social ethics questions

6/2/22, 5:58 AM Launchpad: Racial Inequality: UCOR 2910 02 22SQ Ethical Reasoning in Business

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Launchpad: Racial Inequality Review of History and Contextualization for the Readings

As we’ve emphasized all quarter, in doing ethical analysis that gets to the roots of social and economic injustices, we need to look at how, what, and why a society’s social surplus of goods and time are being produced and distributed. This is because the economy and the wealth generated therein is always a social product required for sustaining, reproducing, and advancing society. Thus, how this common wealth is socially produced together and shared together, and the social form the wealth takes, determines whether a society is healthily able to build diverse relations of community for its own sake or whether a society’s social relations are divisively fragmented and exploited for private gain. Thus, a robust ethics requires asking the important question of whether we are producing and distributing resources and goods according to the real human needs of empowerment for community building and mutual flourishing, or whether our social capabilities are commodified and used up for generating privatized wealth for the private gain of a few. And asking these questions is especially important in order to historically understand the rise and continuation of racism and racial inequality in our capitalist society.

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In order to understand racial inequality, we first need to challenge some hidden assumptions, a challenge which we have already seen within some of our prior readings so far. The dominant narrative about racial inequality has often been controlled by the doctrine that the rules of the market are non-discriminatory, with any discrimination resulting instead from irrational group/individual beliefs and attitudes being imposed on it from outside. (But where then did such irrational beliefs come from?) The assumption here is that the capitalist economy is removed from such irrationalities because it is simply an essentially colorblind, objectively rational, and morally neutral system of fair exchange. (But where then did such a purely innocent market come from, because such cannot be found in history -- was there a fair exchange with indigenous people for their land? was there a fair exchange for slave bodies from Africa? is there a fair exchange between local communities and the corporations that extract their resources and labor?) In other words, these ahistorical assumptions of an innocent economy separates the origins of racism and racial inequality from the economy, and instead treats racism as a separate issue of politics, culture, and psychology infecting an essentially objective and fair economic system.

Yet in doing a little bit of historical study, as we’ve already begun in this course, one finds that the evidence stands against this assumption that capitalism is somehow a neutrally moral and rational system of fair exchange. From the beginning we’ve seen that capitalism started as the private expropriation of capital in order to monopolize land, resources, and the social means of production, no longer for producing social use values according to actual needs, but rather to produce commodities for exchange values according to the new desire to increase private profit as an end in itself. Moreover, we’ve explored how this new accumulation of capital and profit as an end in itself began through capital owners seeking out cheaper resources and labor through the colonization of other people’s lands around the globe and through the commodification of people’s bodies as in the Transatlantic slave trade (forms of new colonization and enslavement unprecedented in recorded history). And it is through this violent accumulation of capital, consolidating humans, lands, resources, and wealth into the private hands of a few, that capitalists were able to also gain undue leverage over the mass of “free” wage laborers so that one can say there has hardly ever been a fair exchange of labor for a wage when so many are dispossessed of everything except their own labor to sell.

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The major point here is that this increased drive of colonization and enslavement was not simply a relic of the past but rather a new imperative of the capitalist economy itself, since capitalism’s unique logic requires that profit is not only an end in itself, but is made exclusively by driving down the cost of labor and land by any means possible while maximizing their output for the owner/shareholders with as little reinvestment in the other’s maintenance as possible—it is the logic of submitting everyone and everything to commodification for the gain of a few. Thus while the institution of chattel slavery is technically gone, this commodifying logic of privatizing both the means of production and the form of surplus at the expense of the land and laborer is still with us today—it’s just that its exploitation takes other forms now like using any leverage to drive down wages, lobbying government to limit union power, denying benefits, using predatory lending, exploiting poor working conditions in poor countries, pursuing sweatshops, privatizing public goods, privatizing natural resources and common lands while displacing entire people groups, etc. (look at the treatment of indigenous people, and most recently the Dakota Access Pipeline) – and of course benefitting from the perpetuation of the racial devaluation of certain people groups (even if no longer directly endorsing racism itself) as a means of keeping their economic worth down as now a cheap supply of disposable wage labor.

