so i arrived in seattle beginning in the fourth grade back in the seventy's early seventy's i should say and was involved in what on the surface was like an a social engineering experiment called bussing we lived on capitol hill at the time an apartment on the corner of pine and madison but almost all of the kids on our bus were bussed out to ballard and if i'm not going to talk about the psychological price that we paid you know being twenty three kids being bused to all white schools in the kind of racism that we experience from students and teachers and what that meant in the trauma it left on us to imprint left on us i won't talk about that when we talk about values all the kids we picked up on that bus lived in central district was considered a ghetto the value of their homes were conservative lower than they are now the value of the schools that cater to these kids were considerably lower which is the whole idea of being bused to these other schools busing was never about integration it was concession to families struggling to educate their was a very different kind of thing but that was the whole point so gentrification in this transformation is not about integration never was about integration it's a modern form of seller colonialism and with sellers coming to restaurant and shops and rising property values and improve schools garfield in those days was not a good school now it's considered one of the best schools you know it's you know you keep in mind that we still go swimming in the  we can talk about that want to but exchange values of same as price but in some respects race doesn't matter before we get into this question what is racial capitalism and why it matters i want to begin with just a few basic theses because i think i may run out of time and i rather stop before i'm done but as one lay out a few things one race and gender are not incidental or accidental features now second thesis race isn't simply or primarily about an identity we confuse sometimes race with identity it is a structure of power  to say some things that might throw you off in terms of who's being racialized three the central story of race and the making of the captors order isn't always the most obvious story ok with my mean is that the obvious stories like racial slavery dispossession imperialism i'm not saying they're not really important but it's not always about just those things but rather masculinity so the secret to capitalism survival is racism and the racial in picture arkell state now racial capitalism you know the genesis of the term really comes out of south africa south african scholars were among the first to really start to use that term in the seventy's mid seventy's and i won't go into the whole genesis of it but it emerged as a kind of analytical framework to understand how the apartheid state structure the relations of race class and accumulation but it also came out of a political question a political question was when we dismantle the party then we will what what's going to be left over in other words d dismantle the racial state in the elements of law or do we have to dismantle capitalism at the same time so the question is if we do that with a post parte nation still maintain the very structures that we produce deep racial class and gender inequality in that was a quite a still a question that's being struggled over right now so it makes sense that the concept of racial capitalism would emerge in south africa where the racial character of south african implementation of a party you know essentially all prior legislation you know state and corporate practices sought to do the various things that were basically foundational racial kalpas and stripped africans of lamb  create a racially segmented and super exploited working class manufacture precarity through population chance for and by destroying black economic institutions all the while they're doing this using the surplus that they are able to extract to create what might be called a whites only welfare state so much of that surplus is subsidized what housing subsidies for white workers and why people massive and i should say by way of disclosure he was my teacher he was someone who who passed away sadly two thousand and sixteen and he was a person who is responsible for much of what i know about anything besides my  mother brilliant but we associate the term with him he introduced a term in his book called black marxism the making of black radical tradition one thousand published ninety three and he developed it from the he developed the concept of racial capitalism from it to specific system a description of a specific system that is like a party or a settler colonialism to a way of understanding the general history of modern capitalism  so building on the work of sociologist oliver cox robinson's objective was not to analyze the historical and contemporary elements of racial capitalism instead what he wanted to show was how european racism racialism in nationalism preceded capitalism preceded capitalism it existed before capitalism emerged when it emerged in the thirteen order but rather evolved from that old order from the old should order to produce a modern world system of racial capitalism depended on slavery violence imperialism and genocide so as he put it the and that's within europe that's to say they kept us in was racial not because of some conspiracy divide to divide workers or to justify slavery in dispossession didn't have to work to hide it just by say because that slavery within first european proletarians were racial subjects that's what he's saying the first european politicians were racial subtext they weren't just africans they were irish they were jews they were europe was very much a colonial process ok one involving processes of invasion settlement expropriation in racial hierarchy and he minds us that what drove german  and taken part