Many of us identify ourselves by “race” and ethnicity in daily conversation as well as on government forms. However, according to the American Anthropological Association, there are no biological foundations or genes for “race.” Humans are genetically more alike than different, yet the idea of “race” is embedded in our everyday dialogue. This is because “race” is an idea, a concept carefully reinforced and reproduced by capitalist society in order to maintain itself.

Over 140 years after the end of chattel slavery in the U.S, the ruling class still wields racism, as it’s most vicious tool against the world’s workers. In New York, official unemployment among blacks is four times the rate among whites. The college graduation rate of blacks is half that of whites in the U.S. Around the world, virtually every measure of health, from infant mortality rates, to stress and high blood pressure, to diabetes and heart failure, is worse for blacks. In the U.S., 1 in 10 black males age 30-34 is in prison, 1 in 4 is in the criminal justice system. On a daily basis young black and Latino men are gunned down in the streets by racist cops, or killed by crime that rises with the unemployment and poverty rate.

Obama A Cover For U.S. Imperialism

The election of a black president has not blunted racism. On the contrary, the bosses hope that Obama provides a cover to the horror of U.S. Imperialism. Already the ruling class is licking its chops at the rise in black military recruitment since Obama’s election. These young men and women will be sent to kill and risk death in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan.  Meanwhile destitute workers from Uganda are being used as soldiers in Iraq, paid only a fraction of the wages of the U.S. military, and used as shields in a protective ring around U.S. mega-bases. Building anti-racist, international unity among these soldiers with a revolutionary outlook is the way forward to eliminate racism.

Racism is not merely a vestige of an old system, but an essential part of capitalism. From the very beginning of capitalist society, the ascending ruling class was profiting enormously from slave labor and indentured servitude, a system by which poor workers were committed to a single boss for a set period and then “freed” to become wage laborers.  But as black and white indentured servants began uniting with Native Americans to resist exploitation in this new social order, race laws were enacted and brutally enforced to divide the colonial work force.

In 1662, Virginia passed a law that enslaved blacks for life. Legislation was passed to determine what a “black” person was since so much intermarriage occurred. These laws were also used to justify the enslavement of children produced from the rape of black slaves by the colonial rulers. While black slavery was enshrined in law, a 200-year genocide against Native-Americans was carried out, led by butchers such as Andrew Jackson who would go on to become President.

‘Founding Fathers’ Justified Slavery

Slave-owning racist Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States and the author of the Declaration of Independence, said in 1789 that he could never imagine a “biracial republic.” The hypocritical “founding fathers” needed to justify their brutal ownership of enslaved African workers while simultaneously touting the “ideals” of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

The Abolitionist movement grew in reaction to the continued brutality of chattel slavery. Many people spoke out. John Brown and Nat Turner led the most militant attacks on slaveholders, with John Brown trying to unite white and black workers alike. They planted the seeds for anti-racist actions that played out in the U.S. Civil War, and continue to inspire workers all over the world.

At that time the ruling class was becoming divided between the Northern industrialists and the Southern slaveholders. The industrialists used the mass hatred of slavery to weaken the southern bosses, eventually leading to the Civil War. After hundreds of thousands died fighting slavery, Lincoln saw it was no longer politically tolerable and reluctantly ended chattel slavery in 1865.

The limited politics of the struggle didn’t allow for racism to be defeated, as the Abolitionists did not make the fight against capitalism the issue, but only against slavery.  So, chattel slavery became wage slavery; it didn’t end, they just changed the rules.  The bosses have since stolen trillions of dollars of additional profits through the super-exploitation of black, Latino and Asian workers being paid lower wages.

After chattel slavery, new laws against integration, called Jim Crow, physically and politically separated workers. White capitalists, using former confederate officers and soldiers to protect their privilege through terror, formed the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. They attacked black workers organizing, speaking out or uniting with white workers.

Great strikes such as the New Orleans General Strike of 1892 illustrated that white and black workers could see past racism as the struggle united them. They fought scabs and the U.S. army and were stronger together than they ever could have been apart. From the 1930’s to ‘50s, uniting black and white workers in the struggle against racism became a cornerstone of the old Communist Party.

