Every problem that confronts the US today can be traced back to racist ideology. Businesses cannot survive on just the small percentage of the very wealthy buying goods. Mass incarceration, poverty, healthcare disparities all of these issues affect your bottom lineand profits.

The following is taken from the keynote address delivered by Dolita Cathcart,Associate Professor of History atWheaton CollegeinMassachusetts, at our JustBrands virtual event on August 18, 2020.

Institutional racism permeates every aspect of our culture. The United Stateswas founded on political principles of freedom and equality, but not for all not for women, Native Americans, enslaved or free Africans and AfricanAmericans, or for anyone one else who was not an Anglo Saxon. Politics andeconomics shaped the US from the very beginning, and they remain intertwinedtoday. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution rest on theunderstanding that the only free Americans were wealthy, white males. Oureconomy is based on a slave economy and continues to be based on racialcapitalism a capitalism that was shaped by slavery and after emancipation,continued to be influenced by the tenets of slavery regardless of skin color.The following is a brief history of institutional racism, the systemicdiscrimination of marginalized groups, and how white Americans suffer collateraldamage from these principles of discrimination.

We are facing three major crises today: ongoing racism anddiscrimination,a pandemic, and aneconomic apocalypse. Racism and its intersectional -isms sexism, heterosexism,anti-Semitism, and classism affect all of these crises. In other words, whitemale Americans suffer collateral damage from past and current racist policies inAmerica. But before we get to that, let us first dive into a brief history ofracism in the United States.

The first Africans sold into slavery in the British colonies happened inVirginia in 1619. Slavery in those early days resembled indenturedservitude. Enslaved Africans were not necessarily enslaved for life, werereferred to as servants, intermarried with white indentured servants and NativeAmericans, and frequently rebelled together against slave-owning whites in theSouth. The result of these rebellions was a stiffening of what were called BlackCodes, the ending of white indentured servitude, and the killing or removal ofNative Americans. By the mid 1700s, slavery as we know it today was in place.Black Codes were used to separate white workers from blacks and Native Americansto prevent a permanent coalition of the poor from forming. White Southernpoliticians even changed the long tradition of having a child follow thefathers condition to following the mothers condition, because the former meantthat when a white man raped a black woman, their child would be free. This madeit possible for slave-owning whites to naturally increase their enslavedpopulation through rape, because their brown children would now be chattel theslaves of their white fathers.

During slavery, the Slave Patrol were the police. They arrested and kidnappedAfrican Americans throughout the nation and re-enslaved them in the South. Theuse of police forces to control Black and brown people begins during slavery andcontinues to this day. The police do not make the laws or policies, but theycarry out the preferences of the white political elite who make the laws.

The enslavement of Africans and African Americans was a boon to those wealthyenough to own people, and a psychological boost to those too poor to buy aperson. The growing economic inequities among different economic classes ofwhites required giving something to poor whites, and that something waswhiteness. Servant, serf or peasant none of that mattered in this newnation; because though these Americans might be poor, their white skin colorimmediately elevated them above those of a darker hue. In other words, at leastin the US, poor whites would not be at the bottom of the political, social andeconomic ladder. This psychological boost was important because poor whites didnot get much more. Prior to slavery being abolished in the Northern states, forexample, only those white males who owned significant property could vote. Inorder to keep the majority of white America in line after slavery was abolishedin the North, the franchise was opened to poor white males; and the idea ofwhiteness, of white superiority, was spread among those who had little else. Andit was from this group that our nascent police forces would be formed. They maynot have had much, but they could take out their frustrations on the bodies ofBlack people.

By the early to mid 1800s, some middle class white women began to agitate forthe end of slavery. Free blacks in the North and the South had been agitatingfor the end of slavery for at least a century by then, but the interesting thingabout these white women activists was that as they fought to end slavery, theyrealized they were not free like their brothers they were essentially owned bytheir fathers and husbands. This moment of realization created the firstintersection between race or skin color and gender, but not class. So, poorpeople of all skin colors remained marginalized.

The end of the Civil War, unfortunately, tore apart the coalition of whiteand Black abolitionists because women were not granted the franchise like blackmen. So, 19th-century feminists turned to Southern white women, thus cuttingtheir ties with black women and dissolving their united front.

