Race is a social contrast used to characterize and categorize seemingly distinct populations. Race is a concept that is associated with an individual’s physical characteristics, such as an individual’s skin color or hair texture. Capitalism, on the other hand, is a form of political and economic system that controls a country’s industries and trade. Capitalism allows for private ownership of trade and industries within the country, thus contributing to individuals’ profits rather than the state profiting from these businesses. Through capitalism, corporations are funded by the profits acquired to ensure the continuation of the system. The big corporations in the US are predominantly owned by Caucasians, who, in turn, solicit cheap labor from the underprivileged members of the community to ensure they maximize their profits. Race and capitalism are intricately connected in several ways. Race and capitalism interact to yield inequalities and exploitation among various marginalized racial communities. These two concepts are also tied to racism and the racial division of labor, which enhances the marginalization of these underprivileged individuals. Race and capitalism are, therefore, integral to each other as the two concepts are tied together.
Capitalism is tied to race through the inequalities it produces. Capitalism promotes the idea that everyone is equally positioned to succeed (Koepke, 2007). Capitalism insists that if everyone remains hardworking, justice will prevail to ensure they get their reward. Unfortunately, in capitalist societies, valued resources are stratified according to class, race, and gender (Koepke, 2007). In the US, Caucasian lives are valued more than other individual lives so that these individuals are afforded more resources and opportunities than any other race. The economy in such a society is not structured to care for those with fewer resources. Individuals from different races end up being underprivileged and marginalized (Koepke, 2007). These individuals remain poor thus are unable to participate in society while those privileged continue to benefit from their social status and continue to participate in society.
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Capitalism and race are also intricately entangled because capitalism yields the exploitation of various racial groups. The owners of private property in capitalist societies enhance their wealth by exploiting the underprivileged non-white individuals in society (Roy et al., 2018). These property owners depend on the underprivileged to work for them and purchase goods and services from them. The owners of these private properties depend on the have-nots as they derive their wealth from them (Roy et al., 2018). The goods and services sold by corporations to people are traded at a profit where the private owners of these corporations’ benefit from the profit. This thus shows how capitalism cannot get rid of poverty, as poverty is the basis of wealth (Roy et al., 2018). The inequalities fostered by capitalism result in a class of individuals living in poverty with minimal resources who are predominantly non-white. Capitalism depends on race to take power and resources from people, thus enhances their exploitation.
Capitalism and race are also tied to each other through racism. Racism is the different acts of discrimination, antagonism, or prejudice that are directed to individuals from particular marginalized ethnic or racial groups (Leong, 2013). Capitalist societies have found their way to exploit people from marginalized races to get maximum profits from them. Capitalism originated from Europe as the region was well-positioned to extract wealth from other nations. For the Europeans to successfully extract this wealth, they would spread ideas of their racial superiority and the inferiority of the nations from whom they plundered resources and capital (Koepke, 2007). Similarly, in the Americas, Africans were forcibly brought from their homeland to help the Caucasian property owners increase their profit by exploiting them as slaves. However, centuries after the end of slavery, the US still relies on race as a determinant of the allocation of society’s resources.
Racism allows for a racial division of labor in capitalist societies. Most of the large corporations in the US are owned and governed by white males who seek to keep their wealth and power to themselves. As such, they continuously work to exploit the labor of millions of Latino, Blacks, and Native American communities (Leong, 2013). The existing division of labor ensures that these marginalized communities remain in their social class working menial jobs that pay minimum wages. These groups of people have to struggle to find part-time or temporary work that pay a minimum wage (Koepke, 2007). They also have to maintain these jobs because the rate of unemployment among their communities is always high. Capitalist societies depend on the high unemployment rates of these marginalized racial groups to keep the cost of labor down and further increase the profit gained (Leong, 2013). As such, capitalism depends on race to divide and conquer workers to ensure it controls labor.
The concepts of race and capitalism are intricately entangled. Race is a concept that is associated with an individual’s physical characteristics. At the same time, capitalism is a form of political and economic system that facilities the private ownership and control of a country’s industries and trade, thus contributing to individual profits. Race and capitalism are interconnected through the inequalities that result from capitalist societies marginalizing the underprivileged racial communities. The two concepts are tied to each other because capitalism facilitates the exploitation of various racial groups to facilitate the increase in profits and propagate the existing social classes. Through racism, capitalist societies also facilitate the racial division of labor that ensures the marginalized communities are unable to climb the social class. Moreover, capitalism also helps maintain the existing higher levels of unemployment among these communities to maximize on the profits these big corporations earn that are mainly owned by white males in the US. Although people might claim that capitalism allows hardworking individuals to raise their social class and get rewarded for their effort, it remains evident that capitalism in the US is tailored to support poverty among the marginalized community, as evidenced by the existing ties between the two concepts.
References
Koepke, D. J. (2007). Race, class, poverty, and capitalism. Race, gender & class, 189-205. https://sci-hub.tw/http://www.jstor.org/stable/41675299
Leong, N. (2013). Racial capitalism. Harv. L. Rev., 126(8), 2151. https://harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/vol126_leong.pdf
Roy, A., Dawson, M., Connolly, N., Finch, A., Perry, K. K., Campi, A., ... & Ralph, M. (2018). Race and Capitalism: Global Territories, Transnational Histories. https://challengeinequality.luskin.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2018/04/Race-and-Capitalism-digital.pdf
