July 30, 2015

And Yes, Racism Is Rooted in Economic Inequality

editor:	Murat Suner

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said that economic inequality and institutional racism are “parallel problems” that both must be addressed at the same time, referencing the efforts of Martin Luther King Jr. to combat poverty in America.

Sanders was sharply criticised last weekend at progressive conference Netroots Nation, where some black activists accused him of focusing on economic issues over racial inequality.

However, Sanders stated on NBC’s Meet the Press: “We have to end institutional racism, but we have to deal with the reality that 50% of young black kids are unemployed, that we have massive poverty in America, that we have an unsustainable level of income and wealth inequality.” 

He added “My view is that we have got to deal with the fact that the middle class in this country is disappearing, that we have millions of people working for wages that are much too low impacts everybody, impacts the African American community even more,” he said on Sunday. “Those are issues that do have to be dealt with, and just at the same time as we deal with institutional racism.”

Seth Ackerman, who is on the editorial board of Jacobin, backs up that argument by referring to the history of racism and economic exploitation. 

Seth asks: "If racial inequality isn’t merely a symptom of economic inequality, what is it a symptom of?"

The expected answer: "It’s a symptom of hundreds of years of slavery, colonialism, Jim Crow, and urban apartheid."

His response: "Yes. But what were slavery, colonialism, Jim Crow, and urban apartheid if not extreme forms of economic inequality?"

History provides evidence: "What was the point of England’s colonization of Ireland if not to impose a lucrative “economic inequality” on its victims? Was the urban apartheid of Haussmann’s Paris not the “symptom” of nineteenth-century economic inequality? And what exactly do you think all those African slaves were doing in the American South?" 

And, if racism can’t be reduced to “economic inequality”, the residual is racial animosity in everyday life - it's the undercoat of structural racism. 

And, if freedom means anything, it means the freedom to go about your life without having to worry about all the animosity you encounter. 

Read the full article by Seth Ackerman on Jacobin here.

Read our dossier on racism here.

Reference: "Jim Crow", symbol of racial segregation.

Image: Work according to segregation, Source: n.a.