Thread by @queersocialism

first, if we are to take cedric robinson’s work serious: there were examples of racial regimes prior to the slave trade as evident by europe’s antagonistic relationship with many, at the time seemingly “racialized” groups, who would later “become” white (irish/jews/etc).

https://twitter.com/bantspandit/status/1380947143020658694

even beyond that: race was created in europe & the contemporary racial order cannot merely be belittled to being an invented tool of the ruling class to prevent “solidarity.” race was politically mobilized to justify the dehumanization/trafficking/enslavement of black africans.

how can “race” be belittled to being a “tool to divide the working class”—when it is the foundation upon which capitalism was originally formed?

black africans were not stolen and brutally trafficked across the seas to europe/the americas, as even as much as “humans,”—in how europeans defines the term—and damn sure not workers—but as slaves, chattel, productive property.

^that, in and of itself, requires a specific reassessment—beyond traditional reductionist modalities about “race dividing the working class” when we consider how we have historically experience capital’s violence *vastly* differently.

we are all oppressed by capital: true. yet, some of us were/are not only oppressed by capital, but came here as capital to be brought, traded, etc. that is inherently a racialized position, that cannot be dismissed w/n these antagonisms—despite our (lumpen)proletarianization.

“race is a tool to divide the working class,” is often used to infantilize the white working class, as passive/unintentional upholders of white domination (lol, false). & claiming racialized people are being “divisive” by prioritizing rac[e/ism], especially by the white “left.”