in which Indian films envision Native
encounters with Black people as being historically, or even empirically, the source
of their extinctioncinema is seldom called to such a rational and conscious

account. By as much I mean the following: there are moments in these films in
which the spectator is being persuaded that the suffering of Indian-ness is
untenable, cannot be justified, and should not be endured. None would argue with
the political and economic reasoning of such claims. But the libidinal reasoning of
these claims, manifest in some of the most emotionally charged scenes, relies upon
Settler civil societys longstanding commonplace and quotidian phobias as regards
the image- and acoustic-based iconography of Blackness as an unspecified and
undisputed threat: for example, the quotidian depravity of Black rap music (Skins),
the figure the cold and aggressive Black woman (The Business of Fancydancing),
the loud and impossible Black male task-master (Sioux City)lvii, and the
vestmentary and kinesic codes of mise en scne commonly accrued to Black youthqua-criminal (Skins). The Black in both Savage and Settler cinema is commonly
imagined as a threat to sovereignty and civil society, respectively. Furthermore, it is
the imaginative labor around this threat in common which secures 202 Red, White,
& Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms coherence for the grammar
of Savage sovereignty. The argument being made here for the first time in either
film studies, Native American studies, Black studies, or, for that matter,
comparative ethnic studies, will proceed by examining not only what a benchmark
film like Chris Eyres Skins yields symptomatically but by way of an extensive
examination of Native American ontological commentaries. In short, whereas the
coherence of Native American cinema may not reproduce the White supremacy of
Settler/Master cinema, its grammar of suffering, and the way that grammar labors
cinematically, is dependent on what I will call Savage Negrophobiaa Native
American brand of anxiety as regards the Slave, which is foundational not only to
the emerging filmography of Savage cinema but also to the more substantial and
established archive of Native American political common sense and metacommentaries on Savage ontology.
The native does not care about class struggle, as it brings the
Black to its heels, ignoring the modality of Savage
When Angelita, the indigenous colonel in the Army of Justice and Redistribution,
struggles to explain to Comrade Bartolomeo, a White Marxist, why Indians couldnt
care less about international Marxism; all they wanted was to retake their land from
the white man, or when Sterling reminisces on his lifelong banishment from Laguna
Pueblo by the elders (an intra-Savage conflict), Silko is not compelled to discipline
the dream world of the fiction by reminding us that it is not about race but rather
about poverty and oppression. Curiously enough, these encounters evince what can
only be described as a philosophical about-face: Angelita is deployed by Silko
against Marxisms ethical dilemmas that writer and character might demonstrate
how puny and inadequate the question of class is to indigenous dilemmas of land
restoration. And while Sterling is sent into the fictional world by Silko for a variety of
complex reasons central to the sovereign dilemma of cultural restoration, one thing
is certain: he is not deployed across seven hundred pages to convince the reader
that it is all about class. Why then, must the Black be brought to heel? Almanac of
the Dead is not content to simply ignore that modality of the Savage which is
most analogous to the Slave; nor is it content to merely displace the dilemma of the
object status of the Slave onto the ethical dilemma of class. In addition to these two
strategies of erasure, Silko is determined to make the Black over in the image of
indigenism. This is a gratuitous gesture that even Skins does not attempt.
Civil Society
Ideologies such as Marxism fail to explain the social
relationships of the Black
My argument with the passage above has little to do with the content of Barretts
claims. Certainly, value is both the masking of social relations as well as the
masking of its own circuit of displacement, substitution, and signification. But
theories (i.e., Marxism, feminism, and film theory) which unpack the hypostasized
form which value takes, as it masks both its differential and social relations,
experience the humiliation of their explanatory power when confronted with the
Black. For the Black has no social relation(s) to be either masked or unmaskednot,
that is, in a structural sense. Social relations depend on various pretenses to the
contrary; therefore, what gets masked is the matrix of violence that makes Black
relationality an oxymoron. To relate, socially, one must enter a social dramas miseen-scne with spatial and temporal coherencein other words, with human
capacity. The Slave is not so much the antithesis of human capacity (that might
imply a dialectic potential in the Slaves encounter with the world) as s/he is the
absence of human capacity. 333 Red, White, & Black: Cinema and the Structure of
U.S. Antagonisms Having recapped the general project, we can begin to closely
examine Settler/Master cinema, a cinema elaborated by an ensemble of questions
that arise out of an explanatory rubric predicated on exploitation and alienation; a
cinema in which the protagonist(s) who shoulders a films ethical dilemmas is an
exploited and alienated Human. The apex of Humanness is Whiteness (Dyer).
Therefore, socially engaged cinema of which the director is White and whose
standard bearer of ethical dilemmas is also White will be the focal point of our
investigation. Enter Monsters Ball
Ideology
Marxism fails to incorporate the slave into its philosophy
What is the it beyond representation that Whiteness murders? In other words,
what evidence do we have that the violence that positions the Slave, is
structurally different then the violence inflicted upon the Worker, the Woman, the
Spectator, and the Post-Colonial? Again, as was demonstrated in Part I, the
murdered it is capacity par excellence, spatial and temporal capacity. Marxism,
Film Theory, and the political 419 Red, White, & Black: Cinema and the Structure of
U.S. Antagonisms common sense of socially engaged White cinema think human
capacity as Butler and Seshadri-Crooks do: as universal phenomena. But Blacks
experience human capacity as a homicidal phenomena. Fanon, Judy, Mbembe,
Hartman, Marriott, Patterson, and Spillers, have each, in their own way, shown us
that the Black lost the coherence of space and time in the hold of the Middle
Passage. The philosophy of Butler, the film theory of Silverman, Doane, and
Seshadri-Crooks, the Marxism of Negri and Hardt, the social optimism or pessimism
of popular film reviews, and the auteurial intention of director Marc Forster, all leave
the Slave unthought. They take as given that the Black has access to dramas of
value. But each disparate entity in any drama of value must possess not only
spatiality (for even a patch of grass exists in space), but the power to labor on
space: the cartographic capacity to make placeif only at the scale of the body.
Each disparate entity in any drama of value must possess not only temporality (for
even a patch of grass begins-exists-and-is-no-more), but the power to labor over
time: the historiographic capacity to narrate eventsif only the event of
sexuality. The terrain of the body and the event of sexuality were murdered when
the African became a genealogical isolate (Patterson 5). Thus, the explanatory
power of the theorists, filmmaker, and film reviewers cited above, at its very best, is
capable of thinking Blackness as identity or as identification; conceding, however,
as the more rigorous among them do, that black and white do not say much about
identity, though they do establish group and personal identifications of the subjects
involved (Seshadri-Crooks 133). But even this concession gets us nowhere. At best,
it is a red herring investing our attention in a semiotic impossibility: that of the
Slave as signifier. At worst, it puts the cart before the horse; which is to say that no
Marxist theory of social change and proletarian recomposition, 420 Red, White, &
Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms and no feminist theory of
bodily resignification, have been able (or cared) to demonstrate how, when, and
where Lincoln freed the slaves. Yet, they remain, if only by omission, steadfast in
their conviction that slavery was abolished. At moments, however, the sensory
excess of cinema lets ordinary White film say what extraordinary White folks wont.
Marxism fails to recognize the white supremacist foundation,

preventing it from establishing a comprehensive antagonism
Society?,
1579.) //ky
A Decisive Antagonism Any serious consideration of the question of antagonistic
identity formation a formation, the mass mobilisation of which can precipitate a
crisis in the institutions and assumptive logic which undergird the United States of
America must come to grips with the limitations of marxist discourse in the face
of the black subject. This is because the United States is constructed at the
intersection of both a capitalist and white supremacist matrix. And the privileged
subject of marxist discourse is a subaltern who is approached by variable capital
a wage. In other words, marxism assumes a subaltern structured by capital, not by
white supremacy. In this scenario, racism is read off the base, as it were, as being
derivative of political economy. This is not an adequate subalternity from which to
think the elaboration of antagonistic identity formation; not if we are truly
committed to elaborating a theory of crisis crisis at the crux of Americas
institutional and discursive strategies. The scandal with which the black subject
position threatens Gramscian discourse is manifest in the subjects ontological
disarticulation of Gramscian categories: work, progress, production, exploitation,
hegemony, and historical self-awareness. By examining the strategy and structure
of the black subjects absence in Antonio Gramscis Prison Notebooks and by
contemplating the black subjects incommensurability with the key categories of
Gramscian theory, we come face to face with three unsettling consequences. Firstly,
the black American subject imposes a radical incoherence upon the assumptive
logic of Gramscian discourse. In other words, s/he implies a scandal. Secondly, the
black subject reveals marxisms inability to think white supremacy as the base and,
in so doing, calls into question marxisms claim to elaborate a comprehensive, or in
the words of Antonio Gramsci, decisive antagonism. Stated another way:
Gramscian marxism is able to imagine the subject which transforms her/himself into
a mass of antagonistic identity formations, formations which can precipitate a crisis
in wage slavery, exploitation, and/or hegemony, but it is asleep at the wheel when
asked to provide enabling antagonisms toward unwaged slavery, despotism, and/or
terror. 1350-4630 Print/1363-0296 On-line/03/020225-16 2003 Taylor & Francis
Ltd DOI: 10.1080/1350463032000101579 Downloaded by [141.213.236.110] at
11:41 04 July 2014 226 Frank Wilderson, III Finally, we begin to see how marxism
suffers from a kind of conceptual anxiety: a desire for socialism on the other side of
crisis a society which does away not with the category of worker, but with the
imposition workers suffer under the approach of variable capital: in other words, the
mark of its conceptual anxiety is in its desire to democratise work and thus help
keep in place, ensure the coherence of, the Reformation and Enlightenment
foundational values of productivity and progress. This is a crowding-out scenario
for other post-revolutionary possibilities, i.e. idleness. Why interrogate Gramsci with
the political predicament and desire of the black(ened) subject position in the
Western Hemisphere? Because the Prison Notebooks intentionality, and general
reception, lay claim to universal applicability. Neither Gramsci nor his spiritual
progenitors in the form of scholars or activists say that the Gramscian project sows
the seeds of freedom for whites only. Instead, they claim that deep within the
organicity of the organic intellectual is the organic black intellectual, the organic
Chinese intellectual, the organic South American intellectual and so on; that though
there are historical and cultural variances, there is a structural consistency which
elaborates all organic intellectuals and undergirds all resistance. Through what
strategies does the black subject destabilise emerge as the unthought, and thus
the scandal of historical materialism? How does the black subject distort and
expand marxist categories in ways that create, in the words of Hortense Spillers, a
distended organisational calculus? (Spillers 1996, p. 82). We could put the question
another way: How does the black subject function within the American desiring
machine differently than the quintessential Gramscian subaltern, the worker? Before
going more deeply into how the black subject position destabilises or disarticulates
the categories foundational to the assumptive logic of marixsm, its important to
allow ourselves a digression that attempts to schematise the Gramscian project on
its own terms.
Current movements fail because they fail to recognize the key

component of the system social and physical death. This
means the perm fails and the alt is key
Heiner 3 (Brady Heiner, Ph.D., Philosophy, Stony Brook University, 2003,
Commentary Social Death and the Relationship Between Abolition and Reform,
http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/docview/231923698/fulltext/3BF8A1
6132A14B13PQ/1?accountid=14667.)//ky
No reformation of the current system will lead to this total transformation. Reformist
movements fail to recognize that social and physical death are essential to the
functioning of the present social system. Consequently, reformist movements refuse
to acknowledge that destructive actions are necessary in the struggle for liberation.
We must concentrate on the structures and institutions that we need to destroy just
as much as we focus on the practices and formations we must construct to be free.
We must eliminate enforced social death entirely for us to be able to constitute
alternative social organizations that truly provide for democratic freedom. In
addition, we must hold this systemic transformation in mind as we engage in our
various local struggles. For, without this total vision - what Rodriguez calls an
abolitionist "political fantasy" - our local successes will be doomed to mere reform.
Anti-Blackness Pre-requisite to
Capitalism
Anti-Blackness is a pre-requisite to capital accumulation and
the system of capitalism and US hegemony
Society?,
1579.) //ky
Civil Death in Civil Society Capital was kick-started by the rape of the African
continent. This phenomenon is central to neither Gramsci nor Marx. The theoretical
importance of emphasising this in the early twenty-first century is two-fold: first,
the socio-political order of the New World (Spillers, 1987, p. 67) was kick-started
by approaching a particular body (a black body) with direct relations of force, not by
approaching a white body with variable capital. Thus, one could say that slavery
the accumulation of black bodies regardless of their utility as labourers (Hartman;
Downloaded by [141.213.236.110] at 11:41 04 July 2014 230 Frank Wilderson, III
Johnson) through an idiom of despotic power (Patterson) is closer to capitals
primal desire than is waged oppression the exploitation of unraced bodies
(Marx, Lenin, Gramsci) that labour through an idiom of rational/symbolic (the wage)
power: A relation of terror as opposed to a relation of hegemony.4 Secondly, today,
late capital is imposing a renaissance of this original desire, direct relations of force
(the prison industrial complex), the despotism of the unwaged relation: and this
Renaissance of slavery has, once again, as its structuring image in libidinal
economy, and its primary target in political economy, the black body. The value of
reintroducing the unthought category of the slave, by way of noting the absence of
the black subject, lies in the black subjects potential for extending the demand
placed on state/capital formations because its re-introduction into the discourse
expands the intensity of the antagonism. In other words, the slave makes a
demand, which is in excess of the demand made by the worker. The worker
demands that productivity be fair and democratic (Gramscis new hegemony,
Lenins dictatorship of the proletariat), the slave, on the other hand, demands that
production stop; stop without recourse to its ultimate democratisation. Work is not
an organic principle for the slave. The absence of black subjectivity from the crux of
marxist discourse is symptomatic of the discourses inability to cope with the
possibility that the generative subject of capitalism, the black body of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, and the generative subject that resolves late-capitals overaccumulation crisis, the black (incarcerated) body of the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries, do not reify the basic categories which structure marxist conflict: the
categories of work, production, exploitation, historical self-awareness and, above all,
hegemony. If, by way of the black subject, we consider the underlying grammar of
the question What does it mean to be free? that grammar being the question
What does it mean to suffer? then we come up against a grammar of suffering not
only in excess of any semiotics of exploitation, but a grammar of suffering beyond
signification itself, a suffering that cannot be spoken because the gratuitous terror
of white supremacy is as much contingent upon the irrationality of white fantasies