that was about colonial domination over territories that they once control your earlier in the bitter so cedric robinson illustrates this point by examining the shifting and increasingly violent character of english colonisation of ireland in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries so the dispossessed irish who were not killed those historical experiences that shaped i was nationalism and determined their relationship with the english working class in render them an inferior race this is the way beyond the scope of the talk but if you read like the first section of black marxism it's about europe it only exists in the minds of economists who themselves are thinking of racial terms so the term simply signals that capitalism developed in operate within a racist system or racial regime  racism is fundamental for the production and reproduction of bile it's and that violence is necessary for creating and maintaining capitalism why is that well first of all capital didn't begin with money ok that's this is the world most of the world much of the land of resource they held in common you know it meant forcibly dispossessed in people and turning them into cheaper cheap labor or unfair labor and those and that labor see was used to make things and grow things this is very important because we've grown up in a world where private property is seen as a natural thing by private parties like a natural right when for water is privatized everything you die you have to buy you can't walk on property now because property is private so what i'm saying is that the commons of it was what the natural for centuries it's dispossession from the commons and the construction of private property is a concept even when i said at the very beginning of my my my talk i said i i pay tribute to the indigenous people on the land and sometimes they confuse what it means to so this requirement for resources and for labor is really behind conquests behind colonization dispossession slavery in environmental destruction these are the five process in the creation of modern capitalism and white supremacy this is why we need to think about racial capitalism not just in national terms and global terms from its inception ok it's no accident that the global division of labor reflects this history with the lowest paid in the most precarious workers in the global economy being descendants of who of slaves descendants of the colonize descendants  capitalism structures not just the public realm for return to talk about but also the private so any critique of racial capitalism means that we have to understand the role of paid and unpaid women's work in social reproduction and how this work is racialized ok so reproductive labor for example is outsourced especially as incomes and wages decline and to carry the rises both the use of free labor in the world today in many of those slaves are sex slaves we've all being bombarded with interesting stories about the discovery the revelations of fact not only that but they're very central to the reproduction of the system of capitalism and although many of the high profile cases are not women of color women of color are usually the ones who are most affected by these process by subsistence farmers many of whom are women by urban squatters many of whom are women undocumented migrants welfare recipients women often women who are in gender nonconforming families in the forefront but we always see that as like the the wedge resisting capitalism because we have this kind of romantic view of the industrial worker in the shop floor so what i'm going to do now with the time i have is very quickly sweep through certain historical epics make a few points spend some time in a new liberal racial order with one particular story and then say something about trump yes i have some time so keep in mind that i don't think that we actually started at seven because we did not remember we decided much later i got to hear all these great things about about me and so don't don't blame me for that so export it sold to the caribbean that's another story but the problem of sellers the problem sellers face was sort of twofold one dispossessing indigenous people prisoners they were incarcerated in fact you know we have to be really careful when we talk about like how racial stable emerges the north america it's just not true i dissuade beyond the scope of my talk but racial sa at the point of capture doesn't begin in north america so i could be like oh i thought us indentured servant would you do and how come i can't leave no that worked they were in slave at the point of capture but the third aspect of management was how to manage an unruly white working class the rural poor those those same people who are themselves colonizing dispossess ireland wind up on a boat in the presidential servants because because managing the white poor and the enslaved meant enclosure in england cocksure is a little bit easier than in north america because they don't have the capacity to enclose you have vast landscapes as boundaries can't be defended easily so keep in mind as all this is happening in north america north america's colonies there's a pitched battle taking place in england at the same time all over the commons and there's a real societies they joined with native peoples and it was dangerous because certainly white folks who didn't see any future for themselves except as bonded labor s discourse of indians as idle comes out at the very onset of the corner period and it was a capital crime in fact for english to live with india yet by the late eighteenth century according to one observer there were thousands of colonists that is former indentured servants went there to service who ran away and had become what they call new made indians living as hunters fishers fishing gathering that sort of thing so they got of on the problem by extending lang