Definition of Racial Capitalism
Cedric Robinson first coined the term racial capitalism in his work, Black Marxism in 1983. He describes racism and capitalism as deeply intertwined; the latter being developed while race was also being constructed [1]. The term describes how labor is racially stratified, leading to the overrepresentation of historically marginalized groups such as Black, Indigenous, and Latinx communities in low-wage work. Examples include disproportionate numbers of Black and Latinx individuals in essential work during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States [2], and disproportionate numbers of incarcerated Black men exploited in the prison-industrial complex [3].
Here, Angela Davis describes how capitalism has historically exploited the labor of Black, Latinx, and immigrant workers. She references Cedric Robinson’s explanation of the term, specifically explaining the limitations of Marxist thought––which our group hopes to also do in our definition of the term. Davis also extends Robinson’s critique to the present day.
Terminology
Capitalism
Capitalism describes a method of organized labor to support mass production and the accumulation of goods. Professor Jodi Melamed states that capitalism can only exist through the exploitation of one group by another [5].
Racial-Settler Capitalism
It is important to note that the term racial capitalism draws from theories of both racism and capitalism. Much like this joint formation of terminology, Dr. Sarah Fong, a scholar in the field of race and colonial studies, pulls from theories of racial capitalism as well as settler capitalism to propose the term racial-settler capitalism [6]. Racial-settler capitalism goes further than racial capitalism to emphasize the colonizing forces that both created and continue to recreate capitalism, specifically in what is now called the United States.
Where racial capitalism focuses on how racialized exploitation of labor is imperative in the founding of a capitalist state, racial-settler capitalist theory grants this and extends upon it by arguing that the seizure and dispossession of Indigenous land is also an imperative part of the capitalist project. In her writing of “Racial-Settler Capitalism: Character Building and the Accumulation of Land and Labor in the Late Nineteenth Century” Dr. Sarah Fong summarizes her definition by writing, “I use the term racial-settler capitalism to name the ensemble of economic and ideological structures which work to accumulate both racialized labor and Indigenous territories for the profits of the dominant classes in the Americas” [7]. Here, she highlights the often forgotten piece in the capitalist project where land was commodified and exploited in a racialized and colonized way. The duality of the two structures, racism, and colonialism, is what Fong argues both created and upholds capitalism as we know it today.
It is beneficial to uplift extensions of the term racial capitalism to contextualize further, both the origins and present-day impacts of capitalism.
This is a picture of the Black Lives Matter Mural that was painted on a street in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Soon after the community painted this display of resistance, the state government in Tulsa decided to paint over it because “prior permission was not granted.” This instance of “censorship” could be interpreted as an instance of racial capitalism at work. In the article “Bureaucratizing Black Lives Matter murals: Racial capitalism, policing and erasure of radical politics” the authors use the Tulsa example to reveal how the founding of the state through racial capitalism is deeply intertwined with decisions like these [8]. The introduction of racial-settler capitalism would further extend this discussion given the physicality of land ownership in this decision. Who gets to decide what is expressed, when land is the backdrop?
Discussion
Cedric J. Robinson and Black Marxism
As Robin D.G. Kelley puts it in the foreword of Black Marxism,
“Capitalism and racism, in other words, did not break from the old order but rather evolved from it to produce a modern world system of “racial capitalism” dependent on slavery, violence, imperialism, and genocide.”
Robin d.g. Kelley, black marxism [9]
Robinson essentially rewrites Marx’s history of capitalist exploitation originally told from a European perspective [10], to explain the social and economic order of the world on a global scale and the nuances of both race and class as intertwining factors in oppression.
Many interpretations of what exactly Robinson meant by racial capitalism have been discussed since its publication, going beyond the notion of it as a critique of Marx, and importantly noting that it is not simply the combination of racism and capitalism. Prison abolitionist and scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore describes racial capitalism not as a thing but a relation [11], and others have defined it as a social ideology [12]. Racism and capitalism are constantly in conversation with each other, in a mutual relationship and system that is built off of and continues to feed off of the exploitation of racialized labor.
In a historical context, this concept of racialized labor derived from the exploits of racial capitalism that began with the colonization of Indigenous American land and further skyrocketed during the trans-atlantic slave trade [13]. The exploitation of land, labor, and resources in Indigenous America set the precursor for further colonial violence across the world, most devastatingly the enslavement of African peoples and the continued enslavement of Black Americans for centuries. Modern-day effects of racial capitalism are seen across the globe, most viscerally within the prison-industrial complex. Thinkers have described the disparity of the “production” of black incarcerated individuals as a “commodity” within the capitalist system [14]. The interconnectedness of imprisonment and incarceration within race and class is just as important as the relationship between racialism and capitalism. Racial capitalism as an ideology and a world system encompasses all of these concepts within itself.