and shared pleasures as it is upon a logic the logic of capital. It extends beyond
texualisation. When talking about this terror, Cornel West uses the term black
invisibility and namelessness to designate, at the level of ontology, what we are
calling a scandal at the level of discourse. He writes: [Americas] unrelenting assault
on black humanity produced the fundamental condition of black culture that of
black invisibility and namelessness. On the crucial existential level relating to black
invisibility and namelessness, the first difficult challenge and demanding discipline
is to ward off madness and discredit suicide as a desirable option. A central
preoccupation of black culture is that of confronting candidly the ontological
wounds, psychic scars, and existential bruises of black people while fending off
insanity and self-annihilation. This is why the ur-text of black culture is neither a
word nor a book, not an architec- Downloaded by [141.213.236.110] at 11:41 04
July 2014 Gramscis Black Marx: Whither the Slave in Civil Society? 231 tural
monument or a legal brief. Instead, it is a guttural cry and a wrenching moan a
cry not so much for help as for home, a moan less out of complaint than for
recognition. (1996, pp. 8081). Thus, the black subject position in America is an
antagonism, a demand that can not be satisfied through a transfer of
ownership/organisation of existing rubrics; whereas the Gramscian subject, the
worker, represents a demand that can indeed be satisfied by way of a successful
War of Position, which brings about the end of exploitation. The worker calls into
question the legitimacy of productive practices, the slave calls into question the
legitimacy of productivity itself. From the positionality of the worker the question,
What does it mean to be free? is raised. But the question hides the process by
which the discourse assumes a hidden grammar which has already posed and
answered the question, What does it mean to suffer? And that grammar is
organised around the categories of exploitation (unfair labour relations or wage
slavery). Thus, exploitation (wage slavery) is the only category of oppression which
concerns Gramsci: society, Western society, thrives on the exploitation of the
Gramscian subject. Full stop. Again, this is inadequate, because it would call white
supremacy racism and articulate it as a derivative phenomenon of the capitalist
matrix, rather than incorporating white supremacy as a matrix constituent to the
base, if not the base itself. What I am saying is that the insatiability of the slave
demand upon existing structures means that it cannot find its articulation within the
modality of hegemony (influence, leadership, consent) the black body cannot
give its consent because generalised trust, the precondition for the solicitation of
consent, equals racialised whiteness (Barrett). Furthermore, as Patterson points
out, slavery is natal alienation by way of social death, which is to say that a slave
has no symbolic currency or material labour power to exchange: a slave does not
enter into a transaction of value (however asymmetrical) but is subsumed by direct
relations of force, which is to say that a slave is an articulation of a despotic
irrationality whereas the worker is an articulation of a symbolic rationality. White
supremacys despotic irrationality is as foundational to American institutionality as
capitalisms symbolic rationality because, as West writes, it dictates the limits of the
operation of American democracy with black folk the indispensable sacrificial
lamb vital to its sustenance. Hence black subordination constitutes the necessary
condition for the flourishing of American democracy, the tragic prerequisite for
America itself. This is, in part, what Richard Wright meant when he noted, The
Negro is Americas metaphor. (1996, p. 72) And it is well known that a metaphor
comes into being through a violence that kills, rather than merely exploits, the
object so that the concept might live. Wests interventions help us see how marxism
can only come to grips with Americas structuring rationality what it calls
capitalism, or political economy; but cannot come to grips with Americas
structuring irrationality: the libidinal economy of white supremacy, and its hyperdiscursive violence that Downloaded by [141.213.236.110] at 11:41 04 July 2014
232 Frank Wilderson, III kills the black subject so that the concept, civil society, may
live. In other words, from the incoherence of black death, America generates the
coherence of white life. This is important when considering the Gramscian paradigm
(and its progenitors in the world of US social movements today) which is so
dependent on the empirical status of hegemony and civil society: struggles over
hegemony are seldom, if ever, asignifying at some point they require coherence,
they require categories for the record which means they contain the seeds of
anti-blackness.
In the War on Position, black bodies are accumulated and

slaughtered at will as a foundation for civil society
Society?,
1579.) //ky
For the sake our scenario the impact of a successful War of Position on our
hypothetical meat packing plant let us not refer to the question as the negro
question. Instead, let us call it the cow question. Let us suppose that the
superstructure has finally flowered, and that throughout the various fronts where
the power to pose the question held by the private initiatives and associations
elaborated by the industrialists, hegemony has now been called into question and a
war of position has been transposed into a war of manoeuver. The scandal with
which the black subject position threatens Gramscian discourse is manifest in the
subjects ontological disarticulation of Gramscian categories: work, progress,
production, exploitation, hegemony, and historical self-awareness. Gramscis notes
on Americanism and Fordism demonstrate his acumen in expressing how the
drama of value is played out in civil society (i.e. the family) away from the slaughter
house, while being imbricated and foundational to the class exploitation which
workers experience within the slaughter house. But still we must ask, what about
the cows? The cows are not being exploited, they are being accumulated and, if
need be, killed. The desiring machine of capital and white supremacy manifest in
society two dreams, imbricated but, I would argue, distinct: the dream of worker
exploitation and the dream of black accumulation and death. Nowhere in Gramsci
can one find sufficient reassurance that, once the dream of worker exploitation has
been smashed once the superstructure, civil society, has flowered and the
question of hegemony has been posed the dream of black accumulation and
death will be thrown into crisis as well. I submit that death of the black body is (a)
foundational to the life of American civil society (just as foundational as it is to the
drama of value wage slavery), and (b) foundational to the fantasy space of
desires which underwrite the industrialists hegemony and which underwrite the
workers potential for, and realisation of, what Gramsci calls good sense. Thus, a
whole set of new and difficult, perhaps un-Gramscian, questions emerge at the site
of our meat packing plant in the throes of its War of Manoeuver. First, how would the
cows fare under a dictatorship of the proletariat? Would cows experience freedom at
the mere knowledge that theyre no longer being slaughtered in an economy of

exchange predicated on exploitation? In other words, would it feel more like
freedom to be slaughtered by a workers collective where there was no exploitation,
where the working day was not a minute longer than the time it took to reproduce
workers needs and pleasures, as opposed to being slaughtered in the exploitative
context of that dreary old nine to five? Secondly, in the river of common sense does
the flotsam of good sense have a message in a bottle that reads Workers of the
World Become Vegetarians!? Finally, is it enough to just stop eating meat? In other
words, can the Gramscian worker simply give the cows their freedom, grant them
emancipation, and have it be meaningful to the cows? The cows need some
answers before they raise a hoof for the flowering of the superstructure. The cows
bring us face to face with the limitations of a Gramscian formulation of the question,
what does it mean to be free? by revealing the limitations of the ways in which it
formulates the question, what does it mean to suffer? Because exploitation (rather
than accumulation and death) is at the heart of the Gramscian question, what does
it mean to suffer? and thus crowds out analysis of civil societys foundation of
despotic terror and white pleasure by way of the accumulation of black bodies
the Gramscian question also functions as a crowding out scenario of the black
subject herself/himself, and is indexical of a latent anti-blackness which black folks
experience in the most sincere of social movements. So, when Buttigieg tells us
that: The struggle against the domination of the few over the many, if it is be
successful, must be rooted in a careful formulation of a counterhegemonic
conception of the social order, in the dissemination of such a conception, and in the
formation of counterhegemonic institutions which can only take place in civil
society and actually require an expansion of civil society. [emphasis mine] (1995, p.
31) a chill runs down our spine. For this required expansion requires the
intensification and proliferation of civil societys constituent element: black
accumulation and death.
Civil society and capitalism are founded on the accumulation

and death of the black body, where the black subject was
never meant to work, but instead sacrificed to kick start
capital
Society?,
1579.) //ky
Civil society is the terrain where hegemony is produced, contested, mapped. And
the invitation to participate in hegemonys gestures of influence, leadership, and
consent is not extended to the black subject. We live in the world, but exist outside
of civil society. This structurally impossible position is a paradox Downloaded by
[141.213.236.110] at 11:41 04 July 2014 238 Frank Wilderson, III because the black
subject, the slave, is vital to civil societys political economy: s/he kick-starts capital
at its genesis and rescues it from its over-accumulation crisis at its end black
death is its condition of possibility. Civil societys subaltern, the worker, is coded as
waged, and wages are white. But marxism has no account of this phenomenal birth
and life-saving role played by the black subject: in Gramsci we have consistent
silence. The black body in the US is that constant reminder that not only can work
not be reformed but it cannot be transformed to accommodate all subjects: work is

a white category. The fact that millions upon millions of black people work misses
the point. The point is we were never meant to be workers; in other words,
capital/white supremacys dream did not envision us as being incorporated or
incorporative. From the very beginning, we were meant to be accumulated and die.
Work (i.e. the French shipbuilding industry and bourgeois civil society which finally
extended its progressive hegemony to workers and peasants to topple the
aristocracy) was what grew up all around us 20 to 60 million seeds planted at the
bottom of the Atlantic, 5 million seeds planted in Dixie. Work sometimes registers as
a historical component of blackness, but where whiteness is concerned, work
registers as a constituent element. And the black body must be processed through a
kind of civil death for this constituent element of whiteness to gain coherence.
Today, at the end of the twentieth century, we are still not meant to be workers. We
are meant to be warehoused and die. The U.S. carceral network killsmore blacks
than any other ethnic group[and] constitute[s] an outside in U.S. political life. In
fact, our society displays waves of concentric outside circles with increasing
distances from bourgeois self-policing. The state routinely polices the unassimilable
in the hell of lockdown, deprivation tanks, control units, and holes for political
prisoners. (James, 1996, p. 34) Work (i.e. jobs for guards in the prison industrial
complex and the shot in the arm it gives to faltering white communities its
positive reterritorialisation of White Space and its simultaneous deterritorialisation
of Black Space) is what grows up around our dead bodies once again. The chief
difference today, compared to several hundred years ago, is that today our bodies
are desired, accumulated, and warehoused like the cows. Again, the chief
constant to the dream is that, whereas desire for black labour power is often a
historical component to the institutionality of white supremacy, it is not a
constituent element. This paradox is not to be found at the crux of Gramscis
intellectual pessimism or his optimistic will. His concern is with subjects in a
white(ned) enough subject position that they are confronted by, or threatened with
the removal of, a wage, be it monetary or social. But black subjectivity itself
disarticulates the Gramscian dream as a ubiquitous emancipatory strategy, because
Gramsci (like most US social movements) has no theory of, or solidarity with, the
slave. Whereas the positionality of the worker enables the reconfiguration of civil
society, the positionality of the slave exists as a destabilising force within civil
society because civil society gains its coherence, Downloaded by [141.213.236.110]
at 11:41 04 July 2014 Gramscis Black Marx: Whither the Slave in Civil Society? 239
the very tabula raza upon which workers and industrialists struggle for hegemony,
through the violence of black erasure. From the coherence of civil society the black
subject beckons with the incoherence of civil war. Civil war, then, becomes that
unthought but never forgotten spectre waiting in the wings the understudy of
Gramscis hegemony.
Black subjectivity is based in the foundations of capitalism and