grants to white people effectively ending forms of white bondage white bondage would have probably continued had not been for this pressure and so the freeing so what we see what we're seeing is not so much the consolidation of racial slavery but the freeing of forms of white bondage the creation of except their class turning them into citizens and t capitalist or that there was no metabolism between them and the owners of capital rather it meant at least two or three things one it meant that they came to see nonwhite labor as subordinate as inferior and whose interests in fate are not linked to their and some of the more clinical radical elements nonwhite labor as an obstacle to their revolution as a probe terry secondly and probably more significantly by identifying  settlers they saw themselves as future capitalists as future slave holders as future kept captains of industry so with emancipation on a global scale colonial officers in free market liberals in this case j way colonial thick officer and a few market ideology so these figures turned to what we might call and i have to say with apologies to my friend moon over here the three  and of course reproductive labor for male wage earners but they're also included not to be sees victorian gender norms don't apply to african nation women they still perform the bulk of our cultural  they may not make up significant proportions of asian migrant labor especially as more limits are placed on migration but they were left behind to care for children to work in agriculture or in emerging industries for black women african women besides domestic workers domestic labor they were consigned to what would be considered men's work they built roads they worked on plantations they collected rubber in the congo in other words they're considered well by my friend and colleague sarah haley cause ungendered labor and gender do gender stripped in some ways it's not just being masked in lies it's basically being recognized as having no gender limits in terms of their their labor at the same time women were often in positions of being independent producers in the cool in the realm of the colonies whether it workers are increasing becoming consumers what this means is that something finance finance was so essential to back in colonial projects back in the slave trade in fact lloyd's of london you know so by the time you get to twentieth century financial institutions begin to extend credit to workers and that enables them to consume more and they can afford more although their existing wages are not going debt becomes a driver in other words we think so much before this moment of working as a way to just reproduce your labor power for the next day now it's about commodity it's about accumulation it's  having things in debt keeps you continue to work and work and they pay that debt back with interest capitalists on the other hand can park their surplus in banks and they can profit from financial ventures so investments in stocks in loans to workers and to businesses and high interest rates credit cards come into being by the middle to late twentieth century time a subprime mortgages which we'll talk about  the second in as we know from peter hudson's really great book bankers and empire which is out now you should check it out we know that you know that colonial and racial regimes allowed u s banks to use immediately begin to see how the system is racial race and gender and citizenship status status determines wages it determines employment opportunities it determines a kind of labor you do whether skill unskilled and protected unpaid paid access to credit to loans to interest rates charged that sort of thing all this is shaped by value racial value in some so many of you know about beginning about four year three four years ago you know the flood water supply was poisoned and he may know that in two thousand and thirteen the governor of michigan  early decided to switch the public water supply from the detroit river to flint verify the problem the flint river was polluted everyone knew it was highly toxic and to save money the new regime that is unelected regime unelected emerged to manage or stop chemically treating the city's lead pipes which made matters worse so the results were that you know residents were getting sick and that's what they want to look like so residents continue to receive water bills for that water ok so of course they organized so let's look at the larger picture to understand the new liberalization of racial composition first of all over half of flints population is black and they make up the largest proportion of residents living below the poverty line in flint is the second most impoverished city in the nation next to youngstown ohio secondly black communities are especially subject to this kind of corporate state dictatorship the idea that  system which imposes out there a tear in governance in the name of austerity in michigan for example forty nine percent of the african american population at least two years ago had no locally elected government and were under emergency managers black people make up about fourteen percent the state's population in detroit in highland park by the way my wife's uncle was organizations like the michigan welfare rights organization in blue planet project that went to new york went to united nations to make the case that water is a human right now actually got support to this position  that shutting off water to those who can't afford to pay their bills is a human rights violation ok now this we know we know this part of the story the price we always know as like how come so many residents can pay their bills or better how did cities like flint and detroit once so having the highest paying workers in the country driving industrial work force job protections because of intense union struggles wasn't a giveaway and also the post war growth