the evolution of a charge: from white privilege to white supremacist

[starroute]

71. But can there be racial justice in a fundamentally oppressive system?

In a science-fictional sense, you could imagine a color-blind but economically unequal society, where the 1% and the 99% were both fully integrated and race wasn't an issue -- but where the 1% was still on top and the 99% was still kept in line by the middle class being taught to fear the poor and the poor being subject to police state tactics.

But even if that was desirable -- and it isn't -- there's no way to get there from our present system. Capitalist society depends on having an underclass, both to do the gruntwork and as a way of controlling the middle class, and maintaining a racial dividing line is the easiest way to manage that.

Minimum wage increases and single-payer healthcare aren't going to solve the problem of inequality either, of course. What's needed is a complete transformation of the system. And I understand that the black community can't wait for that -- that they just want the damn cops to stop shooting their children.

But I do hope to see BLM develop an increasingly sophisticated economic critique -- which I believe is already happening -- and not put all their eggs in the basket of racial justice.