Three Amendments were ratified after the Civil War the 13th, the 14th andthe 15th Amendments. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery, except inprisons. Prisoners remain legal slaves under the Constitution. The14thAmendmentaddresses citizenship rights and equal protection of thelaws. And the15th Amendment granted black men the franchise. Fifty yearslater, women won the franchise with the ratification of the 19th Amendment.

Prior to the ratification of the 13th Amendment, the reconstruction of the Southwas left to former slave holders who were looking for ways to regain theirproperty and power. So, for the first two years after slavery, the Southreinstated a type of slavery an apprenticeship where the apprentice could bean apprentice for life. To make matters worse, the 13th Amendment also gavethese former slave owners a way to regain their property, through the prisonsystem. As a result, new Black Codes were passed that essentially made itillegal to be Black. African Americans who did not yet have jobs, homes, andin some cases, even clothing (because many former slave owners took back theclothing slaves wore) could be arrested and forced into the convict leasesystem, aspects of which still exists today. Conditions were worse than slavery.They could be killed with impunity, or starved and beaten or just disappeared.The prison industrial complex became the new plantation, and poor whites werealso abused in this system. If more workers were needed, then more black maleswere arrested. In 1898, for example, 78 percent of Alabamas state revenue wasderived from convict leasing. So, there was little impetus to focus on othermethods of accumulating state funds.

Throughout the rest of the 19th century, former slave holders and their sonscontrolled the south politically, socially and economically; and continued tocontrol national politics in Washington, as well. Black Codes became Jim Crowlaws thatsegregated the South and constrained voting by Blacks and poor whites. Poorwhites still had white skin privilege, but that privilege did not add much moneyto their pockets. At every moment of the day, African Americans were treatedlike second-class citizens, and that was on good days! African Americans foughtthis discrimination through the courts and frequently won, but the laws were notenforced. Organized Blacks protested and sued throughout the 1920s through the1950s; and this action protesting lynching, segregation and entrencheddiscrimination would galvanize action leading to the civil rights movement ofthe 1960s. Change, though, was slow and incremental more dramatic perhaps inthe South but it made little to no difference in the lives of Black Americanseverywhere else in the nation. So, the cities erupted, white support began towane, protests against the Viet Nam war were ramped up; and President RichardNixon promised Law and Order, and used his Southern strategy of stoking racismto appeal to a new market of voters to the Republican party, working-class whitemales or lunch-pail Republicans, whose racial resentment became a tool of theRepublican party.

White men had to compete with women and men of color for jobsfor the first time in American history because of programs created to mitigatesexism and racism. Their identity was further threatened as more women began tojoin the womens liberation movement, and as more people of color were able toattend college and enter the job market. What good is masculinity and white skinif it no longer afforded an advantage over women and people of color?Republicans continue to use this Southern strategy to link racists andmisogynists to the party to this day. The Republican party has become the partyof the rich and of poor whites, white nationalists, the Klan and their friends,religious Christian extremists, and gun rights advocates. These are notnecessarily bad people, but they are often people whose focus on their singularissue of white male straight Christian supremacy prevents them from recognizingthat they are pawns in a rich mans game of divide and conquer.

Nixons War on Drugs became part of an ongoing war on African American libertyand freedom, and fed the mass incarceration of Black America and privatizedprisons for profit. In an interview with Dan Baum for Harpers Magazine in1994, John Ehrlichman Nixons White House Counsel, Chief Domestic Advisorand creator of the Watergate Plumbers with H.R. Haldeman stated:

"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had twoenemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? Weknew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but bygetting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks withheroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, andvilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lyingabout the drugs? Of course, we did.

The mass incarceration of African Americans began in earnest under PresidentRonald Reagan. In 1980, .2 percent of the population, about 500,000 people,were incarcerated; by 2008, .8 percent of the population, 2.3 million people,were in prison. Reagan, like Nixon, also used the Southern strategy to linkdrugs and poverty to black Americans. According to the FBI, 75 percent ofall drug users are white. According to the US Census Bureau, of the 46.2million people living in poverty in 2017 (the latest figures available), 31.7million are white and white children make up the largest percentage of Americaspoor.

Imagine the uproar if white suburban kids were treated like Black urban kids forthe same crimes. Drug addiction would have been treated differently decades ago.Money would have gone to education, mental health care, job training, or housinginstead of over-policing Black and brown communities. As a result, the policebecome untrained de facto social workers, which is not fair to them or tocivilians in trouble. They receive negligible training on issues of race andde-escalation techniques, leaving residents of color to deal with theunconscious and conscious biases of many of these officers. But it gets worse.According to a 2006 FBIreport,white supremacists have been infiltrating police departments across the country.These are the issues that the Defund the Police movement is trying to address.