of the us economy during the one nine hundred seventy s as manufacturing process es became more mobile companies like g m ford left michigan not entirely but money their processing manufacturing processes went for cheap labor they moved to the us out they moved to mexico they opened up shop in south africa they've been there for a while brazil and through free trade agreements they paid even less in taxes and duties and set up shop in places with few environmental or labor regulations so these shifts both produced and were responses to the global economic crisis of the nineteen seventies the global slump of seventy four in particular and also the oil embargo the competition from automakers like japan in germany in order to keep g m in flint because he didn't want g m to leave the city government agreed to give the company huge tax cuts and promised immunity and write this down for those of you going to write about in your class thomas immunity from legal consequences of polluting the river so you know you can pollute the river we're not going to fine you go ahead and do it that's what capital interested in the city the shareholders and cumulation and trying to do do something with that surplus but jobs still disappeared and it disappeared to outsourcing to do sheriffs to automation and so by nineteen between nine hundred seventy nine two thousand and ten flint still lost eighty seven point five percent of its manufacturing jobs which is so interesting because again think about all the giveaways that the city and states giving them not to leave and they still losing jobs so with g m with the shares use losing value like many of us and manufacturing firms they turn to finance namely g m entered the consumer finance market they sold insurance packages they went to banking services in the mortgages home equity loans to members of the public and by nine hundred ninety nine g m was deeply involved in selling sub time mortgages to people who were unlikely to pay them back in the result was predatory lending working people overwhelmingly black working people lost their homes as well as their jobs and when the variable rate on the mortgages ballooned in the housing market collapse and that's what we talk about two thousand and eight crisis just had a domino effect on the economy  domino effect left cities like flint with a fraction of the tax revenue because of course tax revenues generated by property taxes and if the property people not in your house and property values decline you know generating much revenue ok so what's worse is those tax breaks given to the very corporations that fleeced the city  ultimately the city fell deeper into debt and they couldn't get back those tax revenues from g m so in order to try to come out of debt what do they do the city does what a lot of beautiful cities do they turn to privatizing public assets in order to attract investment capital so public lands are sold off to develop water rates increase in there's a push to privatized water a downtown the development schemes are encouraged using public funding public debt and substantial tax breaks more tax breaks to private firms to finance new buildings skyscrapers parking lots and so the thing is that they can't pay back that debt then it's a loss none of these ventures revitalized downtown none of these ventures revitalize the economy it left the city if they are responsible for massive debt and that massive debt became justification for moving the city council aside and putting in emergency manager in place to manage the debt you see like puerto rico so continue our story very quickly back in two thousand and fourteen fifteen was clear that the water was unfit for human or animal consumption the city council tried to reverse a decision the people opposed it but the emergency manager refused what we know now is that dano early was actually part of a plan and that plan was to push detroit into bankruptcy to complete the  supply so what i mean by that detroit water and sewerage department was operating with massive huge budget deficits so their bond holders were faced with potential loss of flint as a customer said in one loose tone as a customer so they place greater pressure on delinquent customers to pay off to pay their bill so they're cut off services to people raise rates on detroiters in the choice water agency then offer to cut its rates in half to flint residents but done early was like you know no don't cut the rates so we had a chance to cut the rates but then he said we're going to continue to use flint river supply and then jerry  residents who are behind their bills and began making plans to eliminate hundreds of jobs so the shut off in the layoffs were really a strategy as i suggested before to make the detroit sewerage department more attractive for private investors proper in puerto rico which is the power grid obviously there's a lot more to story and i'm going to go much more into this but we know that darn early is decision was pushing detroit into bankruptcy in the complete privatization of water supply what we see with flint therefore are not only the consequences of new liberalization of racial capitalism which includes the dismantling of democracy but we also see and they'll be mad at me for saying this but the rise of a black political class serves as junior partners in these forms of authoritarian governance ok so you got the don't want to close some words on trump but i want to make a transition here so the story of flint of course is being replicate in puerto rico it should remind us i think above all that the authoritarian turn that we thought on the poor covert wars political and cultural backlash against movements for racial and gender justice rampant xenophobia open massaging the attacks on reproductive rights a backlash against diversity motorcoach and all that way before thousand not but two thousand and ten