As Julia Ott’s and Matthew Desmond’s articles highlighted from previous weeks, while anti-black racial ideology only explicitly emerged later in the slave trade in order to justify the ongoing enslavement of Africans within a supposedly “free” society, this racism continued and actually expanded well after slavery was abolished because it was still needed to justify the devaluation of black bodies as the economy sought to recoup its loss of a cheap labor source after the Civil War. Confining the now “free” black workers to underdeveloped areas (refusing them their promised 40 acres and a mule) and treating them as lesser humans helped decrease short term social costs for capital while creating a standing reserve of desperate low-wage workers more easily exploitable, which also gave capital simultaneous leverage on the labor market over the higher wage demands of white workers. As W.E.B. DuBois has emphasized the very construction of “white privilege” was used as a tool by capital owners to divide white workers against black workers (much like the original anti-black laws of the colonists as a means to divide black and white workers against each other after the Bacon Rebellion in the 17th century), divisively scapegoating each other and deflecting

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from capital, in order to diminish the growing power of organized labor (see DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America, and also Theodore Allen, The Invention of the White Race. And especially see the documentary 13 which spells out how the increasingly disproportionate criminalization and incarceration of black men has served to recoup a cheap workforce through prison labor to this day - link included below). Thus, racial inequality, especially in the USA between white and black workers, remains with us because, among other things, it still seems to serve a functional purpose of driving down the overall cost of labor by fragmenting the working class within a competitively divisive economy predicated on putting capital over workers, profit over people. That is, one does not need to attribute an ongoing conspiracy of white supremacy to capitalism nowadays to see how its market logic nevertheless continues to stoke racial inequality even within our Civil Rights era. Indeed, immediately after gains were won in the Civil Rights movement whereby black workers could demand more pay, there was an economic and political push in the 1970s and 80s to diminish welfare and public goods, and to unfetter the supposedly “free” market through its increasing deregulation, privatization, de-unionization, debt-financialization, and deindustrialization of American cities in pursuit of cheaper labor elsewhere, thus exacerbating once again the racial inequality gap by abandoning the black worker (in other words, the dehumanizing logic behind "capital flight" can exacerbate racial inequality without specifically intending racism).

In light of the historical record we must then ask: If we have an economy that submits everybody and everything to commodification, arbitrarily expropriating lands, resources, and labor for a few, putting profit over people, adhering to a logic that is the reverse of what progressive forms of virtue ethics called for in terms of the common good, does it make any sense then to call this type of economic system “morally neutral”, innocent, or non-discriminatory? If we have an economy that perpetuates a divisive “survival of the fittest” in pursuit of profit by any means, that is already tilted in favor of those who undemocratically control the common wealth, can we really still believe in a rational, non-discriminating market whose “invisible hand” (like a providential god) will somehow self-correct and even things out?

It needs to be emphasized once more, that in light of this analysis, one does not need to claim that the capitalist economy is inherently racist or that individual capitalists are all white supremacists; there are of course many well-intentioned people within the system; rather in order to better

th

6/2/22, 5:58 AM Launchpad: Racial Inequality: UCOR 2910 02 22SQ Ethical Reasoning in Business

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understand why racial inequality continues, we need to understand how the history and structure of capitalism as a general system allowed for racism to emerge as a way of justifying the devaluation of certain lives, and that while we've eliminated racist laws in order to promote equal rights, this history of socio-economic devaluation and deprivation has still left various people- groups behind in ways that require continued attention; AND that the capitalist economy, in still putting profit over people, is too narrowly calibrated to know how to meet a diversity of real needs for equitable empowerment, and too impersonal to care about addressing and rectifying the consequences of its own past This more comprehensive picture demands that we avoid two generalized assumptions that often perpetuate racial divisions rather than heal them:

It demands that we avoid simplistically claiming that any ongoing disparities between black and white communities in our post-segregation/equal rights era must be because of black people themselves, as if they could be stereotyped as irresponsible, or lazy, etc. Since we now understand some of the enduring complexities involved in the historically and structurally determined ruts of inequality for marginalized groups there can then be no stereotyped appeals or victim-blaming based on anecdotal evidence. It also demands that we avoid sweeping claims that every socio-economic institution is still overtly racist or a product of white supremacy, as if the fact of continuing racial disparities within the current capitalist economy must therefore be the direct intentional result of an ongoing white supremacist conspiracy. Such is also too simplistic because we now can see that the material effects of racism can endure long after the abolition of racist laws and the decline in overtly racist actors, since the legacy of racial inequality is often reinforced, perpetuated, and exacerbated (whether intentionally or unintentionally, directly or indirectly) by a "colorblind" economy that still incentivizes the exploitation of any disadvantages by whatever means possible. Thus while the capitalist economy might not be as inherently or overtly racist like its past iterations, it is nevertheless still structured around a narrow profit motive that discourages reinvesting in communities deemed not as profitable, thus perpetuating cycles of poverty for certain areas that may already be unevenly absorbing the historical consequences of racism.

