Is Capitalism Racist?

Capitalism in the inner city is could in fact be racist. Many factors may play a role such as socio-economic status, residential and economic segregation, and alienation. But capitalism may be another way to justify racism in the city and around America. Gender and ethnicity will be the main focus in this section to determine whether capitalism is racist. Racism is one of the biggest controversial topics in our nation today and many people choose to make it apparent and others ignore it. The capitalistic owners controlling most of the means of production in our economy may use race as a way to maintain the social order in our society. The idea of “white privilege” could be a consequence of this practice by the big business owners. White privilege is the idea that because a person is has white skin they automatically own benefits and advantages in their everyday lives that color people don’t. Like slavery, African Americans were a valuable asset to white farmers and like in todays society, minorities willing to do cheap labor to benefit the Capitalistic is essentially the same thing. Exploiting workers to make a profit is equally the same as slaves picking cotton farms to benefit their master to sell for profit. To be clear, “…racism did not derive from capitalism itself but rather from the social, cultural and institutional conditions of post-slavery, pre-civil rights America”(Pitcher 2012: p7).

            Racism came before capitalism, but capitalism reinforces the idea of racism through social and economic structures. Racism can correlate to how Chicago is divided by whites dominating the north side and African American dominating the south side. Other than residential segregation, most of the cheap labor is located in the southern part of Chicago therefore explains why African Americans dominant most of the urban area. With a lack of education, skilled labor, and resources, capitalistic owner may take advantage of these factors for cheap unskilled labor to be done for a profit.

References:

http://capitalism.org/racism/does-capitalism-cause-racism/ 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kirsten-west-savali/you-cant-have-capitalism-_b_5809628.html