was just explosion right remember that in two thousand levon so that whole period we have yet occupy you have athens and madrid in and sao paolo in london in the west bank and all these like risings that are challenging this sort of the crisis of global capital so i'm convinced that  massive opposition to globalization and to the policies of austerity is policies designed to solve capitalism is crisis on the backs of workers on the backs of the poor both exposed in haste and the crisis that produce trump so trump isn't wasn't just sort of like you know bad democratic planning you know  wasn't it was so much more than that another was you know we could have predicted it you know and some people did have paid attention but i'm very proud to say that i'm sad to say i was them so to understand this is what i want to sort of cold for this to understand this current moment that we're in i think is worth revisiting that put that picture up there like this this is this is this is the picture i meant to talk about with respect to the last gasp of liberal democracy you know the obama years you know we could install tick for them because we're dealing with the so stupid right but there's some terrible things that happened in those days that we kind of forget about but they look good but but then again i mean people think george w bush is looking good and that's what's amazing to me that's the same reagan's   and they took him to task for failing to grasp the way in which popular could sense can be mobilized by incorporating popular discontent discontent patriarchy respectability much like reagan themes that emerged in the context of what hall calls a crisis of national identity and culture precipitated by the unresolved trauma of the end of empire in other words to make britain great again really meant to restore the old order of anglo saxon ism racialized patriotism and had all patriarchal authority and that's still with us is this tension in england right now that still their home was riding against a group of labor party marxists who really were unable to see how the working class had actually been rican post in the twentieth century didn't look the same way as imagine that it and in fact it was not unified it was couldn't be unified so easy because it wasn't it was divide it was divided by race was divided by gender it was fractured so a lot of the marxist not acknowledge this but they see the divides of identity of race and gender for example in sexuality as a false consciousness is like no they're not you know this is that if we don't actually see the historical to deck tree in the formation of identity it makes it impossible to see class rule  as like a single class not as a single class rather but as an historic block let me just say that again so we easing in that we make them stick of thinking of class war as one class ruling industrial capital and elements of the working class the worst elements the workers could participate in class rule could actually support the ruling class and have a stake in it and he's saying that you know there's reasons for some that stake has to do with things that are professors here were like in elementary school at a time when i was fighting those battles for todd guillen the people like that but that's you know way back in the past i could say that you know some of the people i argued with and debated with in the early in the sort of early ninet you see similar attacks and in some ways this attack from the left and how identity politics undermined class politics or liberal variant which is that you know identity politics undermine a unified american identity based on an lightman principles of individuals and liberty and secularism and lately we've seen a resurrection of this we've seen the resurrection of richard rohr book achieved in our country they confuse the two they think that when you actually have a categorical opposition to these forms of oppression that is equal to identity politics and they presume that the white working class operated purely out of a kind of race and gender neutral economic interests but all the other people are driven by their race and gender in their sexuality so most pundits of course from peter's error they insist that trump appealed not you know so you would think would win over all black and brown voters because they are the lowest rungs of the working class and they suffer disproportionately from some of the policies that he claimed claimed to stand up the liberal critics of identity politics the real culprits are people of color the queer people the feminists liberal democrats who eliminated the white working class driving them into the arms  donald trump now they're liberal democrats who in there are all kinds of people just because they're bankrupt you know but that's different it's a different story and i said it the democratic process bankrupt and has been for some time i don't them so they're going to be printed out but again instead you know these the people get who are seen as a kind of culprits so the argument is argument that you know identity associated with identity liberalism as mark millar would have us believe have actually not been obsessed with narrow group identities but with forms of oppression they've been concerned about exclusion they've been fighting mar tion and none of these movements today have been exclusionary black lives matter is not exclusionary or organization you know they're wide open efforts to interrogate sources of persistent inequality the barriers to equal opportunity in the structures and policies that do harm to some groups at the expense of others i only of course is that the most exclusive sufficient so the purpose of racism is to control the behavior of white people not black people for blacks guns and tanks are sufficient in other words racism not anti racists constitutes the identity politics of hope still trumps