What is the relationship between economic justice and racial justice?
First of all, I don’t believe that capitalism and racism are one and the same. Many of history’s worst racists were quite anti-capitalist, and the modern “hubs” of global capitalism are among the most culturally diverse cities around.
But there are plenty of interesting parallels: U.S. capitalist employers in the late 19th and early 20th century often used unemployed black workers to break strikes.
This helped to divide the working class and undermine its sense of solidarity and common cause.
The kind of police abuses that today’s protesters are decrying bear an eerie resemblance to tactics regularly used against labor activists up until the 1930s.
Postwar civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr., felt a kindred spirit with the labor movement - and King himself was attending a garbage workers’ strike in Memphis when he was killed in 1968.
And how much of the anger expressed in places like Ferguson and New York City, overlaps with anger over economic inequality and the plight of the proletariat? While I can’t give an exact answer, I do know many of the supporters of today’s Black Lives Matter movement happen to be the same folks who supported the Occupy movement and the Fight For 15.
The good news is that a lot of economic justice causes also happen to benefit black and Latino Americans especially strongly, even though the policies are technically ‘color blind.’
A $15 minimum wage, an FDR-style public employment program, income-based affirmative action, nationwide marijuana legalization, cheap or free college tuition, and single-payer health coverage are all ways to promote basic fairness of opportunity in America. But as a bonus, they all happen to even things up a little bit for Americans of color.
There is no excuse for either racial or economic injustice in the year 2015. And moving beyond injustice will require that on at least some things, we look beyond capitalism for answers.
Commented