Racial Capitalism During the Pandemic
Throughout the pandemic, racial capitalism enforced systemic socioeconomic inequalities that led to high coronavirus (COVID-19) morbidity and mortality rates among Black and Latinx people. First, when the pandemic began, many jobs moved online in order to protect workers’ safety and health. However, many jobs were deemed ‘essential’ to society and thus were not moved online or scaled back. Black and Latinx people represent the large majority of the ‘essential workforce’ and were forced to continue working in person, which led to high exposure rates. For example, the agricultural and meat packing industries, where Black and Latinx workers are disproportionately overrepresented, continued throughout the pandemic. Here, Black and Latinx individuals were often blamed for high morbidity and mortality rates because of “community transmission and worker behaviors” [15]. This “territorial stigmatization” rationalizes corporate leadership misconduct and “erases worker visibility” [16].
“Finally, across all occupational settings, narratives of innate susceptibility, territorial stigmatization, and individual behavioral explanations abdicate corporate responsibility and associated government policies to provide safe environments, adequate PPE, paid sick leave, and SARS-CoV-2 testing. These narratives instead impose blame on workers for the hazards they experience at work.”
Elizabeth S McClure, Pavithra Vasudevan, Zinzi Bailey, Snehal Patel, and Whitney R Robinson, Racial Capitalism Within Public Health—How Occupational Settings Drive COVID-19 Disparities [17]
Additionally, Black and Latinx workers did not have adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) unlike other white workers. For example, the majority of highly paid careers like physicians were given proper PPE whereas lower paid and lower status jobs that had higher exposure rates were given inadequate PPE [18]. And, these jobs followed stark racial lines. Overall, racial capitalism enforced Black and Latinx worker hierarchies during the pandemic, which led to higher exposure rates and lower PPE access and thus contributed to skyrocketed Black and Latinx morbidity and mortality.
This case needs to be viewed through the lens of racial capitalism because it is no accident that Black and Latinx people are overrepresented in the low-wage workforce and exploited, which the pandemic only exacerbated. Black and Latinx workers are overrepresented in agricultural and meat packing industries because of racism rationalizing capitalism. Here, race has provided the structure to labor industries in that race segregates people of color to lower-paid and manual labor jobs. This structure makes it seem like certain people belong to specific industries, which only justifies and continues the cycle of Black and Latinx people working ‘essential’ jobs during the pandemic. And, because of institutional and systemic racism, these jobs are usually the most exploitative, arduous, and underpaid work. As aforementioned, this resulted in high morbidity and mortality because of the lack of attention, care, and sheer respect.
The video below, focuses on racial capitalism in child welfare which is another example of racial capitalism in the context of public health. Specifically, this video focuses on Black and Latinx patients in the Boston area. The panel features four experts who discuss questions surrounding child welfare, medicine, and the intersection of race and class. Each expert helps the audience understand racial capitalism in a public health context, which is extremely important considering the history of public health and race in the US and especially during the pandemic.
The Prison Industrial Complex
In this source, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, a Professor of Geography and Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics, focuses on an overview of racial capitalism, but looking at it through a global lens and specifically honing in on the prison industrial complex. The film focuses on more than just a background of racial capitalism, but also a specific understanding of the how the prison industrial complex connects to abolition geographies, which are both systems of racial capitalism.
The four panels below are excerpts from a zine titled Racial Capitalism and Prison Abolition by Zine Library, which can be found here. The first panel describes Cedric J. Robinson and Robin D.G. Kelley as original black Marxist thinkers of racial capitalism. The second panel explains the justification of capitalist exploitation via racism. Panel three discusses the tie between racial capitalism and mass incarceration in relation to race and racial capitalism, while panel four demonstrates mass organization toward prison abolition.
page 13 
page 20 
page 24 
page 38
Racial Capitalism in Popular Culture
In this unique explanation of racial capitalism, the producer, @CommunistCatperson uses the platform of Tik Tok and engaging special effects to create a comprehensive and catchy summary of the term [23]. They sing “capitalism is racist and racism is capitalist” as the chorus to explain how the two societal creations are interrelated and inseparable. The common misconception they are refuting is that racism comes from “ignorance and hate” but in reality, race was created by people in power to justify mass exploitation and capitalism. Not only does this source provide helpful information for its audience, but it also reveals how terms that are historically used in academia, also are being discussed by the general public.
