No one is denying that racism exists

I can’t remember the first time I pointed out the working of our class system in racial exploitation and was told I was denying the reality of racism. But I remember the first time I read that someone else had experienced this. In 2009, Adolph Reed wrote:

Yes, racism exists, as a conceptual condensation of practices and ideas that reproduce, or seek to reproduce, hierarchy along lines defined by race. Apostles of antiracism frequently can’t hear this sort of statement, because in their exceedingly simplistic version of the nexus of race and injustice there can be only the Manichean dichotomy of those who admit racism’s existence and those who deny it.

Given antiracists’ name, it should be no surprise that they reduce every problem to racism. But I’m struck by the way they are as unaware of capitalism as fish are of the sea. Antiracists talk about structural racism and fail to see that its structure is the capitalist class system. They say everyone who grows up in a racist society is racist and never consider that if the influence of society is so powerful, there would be no rebels. We live in a capitalist society. Do they think there are no socialists and no conservative religious people who reject capitalism?

I agree with Adolph Reed: racism exists.

I also agree with Malcolm X that “You can’t have capitalism without racism.” In theory, you can have capitalism without racism, but in reality, the US’s limited class mobility means that its class hierarchy will always be racially disproportionate. The only way to change that would be to share the wealth, and capitalists will never do that.

P.S. I just left this comment for someone and realize I could leave it for many identitarians:

No one is denying that black people were disproportionately poor. We’re only trying to show that racism has always been intimately connected to capitalism, but race reductionists don’t want to talk about that. When black and white people of the same class are treated the same, as they were under redlining, the problem is not racism. That does not mean racism is not a problem.

Also, I once went googling to try to see if anyone actually thought racism was over. I only found one person, an old white conservative, who said it on the night Obama was elected. He probably changed his mind the next day when the elation wore off.

P.S. #2: This is another reply I could leave for many:

I am always happy to talk about racism with people who are willing to talk about capitalism’s role in racism. In my youth, I was beaten bloody by racists for opposing racism. I know that racism will be a problem until the last racist dies.

Related:

Mythical Class Reductionists vs. Actual Race Reductionists

Why Black Women are now Privileged, but Black Men are still Penalized