The Centrality of Racism

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Racism is not central because it is central to people of color, which it obviously is, but because it is central to the entire population.

Racism is itself repression, one of the most concentrated forms of repression.

What makes racism central is not the impact it has had and continues to have on peoples of color, but the devastating and debilitating impact it has had on all people, including people of European descent. From this it follows that whites — poor whites, white workers, white intellectuals, sections of the white middle class, etc. have a vital stake in ending the oppression of African-Americans and other peoples of color, of bringing down the whole system of white supremacy.

In speaking of history we often take for granted an agreement on just what history is. Most people — even those who respect it and wish to learn from it — view history as a page that has been turned. But before we can get to the meaning of history, we need to ask what is the present? I would suggest that the present is not a new, blank page but a summation, history’s accumulation. While its elements are always being reshaped, they are present nevertheless, a living presence. It is said that individuals can never escape their past. The same is true of societies. Our slave past is not “ancient history” as some claim, wishing to wash their hands of responsibility for that horror. For the evils of slavery have never been dealt with, only changing form, while the essence has remained.

Let us begin with slavery. What effect did the enslavement of millions of Africans have on the well-being of the masses of Southern whites? Five million southern whites, three quarters of the total held no slaves. No mint Juleps for them! The great plantation system using slave labor enriched a handful of big slaveholders while making it impossible for white farmers to compete. Nor for the most part could they take up the crafts and trades, for these, too, were under the command of the slaveholder. Gradually, the original independent yeomen of the South were forced into ever more marginal land or gave up their land altogether, sinking into a poverty that shocked European travelers who had certainly witnessed degradation in their own countries. As for education, the southern elite saw no purpose in providing poor whites with public schools. Chronic illness, malnutrition, illiteracy, grinding poverty, such was the lot of the masses of Southern whites. Slavery could have been overthrown from within, but poor whites associated the stigma of the slave condition with black skin. And as much as they hated the slaveholder, they feared the effect of emancipation even more, feared for their security, feared the competition of Black labor. So they cooperated in imprisoning the slave population. And their payoff? Hundreds of thousands sent to their death in the Civil War or maimed for the sake of Southern Bourbon privilege. Those lucky to survive returned to an economy in ruins. The newly freed slaves were prevented from acquiring land, the one thing that would have ensured their freedom. Instead, the North fastened on the Freedmen a new merchant/landlord class, and in doing so they fastened that class onto the mass of land-hungry poor whites as well who, along with those Freedmen, were forced to become tenant farmers and sharecroppers. In fact, there were more white than Black sharecroppers on the cotton plantations. Whereas before the Civil War, white farmers had produced only 10 percent of the cotton crop, by 1900 they were producing 60 percent.

With the situation coming to a head in 1938, a report commissioned by President Roosevelt, entitled Economic Conditions of the South aimed a national spotlight on the misery of the Southern white, showed how the richest state in the South ranked lower in per capita income than the poorest state outside of the South, showed how the South lagged behind in health, education, income, housing, infant mortality. Nor was this simply a factor of Black poverty. The study documented the gross differences between Northern and Southern whites. In fact, Northern Black workers earned more than Southern whites in comparable occupations.

What the report carefully omitted documenting was the economic differential between Black and white within the South, the wide gap in spending on education, etc. For then people might have drawn some dangerous political conclusions that precisely where the discrimination was greatest against Black people, where the income gap and the education gap was greatest, where repression against Black people was most fierce, it was there where ordinary white people fared the worst.

Gradually, some industry did arise in the South, and for the most part jobs were reserved for whites only—especially in the textile industry. But those jobs provided little improvement in standards of living. For when white workers made too many demands, when the word “union” began to waft through the factory doors, employers were quick to threaten replacement of white workers with Black. Thus, the special oppression of Black people was a club with which to beat white workers.

As it was in the North…Few Black workers were hired in Northern industry. And when white workers would go out on strike against the misery of their conditions, employers threatened to or actually did bring in Black workers as scabs. The’ exclusionary practices of virtually every AFL-CIO union, beginning in the 1880s and continuing in many unions even to this day, is well known. By refusing to accept Black members into their ranks, the unions not only damaged the interests of Black workers but of white workers as well, allowing the employers to play off one group against another. But beyond that, the philosophy of the AFofL with its craft mentality, its refusal to organize any but native white, skilled males kept the labor movement weak, left whole industries unorganized—precisely the new industries arising after the Civil War, heavy industry, mass production industry. As a result, the labor movement remained economically and politically impotent.