Communists Led Fight Against Racism

From building a mass movement to defending the young black men framed in Scottsboro, to organizing integrated sharecroppers and steel workers unions in the south, the communist movement led the fight against racism.  Our Party came out of this movement, and by learning from its successes and mistakes and fighting many battles against the Klan, Nazis and racist cops, we have advanced our understanding of racism.    

In June 1964, the first mass big-city rebellion erupted in New York City’s Harlem when many thousands of black workers and youth took to the streets to protest another police murder of a black teenager. They marched through Harlem’s streets, displaying the front page of CHALLENGE as their “flag.”

PLM (Progressive Labor Movement, forerunner of PLP) was the only organization to support the rebellion — all the reformist black leaders and the old “Communist” Party tried to simultaneously cool the rebels and attack PLM. We defied being banned from Harlem by the state, and held a mass demonstration during the height of the rebellion calling for the bosses, their judges, and their cops to be hanged.  

In the ‘60s and beyond, the bosses have tried to turn anger against racism into a wedge to keep workers of different “races” separate. Nationalist groups like the Black Panther Party called for blacks to stick together in a militant way. More mainstream ideas called for black-owned business, black cops and black politicians. President Obama is the ultimate figure in the disarming of the struggle against racism. His rhetoric about the “post-racial” society is an attempt to delude workers into not seeing the realities of racism all around them.

Racism As Widespread As Ever

The foreclosures and unemployment rates of the current economic crisis affect blacks more than whites. Racist police brutality persists, and during his candidacy, Obama’s only comment on the assassination of Sean Bell was that the police were justified. During his inaugural speech, this supposed trail-blazer described himself as following in the footsteps of the “founding fathers” who created the racism he downplays. 

Racism was created by the ruling class and developed as capitalism developed. It allows bosses to keep workers of different colors apart so they will not join forces to rebel. Racism creates a group of super-exploited black and Latino workers, keeping wages lower for all, as workers fear asking for more because others work for less.

The most heroic class struggles of workers have been waged by building multi-racial unity. The battle of the Stella D’Oro workers over the last year has been the most recent example of this, with workers of every nationality standing in solidarity and male workers refusing to take deals that would not benefit the women workers in a stand against sexism as well. PLP was founded on the belief that we must fight racism in order to create a new world and that only a communist revolution can destroy this capitalist creation. The rulers built racism to make more profits for themselves. Workers don’t need or want the ideas that separate us from each other. Workers will destroy racism as they destroy the whole capitalist system and build a world that serves our needs instead.

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Haitian Revolution Crushed French Slave-owners

The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) was the most important revolution of its time. Haiti was the richest colony in the Caribbean, and it would have been a launching pad to begin a French offensive into the North American continent.  The enslaved workers of Haiti, with nothing but meager weapons, managed to defeat the powerful French army.  They fought Napoleon’s armies that were rampaging all across Europe, and they gave that despot his first defeat. The uprising was successful in overthrowing the French landowners, as well as defeating the European armies that came to France’s aid in order to restore “order.” The former slaves also freed the slaves of the Spanish colony that would be later named “The Dominican Republic.” The former slaves managed to wipe out their oppressors, but they were trapped in the ideology of race.  They saw white workers as the enemy, and this racism became nationalism as it was co-opted by pro-capitalist misleaders like Toussaint L’ouverture. 

The Haitian Revolution foreshadowed the failures of all of the future National Liberation Movements, as they did not fight against all bosses, but only the white bosses, not recognizing just how virulently racist the black slave-holders were. Haiti became the first example of neo-colonialization as well, as the capitalist nations forced Haiti to pay billions of dollars in today’s currency in reparations to the French slave-owners, thus impoverishing the Haitian workers and enslaving them economically to the designs of the imperialist nations. Haiti has been punished to this day for daring to rise up and defeat capitalism while it was ascending, and their great revolution has been carefully removed from the capitalist’s textbooks.