is key to the complete rejection of production itself
California, Berkeley, 2003, The Prison Slave as Hegemony's (Silent) Scandal,
http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/stable/29768181?seq=6.) //ky
Capital was kick-started by the rape of the African continent, a phenomenon that is
central to neither Gramsci nor Marx. According to Barrett (2002), some? thing about
the Black body in and of itself made it the repository of the violence that was the
slave trade. It would have been far easier and far more profitable to take the white
underclass from along the riverbanks of England and Western Europe than to travel
all the way to Africa for slaves. The theoretical importance of emphasizing this in
the early 21st century is twofold. First, capital was kick-started by approaching a
particular body (a black body) with direct relations of force, not by approaching a
white body with variable capital. Thus, one could say that slavery is closer to
capital's primal desire than is exploitation. It is a relation of terror as opposed to a
relation of hegemony. Second, today, late capital is imposing a renaissance of this
original desire, the direct relation of force, the despotism of the unwaged relation.
This renaissance of slavery, i.e., the reconfiguration of the prison-industrial complex
has, once again, as its structuring metaphor and primary target the Black body. The
value of reintroducing the unthought category of the slave, by way of noting the
absence of the Black subject, lies in the Black subject's potential for extending the
demand placed on state/capital formations because its reintroduc tion into the
discourse expands the intensity of the antagonism. In other words, the positionality
of the slave makes a demand that is in excess of the demand made by the
positionality of the worker. The worker demands that productivity be fair and
democratic (Gramsci's new hegemony, Lenin's dictatorship of the proletariat, in a
word, socialism). In contrast, the slave demands that production stop, without
recourse to its ultimate democratization. Work is not an organic principle for the
slave. The absence of Black subjectivity from the crux of radical discourse is
symptomatic of the text's inability to cope with the possibility that the generative
subject of capitalism, the Black body of the 15th and 16th centuries, and the
generative subject that resolves late capital's over-accumulation crisis, the Black
(incarcerated) body of the 20th and 21 st centuries, do not reify the basic categories
that structure conflict within civil society; the categories of work and exploitation.
Thus, the Black subject position in America represents an antagonism or demand
that cannot be satisfied through a transfer of ownership/organization of existing
rubrics. In contrast, the Gramscian subject, the worker, represents a demand that
can indeed be satisfied by way of a successful war of position, which brings about
the end of exploitation. The worker calls into question the legitimacy of productive
practices, while the slave calls into question the legitimacy of productivity itself.
Thus, the insatiability of the slave demand upon existing structures means that it
cannot find its articulation within the modality of hegemony (influence, leadership,
consent). The Black body cannot give its consent because "generalized trust," the
precondition for the solicitation of consent, "equals racialized whiteness" (Barrett,
2002). Furthermore, as Orlando Patterson (1982) points out, slavery is natal
alienation by way of social death, which is to say, a slave has no symbolic currency
or material labor power to exchange. A slave does not enter into a transaction of
value (however asymmetri? cal), but is subsumed by direct relations of force. As
such, a slave is an articulation of a despotic irrationality, whereas the worker is an
articulation of a symbolic rationality. A metaphor comes into being through a
violence that kills the thing such that the concept might live. Gramscian discourse
and coalition politics come to grips with America's structuring rationality ? what it
calls capitalism, or political economy ? but not with its structuring irrationality, the
anti-production of late capital, and the hyper-discursive violence that first kills the
Black subject, so that the concept may be born. In other words, from the
incoherence of Black death, America generates the coherence of white life. This is
important when thinking the Gramscian paradigm and their spiritual progenitors in
the world of organizing in the U.S. today, with their overvaluation of hegemony and
civil society. Struggles over hegemony are seldom, if ever, asignifying. At some
point, they require coherence and categories for the record, meaning they contain
the seeds of anti Blackness. What does it mean to be positioned not as a positive
term in the struggle for anti capitalist hegemony, i.e., a worker, but to be positioned
in excess of hegemony, to be a catalyst that disarticulates the rubric of hegemony,
to be a scandal to its assumptive, foundational logic, to threaten civil society's
discursive integrity? In White Writing, J.M. Coetzee (1988) examines the literature of
Europeans who encountered the South African Khoisan in the Cape between the
16th and 18th centuries. The Europeans were faced with an "anthropological
scandal": a being without (recognizable) customs, religion, medicine, dietary
patterns, culinary habits, sexual mores, means of agriculture, and most
significantly, without character (because, according to the literature, they did not
work). Other Africans, like the Xhosa who were agriculturalists, provided European
discourse with enough categories for the record, so that, through various strategies
of articulation, they could be known by textual projects that accompanied the
colonial project. But the Khoisan did not produce the necessary categories for the
record, the play of signifiers that would allow for a sustainable semiotics.
Alternatives
Only by completely taking down the prison-industrial complex
can we stop social death and lead to actual democracy
Heiner 3 (Brady Heiner, Ph.D., Philosophy, Stony Brook University, 2003,
Commentary Social Death and the Relationship Between Abolition and Reform,
http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/docview/231923698/fulltext/3BF8A1
6132A14B13PQ/1?accountid=14667.)//ky
IN MY BRIEF COMMENTS, I WISH TO FOCUS ON THE THEME OF DEATH THAT
APPEARS, explicitly or implicitly, in each presentation given at the "Prison Reform
and Abolition" panel. As Dylan Rodriguez put it, "death is the social truth of
imprisonment.... [It is] the political and organizational logic of the prison." "Death,"
in this discussion, has signified on multiple registers. On one level, there is what
Dylan Rodriguez, Geoff Ward, and Frank Wilderson (at an earlier point) referred to as
civic or social death - the disenfranchisement and forced invisibility experienced by
current and former prisoners. On another level, there is the political "death" that Liz
Appel discussed - the fact that the messages of many of the radical imprisoned
intellectuals who are "permitted" to escape this social death are, in turn, politically
neutralized by the individualist logic of exceptionalism. Then, of course, there is the
physical death inflicted by the racist mechanisms of capital punishment. The more
seriously we take the idea that death - not correction or rehabilitation - is the
ultimate social truth of imprisonment, the more radical our political organization
against the prison-industrial complex will be. (By radical, I do not mean violent, but
rather powerful.)1 This death is administered inside and outside the prison walls. As
Henry Giroux illustrated, schools, particularly those in racialized communities, are
increasingly becoming sites that function to inure youth of color to their social and
political death. Similarly, penal intervention in these marginalized communities, as
Ward and Marable discuss, often strips those communities of their right to engage in
the processes of political decision-making. I would argue that many of us experience
a kind of death when our collective power to act is fragmented, abstracted, and
controlled by the mechanisms of capitalist command - a process that transforms our
collective living labor into the dead labor that produces profits for the capitalist
class. Whether it is social death by incarceration, political death by neutralization
and disenfranchisement, productive death by exploitation, or physical death by
execution, capital and its state-form predicate the life of the wealthy, the white, and
the privileged on the death of the poor, the black and brown, and the impoverished.
From this perspective, all reformist politics are simply not radical enough. It is not
simply that incarceration is a superficial solution to complex social and economic
inequalities. Many recognize that fact and use it to fuel reformist agendas that
reason, "if the causes of social and economic inequality are more complex than the
current criminal justice system acknowledges, then let us restructure the criminal
justice system in such a way that it accommodates those social and economic
complexities." However, these movements seek merely to perfect the inherently
oppressive logic of the capitalist state-form; I would argue, however, that the point
is to destroy it. To embrace a more radical and more properly abolitionist politics, we
must acknowledge that our life in the present society is determined by and founded
upon the social and physical death of the incarcerated. We mustrecognize that the
wealth of the transnational capitalist class is dependent upon the control of the
living labor of the multitude. Thus, we must refuse a system that sustains life
through the infliction of death - a system that predicates the freedom of the
minority upon the unfreedom of the majority. In a discussion devoted to prison
reform and prison abolition, it is crucial that we explicitly address the differences
between the two. For instance, we cannot appropriately address the issue of
abolitionism without confronting its relationship to the state. Although prison reform
and even death penalty abolition are assimilable to liberal politics, prison abolition
exists well outside the framework of political liberalism. For example, Giroux stated,
"the role of the state as a guardian of public interests appears to be lost in
[contemporary] society." Here we need to interrogate exactly who and what
constitutes the "public." Like many others, I would argue that the state has never
served as "a guardian of public interests," unless we interpret "public interests" as
something like "the interests of capital" or "the interests of the white ruling class."
The element that ultimately distinguishes a radical (abolitionist) agenda from a
liberal (reformist) one resides in the totality of its approach. The fundamental aim of
a radical movement is total (systemic) transformation. For that to be effected,
positive, constructive measures must be continually accompanied (and, in many
cases, preceded) by negative, destructive ones. That is to say, an abolitionist
movement acknowledges that the prison-industrial complex (and the capitalist
state-form that sustains it) must be completely dismantled for democracy to be
actualized. For, as long as our lives in present society are determined by and
founded upon the social and physical death of the incarcerated, we are not truly
free. No reformation of the current system will lead to this total transformation.
Reformist movements fail to recognize that social and physical death are essential
to the functioning of the present social system. Consequently, reformist movements
refuse to acknowledge that destructive actions are necessary in the struggle for
liberation. We must concentrate on the structures and institutions that we need to
destroy just as much as we focus on the practices and formations we must
construct to be free. We must eliminate enforced social death entirely for us to be
able to constitute alternative social organizations that truly provide for democratic
freedom. In addition, we must hold this systemic transformation in mind as we
engage in our various local struggles. For, without this total vision - what Rodriguez
calls an abolitionist "political fantasy" - our local successes will be doomed to mere
reform. However, we must acknowledge that the line between reformist practices
and abolitionist practices is not a definitive one. For example, though the ultimate
goal of an abolitionist movement is the total negation of the capitalist state-form,
this long-term objective must not prevent us from engaging in a host of immediate
struggles to secure the survival and quality of life of those currently imprisoned. We
must not allow our expansive vision to blind us to the immediate struggles of those
presently locked down by the system. A movement that fails to engage in these
types of struggles is at odds with the interests of those on the inside - those for
whom these immediate struggles are of utmost urgency.2 A properly radical/
abolitionist movement must work incessantly to suture the divide (both actual and
virtual) between the inside and the outside of the prison, and, more generally,
between the local and the global. In this context, radical imprisoned intellectuals through their lives, work, and resistance - urge us to constitute a freedom that, as
Rodriguez put it, "refuses to be defined against confinement, incarceration, and
immobilization." This freedom is not underpinned by the infliction of death, but by
the production of life. It is not constituted in a praxis of limitation, but in one of

creation.
Impacts
Violence is a part of black constitution, it enables their
nonbeing
Douglass and Wilderson 13 (Patrice Douglass, Frank B. Wilderson III, PhD in
Culture and Theory, University of California, Irvine,Ph.D. in Rhetoric/Film Studies,
University of California, Berkeley, Winter 2013, The violence of presence:
metaphysics in a blackened world,
http://go.galegroup.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/ps/i.do?action=interpret&id=GALE
%7CA363191783&v=2.1&u=lom_umichanna&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w&authCount=1.)
//ky
Over the past fifteen to twenty years, black philosophy has enhanced its
explanatory power by way of a deliberate engagement with critical theory. One of
the most notable examples of this turn is found in Lewis Gordon's extended
readings of Frantz Fanon and Jean-Paul Sartre--the dialogues Gordon has staged
between Fanon's blackened psychoanalysis and Sartre's Marxist existentialism. (1)
We contend that black philosophy should continue to pursue this kind of
juxtaposition: an irreverent clash between ensembles of questions dedicated to the
status of the subject as a relational being and ensembles of questions dedicated to
what are more often thought of as general and fundamental problems, such as
those connected with reality, existence, reason, and mind; in the form, specifically,
of a clash between questions concerning the always already deracination of
blackness and questions, for example, of metaphysics-rather than pursue a line of
inquiry that assumes a stable and coherent philosophical vantage point from which
a black metaphysics can be imagined. This is because, as we argue below, for
blacks no such vantage point exists. Such a project could stand the assumptive
logic of philosophy on its metaphysical and ethical head; just as a similarly
blackened project has turned the assumptive logic of critical theory (specifically, its
starting point, which assumes subjectivity) on its relational head. (2) A focus on
violence should be at the center of this project because violence not only makes
thought possible, but it makes black metaphysical being and black relationality
impossible, while simultaneously giving rise to the philosophical contemplation of
metaphysics and the thick description of human relations. Without violence, critical
theory and pure philosophy would be impossible. Marx and others have intimated as
much. But what is often left unexamined is that this violence is peculiar in that,
whereas some groups of people might be the recipients of violence, after they have
been constituted as people, violence is a structural necessity to the constitution of
blacks. Ideally, philosophers (studying metaphysics) and critical theorists (studying
the relational status of the subject) should not be able to labor without
contemplating the violence that enables black (non)being; but, in fact, the evasion
of blackness-qua-violence is what gives these disciplines their presumed coherence.
This unthought dynamic is a best case scenario, as will be seen below with a
critique of Elaine Scarry's The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World.
(3) A worst-case scenario ensues when the critical theorist deploys anti-black
violence in her/ his critique--and restricting of subjectivities and genres, as will be
seen with a critique of Jasbir K. Puar's Terrorist Assemblages: Homo--nationalism in
Queer Times. (4)
Zizek
Identity Politics
Alts fail
Political movements founded upon identity politics are
inauthentic and cannot create change against the forces of
capital
Zizek 99 (slavoj, senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy, University of
Ljubljana, Slovenia, international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, and
general badass, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology, pg. 210, wcp)
Here, however, one must fully endorse Badiou's point that these 'returns to the Substance' are
themselves impotent in the face of the global march of Capital: they are its inherent supplement,
the limit/ condition of its functioning, since - as Deleuze emphasized years ago - capitalist
'deterritorialization' is always accompanied by re-emerging 'reterritorializations'. More
precisely, there is an inherent split in the field of particular identities themselves caused by the
onslaught of capitalist globalization: on the one hand, the so-called 'fundamentalisms', whose
basic formula is that of the Identity of one's own group, implying the practice of excluding the
threatening Other (s ) : France for the French (against Algerian immigrants), America for
Americans (against the His panic invasion ) , Slovenia for Slovenians ( against the excessive
presence of 'Southerners', immigrants from the ex-Yugoslav republics);39 on the other hand,
there is postmodern multiculturalist 'identity politics', aiming at the tolerant coexistence of evershifting, 'hybrid' lifestyle groups, divided into endless subgroups ( Hispanic women, black gays,
white male AIDS patients, lesbian mothers . . .). This ever-growing flowering of groups and
subgroups in their hybrid and fluid, shifting identities, each insisting on the right to assert its
specific way of life and/or culture, this incessant diversification, is possible and thinkable only
against the background of capitalist globalization; it is the very way capitalist globalization affect
our sense of ethnic and other forms of community belonging: the only link connecting these
multiple groups is the link of Capital itself, always ready to satisfy the specific demands of
each group and subgroup (gay tourism, Hispanic music . . .) . Furthermore, the opposition
between fundamentalism and postmodern pluralist identity politics is ultimately a
fake, concealing a deeper solidarity (or, to put it in Hegelese, speculative identity): a
multiculturalist can easily find even the most 'fundamentalist' ethnic identity attractive, but only
in so far as it is the identity of the supposedly authentic Other (say, in the USA, Native American
tribal identity); a fundamentalist group can easily adopt, in its social functioning, the
postmodern strategies of identity politics, presenting itself as one of the threatened minorities,
simply striving to maintain its specific way of life and cultural identity. The line of separation
between multiculturalist identity politics and fundamentalism is thus purely formal; it often
depends merely on the different perspective from which the observer views a movement for
maintaining a group identity.
Their obsession with ethnic conflict is capitalisms attempt to

whitewash the political multiculturalist notions of change
rationalize the capitalist status quo by eliminating the
question of workers exploitation from political discourse.
Zizek 00 (slavoj, senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy, University
of Ljubljana, Slovenia, international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, and
general badass, The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?, pg
10-11, wcp)
So the more today's social theory proclaims the end of Nature and/or Tradition and the rise of
the 'risk society', the more the implicit reference to 'nature' pervades our daily discourse: even
when we do not mention the 'end of history', do we not convey the same message when we claim
that we are entering a 'postideological' pragmatic era, which is another way of claiming that we
are entering a post-political order in which the only legitimate conflicts are ethnic/cultural
conflicts? Typically, in today's critical and political discourse, the term 'worker' has disappeared,
supplanted and/or obliterated by 'immigrants [immigrant workers: Algerians in France, Turks
in Germany, Mexicans in the USA]' - in this way, the class problematic of workers'
exploitation is transformed into the multiculturalist problematic of the
'intolerance of Otherness', and so on, and the excessive investment of multiculturalist
liberals in protecting immigrants' ethnic rights clearly draws its energy from the 'repressed' class
dimension. Although Francis Fukuyama's thesis on the 'end of history' quickly fell into
disrepute, we still silently assume that the liberaldemocratic capitalist global order is somehow
the finally found 'natural' social regime; we still implicitly conceive of conflicts in Third World
countries as a subspecies of natural catastrophes, as outbursts of quasi-natural violent passions,
or as conflicts based on fanatical identification with ethnic roots (and what is 'ethnic' here if not
again a codeword for nature?). And, again, the key point is that this all-pervasive
renaturalization is strictly correlative to the global reflexivization of our daily lives. For that
reason, confronted with ethnic hatred and violence, one should thoroughly reject the standard
multiculturalist idea that, against ethnic intolerance, one should learn to respect and live with
the Otherness of the Other, to develop a tolerance for different lifestyles, and so on - the way to
fight ethnic hatred effectively is not through its immediate counterpart, ethnic tolerance; on the
contrary, what we need is even more hatred, but proper political hatred: hatred
directed at the common political enemy.
Identity does not exist under globalization coalition building

