During Professor Isaac’s discussion of the short story “The Miracle Worker” by Mia Alvar, he said that “Race management precedes industrial management.” I thought that this phrase was highly relevant to our class when we talked about whether it was possible for capitalism to exist without racism. After reading Black Marxism, the general consensus was that the founding of capitalism was based upon the racial hierarchy that existed during feudalism. Later, Isaac brought up the capitalist idea of the disposability of laborers that was illustrated by the suicide of a Filipino domestic worker. At the funeral, there were no family members or loved ones present, only strangers. The total lack of sympathy for the plight of the domestic worker (who is almost invariably a woman of color) demonstrates how impersonal capitalism is. These women are treated as totally expendable; they are exploited for their labor and time and then simply discarded.
*Spoilers for Black Panther*
In the movie Black Panther, T’Challa and Killmonger represent two views of how change should be enacted in an unequal society. Killmonger’s views closely parallel those of the Black Power movement and its leaders like Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael. He grew up in an impoverished, racially divided neighborhood and suffered hardships that are still realities in modern day America. Killmonger’s response is to advocate the violent overthrow of white society and to establish a new racial hierarchy with blacks on top. T’Challa opposes this as simply repeating the past without learning from mistakes. His attitude is more conventionally socially liberal, and at the end of the movie he establishes a Wakandan outreach center to promote education and provide opportunities to the less privileged. Although there is a stark difference in the philosophies of the two leaders, Killmonger is not portrayed as a stereotypical one dimensional villain. It is made clear that his attitude was shaped by the social conditions in which he grew up.
