Without Socio-Economic Justice, Racial Justice is impossible.

Silence is violence; but capitalism is judge, jury and executioner. Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk

There can be no racial justice without socio-economic justice. This is a known reality for all socialists in the world today. Martin knew this. Malcolm knew this. They professed as such. However for many, these concepts seem rather abstract and undefined, leading to the inability to make the important connection between the two. Here I will, from my perspective, explain why socio-economic (read class) injustice is directly linked to the racial injustice faced by millions of minorities across the world. Indeed, another important aspect to remember is that discrimination can occur between any two races. Indeed black-white race relations have been at the fore of the western mind when it comes to racism, but remember this is a stand for ALL that face racial discrimination, anywhere in the world.

The disproportionate impact upon working class minority communities

Throughout history, and the growth of the ever more cut-throat capitalist world we exist within, workers have had to deal with less and less and less. Wages in the western world have not risen in line with productivity since 1981. That means the increases in worker efficiency have been taken for granted; FOR 39 YEARS. Yet when we protest this and many other overt injustices, what are we met with? Police intimidation, abuse and murder. These characteristics do not change across country, they are the one commonality.

Yet, this injustice is hugely intensified when institutional racial biases are accounted for. America is currently under the spotlight, and is a place of obvious extremes, so it makes sense to outline my argument with the use of American examples. Indeed, working class African-American’s are the MOST targeted community in the US. On a basic level, African-Americans suffer from the double-effect of unregulated capitalism; poor working conditions, rights and pay, coupled with the implicit and explicit racism suffered at the hands of white customers, co-workers and bourgeoisie management.

This double effect is rife throughout the American Capitalist State. Beginning during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods, African-American communities have been systematically economically deprived (both in terms of governmental and commercial funding), due to the racial biases of majority white political, social and economic organisations (Small town right the way to the federal level). These racially-motivated officials have, and continue to promote, a policy line which dis-proportionally aims to uneducate, defund, and hold black communities hostage to their reality.

This is clear from studying the differences in financial support given to majority black schools and colleges versus their white counterparts today. In 2019, The Pacific Standard reported that ‘non-white school districts get $23 Billion less than white ones’. In the report, it found on a per-student basis, non-white concentrated schools received $2,226 less than white concentrated schools. This bias plays out as bad within commercial markets too; Forbes reported in 2018 that ‘ Black Home Buyers Denied Mortgages More Than Twice As Often As Whites’. The report finds denial rates (% of applicants denied loans) for White Americans were just 8.1% in 2016. Alternatively, in the same year denial rates were 21% for African-American’s – down from 34.3% at the time of the financial crash. Let that sink in. 1/3 of all African-Americans applying, were denied a conventional loan in 2007. Let me ask you; who owns the vast majority of banks? Who literally destabilised the economy in the pursuit of gross amounts of wealth, and then when it didn’t work got bailed out by the public purse? The White Upper Class. The exact same class that was there in 1929 at the helm, knowing that millions of workers, especially African-American workers, would be unable to feed their families, relying on federal scraps to survive the Great Depression, for almost a decade (because remember that same White Upper Class controlling the banks? Yeah they’re in government too).

Although I have barely scratched the surface, these examples are very telling for the position large majorities of African-American’s find themselves within. Underfunded as children, sent to rotting school facilities, with bare minimum supplies, in school institutions that literally target young African-Americans from pre-school all the way to High School. The US Department of Education released damning figures in 2014, which found that when black students and white students commit similar infractions at school, black students are suspended and expelled three times more often than white students. The US school system has embodied the ‘school-to-prison pipeline’ with law enforcement so often being called into schools to deal with altercations, that overly result in the arrest of young African-Americans on school grounds.

Without education, very little can be done to improve the financial position of so many African-Americans, and when applied on a national, and generational basis, it is evident that the cycle of poverty among the African-American working class continues. Therefore, when you have no ability to better life for yourself, under a system that wants to turn you into a modern-day slave within the prison-industrial complex, there can be little hope for any form of mass upward class mobility, and such the promise of a full life. This is the reality faced by millions of working class minorities across the world. Everyday.

King laid out the triple header in the ills of America; Militarism, Racism and Capitalism. *Here, King looks at a glass door of his rented beach cottage in St. Augustine, Fla. that was shot into by someone unknown on June 5, 1964. | Jim Kerlin / AP*

It is important to remember however that these socio-economic issues and potential solutions were discussed by both MLK and Malcolm X during the 50s/60s. Although Dr. King came from a middle class family, and Malcolm from a working class one, both revolutionaries understood the importance of financial independence and security for African-American communities. Malcolm was more radical in the idea of an entirely separate, self-sufficient economy, and actually favoured a more libertarian capitalist model (within this African-American only community).

Yet, Dr. King knew and sympathised with the plight of the working class. He felt a strong desire to serve humanity, in particular the disinherited he had first seen standing in bread lines during the Great Depression as a child. Indeed, whilst on summer breaks from Moorehouse college as a teenager, Dr. King chose to work as a manual labourer, to understand the humiliation and suffering of the African-American blue collar worker. It was also known that King read Marx, considering his analysis of Capitalism on point. Why do you think then that in the months and weeks before his death on April 4th 1968, Dr. King was organising the ‘Poor People’s Campaign’? Aiming to bring together the poor, working class across America, from all different races to erect a tent-city in DC? To jar the conscious of a nation, to wake them up to the fact that American capitalism was deeply broken; and therefore required radical change.

Dr. King was a Democratic Socialist. There are too many of Dr. King’s quotes to include them all, but I feel this one summarises his exact beliefs; “I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic… [Capitalism] started out with a noble and high motive… but like most human systems it fell victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today, capitalism has out-lived its usefulness.” – A letter to Coretta, July 18th 1952.

Take on Dr. King’s challenge

As we come to a close, I feel it is important to remind people that Dr. King was a true socialist revolutionary. Morally challenging the very foundations of the American system, proposing a new model, which fundamentally was in opposition to those in power. In his honour, and the honour of so many of our fallen brothers and sisters whom died at the hands of those that hated them just for the colour of their skin, let us unite and finish what was started long ago. WE NEED RADICAL CHANGE. WE NEED RACIAL EQUALITY. WE NEED DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM.

There is no racial justice without socio-economic justice.

Mentions

I want to thank my good friend Alex Edwards for his help in guiding me in the contents of this piece, your wisdom is insurmountable Grandad. I’m sure we’ll work together much more in the future.

Here are all the links to the sources I used (some are hyperlinked others not);

https://www.questia.com/magazine/1G1-13767790/martin-luther-king-jr-and-malcolm-x-economic-insights

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disenfranchisement_after_the_Reconstruction_Era