But what effect did the institution of slavery have on the freedoms of the white masses? In the early days, slavery was debatable in the South, even among the slaveholders. But with technological developments, the slave-worked plantations became enormously profitable. Whites who continued to raise objections were therefore harassed, persecuted, and ultimately silenced or driven out of the region. In addition, as the Abolition movement grew in the North, its literature, intended for Southern readers, was seized in Southern post offices. Even the Governor of Kentucky was constrained to exclaim, “The most lamentable evil of slavery is the practical loss of the liberty of speech and of the press.” Not satisfied with gagging the South, the Southern Plutocracy demanded that the Abolitionists be curbed in the North, that Congress be forbidden to mention the subject of slavery. And indeed, Congress did pass such a measure gagging itself. Abolitionists found churches and halls closed to them in the North, were victims of mob outrages, and even assassination. Growing ever bolder, the Slavocracy demanded the right to bring its slaves into the free states, thus opening the door to the institution of slavery in the North, thus opening the door to the institution of slavery throughout the country. With increasing brazenness they mocked at Northern labor problems and suggested that slave labor might even be beneficial for Northern capital.

In the 1890s, the atmosphere of intimidation and violence against Blacks during slavery became an air that poor whites had now accustomed themselves to breathing. The same fraud and violence against Blacks, marked by the stealing of elections and the end of Reconstruction, were now used against poor white farmers who tried to organize politically around a radical program. What we speak of here is the rise of the Populist Movement—a movement of Western and Southern farmers—in the south, Black as well as white, struggling against the stranglehold of the railroads and “money power”. A powerful, independent movement was building, holding out its hand to labor, in the beginning seeking unity of Black and White. The money power was worried, especially so the Southern Bourbon. Here was Tom Watson, the most radical and influential of the Southern Populists calling for an end to the color line and telling his Georgian audience of dirt farmers: “the argument against the independent political movement in the South may be boiled down to one word — nigger.” Tragically, the Populist movement in the South did end up crashing against the reef of racism. The poor white was convinced to remain in the Democratic Party, convinced that to do otherwise would be to open the door to the overthrowing of white supremacy. For little as they had, in their minds they possessed that one thing that was vital to their sense of dignity: their whiteness. In breaking up the alliance with African-Americans, the Southern poor white destroyed his own future. Tom Watson, incidentally later reversed himself and led the movement that eventually disenfranchised Black people.

Frightened by the specter of Black-white unity, the Southern rulers decided to forestall any further attempts along these lines. The measures used ostensibly to disenfranchise the Black people (principally the poll tax, passed in most Southern states in the late 1890s and early 1900s) worked to disenfranchise masses of whites, as well. For example, the white vote dropped 60 percent in Louisiana. In Texas, while 80 percent of the whites voted in 1900, that figure dropped to 29 percent in the 1940s. In Virginia, the Byrd machine, exercising control for almost the first half of the 20th century disenfranchised so many whites that about 1/3 of the voters were either office holders or state employees.

The period of the 1890s and early part of the 20th century ushered in a racist torrent in both North and South unparalleled in viciousness, either before or since. The media, the arts, the universities and schools, political speeches, all with either anti-Black ridicule or hysteria. Jim Crow laws were passed covering one domain after another. Segregation became the norm, in the North as well as the South, blessed by the Supreme Court in its 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision. The ideology of the Old South and its way of life was glorified throughout the nation. Not only had Northern Capital made peace with the lords of the plantation, but they found the slaveowner ideology extraordinarily useful in pursuing their imperialist ambitions. For the lords of capital and industry had now assumed that very heavy “White Man’s Burden,” in the Caribbean, in Central America, and in the Pacific. In return, the Bourbons became imperialism’s and militarism’s most enthusiastic supporter. And while the Southern elite were filling the military academies, poor whites were filling the caskets produced by the First World War.

Meanwhile, white workers reeled before the postwar employer offensive. Round-ups and deportations of militant aliens, local police busting heads, gassing and shooting by company-deputized sheriffs, armies of private gunmen on company payrolls, labor spies and Yellow Dog contracts, unending court injunctions against boycotts and picketing, all this going by the name of the Americanization of Labor, an offensive which the unions, based on the narrow foundation of skilled native white male workers, could not stand up to.

