First, it's important to understand that capitalism could not have been established in the US without racism. Indeed, racism as we know it today didn't really exist in the world before capitalism. The concept of different "races" is a lie. Race is a political concept, not a scientific one, and racism was consciously developed by the capitalists as a political weapon for dividing the working class on the basis of skin color. Racism has functioned as a way to tie a section of workers to a country's ruling class. In the US, racism has been used to make the white poor believe they had the same interests as the ruling class. It has served to keep them unclear as to who their real enemy is and keep them allied with the ruling class.
This strategy has worked because the ruling class was able to back it up by granting economic and petty social privileges to white workers. Poverty was painted as a problem of Blacks. In this way even many of the poorest whites, who had little reason to support the business class, could be tied to the system.
What all of this means is that it is not possible to end racism without ending the capitalist system that produced it and relies on it.
But politics has its roots in economics, and fundamental economic changes beget profound political changes and opportunities. The computer and the robot have given the corporations a way to produce with less and less labor, and capitalists won't provide jobs or privileges for labor they don't need, no matter what color the worker. The technological change that is sweeping the world is making millions permanently unemployed and underemployed. It is creating a new class of dispossessed that includes people of every color. For the first time in American history, there is the possibility of uniting the poor around their common interests.
None of the poor have a place or stake in capitalist society today. This class is growing as millions of white workers who once had good-paying jobs fall into it. This class is a potential threat to the system because the poor are forced to fight for a new society to survive.
Today, America's rulers are responding to this threat by trying to paint the poor as the enemy -- they are making war on the poor of every color: Black, immigrant and white. Recent examples include the legal lynchings in Jena, the terroristic immigration raids, and the concentration camp conditions of "FEMA-villes" on the Katrina-ravaged Gulf coast.
We are all in grave danger if the poor remain isolated. We are all threatened with the rise of fascism as our rulers put an end to democracy to protect themselves from the struggle of the mass of poor. We can also see the threat of world war looming. Thus the fight against racism today is not simply a struggle for equality, as important as that is. It is part and parcel of the fight for peace, for democracy and for an end to the exploitation of all human beings. It is part of the fight for the survival of humanity.