and a politics grounded in identity are impossible due to
inherent nature of modern capital to fragment individual
identities in favor of large systematic exploitation
Zizek 00 (slavoj, senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy, University
of Ljubljana, Slovenia, international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, and
general badass, The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?, pg
11-15, wcp)
So where are we, today, with regard to ghosts? The first paradox that strikes us, of course, is that
this very process of global reflexivization that mercilessly derides and chases the ghosts of the
past generates not only its own immediacy but also its own ghosts, its own spectrality. The most
famous ghost, which has been roaming around for the last 150 years, was not a ghost of the past,
but the spectre of the (revolutionary) future - the spectre, of course, from the first sentence of
The Communist Manifesto. The automatic reaction to The Manifesto of today's enlightened
liberal reader is: isn't the text simply wrong on so many empirical accounts - with regard to its
picture of the social situation, as well as the revolutionary perspective it sustains and
propagates? Was there ever a political manifesto that was more clearly falsified by subsequent
historical reality? Is not The Manifesto, at its best, the exaggerated extrapolation of certain
tendencies discernible in the nineteenth century? So let us approach The Manifesto from the
opposite end: where do we live today, in our global 'post . . .' (postmodern, post-industrial)
society? The slogan that is imposing itself more and more is 'globalization': the brutal imposition
of the unified world market that threatens all local ethnic traditions, including the very
form of the nation state. And in view of this situation, is not the description of the social
impact of the bourgeoisie in The Manifesto more relevant than ever? The bourgeoisie cannot
exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations
of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of
production in unaltered form was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier
industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all
social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all
earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices
and opinions, are swept away, all new formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All
that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with
sober senses his real condition in life, and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly
expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It
must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie
has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production
and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it bas drawn from under
the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries
have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose
introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no
longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones;
industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In
place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring
for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and
national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal interdependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual
creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrowmindedness becomes more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local
literatures, there arises a world literature.6 Is this not, more than ever, our reality today?
Ericsson phones are no longer Swedish, Toyota cars are manufactured 60 per cent in the USA,
Hollywood culture pervades the remotest parts of the globe.... Furthermore, does not the
same go also for all forms of ethnic and sexual identities? Should we not supplement
Marx's description in this sense, adding also that sexual 'one sidedness and narrow-mindedness
become more and more impossible'; that concerning sexual practices also, 'all that is solid melts
into air, all that is holy is profaned', so that capitalism tends to replace standard
normative heterosexuality with a proliferation of unstable shifting identities
and/or orientations? From time to time Marx himself underestimates this ability of the
capitalist universe to incorporate the transgressive urge that seemed to threaten it; in his
analysis of the ongoing American Civil War, for example, he claimed that since the English
textile industry, the backbone of the industrial system, could not survive without the supply of
cheap cotton from the American South rendered possible only by slave labour, England would
be forced to intervene directly to prevent the abolition of slavery. So yes, this global dynamism
described by Marx, which causes all things solid to melt into air, is our reality- on condition that
we do not forget to supplement this image from The Manifesto with its inherent dialectical
opposite, the 'spiritualization' of thievery material process of production. While capitalism does
suspend the power of the old ghosts of tradition, it generates its own monstrous ghosts. That is
to say: on the one hand, capitalism entails the radical secularization of social life- it
mercilessly tears apart any aura of authentic nobility, sacredness, honour, and so
on: It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of
philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal
worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has
set up that single, unconscionable freedom - Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by
religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.7
However, the fundamental lesson of the 'critique of political economy' elaborated by the mature
Marx in the years after The Manifesto is that this reduction of all heavenly chimeras to brutal
economic reality generates a spectrality of its own. When Marx describes the mad selfenhancing circulation of Capital, whose solipsistic path of self-fecundation reaches its apogee in
today's meta-reflexive speculations on futures, it is far too simplistic to claim that the spectre of
this self-engendering monster that pursues its path regardless of any human or environmental
concern is an ideological abstraction, and that one should never forget that behind this
abstraction there are real people and natural objects on whose productive capacities and
resources Capital's circulation is based, and on which it feeds like a gigantic parasite. The
problem is that this 'abstraction' does not exist only in our (financial specula tor's)
misperception of social reality; it is 'real' in the precise sense of determining the
very structure of material social processes: the fate of whole strata of populations, and
sometimes of whole countries, can be decided by the 'solipsistic' speculative dance of Capital,
which pursues its goal of profitability with a blessed indifference to the way its movement will
affect social reality. That is the fundamental systemic violence of capitalism, which is
much more uncanny than direct pre-capitalist socio-ideological violence: this
violence is no longer attributable to concrete individuals and their 'evil' intentions;
it is purely 'objective', systemic, anonymous.
Identity is fluid the self is constantly becoming which

disproves the thesis of identity politics in other words, no tag
could ever do this card justice
Zizek 4 (slavoj mah boi, general philosopher, The Ongoing Soft Revolution, Critical
Inquiry, wcp)
And, to go even a step further, is the practice of fist-fucking not the exemplary case of what
Deleuze called the "expansion of a concept?" The fist is put to a new use; the notion of
penetration is expanded into the combination of the hand with sexual penetration ,
into the exploration of the inside of a body. No wonder Foucault, Deleuze's Other, was practicing
fisting: is fist-fucking not the sexual invention of the twentieth century, a new
model of eroticism and pleasure? It is no longer genitalized, but focused just on the
penetration of the surface, with the role of the phallus being taken over by the hand, the
autonomized partial object par excellence. And, what about the so-called Transformer or
animorph toys, a car or a plane that can be transformed into a humanoid robot, an animal that
can be morphed into a human or robot. Is this not Deleuzian? There are no "metaphorics" here;
the point is not that the machinic or animal form is revealed as a mask containing a human
shape but, rather, the existence of the becoming-machine or becoming-animal of the human, the
flow of continuous morphing. What is blurred here is also the divide machine/living organism: a
car transmutes into a humanoid/cyborg organism. And, is the ultimate irony not that, for
Deleuze, the sport was surfing, a Californian sport par excellence if there ever was one? No
longer a sport of self-control and domination directed towards some goal, it is just
a practice of inserting oneself into a wave and letting oneself be carried by it. Brian
Massumi formulated clearly this deadlock, which is based on the fact that today's capitalism
already overcame the logic of totalizing normality and adopted the logic of the erratic excess:
Turns
Identity politics result in a crippling interpassivity that only
functions through violence
Zizek 97 (slavoj, senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and
Philosophy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, international director of the Birkbeck

Institute for the Humanities, and general badass, The Plague of Fantasies, pg.
146, wcp)
In the political domain, one of the recent outstanding examples of 'interpassivity' is the
multiculturalist Leftist intellectual's 'apprehension' about how even the Muslims, the great
victims of the Yugoslav war, are now renouncing the multi-ethnic pluralist vision of Bosnia and
conceding to the fact that if the Serbs and Croats want their clearly defined ethnic units, they too
want an ethnic space of their own. This Leftist's 'regret' is multiculturalist racism at its worst: as
if the Bosnians were not literally pushed into creating their own ethnic enclave by the way that
the liberal' West has threatened them in the last five years. What interests us here, however, is
how the 'multi-ethnic Bosnia' is only the latest in the series of mythical figures of the Other
through which Western Leftist intellectuals have acted out their ideological fantasies: this
intellectual is 'multi-ethnic' through Bosnians, breaks out of the Cartesian paradigm by
admiring Native American wisdom, and so on just as in past decades, when they were
revolutionaries by admiring Cuba, or 'democratic socialists' by endorsing the myth of Yugoslav
'self- management' Socialism as 'something special', a genuine democratic breakthrough . . . In
all these cases, they have continued to lead their undisturbed upper-middle-class
academic existence, while doing their progressive duty through the Other. This
paradox of interpassivity, of believing or enjoying through the other, also opens up a new
approach to aggressivity: aggressivity is provoked in a subject when the other
subject, through which the first subject believed or enjoyed, does something which
disturbs the functioning of this transference. Look, for example, at the attitude of some
Western Leftist academics towards the disintegration of Yugoslavia: since the fact that the
people of ex-Yugoslavia rejected ('betrayed') Socialism disturbed the belief of these academics that is, prevented them from persisting in their belief in 'authentic' self-management Socialism
through the Other which realizes it - everyone who did not share their Yugo-nostalgic attitude
was dismissed as a proto-Fascist nationalist3
***Permutation***
Capitalist domination and racism are intertwined the two are
mutually dependent
Brown 14 (Pamela, columnist with Tidal Magazine, contributor to Acronym TV's Resistance
Report and an organizer with Peoples Investigation of Wall Street, Can We Have Capitalism
Without Racism? The Invisible Chains of Debt and the Catastrophic Loss of African American
Wealth, http://www.alternet.org/economy/can-we-have-capitalism-without-racism-invisiblechains-debt-and-catastrophic-loss-african?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark, 1/4/14, acc.
7/13/14, arh)
Yet, when we talk about debt, mostly we talk about it as a thing as the kind of thing that hangs
from the body like a ball and chain or from our necks like an albatross. We talk a lot about how
debt makes us feel: atomized, isolated, alone. But, we dont often talk about how the neoliberal
construct of perpetual indebtedness to non-human financial entities has created a populace so
focused on debts owed to Wall Street that we have no collective memory of any other kinds of
debts. But, once we open Pandoras box to take a look at the intersections of debt and race, we
are forced to ask ourselves how it is that we have forgotten so much. Could it be that alongside
the rise of the neoliberal social order characterized by the isolation of the invisible chains of
debt, a parallel practice of colorblindness arose that produces the invisibility of race? And if
Malcolm X was correct that we cannot have capitalism without racism, we have to ask
ourselves whether racism has really declined with colorblindness, or whether colorblindness
might be neoliberalisms corollary. It has been under a gray monotone cloud that a predatory
debt system has been advanced, one that stripped African Americans of all economic gains
subsequent to Civil Rights, and that spread throughout the rest of the economy, impacting
generations to come. Theres plenty of evidence of racism in spite of all the talk about post-racial
America. Still, it comes as a big surprise that while we have been declaring race dead, structural
racism has clearly increased. In fact 50 years after Civil Rights, 150 years after the Emancipation
Proclamation, and during the first black presidency, white Americans currently hold at least 19
times the wealth of African-Americans (Kochhar 2010: 3). Put into perspective, in 1984 the ratio
was 12 to 1, dipping to 7 to 1 in 1995, jumping to an astonishing 19 to 1 in 2009, and is probably
even greater now. In practical terms this means that the average middle income black family has
less wealth than the average white family with earnings below the poverty line (Shapiro 2004:
7). According to a 2010 Brandeis University study, in the last 23 years, the racial wealth gap
increased by 75K from 20K to 95K (Shapiro 2010: 2). Even within the highest income African
Americans, wealth has fallen from 25K to 18K, whereas the wealth of whites in a similar class
surged to 240K (Shapiro 2010: 2). White families saw a dramatic growth of financial assets
excluding home value from 22K to 100K, while African Americans saw very little increase at all
(Shapiro 2010: 1). Because family wealth is the biggest predictor of personal wealth, and wealth
is used to pay for education, this gap assures racial inequality for at least the next generation.
Already 81% of African American students are graduating from college an average of 29K in the
hole (Johnson, 2012: 21). And already the average middle income African American worker
would have to spend an additional twelve weeks per year working to earn the same amount as a
white worker (Shapiro 2004: 7). As a result, between 1984 and 2007 African Americans actually
doubled their debt burden as measured by assets against liabilities. At the rate blacks have been
falling behind since the mid 90s, black and white median wealth will never ever reach parity,
and unless something is done, these paths will continue to diverge. Yet, 61% of white Americans
believe that blacks have already achieved equality, and an additional 22% believe that racial
equality will be reached soon (Richomme, 2012: 8). In other words , 83% of whites believe
that we are living in a post racial era. Only 17% of blacks believe that equality has
been reached . If we understand the neoliberal debt system as increasing inequality by
moving financial resources toward the top, this process would be visible if it were not for the
invisibility of race and the ideologies of colorblindness that accomplish that invisibility. BonillaSilva proposes four central frameworks that colorblindness operates through: abstract
liberalism, naturalization, cultural racism and minimization of racism. Vaguely liberal ideals of
freedom manifest as the belief that opportunities should be equal, but not intentionally
expanded, tying right into the idea that things are just the way they are. The it is what it is
approach lends to beliefs that poverty is cultural, and if people changed their habits they would
advance. And, of course, this goes hand in hand with the idea that blacks do not experience
discrimination, a belief with which 83% of whites agree. According to Bonilla-Silva together
these frames form an impregnable yet elastic wall that barricades whites from the United States
racial reality (Bonilla-Silva, 2010: 47). These frames are drawn upon synergistically and
effortlessly such that it makes sense that inequalities exist, and that it also makes sense that
nothing proactive can or should be done about it. Part of the way that these beliefs work
effectively together is that they inhabit the invisible space that debt creates between us,
presenting us as if we are not only disconnected from each other but from time, and thus
history. As indebtedness to financial powers requires of us constant foresight, a constant seeking
of a future beyond debt, we lose sight of the past. Colorblindness serves the invisible debt
economy like a key in a lock. By rendering the debts that have created the structures of
inequality invisible, we reinforce the social dynamics of neoliberalisms formulation of debt. And
while the dominant belief is that the debts we owe are generic and disconnected from the past,
colorblind practices amount to a willful denial and lack of concern with the reality of worsening
racial inequality. Worse yet, by assuming that the playing field is truly even, colorblindness
tends toward blaming the victim. After all, if it were not simply inherent deficit, why else would
blacks be lagging so far behind? These ways of seeing manifest as increasing indebtedness and a
predatory debt based economy for all, as wealth-extracting products are first tested on and then
expanded out from black and other communities of color. When it comes to credit cards and real
estate, we can see how these frames led to a domino effect to the detriment of not only blacks,
but to white Americans as well. Beginning in the 1980s household debt began to rise
significantly, increasing every single year from 1982 to 2007 with total household debt hitting
13.9 trillion in 2008 (Ruben 2009:1). From 1989 to 2001 credit card debt literally tripled for the
average American family who experienced a 53% increase in debt load (Draut 2003: 9). And
since 2000 families began to increase debt at a pace four times faster than in the 1990s (Weller
2007: 54). But what is more shocking than this enormous increase is that lower income families
had a 184% increase in debt (Draut 2003: 21). While debt levels have increased fastest for
middle income families, low to moderate income families suffer more. As of 2004, 46% of very
low income families earning less than 10K per year spent more than 40% of their income to pay
off their debt (Ruben 2009: 9). Much of this increase in debt can be traced to the 1978
Marquette vs. First Omaha Service Corp Supreme Court case that had the practical effect of
ending laws prohibiting usury. By allowing states to regulate interest rates and credit card
issuers to set interest rates by the home state of their corporate operation, banks were able to
avoid state caps on interest rates. As a result, banks were able to market high interest,
high fee predatory credit products targeting lower and moderate income people
who could not obtain credit easily before. Since over 25% of African Americans
live below the poverty line, and since African Americans earn on average 62% of
white Americans, blacks were disproportionately impacted by these predatory
tactics. And because of the structural inequalities that have manifested as long term credit
famine in communities of color, these products were viewed as lifelines. But these predatory
products expanded rapidly. Credit card companies tested new ways to make greater profits
through strategies like resetting interest rates due to missed payments and charging exorbitant
late fees, and began to include these terms with less risky products.
Perm do both solvesfocus on both the class and race

