Summary
Contents
This unique collection brings together selections from the work that has defined our understanding of racism. Every significant contribution to the analysis of racism over the past 50 years are comprised in this one book, including extracts from Myrdal's An American Dilemma, Cox's Marxist theory, Carmichael and Hamilton's introduction of the term ‘institutional racism’ and recent textual analyses. Ordered chronologically, so that the reader can work through the narrative of changes coherently, each contribution is introduced by the editors and the whole collection is bound together by introductory and concluding chapters. The result is an unparalleled teaching and study resource. No other book presents the highlights, range and complexity of the various attempts to unravel racism, in such a comprehensive and panoramic way.
Chapter 13: Racism and the Class Struggle: Further Pages from a Black Worker's Notebook
Racism and the Class Struggle: Further Pages from a Black Worker's Notebook
The chapter included here is written by James Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs. The authors challenge the findings and manner in which the Kerner Commission Report approach the problem of racism. They argue that a root cause of racism, capitalism, was side-stepped by the Kerner Commission report in its discussion of white racism. James and Grace Lee Boggs propose that racism is actually functional in terms of protecting the economic interests of the rich and upper class in the United States. This claim should remind the reader of the selection by Du Bois, ‘White Workers’ written in 1935. Interestingly, ...