Then came the Great Depression, and the CIO burst upon the union scene, committed to organizing on an industrial, rather than craft basis, from top to bottom, excluding no one. Thus African-Americans were welcomed. The holes punched in the dam of union racism had dramatic consequences. A flood of workers poured into the new unions. Tremendous victories were scored in contracts that made available to masses of white workers as well as the still small number of Black workers, a living wage. The strength and dynamism of the CIO, its anti-racist stance and its willingness to work with radicals who put Black-White unity at the top of their agenda, was responsible for the progressive measures passed under the New Deal, but for which President Roosevelt is generally given credit. Nevertheless, there were grave problems in the CIO which the leadership was unwilling to address. Black workers remained clustered at the bottom of the job occupations and the CIO leadership insisted on seniority provisions that locked them in at the bottom rungs. Moreover , the CIO fiercely resisted bringing African-Americans into leadership. What all this reflected was not only a substantial weakness in its professed anti-racism, but weakness in consciousness. For racism is the ultimate class issue. So it was totally unsurprising when after the Second World War the CIO further retreated from its rhetorical commitment to racial equality, succumbed to McCarthyism and purged a million members of unions that had Left-wing leadership, endorsed the Cold War and took sides with Washington against the anti-colonial movement, actively collaborating with the CIA abroad.

The southern organizing drive launched shortly after the war by both the AFL and CIO ended in failure. Thanks to the special climate of racism in the South labor unions were virtually nonexistent, and neither the AFL nor CIO were willing to take that racism on. Southern workers therefore remained largely unorganized and extremely poorly paid. This was a tempting situation for northern employers who began relocating in the South. Thus, the failure to confront racism resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs by northern white workers. Now, because of the weakness of the unions, in large part rooted in in its racist policies, runaway shops is now a Southern phenomenon as employers abandon the South’s cheap labor even cheaper labor of the Third world.

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Today, new winds are blowing in the labor movement. There are growing nationwide talks among union organizers in not only the production industries, but the ever-important logistics and retail sectors as well. And while the major unions like the AFL-CIO are a long ways off from providing a true vessel for the working masses, the growing representation of Black and Brown leadership in these movements and their rapid progress thereafter is a testament to the indispensable nature of diverse leadership in the labor movement. A victory against global capitalism can only be won in close alliance with communities of color, with great historical precedent—only were great gains made when intersectionality was strongest during the militant labor movements of the 1930s & the Black liberation movements of the 60s.

A word about the other side of the coin, how the anti-racist struggle and the role of African-American people in that struggle have been key to social advancement.

It was the entry of Black troops into the Civil War that turned the tide of battle, without which the Confederacy would have emerged victorious, leading to the spread of slavery throughout the United States and the further degradation of white labor and farmers. North as well as South. And not to forget, one of the best-kept secrets of the Vietnam War was the role played by US troops in Vietnam in bringing the war to an end. For toward the end, the army had become completely unreliable, especially the Black troops, who constituted a disproportionate percent of the frontline soldiers. Not only were orders flouted, but officers became targets of assassination.

It was the modicum of Black power in the period of Reconstruction which resulted in a whole series of reforms democratizing life in the South, including the provision of public schools, an equitable tax code that took the burden oil the poor, expansion of the rights of women, the provision of care for the emotionally and physically disabled, all of which were of enormous benefit to white farmers and the white poor, as well as the Freedmen.

The Black freedom movement of the 1960s was responsible for a flood of human welfare legislation that was sponsored by a notorious segregationist, Lyndon Johnson, and even more so by a reactionary racist named Richard Nixon, legislation much more far-reaching than that of the New Deal, proving that it is not the political complexion of the politicians that is decisive, but the militancy and power of the popular movement outside the electoral arena. This legislation benefited all but the most privileged, especially benefiting the working and middle class women, the majority of course being European-American. That movement also spawned a host of other movements; freedom movements of the Chicano, Puerto Rican, and Native-American, Asian communities, and the LGBTQ+ movements.

Racism is central to the harm and repression wrought upon the entire populace of the nation throughout history. Equally, the effects of the anti-racist struggle are tremendously liberating for the same masses—it is central to the movement to realize and grapple with Racism as the elite’s chief means of ideological control.

The lesson from all of this, is that the anti-racist struggle can not be relegated into one in a shopping list of pursuits, but must be recognized as central to every struggle for meaningful reform, central to achieving what must be our ultimate goal, a new society, because we can and we will have a society worthy of human beings.