6/2/22, 5:58 AM Launchpad: Racial Inequality: UCOR 2910 02 22SQ Ethical Reasoning in Business

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If this structural analysis allows us to uphold a more nuanced analysis of accountability in which no single blame can be unilaterally placed on either "black people" or "white people" then it also disallows treating black people as simply passive victims of the system. As we will see, much of our knowledge of unjust structures, and their initial challenges and changes, have come about from black empowerment and self- organization, such as in freedom struggles and co-op movements where black people took up the role of active agents for social change.

If this specific market matrix seems fatalistic as such, there is nevertheless hope as we’ve already seen in forms of unionization and the cooperative movement. We must realize that the historical record also shows that the logic of the capitalist market can be effectively challenged when done so by real people uniting together from below for the real human need of mutual flourishing: it is worth reflecting on the historical fact that any rights to vote were only won by the struggles of the disenfranchised banding together and not simply given to them by the niceness of property owners, or the fact that any change in working conditions, in higher pay, in holidays, benefits, etc. have most often been won by workers uniting together and putting pressure on capital owners, or the fact that any freedom from slavery and rights to the common good have been won only when the oppressed come together and struggle against the oppressors. Change of our system and its racist legacy is possible, and has already taken place in certain ways, but it will take all of us organizing together in new democratic ways according to more humane end goals. This week we will read about three ways of dealing with racial inequality, especially regarding income inequality, through various means of putting pressure on the market. How then do we work toward the equal empowerment of black communities and black workers according to their own self-determination and in a way that does not simply perpetuate racial divisions? Below are three strategies, among others, that we will briefly study and reflect on as we try to analyze, evaluate, and address these complex problems:

Strategies from above: direct government intervention into the marketplace, regulating it through “affirmative action” policies rather than simply letting the market “do its thing”. Shaw discusses such action as targeted hiring policies or

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“minority set-asides” (remember powell’s notion of “targeted universalism"). These are needed to open up economic opportunities for minorities to exercise their capabilities, but they need to be wisely crafted along with other public programs, and especially public sector employment, as well as community organizing in order to make it more difficult for markets to deny or neglect them. Also, affirmative action policies often focus solely on opening entrepreneurial and educational opportunities for those already at the top, helping upper middle class black persons while neglecting the majority of the black working class. It can therefore over-emphasize a generic racial classification rather than focus more specifically on economically disadvantaged groups and class positions in order to better meet real needs. Therefore, another government intervention that could especially help combat racial inequality for more black people in general would be to raise the minimum wage to a living wage along with increased public sector jobs. See this timely NYT article that argues for a wage raise: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/25/opinion/minimum-wage-race- protests.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/25/opinion/minimum-wage-race-protests.html? action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage)

Strategies from below: black or intentionally interracial community organizing, and especially cooperatives in which black communities build their own democratic forms of organizing economic activity, which seeks to take back common lands and resources and use their labor for their own social use values. Whether this is as small as a community garden (remember Ron Finley, or even Seattle's own P- patches), a grocery store, or as large as a factory chain or a financial institution (remember the examples from the articles from last week, especially Mondragon fighting discriminatory fascism), these forms of community organizing help provide economic self-determination in a way that challenges the market’s logic of profit over people by simultaneously producing both needed external goods and the internal goods of community development—accumulating real equity as that true wealth of developing our socially creative capabilities together. Dr. Jessica Nembhard’s piece briefly discusses the importance of cooperatives for tackling racial injustice. For a current example of co-op organizing in Jackson, MS, that models itself on Mondragon see https://www.shareable.net/cooperation-

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jacksons-kali-akuno-were-trying-to-build-vehicles-of-social-transformation/ (https://www.shareable.net/cooperation-jacksons-kali-akuno-were-trying-to-build- vehicles-of-social-transformation/)

Strategies from within the economy: interracial unionization of workers throughout history, when done well in democratically organizing together, has proven effective in reducing income and employment gaps between black and white workers, thus combatting the racial divides that capital seeks to impose and maintain within the labor market. Like cooperatives, the key here is in organizing according to the needs for both external goods and internal goods like a community of solidarity. The history of interracial unionization and its relevance for today is explored in the article by Weyher and Zeitlin.

Some Key questions to ask are whether any of these strategies are more effective than others, and how a wisely crafted and coordinated combination of several or all might help move toward a more just organization of the economy. And of course, How might we build on these strategies in a way that further exercises and empowers virtues of solidarity, compassion, cooperation, and creativity among other qualities?

Here are some slides with data about race and class inequality, as well as quotes by Martin Luther King addressing such:

Data Slides on Racial Inequality (1).pdf (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68230525?wrap=1) (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68230525/download?download_frd=1)

Here is a link to the documentary 13 which I mentioned above. It is well worth the time for better understanding racial inequality in the USA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krfcq5pF8u8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krfcq5pF8u8)

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krfcq5pF8u8)

th

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