Global Research

(Originally published April 14, 2023)

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“You can’t have capitalism without racism.” 

– Malcolm X, (1964 speech) [1]

. “When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more
important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

Martin Luther King Jr, Beyond Vietnam speech (1967) [2]

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Throughout history, many of the exciting developments in exploration, discovery and the joy of establishing a new colony is accompanied, like a counterpoint with the tremendous misery of the people on the ground who made it work or who had to be eliminated in order for the project at hand to proceed.

Think of Christopher Columbus, “the man who discovered America!” also triggering the beginning of a major devastation of the Indigenous people of the New World. As writer James Axtel wrote in his 1992 book  Moral Reflections on the Columbian Legacy, “the major initial effect of the Columbian voyages was the transformation of America into a charnel house…surely the greatest tragedy in the history of the human species.” [3]

Or the African slave trade. It was helpful in allowing European colonial economies to survive. It was necessary to exploit land that had opened up in the colonies of North and South America. However, the cost in terms of many lives lost, much suffering, and masters utilizing chains and whips to establish their white supremacy. [4]

Even today, when the people thought they had come so far, we still see injustices in terms of higher proportional prison rates of Black Americans in America, a disregard for the plight of migrant workers, and the never ending torment facing people in Haiti still paying the ultimate price for freeing the nation and fighting for a Declaration of Independence.

According to Marxist thinker Marco La Grotta, the filmed police murder of George Floyd may have enraged mass numbers of people, and gotten one police officer arrested, it hasn’t done very much to address systemic racism still coursing relentlessly through the veins of North American society. It is too useful to our capitalist expansion not to allow this toxic sludge to fester and divide the working class to the benefit of the ruling class. [5]

According to the recently created group Black Alliance for Peace, the Black Radical perspective sees the historic birth of the United States not as the birth of human liberty but the “continuation and re-consolidation of what Rodrick Bush called the “Pan European Colonial Project,” that vicious, hegemonic campaign that was fueled by the European invasion of the Americas in 1492.”

Racism and white supremacy are still themes that revolve around capitalism. What is needed among those who really want to end it, is to take a good hard listen first and foremost to the voices we don’t want to hear. Catch sight of the captive figure we don’t want to think about. We will offer some images this week on the Global Research News Hour.

On this week’s show, we offer three of the most high profile stories of interest to Black people and their colleagues throughout the world. First we will hear Professor Johanna Fernández speaking of the circumstances of long time imprisoned journalist Mumia Abu Jamal now that a judge has turned down a much hoped for new trial. We will have a conversation with Abayomi Azikiwe about efforts afoot to continue the colonization of the African continent. Finally, Austin Cole, a co-coordinator of the Black Alliance for Peace brings details about a collective effort to build a People(s)-Centered Campaign for a Zone of Peace in the Americas.

Associate Professor Johanna Fernández teaches 20th Century US history and the history of social movements in the Department of History at Baruch College (CUNY). She is the editor of Writing on the Wall: Selected Prison Writings of Mumia Abu-Jamal and one of the coordinators of the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home. She is also the host of the Friday morning program What’s GOING On Friday for WBAI radio in New York City.

Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire, and has appeared as a commentator on several media outlets. He is also a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Austin Cole is Co-Coordinator BAP’s Haiti/Americas Team

(Global Research News Hour Episode 387)

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Notes:

1. https://www.socialistalternative.org/2005/07/01/you-cant-have-capitalism-without-racism-looking-back-at-malcolm-x-1925-1965/
2. https://www.crmvet.org/info/mlk_viet.pdf
3. Axtell, James (1992). “Moral Reflections on the Columbian Legacy”. The History Teacher. 25 (4): 407–425.
4. https://www.britannica.com/topic/transatlantic-slave-trade
5. https://www.marxist.ca/article/why-capitalism-needs-racism