Racism and the Economy
The root of racism in this country is our wish to rise above the sweat and bother of taking care of anything—or ourselves, of each other, or our country. Blacks were enslaved not because of their race, but because their labor promised to free us of work. They were economically valuable and militarily weak. They were made to be inferior to persuade us that it was OK to enslave them.
The terms hillbilly, hick, and redneck express the same idea of looking down on people who do physical labor.
There are many problems of race. Berry looks at 4 of them from this perspective.
- Displacement of the racial problem from the country to the city. At lease in the country, the blacks were competently poor. They could survive. When they moved to the city with no jobs and no skills, they became dependently poor.
- The cost of dispossession. In 1920, there were nearly a million black from owners with 15 million acres of land. In 1990 there were about 30k and 3 million acres. That is not just a black problem; it is also a white problem and is due to a powerful prejudice against small landowners. When people are dispossessed, they lose the ability to help themselves.
- The economic solutions to these problems are doubtful at best. The current system of manufacturing disposable goods (eventually garbage) and then paying people to haul it off perpetuates the existence of what Berry calls “nigger work.” “The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth.” When that happens we can only value things by selling them—setting a price on them.
- How can “integration" be achieved? And what would integration mean in communities that are consciously disintegrating? We prefer to not think about society disintegrating. Instead we focus on the multitude of symptoms. Berry talks about busing for racial reason and for consolidations as one instance of disintegration. Local schools are important for community.
Al the issues that he has discussed are “neither political of economic, but moral and spiritual. What is at issue is our character as a people."