struggles is necessary, they are intertwined throughout history
and define each other through the bouts of empirical
oppression
WSF 3 (The Workers Solidarity Federation , Workers Solidarity :Magazine of the Workers Solidarity Federation
Racism and the Class struggle, 2003, http://struggle.ws/rbr/rbr4_racism.html //SRSL)
Racial oppression remains a defining feature of the modern capitalist world. It is manifest most spectacularly in violent attacks on
More important to the fate of these communities has been the systematic
and increasing discrimination by capitalist states, manifest in attacks on the rights of
immigrants, cuts in welfare services, and racist police and court systems. How can racism be defeated? An answer to this
question requires an examination of the forces which gave rise to, and continue to reproduce, racism. It also requires a careful analysis of which social forces benefit
from racial oppression. By racism is meant either an attitude denying the equality of all human
beings, or economic, political and social discrimination against racial groups . The roots of racism
Capitalism developed as a world system based on the exploitation of workers, slaves and
peasants - black, brown, yellow, and white. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the
young capitalist system centred mainly on western Europe and the Americas . In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
Africa and Asia were brought increasingly into the ambit of capitalist power . In the Americas, vast plantation systems were set up. Based
on slavery, they were capitalist enterprises exporting agricultural goods . It was in the system of slavery that the genesis of
racism is to be found. In the words of Caribbean scholar, Eric Williams, "Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery" [1]. Initially, the slave plantations were not organised on
immigrants and minorities by fascist gangs.
racial lines. Although the first slaves in the Spanish possessions in the Americas were generally native Americans, slavery was restricted (at least officially) to those who did not convert to Christianity. The native
Americans were succeeded by poor Europeans. Many of these workers were only enslaved for a limited period, as indentured servants serving contracts of up to ten or more years. Others were convicts sentenced
for crimes such as stealing cloth, or prisoners of war from uprisings and the colonisation of areas such as Ireland and Scotland. However, there were also a substantial number of life-long European slaves, and
even amongst the indentured a substantial number had been kidnapped and sold into bondage.[2] Conditions on the "Middle Passage" (the trip across the Atlantic) for these indentured servants and slaves were,
in Williams' words, so bad that they should "banish any ideas that the horrors of the slave ship are to be in any way accounted for by the fact that the victims were Negroes"[3]. More than half the English
immigrants to the American colonies in the sixteenth century were indentured servants[4], and until the 1690s there were still far more unfree Europeans on the plantations of the American South than Black
slaves[5]. Racist ideas were developed in the context of the slave trade of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this period, African people came to be the main source of slaves for the plantations. The
systems of social control established for American and European unfree labour was now applied to the Africans. The main reason for this shift to African slaves was that such slaves were obtained cheaply enough,
and in sufficient numbers, to meet the expanding needs of the plantation capitalists[6]. African ruling classes played a central role in the highly profitable slave trade: "The trade was ... an African trade until it
reached the coast. Only very rarely were Europeans directly involved in procuring slaves, and that largely in Angola" [7]. It in the seventeenth century that racist ideology began to be developed for the first time by
such groups as "British sugar planters in the Caribbean, and their mouthpieces in Britain" who fastened onto differences in physical appearance to develop the myth that Black people were sub-human and
deserved to be enslaved: "here is an ideology, a system of false ideas serving class interests"[8]. Racism was used to justify the capture and perpetual enslavement of millions of people for the purposes of
European servitude was justified as being

the lot of inferiors; Black slavery was justified through racism . Once developed, racist ideas came
to be used more broadly as a justification for oppression. Jewish people, for example, came to be oppressed as a racial minority rather than as a
capitalism. The enslavement of native Americans had been justified as being on the grounds of their heathen beliefs;
religious group. The beneficiaries of slavery were not Europeans in general, but the capitalist ruling classes of western Europe. African ruling classes also received substantial benefits. There were of course the
vast numbers of Europeans indentured or enslaved. There were also the sailors on the "Middle Passage" whose conditions, according to Williams, were themselves scarcely distinguishable from slavery. Finally,
there were vast numbers of "poor White" peasant farmers of the Americas (some of whom were former indentured servants) who were out-competed and driven to the margins by the giant slave plantations.[9]
The vast majority of Europeans never owned slaves: only 6 per cent of whites owned slaves in the American South in 1860.[10] There were also African-American and native American slave-owners. Race and
Empire Racism was thus born of the slavery of early capitalism. However, having been once created, subsequent developments in capitalism would sustain and rear this creature of the ruling class. The extension
of capitalist power over Africa and Asia took place largely from the seventeenth century onwards in the form of imperialism[11]. Initially, imperial conquest was often undertaken directly by large corporations such
as the British East India Company (in India) and the Dutch East India Company (in South Africa, among other places). Later capitalist governments took a direct hand, notably in the conquest of most of Africa
from the 1880s. Imperialism in this period was driven by the search for profits: initially, profits from control of trade; later by big corporations' need for cheap sources of labour and raw materials, and by the need
to find new markets to sell manufactured goods. Racist ideas were again pressed into service to justify the process of imperial conquest and rule. Imperial control was justified on the supposed grounds that
Africans and Asians (and for that matter other colonised peoples such as the Irish) were unable to govern or develop themselves, and needed to be ruled by external forces - namely the ruling classes of western
Europe and Japan[12]. Equal rights were not seen as even being possible in this world view. Empire did not benefit workers in the colonies, nor in the imperialist countries. The profits of empire accrued to the
capitalist class[13]. Meanwhile, the methods and forces of colonial repression were deployed against workers in the imperialist countries (most notably, the use of colonial troops to crush the Spanish Revolution),
whilst lives and material resources were wasted on imperial adventures. Today, multi-national companies cut jobs and wages by shifting to repressive Third World client regimes. Racism today Clearly, capitalism
gave birth to racism. Racism as an idea helped justify empire and slavery. Racism as a form of discrimination or oppression facilitated high levels of exploitation, and has thus been an important factor in the
development of capitalism. Today, both slavery and the formal empires have been overthrown - this has largely been the result of struggles by millions of workers, peasants and slaves against oppression. Slave
revolts are part of the history of class struggle against capitalism. Peasant and worker resistance to colonialism are equally so, although it must be noted that most anti-colonial struggles were prevented from
although these struggles

removed the formally racist structures of slavery and empire they have not buried racism.
Racism -as an idea and as a practice- continues to serve two key functions under capitalism . First, it
allows the capitalists to secure sources of cheap, unorganised, and highly exploitable labour . Key
reaching their necessary conclusion- socialist revolution- by the determination of local elites to reach a deal with capitalism and imperialism. However,
examples are immigrants and minorities. Subject to racist discrimination, they form a segment of the working class that has been described as "super-exploited", providing high levels of profit for capitalists. In
racism
allows the capitalist ruling class to divide and rule the exploited classe s. Across the planet, billions of workers and peasants
times of capitalist crisis (such as today) these segments are most readily deprived of political and social rights, the first to fall in the overall assault on the working class that takes place. Secondly,
suffer the lashes of capitalism. Racism is used to foster divisions within the working class to help keep the ruling class in power. Praxedis Guerrero, a great Mexican anarchist, described the process as follows[14]:
"Racial prejudice and nationality, clearly managed by the capitalist and tyrants, prevent peoples living side by side in a fraternal manner... A river, a mountain, a line of small monuments suffice to maintain
foreigners and make enemies of two peoples, both living in mistrust and envy of one another because of the acts of past generations. Each nationality pretends to be above the other in some kind of way, and the
dominating classes, the keepers of education and the wealth of nations, feed the proletariat with the belief of stupid superiority and pride to make impossible the union of all nations who are separately fighting to
free themselves from Capital. If all the workers of the different ... nations had direct participation in all questions of social importance which affect one or more proletarian groups these questions would be
happily and promptly solved by the workers themselves." It happens between majority populations and super-exploited minorities, but also between the working classes of different countries. Workers are told to
blame and hate other workers- distinguished by culture, language, skin colour, or some other arbitrary feature- for their misery. A classic example is the scape-goating of immigrants and refugees for "taking away
jobs and housing". In this way, workers' anger is deflected onto other workers (with whom they have almost everything in common) rather than being directed against capitalists ( with whom workers have
nothing in common). An appearance of common interest is created between workers and bosses of a given race or nation. Who benefits? Racism does not benefit any workers. Even workers who are not
themselves directly oppressed by racism lose out from racism because it divides the working class. White American workers, for example, in no way benefit from the existence of an impoverished and oppressed
minority of African American workers who can be used to undercut wages, and working and living conditions. In addition, racist attitudes make it very difficult to unite workers against the capitalists to challenge
the overall distribution of wealth and power in society. Racism has been used again and again to break workers' struggles. The more the working class is divided, the worse its overall condition will be. This point,
which was repeatedly made by the classical anarchist movement[15], has been confirmed in a study by an American sociologist who set out to test the proposition that white workers gain from racism[16].
Comparing the situation of White and Black workers in all fifty US states, he found, firstly, that the less wage discrimination there was against Black workers, the better were the wages that White workers received.
Secondly, he found that the existence of a substantial nationally oppressed group of poor workers reduced the wages of White workers (but did not affect the earnings of middle and upper-class Whites very much).
Finally, he found that the more intense racial discrimination was, the more poverty there was for lower class Whites. Such facts fly in the face of political strategies which claim that majority population workers
receive material benefits from racism. The logic of this argument is that these privileges must be "renounced" before working class unity is possible. Such an argument assumes that capitalists would adopt a
strategy that systematically benefits the majority of workers, a most unlikely (and as we saw above, unsustainable) notion. In addition, this argument implies that the immediate political task is a redistribution of
wealth among workers as opposed to a class struggle against capitalism. That is to say, it calls on the majority of workers to fight on principle for worse conditions. Finally, this approach mixes up two very
different things: oppression and privilege. While it is obviously true that some workers do not directly experience racial oppression, it does not follow that they benefit from it. The two terms are distinct: while it is
oppressive to be subject to low wages, it is not a privilege to have a living wage. Why racist ideas are accepted None of the arguments made so far in this article deny the possibility that minorities of the working
class may receive temporary benefits from racial oppression in specific circumstances. A case in point would be the small white working class in South Africa between the 1920s and the 1980s, which received real
benefits from apartheid. But, as a general rule, racial oppression is fundamentally against the interests of the majority of workers of all colours. To recognise the primary role of capitalist ruling classes (aided by
their states) in promoting and benefiting from racial oppression is not to deny that many working class people often support racism. Racism is often very widespread. However, such support for racism is an
example of working class people acting against their own interests, rather than evidence that workers benefit from racism. However, if racism provides no benefits for workers, how can we explain such support for
the essentially irrational ideas of racism? The answer is that there are very real material forces in capitalist society which operate to foster support for these ideas. The first factor is capitalist control over ideas.
Capitalists do not simply rule by force, they also rule by promoting a capitalist world-view. Here we must consider, as Praxedis argued above, how "the dominating classes, the keepers of education and the wealth
of nations" "feed the proletariat with the belief of stupid superiority and pride": the role of the schools, the media, literature and so forth. The impact of this propaganda cannot be underestimated. The second
factor is the material conditions of the working class itself. Under capitalism, the working class suffers poverty, alienation and misery. In the same way that workers may take solace from religion, they may also
seek the imaginary compensation of supposed racial superiority, "the belief of stupid superiority and pride" (in Praxedis' words). In addition, working class people are locked in bitter competition for a limited
amount of jobs, housing and other resources. In this situation, they may blame other groups in the working class for their plight. Where the other groups are culturally or physically distinct in appearance, this
resentment and competition may be expressed in racist terms. Hence the view, for example, that 'they' are 'taking our jobs'. The Oppressed divided From the above, it is clear that racism is a product of
capitalism, and fundamentally against the interests of the working class and peasantry. Are capitalists from oppressed groups reliable allies in the struggle against racism? The short answer is, no, they are not.
The effects of racism are fundamentally mediated by class position. Taking the case of the United States: although national averages of White and Black incomes show a vast gulf between the two, when class is
taken into account the material inequalities between White and Black workers are shown to be quite limited; taken from another angle, the gap between the conditions of both sets of workers, on one side, and
those of the upper class, on the other, are yawning[17]. Michael Jackson may still face racism, but his wealth and power as a capitalist shields him from the worst effects of racism. Private schools, lawyers, high
incomes - all these factors cannot be ignored. Perhaps more importantly, the class interests of such elites tie them into supporting the capitalist system itself. Black police chiefs, mayors, and army officers are as
much defenders of capitalism as their White counterparts. Such strata will readily compromise with the powers-that-be if it will give them a chance to be 'in the racket and in the running'. Fighting racism It is
capitalism that continually generates the conditions for racist oppression and ideology. It follows that the struggle against racism can only be consistently carried out by the working class and peasantry: the only
forces capable of overthrowing the capitalist system. The overthrow of capitalism will in and of itself fundamentally undermine the social sources of racism. The overthrow of capitalism however, requires the
unification of the working class and peasantry internationally, across all lines of colour and nationality. In addition, the crushing of capitalism, and the establishment of libertarian socialism will allow the vast
resources currently chained to the needs of profiteering by a rich few to be placed under the control of the working and poor people of the whole globe. Under libertarian communism it will be possible to use these
resources to create social and economic equality for all, thus finally enabling the disfigurements of racial oppression to be scoured from the face of the earth. However, this article is in no way arguing that the fight
against racism must be deferred until after the revolution. Instead, it is arguing that on the one hand, only a united working class can defeat racism and capitalism; on the other, a united working class can only be
built on the basis of opposing all forms of oppression and prejudice, thereby winning the support of all sectors of the broad working class. Firstly, it is clear that racism can only be fought on a class basis. It is in
the interest of all workers to support the struggle against racism. Racism is a working class issue because it affects the conditions of all workers, because most people affected by racism are working class, and
because, as indicated above, it is the working class members of racially oppressed groups who are the most severely affected by racism. Working class unity is also in the interests of racially oppressed segments of
the working class, as alliances with the broader working class not only strengthen their own position, but also help lay the basis for the assault on capitalism. Without denying in the least the heroism, and, in some
cases, radicalising role played by minority movements, it is quite obvious that a minority of, say, 10 per cent of the population lacks the ability to overthrow the existing conditions on its own[18]. Such unity is
particularly vital in the workplace, where it is almost impossible for unions of minority workers to function. Secondly, working class unity can, however, clearly only be built on the basis of a resolute opposition to
all forms of racism. If other sections of the working class do not oppose racism, they create a situation in which nationalists can tie racially oppressed segments to Black and other minority capitalists in the futile
games of 'Buy Black' campaigns and voting blocs. Class-based and anarchist alternatives must present a viable alternative if they are to win support. Our tasks Anti-racist work should occupy a high priority in the
activities of all class struggle anarchists. This is important not simply because we always oppose all oppression, and because anarchists have long been opponents of racism. It is also because such work is an
essential to the vital task of unifying and conscientising the working class - a unity without which neither racism nor capitalism can be consigned to the history books. At a general level, we can approach these
by continual
propaganda against racism in our publications, workplaces, unions and communitie s. The workplace and the
tasks by active work in anti-racist struggles and campaigns, including work alongside non-anarchist forces (without, of course, surrendering our political independence), and
union are particularly important sites for activity: it is here that capitalism creates the greatest pressure for workers' unity across all barriers, and it is here that the workers' movement stands or falls on the basis of
We can approach these tasks by raising, on the one hand, demands