Footnotes
1. Robinson, Cedric J. Cedric J. Robinson: On Racial Capitalism, Black Internationalism, and Cultures of Resistance. Edited by H. L. T. Quan, Pluto Press, 2019. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvr0qs8p.
2. McClure, Elizabeth S, et al. “Racial Capitalism within Public Health—How Occupational Settings Drive Covid-19 Disparities.” American Journal of Epidemiology, vol. 189, no. 11, (2020), 1245. https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwaa126.
3. Gordon, Avery F. “Globalism and the Prison Industrial Complex: An Interview with Angela Davis.” Race & Class 40, no. 2-3 (1999), 147. https://doi.org/10.1177/030639689904000210.
4. Angela Davis: We Can’t Eradicate Racism without Eradicating Racial Capitalism. Youtube, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhh3CMkngkY.
5. Melamed, Jodi. “Racial Capitalism.” Critical Ethnic Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, (2015), 77. https://doi.org/10.5749/jcritethnstud.1.1.0076.
6. Fong, Sarah. “Racial Settler Capitalism: Character Building and the Accumulation of Land and Labor in the Late Nineteenth Century.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal, vol 43 no. 2 (2019). https://www.acls.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Racial-Settler-Capitalism-Character-Building-and-the-Accumulation-of-Land-and-Labor-in-the-Late-Nineteenth-Century.pdf
7. Fong, Sarah. “Racial Settler Capitalism: Character Building and the Accumulation of Land and Labor in the Late Nineteenth Century.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal, vol 43 no. 2 (2019), 29. https://www.acls.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Racial-Settler-Capitalism-Character-Building-and-the-Accumulation-of-Land-and-Labor-in-the-Late-Nineteenth-Century.pdf
8. Lennon, John. “Bureaucratizing Black Lives Matter murals: Racial capitalism, policing and the erasure of radical politics.” Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, vol. 9, no. 11, (2022), pp. 89-110., https://doi.org/10.1386/jucs_00050_1
9. Robinson Cedric J. 1983. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. London Totowa N.J: Zed ; Biblio Distribution Center.
10. William I. Robinson, S. R. and H. A. W. (2022, September 15). The cult of Cedric Robinson’s black marxism: A proletarian critique. The Philosophical Salon. Retrieved November 26, 2022, from https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-cult-of-cedric-robinsons-black-marxism-a-proletarian-critique/
11. Jodi Melamed. “Racial Capitalism.” Critical Ethnic Studies 1, no. 1 (2015): 76–85. https://doi.org/10.5749/jcritethnstud.1.1.0076.
12. Fong, Sarah E. K. “Racial-Settler Capitalism: Character Building and the Accumulation of Land and Labor in the Late Nineteenth Century.” Allen Press. Allen Press, May 1, 2019. https://meridian.allenpress.com/aicrj/article/43/2/25/438720/Racial-Settler-Capitalism-Character-Building-and.
13. Virdee, Satnam. “Racialized Capitalism: An Account of Its Contested Origins and Consolidation.” The Sociological Review 67, no. 1 (2019): 3–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026118820293.
14. Karlin, Mark. “The Inseparability of Capitalism, Racism, and Imprisonment: An Interview with Dennis Childs.” openDemocracy, March 17, 2016.
15. McClure, Elizabeth S, et al. “Racial Capitalism within Public Health—How Occupational Settings Drive Covid-19 Disparities.” American Journal of Epidemiology, vol. 189, no. 11, (2020), 1245. https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwaa126.
16. McClure, Elizabeth S, et al. “Racial Capitalism within Public Health—How Occupational Settings Drive Covid-19 Disparities.” American Journal of Epidemiology, vol. 189, no. 11, (2020), 1245. https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwaa126.
17. McClure, Elizabeth S, et al. “Racial Capitalism within Public Health—How Occupational Settings Drive Covid-19 Disparities.” American Journal of Epidemiology, vol. 189, no. 11, (2020), 1245. https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwaa126.
18. McClure, Elizabeth S, et al. “Racial Capitalism within Public Health—How Occupational Settings Drive Covid-19 Disparities.” American Journal of Epidemiology, vol. 189, no. 11, (2020), 1245. https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwaa126.