Though Africans Americans and other marginalized folks are the target ofover-policing, poverty-inducing government policies, and poor healthcaredelivery; white America suffers collateral damage from these policies, a slownational apocalypse that is the result of blowback from racial discriminationand industrial automation.

In the 1990s, a new and cheaper form of heroin was introduced to whites in theSouthern and Western US. The dealers did not sell to Blacks because they weretaught to fear them. So, this was a case where being Black and discriminatedagainst ended up being a net positive for Black America. At the same time,Purdue Pharma introduced and pushed OxyContin falsely claiming it wasnot habit forming. OxyContin mostly affected middle class and wealthier whiteAmerica because of the disparities in healthcare delivery in the US. Again,racial discrimination favored Blacks. Medical students are still being taughtthat Black people have tougher and thicker skins and a higher tolerance forpain, among other myths. The result of these biases and stereotypes is thatwhite Americans are three times more likely to be treated for pain with anopioid than Black Americans. Again, this proved to be another net positive forBlack Americans regarding getting hooked on opioids, though they are still threetimes less likely to be treated for their actual pain. More recently, whiteshooked on OxyContin have turned to heroin because it is cheaper, and that heroinis cut with fentanyl and carfentanyl. The result, according to the CDC, isthat since 1999, 750,000 Americans have died from overdosing on drugs;two-thirds of those deaths were from heroin, and the majority are male andwhite. But now the nation is beginning to recognize that addiction is a medicaldisorder, and not a race-based moral failing. Meanwhile, that slow apocalypse isspeeding up.

We are witnessing a repeat of this racial affect with the coronavirus; that moreessential workers are dying who happen to be Black and brown Americans harkensback to how HIV/AIDS was tied solely to gay men in the 1980s and thus ignored bythe Reagan administration until Reagans Hollywood friend and actor, RockHudson, died of AIDS. Conservative policies favor the wealthy, with a littleleft over to fight the culture wars to keep aggrieved poor and middle classwhites happy. But racism and classism are directed at constraining theaspirations of Black Americans while maintaining generational poverty among poorwhites who are taught to blame Blacks for all of their troubles, thus preventingboth from recognizing they need one another to make real positive change.

The primary victims of racial capitalism are folks of color, but economicpolicies designed under an ethos of racial capitalism affect everyone asCOVID-19 is showing us.

All of this might seem to have nothing to do with race and the businesscommunity, but these are some of the issues that have sustained systemic racism which is why it is so hard to address. We have been taught these lessons forhundreds of years, without even knowing it was happening. It is a slowapocalypse. We are like the frogs in a pot of water slowly heating to theboiling point. The frogs dont register the temperature change until it is toolate and they die. Our slow apocalypse is happening now, and we are nearly tothe boiling point.

What do your Boardrooms look like? A representation of the nation today, or morelike a plantation? How many people of color and women do you have in executivepositions that do not include Human Resources? Are your workers paid equally, ordo white men make significantly more? What kind of mentorship programs do youhave that focus on those employees on the social/political/economic margins? Doyou have internship programs that focus on welcoming people of color? Do youhave any program that connects with marginalized communities in the communitieswhere you are based? Where do you recruit employees? Do you lobby Washington todo some good or just to get tax breaks?

The business community has muscle in this game. If we double the current povertynumbers from 46.2 million to 90-100 million, what happens to your companies?

Every problem that confronts this nation today can be traced back to racistideology. Every single one. The US is a consumer-based economy. Businessescannot survive on just the small percentage of the very wealthy buying goods.Mass incarceration, poverty, healthcare disparities all of these issues affectyour bottom line and profits.

Published Aug 26, 2020 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 1pm BST / 2pm CEST

Dolita Cathcart is an Associate Professor of History at Wheaton College. Professor Cathcart is a noted historian of African American history. She grew up in NYC, graduated from Harvard-Radcliffe Colleges, the University of Massachusetts Boston, and Boston College. She is one of the earlier mentors for the Posse Foundation based in NYC that encourages leadership and diversity in top colleges and universities throughout the country. She was featured in the documentary, Birth of a Movement, currently available on Amazon Prime.

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