that apply equally to all workers (better wages, full union rights, opposition to social partnership
etc.), and by raising, on the other, demands which specifically address the needs of racially
oppressed segments of the working class (equal schooling, equal housing, no to colour bars in
industry etc.). Thus, we should fight for "Better Housing for All! No to Segregation!", to take one example. The target of such demands would, of course, be the bosses, although in no case
whatsoever should the tiniest concession be made to racial prejudices on the part of any workers. There is no contradiction between the class
its ability to address the needs of its whole constituency.
struggle and the struggle against racism. Neither can succeed without the other .
The perm is the only way to solvethe potential unity

necessary to fight cap is grounded in fighting race today, just
focusing on cap cant do the trick
Taylor 11 PhD Program in African American Studies, Northwestern University (Keeanga-Yamahtta, socialistworker.com,
Race, class and Marxism, January 4, 2011, http://socialistworker.org/2011/01/04/race-class-and-marxism //SRSL)
Capitalism is dependant on racism as both a source

of profiteering, but more importantly as a means to divide and rule. Racism is necessary to drive
a wedge between workers who otherwise have everything in common and every reason to ally
and organize together, but who are perpetually driven apart to the benefit of the ruling clas s. Thus,
any serious discussion about Black liberation has to take up not only a critique of
FOR REVOLUTIONARY Marxists, there is an inextricable link between racism and capitalism.
capitalism, but also a credible strategy for ending it. For Marxists, that strategy hinges on the
revolutionary potential of a unified, multiracial and multi-ethnic working-class upheaval against
capitalism. Marxists believe that the potential for that kind of unity is dependant on battles and
struggles against racism today. Without a commitment by revolutionary organizations in the here and now to the fight
against racism, working-class unity will never be achieved and the revolutionary potential of the working class will never be realized. Yet
despite all the evidence of this commitment to fighting racism over many decades, Marxism has been maligned as, at best, "blind" to combating racism and, at worst, "incapable" of it. For example, in an article
published last summer, popular commentator and self-described "anti-racist" Tim Wise summarized the critique of "left activists" that he later defines as Marxists. He writes: [L]eft activists often marginalize
people of color by operating from a framework of extreme class reductionism, which holds that the "real" issue is class, not race, that "the only color that matters is green," and that issues like racism are mere
"identity politics," which should take a backseat to promoting class-based universalism and programs to help working people. This reductionism, by ignoring the way that even middle class and affluent people of
color face racism and color-based discrimination (and by presuming that low-income folks of color and low-income whites are equally oppressed, despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary) reinforces white
denial, privileges white perspectivism and dismisses the lived reality of people of color. Even more, as we'll see, it ignores perhaps the most important political lesson regarding the interplay of race and class:
namely, that the biggest reason why there is so little working-class consciousness and unity in the Untied States (and thus, why class-based programs to uplift all in need are so much weaker here than in the rest of
the industrialized world), is precisely because of racism and the way that white racism has been deliberately inculcated among white working folks. Only by confronting that directly (rather than sidestepping it as
class reductionists seek to do) can we ever hope to build cross-racial, class based coalitions. In other words, for the policies favored by the class reductionist to work--be they social democrats or Marxists--or even
Marxists allegedly think

that class is more important than race; reducing struggles against racism to "mere identity
politics"; and requiring that struggles against racism should "take a back seat" to struggles over
economic issues. Wise also accuses so-called "left activists" of reinforcing "white denial" and
"dismiss[ing] the lived reality of people of color"--which, of course, presumes Left activists and
Marxists to all be white.
to come into being, racism and white supremacy must be challenged directly. Here, Wise accuses Marxism of: "extreme class reductionism," meaning that
Perm solves bestneither movement should be subsumed by

the other
West 93 [Abanes Cornel West, University Professor at Princeton University, M.A. and Ph.D in Philosophy,
Princeton University, graduated Magna Cum Laude in philosophy from Harvard, Prophetic Fragments, Towards a
Socialist Theory of Racism p. 97-?, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1993, http://books.google.com/books?id=2bwdrt5sigC&source=gbs_navlinks_s]
Socialism and Antiracism: Two Inseparable Yet Not Identical Goals It should be apparent
that racist practices directed against black, brown, yellow, and red people are an integral element of
U. S. history, including present day American culture and society. This means not simply that
Americans have inherited racist attitudes and prejudices, but, more importantly,
that institutional forms of racism are embedded in American society in both visible
and invisible ways. These institutional forms exist not only in remnants of de jure job, housing, and
educational discrimination and political gerrymandering. They also manifest themselves in a de facto labor market
segmentation, produced by the exclusion of large numbers of peoples of color from the socioeconomic mainstream.
(This exclusion results from limited educational opportunities, devastated families, a disproportionate presence in
that past Marxist

conceptions of racism have often prevented U. S. socialist movements from
engaging in antiracist activity in a serious and consistent manner . In addition, black
suspicion of white-dominated political movements (no matter how progressive) as well as the
distance between these movements and the daily experiences of peoples of color
have made it even more difficult to fight racism effectively . Furthermore, the disproportionate
the prison population, and widespread police brutality.) It also should be evident
white middle-class composition of contemporary democratic socialist organizations creates cultural barriers to the
participation by peoples of color. Yet this very participation is a vital precondition for greater white sensitivity to
antiracist struggle and to white acknowledgment of just how crucial antiracist struggle is to the U. S. socialist
movement. Progressive organizations often find themselves going around in a vicious circle. Even when they have a
great interest in antiracist struggle, they are unable to attract a critical mass of people of color because of their
current predominately white racial and cultural composition. These organizations are then stereotyped as lily white,
The only effective way the contemporary

democratic socialist movement can break out of this circle (and it is possible because the bulk
of democratic socialists are among the least racist of Americans ) is to be sensitized to the critical
importance of antiracist struggles. This "conscientization" cannot take place either by reinforcing
and significant numbers of people of color refuse to join.
agonized white consciences by means of guilt, nor by presenting another grand theoretical analysis with no
The former breeds psychological paralysis among white

progressives, which is unproductive for all of us; the latter yields important
discussions but often at the expense of concrete political engagement . Rather what is
needed is more widespread participation by predominantly white democratic
socialist organizations in antiracist struggles whether those struggles be for the political, economic,
practical implications.
and cultural empowerment of Latinos, blacks, Asians, and Native Americans or antiimperialist struggles against U.S.
A major
focus on antiracist coalition work will not only lead democratic socialists to act upon
their belief in genuine individuality and radical democracy for people around the
world; it also will put socialists in daily contact with peoples of color in common
struggle. Bonds of trust can be created only within concrete contexts of struggle. This
interracial interaction guarantees neither love nor friendship. Yet it can yield more understanding and
the realization of two overlapping goals: democratic socialism and antiracism. While
support for oppressive regimes in South Africa, Chile, the Philippines, and the occupied West Bank.
engaging in antiracist struggles, democratic socialists can also enter into a dialogue on the power relationships and
misconceptions that often emerge in multiracial movements for social justice in a racist society. Honest and trusting
coalition work can help socialists unlearn Eurocentrism in a self-critical manner and can also demystify the
We must frankly acknowledge

that a democratic socialist society will not necessarily eradicate racism. Yet a
democratic socialist society is the best hope for alleviating and minimizing racism,
particularly institutional forms of racism. This conclusion depends on a candid evaluation that guards
against utopian self-deception. But it also acknowledges the deep moral commitment on the
part of democratic socialists of all races to the dignity of all individuals and peoples,
a commitment that impels us to fight for a more libertarian and egalitarian society.
Therefore concrete antiracist struggle is both an ethical imperative and political
necessity for democratic socialists. It is even more urgent as once again racist policies and Third World
intervention become more acceptable to many Americans. A more effective democratic socialist
movement engaged in antiracist and anti-imperialist struggle can help turn the tide .
motivations of white progressives in the movement for social justice.
It depends on how well we understand the past and present, how courageously we act, and how true we remain to
our democratic socialist ideals of freedom, equality, and democracy.
Permutation apply our methodology of questioning identity to

issues of classism.
The methodology perm is the combination of identity politics
and Marxism necessary to trigger a socialist revolution.
Rectenwald 13 (Michael, Editor at the North Star Magazine a magazine dedicated

to examining radical politics, from social democracy to anarchy Whats Wrong With
Identity Politics (and Intersectionality Theory)? A Response to Mark Fishers Exiting
the Vampire Castle (And Its Critics) http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=11411
December 2, 2013 accessed 7/13/14 .nt)
Therefore, Marxists disgusted with identity politics should take the lessons
of their critique back to the heart of Marxism itself. They really should
examine their own house first. I refer here to the kind of policing of the
category of working class that marked the Old Left and that, with
exceptions, continues to mark Marxist politics at present. Are students
working class? Are graduate teaching assistants workers? Are academic
Marxists workers or even real Marxists? Can a petit bourgeois intellectual
really understand the working class? These questions reflect the identity politics
that subsists in many Marxist milieus. The extirpation of such identity policing
within Marxism itself is much more important politically than the battle
with the identitarian left. As Ross Wolfe writes, It shouldnt matter who people
supposedly are. All that should matter is the kind of transformation they hope to
effect in the world.
The perm solvesmixing Marxist race theory with the aff is the only
way to get results
When CRT was originally envisioned, it was to be an intersection of 'racial theory'

and activism against racism. However, a number of CRT theorists today are frustrated at
the turn CRT has made from activism to academic discourse, and this has led to a
reappraisal of the significance of social class. As we saw in chapter 1 of this volume, Delgado (2003) has put
forward a materialist critique of the discourse-focused trend of recent CRT writings
which focus more on text and symbol and less on the economic determinants of
Latino/a and black racial fortunes . Delgado's paper was the subject of a symposium in 2005, run by The Michigan Journal of Race and
Law, entitled, Going Back to Class: The Re-emergence ofClass in Critical Race Theory. Somewhat surprisingly, given Mills' published comments on Marxism above (see also
Mills said he favored the combination ofMarxism and CRT, which forms
a kind of'racial capitalism.'15 He said he agreed with Delgado on the belief, central to CRT, that class structure
keeps racial hierarchy intact. The working class is divided by 'race' , Mills said, to the
advantage of the upper class, which is mainly composed of white elites (Hare, 2006), a
position very familiar to Marxist analysts. At the same symposium, Angela Harris
said CRT is essential in exposing how interconnected class, 'race' and sex can be:
'We need to pay attention to the intersections and understand how complicated
these issues are,' (cited in Hare 2006). As an example, she referenced the
affirmative action disputes in higher education. The often-cited argument that working-class whites are being rejected in favor
Pateman and Mills, 2007),
of middle-class blacks and Latinos-who, the argument goes have a better chance of acceptance regardless of 'race'-is looking at class based solely on income (cited in ibid.).
'What CRT exposes is that class also needs to be looked at in terms of access to
wealth and the racialization of class' (cited in ibid.). As for the future of CRT, Delgado
envisions a new movement of CRT theorists to recombine discourse and political
activism. 'I'm worried that the younger crop of CRT theorists are enamored by the
easy arm-chair task of writing about race the word and not race in the world' , Delgado
concluded. 'A new movement is needed'. For Marxists, these are promising developments and point towards a possible alignment between CRT and Marxism. However, any
future alignment would need to have at its core a structural analysis ofcapitalism and capitalist social relations, combined with a critique thereof (I return to this in the
Conclusion to this volume). I now turn to a consideration of racism and Marxism before relating racism to the Marxist concept of racialization.
The permutation does existbest way to solve