19. McClure, Elizabeth S, et al. “Racial Capitalism within Public Health—How Occupational Settings Drive Covid-19 Disparities.” American Journal of Epidemiology, vol. 189, no. 11, (2020), 1245. https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwaa126.
20. Morse, Michelle; Roberts, Dorothy; Wispelwey, Bram. Interview by Ruha Benjamin. The Racial Capitalism of Care, 5 May 2022, https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-racial-capitalism-of-care/. Accessed 13 November 2022.
21. Geographies of Racial Capitalism with Ruth Wilson Gilmore. Directed by Kenton Card, performances by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Antipode Foundation, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CS627aKrJI.
22. Racial Capitalism and Prison Abolition. Zine Library, October 15, 2020. https://issuu.com/racialcapitalism/docs/racial_capitalism___prison_abolition_lr
23. Catperson, Communist (@communistcatperson9982). 2021. “Capitalism is racist and racism is capitalist song TikTok.” TikTok, July 12, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/FEipkaRhWrw
References
Angela Davis: We Can’t Eradicate Racism without Eradicating Racial Capitalism. Youtube, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhh3CMkngkY.
Catperson, Communist (@communistcatperson9982). 2021. “Capitalism is racist and racism is capitalist song.” TikTok, July 12, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/FEipkaRhWrw
Fong, Sarah. “Racial Settler Capitalism: Character Building and the Accumulation of Land and Labor in the Late Nineteenth Century.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal, vol 43 no. 2 (2019). https://www.acls.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Racial-Settler-Capitalism-Character-Building-and-the-Accumulation-of-Land-and-Labor-in-the-Late-Nineteenth-Century.pdf
Forbes, Elijah. “Solidarity with Frontline Workers.” Science for the People. Science for the People, July 9, 2021. https://magazine.scienceforthepeople.org/volume-24-number-1-racial-capitalism/.
Geographies of Racial Capitalism with Ruth Wilson Gilmore. Directed by Kenton Card, performances by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Antipode Foundation, 2020. Geographies of Racial Capitalism with Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Gordon, Avery F. “Globalism and the Prison Industrial Complex: An Interview with Angela Davis.” Race & Class 40, no. 2-3 (1999): 145–57. https://doi.org/10.1177/030639689904000210.
Karlin, Mark. “The Inseparability of Capitalism, Racism, and Imprisonment: An Interview with Dennis Childs.” openDemocracy, March 17, 2016. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/inseparability-of-capitalism-racism-and-imprisonment-interview-with-dennis/
Lennon, John. “Bureaucratizing Black Lives Matter murals: Racial capitalism, policing and the erasure of radical politics.” Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, vol. 9, no. 11, (2022), pp. 89-110., https://doi.org/10.1386/jucs_00050_1
McClure, Elizabeth S, et al. “Racial Capitalism within Public Health—How Occupational Settings Drive Covid-19 Disparities.” American Journal of Epidemiology, vol. 189, no. 11, (2020), pp. 1244–1253., https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwaa126.
Melamed, Jodi. “Racial Capitalism.” Critical Ethnic Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, (2015), p. 77., https://doi.org/10.5749/jcritethnstud.1.1.0076.
Morse, Michelle; Roberts, Dorothy; Wispelwey, Bram. Interview by Ruha Benjamin. The Racial Capitalism of Care, 5 May 2022, https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-racial-capitalism-of-care/.
Racial Capitalism and Prison Abolition. Zine Library, October 15, 2020. https://issuu.com/racialcapitalism/docs/racial_capitalism___prison_abolition_lr
Robinson Cedric J. 1983. Black Marxism : The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. London Totowa N.J: Zed ; Biblio Distribution Center.
Robinson, Cedric J. Cedric J. Robinson: On Racial Capitalism, Black Internationalism, and Cultures of Resistance. Edited by H. L. T. Quan, Pluto Press, (2019). JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvr0qs8p.
Virdee, Satnam. “Racialized Capitalism: An Account of Its Contested Origins and Consolidation.” The Sociological Review 67, no. 1 (2019): 3–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026118820293.
William I. Robinson, S. R. and H. A. W. (2022, September 15). The cult of Cedric Robinson’s black marxism: A proletarian critique. The Philosophical Salon. Retrieved November 26, 2022, from https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-cult-of-cedric-robinsons-black-marxism-a-proletarian-critique/
Contributors
Nicole Setow, Hope Coleman-Plourde, Keira Kevany, and Maya Ng-Yu