Racial Capitalism: You’re Not Understanding a Basic Truth

Image Text: “Why have we created a version of human existence that requires people to prove they are worthy of care and importance? To earn rest and leisure?”

Today is about sitting with the question. Not that this question relates specifically to racism, but I can’t help but think about racism in the context of this question.

We understand that when we talk about how racism is systemic, we are actually talking about racial capitalism. So to grapple with questions of racism, you have to grapple with capitalism.

Everyone has been set up to have to prove their individual utility and some people have been subsidized to do it while others have, at the very same time, provide the labor, the measuring stick to say “Look, we aren’t down there”, and place from which to siphon resources, through under-investment and divestment of communities.

What people don’t seem to understand is that the same capitalism that has been designed to erase Indigenous people and consume Black folx is also here to consume them. Because you’re so invested in the narratives of individual merit and ignorant of how part of your ego and sense of self is rooted in being positioned above others, you’re not getting it.