Beware of the new racist counteroffensive [View All]

[IndianaGreen]

Beware of the new racist counteroffensive

by: Sam Webb
March 25 2010

Many people say that racism is simply an attitude or a prejudice of one people toward another people. That allowed Republican senators to make the ludicrous claim that Sonia Sotomayor was a racist, during the hearings on her Supreme Court nomination.

In reality, racism is a historically developed set of practices, institutions and beliefs that systematically subordinate racially oppressed people to an inferior status in every area of life. It dates back to the 17th century and its genesis lies in the practical economic and political requirements of the interwoven systems of predatory colonialism, slavery and nascent capitalism in the "new world" at that time.

These systems of oppression and exploitation in the Americas needed not only an unlimited supply of unpaid or underpaid labor, but also a system of rationalization - racism - to legitimize the theft of lands and resources and the unparalleled subjugation and/or enslavement of peoples of the Americas, Africa and Asia.

Because slavery and other forms of subjugation were tied to a young but expanding system of capitalism, racist oppression and exploitation had a particularly brutal and bloody character. No longer did the subjugated produce for a local market; now they produced commodities for consumers in distant lands and in the context of an expanding world system of production for the sole purpose of accumulating capital and maximizing profits.

http://www.peoplesworld.org/beware-of-the-new-racist-counteroffensive/