Contemporary racism, both in its ideological forms and material practices, might
best be thought of as a matrix of biological and cultural racism . I would argue that, in that
matrix, racism can be based on genetics (as in notions ofwhite people having higher IQs than black people: see Herrnstein & Murray, 199418; and
more recently Frank Ellis (Gair, 2006)19 or on culture it (as in contemporary manifestations of Islamophobia). Sometimes, however,it is not easily
identifiable as either (e.g., 'Britain for the British'), or is a com-bination of both. A good example of the latter is when Margaret
Thatcher, at the time of the Falklands/Malvinas war, referred to the people of that island as 'an island race'
whose 'way oflife is British' (Short and Carrington, 1996, p. 66). Here we have a conflation of notions of 'an
island race' (like the British 'race' who, Mrs. Thatcher believes, built an empire and ruled a quarter of the world through its sterling qualities; (Thatcher, 1982, cited in Miles, 1993, p. 75))
and, in addition, a 'race', which is culturally, like 'us': 'their way oflife is British'.
There are also forms of racism which are quite unintentional, which demonstrates
that you do not have to be a racist (i.e., have allegiance to far-Right ideologies) to be racist, or to be implicated
in generating racism consequences. Thus when somebody starts a sentence with
the phrase 'I'm not racist but ... ', the undertone means that the next utterance will
always be racist. The use by some people in the United Kingdom, out ofignorance, of the term 'Pakistani' to refer to everyone whose mode of dress or accent, for example, signifies that
they might be ofAsian origin is another example of unintentional racism . The use ofthe nomenclature 'Paki', on the other hand,
I would suggest, is generally used in an intentionally racist way because of the
generally known negative connotations attached to the word in the United Kingdom .
Racism, as practices, can also be overt, as in racist name-calling in schools, or it can
be covert, as in racist mutterings in school corridors. For Miles (1989, p. 79), racism relates to social collectivities identified as
'races' being 'attributed with negatively evaluated characteristics and/or represented as inducing negative consequences for any other'. Here I would also want to inflate Miles' definition to include, following Smina
Akhtar, 'seemingly positive attributes'. However, ascribing such attributes to an 'ethnic group' will probably ultimately have racist implications, for example the subtext of describing a particular group as having a
strong culture might be that 'they are swamping our culture'. This form of racism is often directed at people of South Asian origin who are assumed to have close-knit families and to be hard working, and
therefore in a position to 'take over' our neighborhoods. 20 In addition, attributing something seemingly positive-'they are good at sport'-might have implications that 'they are not good' at other things.
People ofAfrican-Caribbean origin, in racist discourse, are thought to have 'no

culture' or a different culture, and to thus also pose a threat to 'us'. In education this
is something that facilitates the underachievement ofworking class AfricanCaribbean boys who are thought to be (by some teachers) less academically able, and
'problems'. Stereotypes and stratifications of ethnic groups are invariably

problematic and, at least potentially, racist. Racism can be dominative (in the form
of direct and oppressive state policy) as in the apartheid era in South Africa or
slavery in the United States, or it can be aversive, where people are segregated,
excluded or cold-shouldered on grounds of racism (Kovel, 1988), or where they are
routinely treated less favorably in day-to-day interactions. In certain situations, racism may well becoi:ne apparent given
specific stimuli. For example, racism in the media, as in the above examples of anti-gypsy/Roma/Traveller racism and Islamophobia, can actually generate racism. Similarly, racist sentiments from a number of
peers who might be collectively present at a given moment can facilitate racist responses. Racist chants and other racist reactions at soccer matches are an obvious example. Elsewhere (Cole, 2008d, pp. 117-119),
I have advocated a definition of racism which includes cultural as well as biological

racism, intentional as well as unintentional racism; 'seemingly positive' attributes
with probably ultimately racist implications as well as obvious negative racism;
dominative racism (direct and oppressive) as opposed to aversive racism (exclusion
and cold-shouldering) (cf. Kovel, 1988) and overt as well as covert racism. Finally,
and crucially in the context of this chapter, racism can be non-color-coded. All of
these forms of racism can be individual or personal, and they can be brought on,
given certain stimuli. These various forms of racism can also take institutional forms
(see chapter 5 of this volume for a discussion of institutional racism), and there
can, of course, be permutations among them. I would argue, therefore, that, in order to encompass the multifaceted nature of contemporary
racism, it is important to adopt a broad concept and definition of racism, rather than a narrow one, based, as it was in the days of the British Empire, or pre-civil rights United States, for example, on notions of
overt biological inferiority, even though there may also have been implications ofcultural inferiority. I believe that the above conception and definition ofracism both theoretically and practically better depicts
racism in contemporary Britain (and elsewhere) than CRT notions of 'white supremacy'. From a Marxist perspective, in order to understand and combat racism, however, we must relate it to historical, economic
I now turn to the Marxist concept of racialization which makes the

connection between racism and capitalist modes of production and thus is able to
relate to these factors, namely the real material contexts of struggle. While the
extraction of surplus value defines the whole capitalist process (see the appendix to chapter 8 of this volume),
permutations ofthese factors vary greatly, and it is for this reason that
and political factors.
the definition of racism has to be wide-ranging.
Modes of production and racialization are inherently linkedmeans

cap and race must be solved together in order to be successful
links between modes of production and racialization in the United Kingdom at

length elsewhere (e.g., Cole, 2004a, 2004b). Forexample, in Cole, 2004a, p. 39, noting that racialization is historically and
geographically specific, I argued that, in the British colonial era, implicit inthe rhetoric of
imperialism was a racialized concept of 'nation' . British cap-italism had to be to
regenerated in the context of competition from othercountries, and amid fears that
sparsely settled British colonies might beoverrun by other European 'races ' (ibid.). As I put it,
while the biologi-cal 'inferiority' ofBritain's imperial subjects was perceived secondhand, theindigenous racism of the period was anti-Irish and anti-Semiti c (e.g., Kirk,1985; Miles,
I have developed the
1982). From the 1880s, there was a sizeable immigration ofdestitute Jewish people from the Russian pogroms, and this fuelled the pre-occupation of politicians and
commentators about the health of the nation,the fear ofthe degeneration of'the race', and the subsequent threat to impe-rial and economic hegemony (Holmes, 1979; Thane,
1982). Intentional andovert institutional racism was rampant in all the major institutions ofsociety:in the Government, the TUC and, of course, at the heart of capitalism itself
(Cole, 2004a, p. 40). Moreover, racialization ensured that the institutional-ized racism promulgated by the ruling class filtered down to the school andbecame part of popular
culture. This was also most marked in the actual curriculum (for an analysis, see Cole and Blair, 2006, pp. 73-75; see also Cole, 1992b, pp. 71-80). As I argued (Cole, 2004a,
pp. 42-43), the Empire came home to roost after World War 2. The demands of an expanding post-war economy meant that Britain, like most other European countries, was
faced with a major shortage oflabor (Castles and Kosack, 1985). The overwhelming majority of migrants who came to Britain were from the Republic of Ireland, the Indian
subcontinent and the Caribbean (Miles, 1989). Those industries where the demand for labor was greatest actively recruited Asian, black and other minority ethnic workers in
Despite the heterogeneous class structure of the migrating

populations (see Heath and Ridge, 1983), migrant workers came to occupy, overwhelmingly, the
semi-skilled and unskilled positions in the English labor market (Daniel, 1968: Smith, 1977). Furthermore, as
I noted (Cole, 2004a, p. 42), they found themselves disproportionately concentrated in certain
types ofmanual work characterized by a shortage oflabor, shift working, unsocial
hours, low pay and an unpleasant working environment (Smith, 1977). The consequences of this process
their home countries (Fryer, 1984; Ramdin, 1987).
ofracialization were clear. According to Miles (1982, p. 165), these different racialized groups came to: occupy a structurally distinct position in the economic, political and
ideological relations of British capitalism, but within the boundary of the working class. They therefore constitute a fraction ofthe working class, one that can be identified as a
racialised fraction . When the children of these migrant workers entered the education system, there were different kinds of representation for different minority ethnic group
students (Cole, 2004a, pp. 43-47). While black children were seen as being disruptive and violent (corresponding to the previous racialization of their forebears in the African
and Caribbean colonies), those ofAsian background (namely Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi) were both seen as an academic (and social) threat to white children (see Hiro,
1971), or religious 'aliens' whose 'specific needs' posed a threat to the autonomy of schools (Blair, 1994)-a form ofcultural racism. Asian students were also presented in
This
notion of the 'passive Asian' student was juxtaposed against the 'aggressive'
student of Caribbean origin and became, as Sally Tomlinson (1984) declared, 'a stick
to beat the West Indian pupil with'. Racist inequalities in the current UK education system are discussed briefly in chapter 5 of this
seemingly benign terms as passive and studious and not presenting a disciplinary problem for teachers-a seemingly positive attribute (Cole, 2004a, p. 45).
volume; see also Gillborn, 2008, Chapter 3 for a thorough discussion of these inequalities written from a CRT perspective.
***Misc***
Cap Link Disease

The Exploration for Cures of Diseases is a Mask for
Pharmaceutical Profits
Rath 03
(Dr. Rath After graduating from medical school he worked as a physician and researcher at
the University Clinic of Hamburg, Germany and the German Heart Center in Berlin. His
research focused on the causes of arteriosclerosis and cardiovascular
disease. http://www4.dr-rathfoundation.org/THE_FOUNDATION/About_Dr_Matthias_Rath/why_book.html )
The purpose and driving force of the pharmaceutical industry is to

increase sales of pharmaceutical drugs for ongoing diseases and to find
new diseases to market existing drugs.By this very nature, the
pharmaceutical industry has no interest in curing diseases. The
eradication of any disease inevitably destroys a multi-billion dollar market
of prescription drugs. Therefore, pharmaceutical drugs are primarily developed to
relieve symptoms, but not to cure.If eradication therapies for diseases are
discovered and developed, the industry has a basic interest to suppress, discredit
and obstruct these medical breakthroughs in order to make sure that diseases
continue as the very basis for a lucrative prescription drug market.The economic
interest of the pharmaceutical industry is the main reason why no medical
breakthrough has been made for the control of the most common diseases
such as cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, heart failure,
diabetes, cancer, and osteoporosis, and why these diseases continue like
epidemics on a worldwide scale.For the same economic reasons, the
pharmaceutical industry has now formed an international cartel by the code name
"Codex Alimentarius" with the aim to outlaw any health information in connection
with vitamins and to limit free access to natural therapies on a worldwide scale.At
the same time, the pharmaceutical companies withhold public information about
the effects and risks of prescription drugs and life-threatening side effects are
omitted or openly denied. In order to assure the status quo of this deceptive
scheme, a legion of pharmaceutical lobbyists is employed to influence
legislation, control regulatory agencies (e.g., FDA), and manipulate
medical research and education. Expensive advertising campaigns and PR
agencies are used to deceive the public.Millions of people and patients around
the world are defrauded twice: A major portion of their income is used to
finance the exploding profits of the pharmaceutical industry. In return, they
are offered a medicine that does not even cure.
The Pharmaceutical Industry is the epitome of capitalism,

Seeking profits over the Safety of the Underprivileged
White 13
(Jackson White works for an organization called the Interhealth: Global Health group,
that tries to promote local health areas in small areas, he is an expert at health
efforts in local tropical communities)
Nowhere is the difference between corporate and public interests more

pronounced or more important than in the sphere of public health. As a
universal concern, health and healthcare has enormous potential for profit, and
unsurprisingly the industry responsible for developing and producing medicines is
big business. Collectively known as the pharmaceutical industry, it is set to
rake in $1.1 trillion in world-wide revenue next year.Unfortunately, profit
does not parallel maximisation of health outcomes, and we see a lopsided
investment picture; those who are most desperate for medical help, the
worlds poor, are precisely those who cannot attract private investment
into solving their health problems because there are limited financial incentives
to do so.Mdecins Sans Frontires (MSF), the charity behind the Access campaign
which aims to provide and develop essential medicines for areas of need, notes that
only 1% of drugs that have come onto the market in the last 30 years have
been developed for combating tropical diseases and tuberculosis. This
seems absurd when we consider the enormous impact of these diseases:
WHO estimates that the so-called neglected tropical diseases impair the
lives of 1 billion people, while tuberculosis kills approximately 1.4 million
and malaria 660,000 annually.There are attempts to correct this imbalance in
investment and innovation. Notably,OneWorld Health is a not-for-profit
pharmaceutical company founded in 2000 whose aims are the development of
drugs for, and the treatment of, malaria, kala-azar and diarrhoeal diseases, among
others. It is currently undergoing phase 2 trials for a novel anti-diarrhoeal drug.
Whether OneWorld provides the template for an effective solution remains to be
seen, and its stability is questionable considering it relies on donations from
philanthropists Melinda and Bill Gates. It is no doubt a step in the right direction.
Another non-profit organisation working towards a similar goal is the Drugs for
Neglected Diseases initiative, which has successfully delivered 2 antimalarial
treatments and a treatment against sleeping sickness, among others.The lack of
private investment into treatments for diseases of the developing world is not the
only problem that needs to be addressed. Equally pressing is the question of
patents. While they are almost certainly necessary for investment and
innovation, we must question when, where and for how long they are
really necessary for.Currently, patents on novel drugs last around 18
years, giving the developing pharmaceutical company a stifling monopoly
for an extended period of time. This has a stark impact on availability through
exorbitant pricing. In 2000, first-line antiretrovirals (ARVs) for the treatment of HIV
cost around $10,000 for the treatment of one person for one year. Understandably,
organisations such as MSF found great difficulty in treating the large numbers of HIV
sufferers in areas of great need such as sub-Saharan Africa. Since then the patent
has run out, and prices plummeted with the development of generic medicines;
first-line treatment now costs around $100 per person per year. This is a 99%
decrease.It is an absurd reality of the capitalist world that we have so
many dying preventable deaths purely because the costs of treatment are
inflated by patent-produced monopolies. Pleasingly, these monopolies do not
always remain unchallenged. Last year in India the German pharmaceutical
company Bayer was forced to allow a compulsory license for its still under patent
liver cancer treatment Nexavar, which is estimated to bring the price of the drug
from over $5500 per month per person down to $175. This was allowed under the
Indian Patents Act, which has a provision allowing a compulsory license after three
years of the grant on drugs that are not available at affordable prices. One wonders
whether this will serve as a warning against such excessive pricing in the
future.Another step forward was taken back in 2001, when the World Trade
Organisation, of which Australia is a member, released the Doha Declaration,
announcing that a member Government can declare a public health emergency and
start manufacturing copies of a patented drug, or take other steps to protect public
health. We are not entirely impotent in the face of health emergencies.Physician
and humanitarian Paul Farmer believes that the way forward is to treat health care
as a human right, and making its delivery a prime concern rather than an
afterthought. Whether this compassionate view is welcome or even possible under
our current economic system is a matter up for debate.
Cap Link Satire

