Racism in the American Past and Present

This analytical framework should help explain how racism has operated throughout United States history. It focuses on the predominant form racism takes in the three major historical configurations of modern capitalism: industrial capitalism, monopoly capitalism, and multinational corporate capitalism. It is worth noting that although we have been critical of Marxist explanations of racist practices, Marxist theory remains highly illuminating and provides the best benchmarks for periodizing modern history. U.S. industrial capitalism was, in part, the fruit of black slavery in America. The lucrative profits from cotton and tobacco production in the slave-ridden U.S. South contributed greatly to the growth of manufacturing (especially textiles) in the U. S. North. The industrial capitalist order in the North not only rested indirectly upon the productive labor of black slaves in the South, it also penetrated the South after the Civil War along with white exploitation and repression of former black slaves. In addition, U.S. industrial capitalism was consolidated only after the military conquest and geographical containment of indigenous and Mexican peoples and the exploitation of Asian contract laborers. On the cultural level, black, brown, yellow, and red identities were reinforced locally, reflecting the defensive and deferential positions of victims who had only limited options for effective resistance. For example, this period is the age of the "colored" identity of Africans in the United States.

The advent of the American empire helped usher in U. S. monopoly capitalism. Given both the absence of a strong centralized state and a relatively unorganized working class, widespread centralization of the capitalist economy occurred principally in the form of monopolies, trusts, and holding companies. As the United States took over the last remnants of the Spanish empire (for example, in Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam) and expanded its economic presence in South America, U. S. racist ideology flourished. Jim Crow laws consciously adopted models for apartheid in South Africa were instituted throughout the South. Exclusionary immigration laws supported by the lily white American Federation of Labor were enacted, and reservations ("homelands") were set up for indigenous peoples. Mexican and indigenous peoples were removed from their lands through the use of force and by the courts. A settler colonial regime was established in the Southwest to oversee the extraction of raw materials and to subject the Mexican population.

At the same time, America opened its arms to the European "masses yearning to be free," principally because of a labor-shortage in the booming urban industrial centers. In this period, a small yet significant black middle class began to set up protest organizations such as the NAACP, National Urban League, and the National Federation of Afro-American Women. Limited patronage networks were established for black middle-class enhancement (for example, Booker T. Washington's "machine"). This period is the age of the "Negro" identity of Africans in the United States. Some influential blacks were permitted limited opportunities to prosper and thereby seen as models of success for the black masses to emulate. Despite its courageous efforts on behalf of black progress, the NAACP in this period could not help but seen as a vehicle for severely constricted black gains. The NAACP was defiant in rhetoric, liberal in vision, legalistic in practice, and headed by elements of the black middle class which often influenced the interests of the organization.

The emergence of the United States as the preeminent world power after World War II provided the framework for the growth of multinational corporate capitalism. The devastation of Europe (including the weakening of its vast empires), the defeat of Japan, and the tremendous sacrifice of lives and destruction of industry in the Soviet Union facilitated U. S. world hegemony. U. S. corporate penetration into European markets (opened and buttressed by the Marshall Plan), Asian markets, some African markets, and, above all, Latin American markets set the stage for unprecedented U.S. economic prosperity. This global advantage, along with technological innovation, served as the hidden background for the so-called American Way of Life a life of upward social mobility leading to material comfort and convenience. Only in the postwar era did significant numbers of the U.S. white middle class participate in this dream.

Aware of its image as leader of the "free world" (and given the growing sensitivity to racism in the aftermath of the holocaust), the U.S. government began to respond cautiously to the antiracist resistance at home. This response culminated in the Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision (1954) and the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 respectively. The ramifications of the court decision and legislation affected all peoples of color (and white women) but had the greatest impact on those able to move up the social ladder primarily by means of education. As a result, the current period of U.S. multinational corporate capitalism has witnessed the growth of a significant middle class of peoples of color. Overt racist language even under the Reagan administration has become unfashionable; coded racist language expressing hostility to "affirmative action", "busing", and "special interests" has now replaced overt racist discourse.

As the legal barriers of segregation have been torn down, the underclass of black and brown working and poor people at the margins of society has grown. For the expanding middle class of people of color, political disenfranchisement and job discrimination have been considerably reduced. But, simultaneously, a more insidious form of class and racial stratification intensified: educational inequality. In an increasingly technological society, rural and inner city schools for people of color and many working class and poor whites serve to reproduce the present racial and class stratified structure of society. Children of the poor, who are disproportionately people of color, are tracked into an impoverished educational system and then face unequal opportunities when they enter the labor force (if steady, meaningful employment is even a possibility).

In the past decade, American multinational corporate capitalism has undergone a deep crisis, owing primarily to increased competition with Japanese, European, and even some Third World corporations, a rise in energy costs brought about by the OPEC cartel, the precarious structure of international debt owed to American and European banks by Third World countries, and victorious anti-colonial struggles that limit lucrative capital investments somewhat. The response of the Reagan administration to this crisis has been, in part, to curtail the public sector by cutting back federal transfer payments to the needy, diminishing occupational health and safety and environmental protection, increasing low wage service sector jobs, and granting tax incentives and giveaways to large corporations. Those most adversely affected by these policies have been blue collar industrial workers and the poor, particularly women and children. Thus Reagan's policies, which are often supported by the coded racist language of the religious right and secular neo-conservatives, are racist in consequence. Poor women and children are disproportionately people of color, and jobs in the "rust belt" industries of auto and steel played a major role in black social mobility in the postwar period.