ABSTRACT
Race and class are different structures of power, but they are mutually determined. This chapter traces the ways in which the imposition of racial slavery in the United States in the late 17th and 18th centuries served as an instrument of social control exercised by economic elites through the technique of ‘divide and conquer’ to subordinate European-American labor as well as African Americans, to the material detriment of both parts of the working class. The chapter demonstrates the resiliency of white supremacy through the period of post-Civil War Reconstruction and its betrayal and the rise and betrayal of modern civil rights movement in the New Jim Crow. The chapter concludes with an examination of the role of white supremacy in the election of Donald Trump in 2016. It proposes strategies that might be deployed to build a united working-class movement that also challenges the continuing power of white supremacy.