The affirmative's "satire" reinforces violent neoliberalismthe desire to maintain a
safe, cynical distance from ideology is a form of vaccinationit makes dominant
cultural messages more acceptable by diminishing the revolutionary potential of
dissent. The 1AC isn't a radical like Che Guevara, its a 29.99 Che Guevara T-shirt
Adam Corner is a research associate in psychology at Cardiff University. 11-21-13 http://aeon.co/magazine/livingtogether/how-advertising-turned-anti-consumerism-into-a-secret-weapon/
In 1796, the English physician Edward Jenner
injected an eight-year-old boy in Gloucestershire with

cowpox. Reasoning that absorbing a small amount of the virus would protect the child
from a full-strength attack of smallpox in the future, Jenners bold experiment founded
the practice of vaccination. Two hundred years later, the marketing industry has
cottoned on to Jenners insight: a little bit of a disease can be a very useful thing.If
youre one of the more than 7 million people who have watched the global fast-food
chain Chipotles latest advertisement, youll have experienced this sleight of hand for
yourself. The animated short film accompanied by a smartphone game depicts a haunting parody of corporate
agribusiness: cartoon chickens inflated by robotic antibiotic arms, scarecrow workers displaced by ruthless automata. Chipotles
logo appears only at the very end of the three-minute trailer; it is otherwise branding-free. The motivation for this big-budget
expos? Were
trying to educate people about where their food comes from, Mark Crumpacker,
chief marketing officer at Chipotle, told USA Today, but millennials are sceptical of brands that perpetuate themselves. Never
mind that Chipotle itself with more than 1,500 outlets across the US, and an annual turnover of $278
million is hardly treading lightly on the worlds agricultural system . The real story is
that the company is using a dose of anti-Big Food sentiment to inoculate the viewer
against not buying any more of its burritos . Chipotle are very happy to sell the idea
that theyre on our side if it helps to keep the millennials happy. If its advertising we dont like,
then its advertising we wont get. In the UK, the telecommunications giant Orange creates cinema ads which are spoof scenes from
well-known feature films, doctoring the scripts to include gratuitous references to cell phones. One popular instalment features the
actor Jack Black recreating a scene from Gullivers Travels (2010), in which Gulliver is captured by the tiny Lilliputians and
lashed to the ground with ropes. As the product placements for Orange become increasingly blatant, Black realises he has been
tricked into acting in a cellphone ad, breaks character and begins a speech about how he wont be duped by Orange. Dont let a
mobile phone ruin your film runs the slogan. Its
annoying, but they know this. And they know that

you know that they know. And ... well you get the gist. These ads want to be our friends to
empathise with us against the tyranny of the corporate world they inhabit . Just when
we thought wed cottoned on to subliminal advertising, personalised sidebars on web pages,
advertorials and infomercials, products started echoing our contempt for them. Shut up! we shout at the
TV, and the TV gets behind the sofa and shouts along with us. It seems almost quaint, now that popular culture is riddled with
knowing, self-referential nods to itself, but the aim of advertising used to be straightforward: to associate a product in a literal and
direct way with positive images of a desirable, aspirational life. How we chortle at those rosy-cheeked families that dominated
commercials in the post-war era. Nowadays,
we adopt the slogans and imagery as ironic home

decor wartime advertisements for coffee adorn our kitchen walls; retro Brylcreem
posters are pinned above the bathroom door. But our reappropriation of artefacts from a previous era of
consumerism sends a powerful message: we wouldnt be swayed by such naked pitches today. The iconic VW 'Think small'
campaign. The iconic VW 'Think small' campaign. Genre-subverting ads started to emerge as early as 1959, when the Volkswagen
Beetles US Think Small campaign began poking fun at the German cars size and idiosyncratic design. In stark contrast to
traditional US car adverts, whose brightly coloured depictions of gargantuan front ends left the viewer in no doubt that bigger was
better, the Beetle posters left most of the page blank, a tiny image of the car itself tucked away in a corner. These designs spoke to a
generation that was becoming aware of how the media and advertising industries worked. The American journalist Vance Packard
had blown the whistle on the tricks of the advertising trade in The Hidden Persuaders (1957), and younger consumers increasingly
saw themselves as savvy. Selling
to this demographic required not overeager direct pitches, but

insouciant cool, laced with irony. Ads for sports drinks bemoan the abundance of
minutely differentiated sports drinks on the market, and beers yearn for the day when
a beer was just a beer In subsequent decades, self-aware adverts became the norm, and
advertising began to satirise the very concept of itself. In 1996, Sprite launched a successful campaign
with the slogan Image is nothing. Thirst is everything. Obey your thirst. In 2010, Kotex sent up the bizarre conventions of 1980s
tampon adverts (happy, dancing women, jars of blue liquid being spilt) by flashing up the question Why are Tampon adverts so
ridiculous? before displaying its latest range of sanitary products. Companies try to convince you that they are part of your
family, says Tim Kasser, professor of psychology and an expert on consumer culture at Knox College in Illinois. They want to
create a sense of connection or even intimacy between the viewer and the advertiser. An
ad that says: Yes, I know

you know that Im an ad, and I know that you know that Im annoying you is a
statement of empathy, and thus a statement of connection. And as any salesperson will tell you,
connection is key to the sales. This technique of cultivating empathy through shared cynicism
has taken off over the past decade. Today, ads for sports drinks bemoan the abundance of minutely differentiated sports
drinks on the market, and beers yearn for the day when a beer was just a beer. The Swedish brewery Kopparberg has done more
than any other company to promote the idea that cider can come in many delicious fruity flavours, so if anyone is to blame for the
difficulty in buying plain old apple cider, it is Kopparberg. Yet their most recent invention is Naked apple cider. As the companys
UK managing director Davin Nugent told The Morning Advertiser: Innovation through fruit is not enough. The bigger picture is
apple cider and were opening the back gate into the category. The apple taste in cider has been lost and become bland were on
to something exciting. Corporate
advertising is the ultimate shape-shifter; the perpetual tease. No

sooner had the virulently anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street movement begun than
the American rapper Jay Zs clothing label created and marketed an Occupy All
Streets spin-off T-shirt. But as citizen cynicism has advanced, the space in which
advertising can operate without tripping on its own rhetoric has become ever more
restricted, and ever more bizarre. Feeling jaded and cynical about samey scripts in ads? Commercials such as 2012s Old
Milwaukee Super Bowl spoof, in which Will Ferrells formulaic endorsement gets cut off mid-sentence, might still speak to you.
Getting a vicarious thrill from viral videos? Ads can mimic that excitement, with carefully coordinated campaigns to capture the
grassroots feel, such as the amateur footage of a man hacking the video screens in Times Square, New York, in fact promoting the
film Limitless (2011). Cynical about the lack of spontaneity in advertising messages? Real-time news-led marketing can make
even the most hackneyed of products seem cutting-edge although American Apparels attempt in October last year to launch the
The
ambiguous, semi-disguised adverts of today would appear to be the commercials we
deserve: self-cynical sales pitches for a jaded generation At the same time, Magazine content,
musical and theatrical entertainment and, in particular, online media are often entirely
integrated with the commercial messages that bankrolled them. This probably
wouldnt have been possible if advertisers had not made the strategic move from the
blatant salesmanship of yore to the subtler, more oblique arts of modern industry. As
#SandySale off the back of the worst Hurricane to hit New York in living memory was not the blast they had hoped for.
consumers cottoned on to the tricks of the trade, ads have stayed one step ahead. There have, of course, been attempts to kick back.
An entire lexicon has flourished around the idea of subverting the advertising industry
from acts of brandalism, which distort or undermine corporate iconography, to culture jamming
(satirical analyses of the business world). Adbusters, the long-running Canadian magazine, has dedicated itself to exposing and
challenging the the corporate world generally, not just advertising. But
a 2011 report for the Public Interest

Research Centre about the cultural impact of commercial messages argued that: The
public debate about advertising such as it exists has also been curiously unfocused and
sporadic. Civil society organisations have almost always used the products advertised
as their point of departure attacking the advertising of a harmful product like
tobacco, or alcohol, for instance rather than developing a deeper critical appraisal of
advertising in the round. So what would a deeper look tell us? Perhaps it is that the cynical
distance inherent in knowing, self-immolating, empathetic adverts not only
perpetuates brands, but is at the foundation of advertising itself.By factoring in
dissent, the ad neutralises it in advance, like the stock market inoculating itself against
future shocks by including their likelihood in share prices. The advertising industry
anticipates and then absorbs its own opposition, like a politician cracking jokes at his
own expense to disarm a hostile media. And the industrys seemingly endless capacity
to perpetuate itself matters. Marketing is not simply a mirror of our prevailing
aspirations. It systematically promotes and presents a specific cluster of values that
undermine pro-social and pro-environmental attitudes and behaviour . In other words, the
more that were encouraged to obsess about the latest phone upgrade, the less likely we
are to concern ourselves with societys more pressing problems. Thats a reason to want to keep a
careful tab on advertisings elusive and ephemeral forms. Encouragingly, there is some evidence that young people are quietly
developing their own defence mechanisms the click-through rate for online advertising has plummeted from a heady 78 per
cent for the worlds first banner ad in 1994 to a meagre 0.05 per cent for Facebook ads in 2011. The Beetle adverts at the tail end of
the 1950s picked up on the growing media smarts of the post-war generation, and Sprites ironic critique of image-led branding
could almost have been lifted from the arguments of the 1990s anti-globalisation movement. The
ambiguous, semidisguised adverts of today would then appear to be the commercials we deserve: selfcynical sales pitches for a jaded generation.Instead of questioning the economic
mechanisms that lead to the homogenisation of town centres, we shop and drink coffee
in commercial spaces disguised in the stylishly-frayed aesthetics of the counter-culture.
Satire has long been acknowledged as a paradoxical crutch [ for a societys existing
power structures: we laugh at political jibes, and that same laughter displaces the
desire for change. As such as Chipotle's which express our concerns about the
failings of globalisation in a safe space before packing them away are surely an
equivalent safety valve for any subversive rumblings . We all like to think that were
above the dark art of advertising; that we are immune to its persuasive powers. But the
reality is that, though we might have been immunised, it is not against ads: it is against
dissent.

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Capitalism Vs.

As time wore on, the beliefs of this movement

What would be the likely response of the left

might thus come, conveniently enough, to

would come down to a simpleminded assumption that minorities were

The historical basis for this way

it would not be hard to generalize from this to the vaguely

this romantic ultra-leftism would

the rigid oppositions of "inside" and "outside," where to be on the inside

In the period we are imagining, then, some would no doubt be

you are a professor in

It would tend not to realize that such

capitalist mode of production, and thus by no means inherently radical

One might expect that some, true to the pessimism of the

We are not, however, advocating

thoroughly partial, social, and the products of historical forces about

process as enantiomorphic- whereby a claim is made to act

Information sharing is a tool of the capitalist system and key

transmodernism makes an important contribution

we have terror in the

name of anti-terrorism; war in the name of peace seeking.

Accordingly, U.S. secre- tary ofstate,

This provides the justifica- tion for

rhetorical process as enantiomorphic- whereby a claim is made to

The unrelenting abuse of nature, viewed as a resource to plunder by global neoliberal

I further noted that the last

The causal role ofneoliberal global

capitalism in global warming is indisputable.

Writing from a liberal perspective

sovereignty over territories.

The lesson to be learnt from that Empire is the need to

The intrusion of EEzs is an example of postmodern imperialism

It is remarkable, in our opinion, that so much of contemporary social theory has

As they pursue the politics of difference, the

although various post-Marxists

Fixation on the black-white binary and U.S. race relations

this is in danger of becoming a form of cultural / academic

imperialism centred on the US experience , and emphasises why we need to

is rarely asked if the

This simplistic approach of binaries also means that

It is worth citing at this point that obsession with identity is a

A side-effect of the influence of the middle-class liberal

revolutionary history is denied or discretely written out of history. Expression and

I see privilege theory

U.S. ante-bellum slavery did not stand in such an "external"

Industrial capitalism transformed the content of world-market relations .4

My argument depends fundamentally upon demonstrating that indus- trial capital

one can understand the specificity of nine- teenth-century world

I examine the trajectory of the "cotton

Racism is a result of capitalism

The need to conquer through manifest destiny is the reason why

A combination of capitalism and colorism led to modern/postmodern slavery

As the number of imported African slaves

Black slavery had advantages in the area of social control. Black

complexion and treatment of the lowest level of plantation labor

Contempt for subordinated groups now focused on black

Slavery did not cause racism. Rather, slavery

Slavery is a product of class- race is the accidental evil

A myth that has become fully naturalized, (Barthes,

radicals, indigenous Americans, Africans,

The results of this system become clear in The Interesting Narrative of

Given the myth that

slaves were viewed as commodities instead of people. The

skin color was not deemed the cause of their