Capitalism Vs. Racism: Is Racism Inevitable in a Capitalist System? Essay

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Introduction

Racism is a human condition—not an economic one, even though it is often demonstrated in economic terms. For instance, in the US, the percentage of the population that lives in poverty is skewed heavily towards minorities (KFF, 2019). And because the US has a capitalist economic system, people are quick to argue that capitalism itself is racist. However, this would be a very superficial analysis of the actual situation. Many of the policies implemented in the US at the governmental level are responsible for the impoverishment of minorities; it actually has nothing to do with capitalism (Prins, 2020). In fact, in other parts of the world, such as China—which is decidedly not a capitalistic country but rather a Communist one—racism is also a problem, what with the Muslim Uyghurs being incarcerated in re-education camps en masse (Klett, 2019). In the US, black activists like Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois and Dr. King have all advocated for black entrepreneurship—which would not be possible were it not for a capitalistic economic system (Clay Jr & Jones, 2008). It is not capitalism that causes racism; instead, it is racist ideology that those who influence systems often hold that leads to racism. This paper will show how it is not capitalism that is to blame for racism, but harmful ideologies and thoughtless/racist policymakers that perpetuate racism.

The Argument that Capitalism is Racist

The argument that capitalism is racist typically begins with the arrival of slavery in the New World. It is argued that slave owners were capitalists who wanted to exploit the labor of the enslaved. Thus, capitalism is racist. The argument goes on to claim that even after slavery was abolished, racist laws continued, such as segregation and the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896. It shows that until the Civil Rights Movement, blacks still had no equality in the capitalist system.

The argument is further advanced by activists like Angela Davis, who has pointed to the prison industrial complex and the disproportionate amount of blacks who are incarcerated and put to work for pennies on the dollar for American corporations for what essentially is a new modern-day plantation system (Davis & Shaylor, 2020). The problem is not capitalism, per se, however. The problem is people who want to exploit others. And that happens in other economic systems as well.

Capitalism is Not Really Racist

To some degree it is not even fair to say that America truly has a capitalist system any longer. A capitalist system is one in which capital is put to use in a free market.

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Today’s world of finance capitalism is much different, and the market is hardly free (how can it be called free when much of it is permitted to be locked down by government in the face of a flu?). Today’s economic system in the US is very mixed and resembles more and more a command economy like that seen in the Soviet era, where central planners essentially set prices for commodities (this is certainly the case for oil) and regularly intervene in the markets to keep them from crashing (and this is certainly the case with the Federal Reserve,…

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…racism is an easy scapegoat for some who do not want to actually engage in any critical thinking. Critical thinking involves gathering all the relevant information and using it to come to an informed conclusion. It requires effort, hard work and research. People tend to prefer to engage in labeling, because it allows them to bypass thought. If they can slap a label on something they can avoid having to think about it because they have already made up in their own mind that the label means this or that. This is what they do when they slap the racist label on capitalism. They don’t actually stop to think about what they are saying when they make these declarations. If they did, they would see the absurdity of it. A system might be unethical, but it is people who are immoral. Racism is immoral. People are racist. Capitalism is simply an economic system that allows people to access the free market so that they can apply their own talents, trade, and skills and capital to compete for business among others. If the community in which they are trying to do this is full of racist community leaders who do not want to allow certain groups access to the free market, that would be racism—but it has nothing to do with capitalism. Thus, one can see that even though this behavior has occurred in America, it has also occurred in China, in Russia, in Africa, and in any other country where one group in power has sought to keep another group from having access to the markets. It is….....

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