When discussing the labor movement in the united states, (white) people tend to refer to slavery primarily in analogy – such and such conditions constitute ‘wage slavery.’ Some even consider discussions of the continuing and historical relevance of slavery to be off topic in a discourse about workers’ rights, despite the fact that slavery is the site of struggle against capitalism where antagonism is sharpest, and despite there being more enslaved people today than in the antebellum south. The unionization efforts at starbucks and other chain service jobs are a favorite topic of discourse in online spaces like this one, but the slavery in their supply chain is rarely discussed in the same breath.
One factor is that incarcerated peoples’ access to these discussions is even more restricted than they were historically. But the more likely culprit is that slavery was and is so racialized that it makes the white dominated labor movement squeamish to talk about it. It’s impolite to bring it up at the smorgasbord of mostly white labor victories. And most importantly, it makes the white worker feel like they aren’t the revolutionary subject. Like we might actually be, structurally, oppressors of enslaved Black people and the non-white proletariat in general. Which we are.
Labor is about class, and class is racialized and gendered. Which is to say that capitalism is racialized and gendered. This rains on the parade of the fantasy of a unified working class, because most white workers are dreaming of a situation similar to the deeply racist and well-fed scandinavian countries rather than, say, revolutionary Haiti, where the slaveowners actually got what they had coming.
None of the machinery of capitalism exists without slavery, and none of it goes away while slavery is still around. So will ending slavery become the focus of the mainstream labor movement? I doubt it.
as a white woman im reluctant to start this conversation but it’s important i think to see how people react
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