White Supremacy and Racial Capitalism in America

One of the themes of the first half of the semester has been racial capitalism. A simple definition of racial capitalism is that it is how capitalism (an economic and political system focused on generating profit) relies on racism and white supremacy.

For some more elaboration on the term racial capitalism, you can:

• watch this brief video in which Angela Davis explains it on Democracy Now (Links to an external site.)
• (Links to an external site.)read this explanation (particularly the “ (Links to an external site.)So what did Robinson mean by “racial capitalism”?” paragraph) about how the term originated. (Links to an external site.)
  • “Capitalism and racism, in other words, did not break from the old order but rather evolved from it to produce a modern world system of ‘racial capitalism’ dependent on slavery, violence, imperialism, and genocide.”

Write a 2-page (double-spaced, Times New Roman font, 1″ margins) paper about how racial capitalism is an important part of the history of the African Diaspora. Your paper should discuss and cite three readings or lectures from class so far. You should spend at least a paragraph on each of your three examples (readings or lectures) from class. Explain the overall argument or theme of the example. What content does that reading or lecture explore? Why is this an example of racial capitalism? In other words, how does it demonstrate that racist violence, policies, or practices worked to generate wealth for others?

Please be sure to proofread your paper to ensure it is free of grammatical errors and clearly written. Feel free to take advantage of Morgan State’s Writing Center (Links to an external site.).

Your paper should be entirely in your own words. That means no quotations. If you would like to cite particular texts from class, you may explain them in your own words. Any paper with a Turnitin Score above 20% will automatically earn a 0. You may see how to check your paper’s Turnitin score here (Links to an external site.).

Please submit your paper in one of these file formats: .doc, .docx, or .pdf.