A Marxist critique of Sean Walton’s defence of the Critical Race Theory concept of ‘White supremacy’ as explaining all forms of racism,and some comments on Critical Race Theory,Black Radical and socialist futures

The fluidity of ‘whiteness’

If one accepts the CRT proposition that ‘whiteness’ is fluid then it can presumably shift dramatically in any given historical time or geographical location. If this is the case, ‘White supremacy’ can be directed at such diverse groups as Jewish people; Eastern Europeans; asylum seekers and refugees; at Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities; at Muslims; and at Irish people – each constituency of which can have varying skin colours ranging from ‘White’ to Black and all hues in between. If we go along with this CRT premise, ‘whiteness’ can also be regained by these multifarious groups and ‘White supremacy’ no longer directed at them. If these qualifications apply, then, while I obviously totally support drawing on neo-Marxist theory to conceptualise forms of racism outside the Black/White binary (Walton’s justification 3), it is not clear why, given the arguments for fluidity, why neo-Marxism is needed. More fundamentally, the question needs to be posed, what is the point of using the term ‘White supremacy’ in the way that Critical Race Theorists use it? I fully understand why they quite rightly want to stress how extreme and all-pervasive racism is, how it is not aberrant, how it saturates society. I agree with Critical Race Theorists’ determination to demonstrate that institutions that claim, and appear to be, non-racist and equitable, such as education, actually reproduce racism (e.g. Chadderton and Edmonds 2015: 140). But why, it also needs asking, not replace ‘White supremacy’ with a less ambiguous term like, for example, ‘institutional racism’?

The Marxist concepts of institutional racism and racialisation

Institutional racism was sanctioned by the British state in the aftermath of the murder of Black teenager, Stephen Lawrence. The definition of ‘institutional racism’, officially acknowledged in the House of Commons by the then Home Secretary Jack Straw was as follows:

The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people. (Macpherson 1999, 6.37, para 11.3) ³

I would want to make an amendment to Miles’ definition. The common dictionary definition of ‘somatic’ is ‘pertaining to the body’, and, given the fact that people can be racialized on grounds of symbols (e.g. the hijab), I would also argue that this needs to be recognized in any discussion of social collectivities and the construction of racialisation.

Crucially, racialisation thus formulated connects racism to capitalist modes of production and makes links to patterns of migration that are themselves determined by political and economic dynamics. (Cole, 2016: 14; see Walton, 83–84 for an elaboration of my definition of racialisation)

Last but not least, I would also want to add intentional as well as unintentional or unwitting racism. Institutional racism can thus be reformulated as follows:

Collective acts and/or procedures in an institution or institutions (locally, nation-wide, continent-wide or globally) that intentionally or unintentionally have the effect of racializing certain populations or groups of people. This racialization process, that is not limited to skin colour and can be colour-coded, non-colour-coded or hybridist, cannot be adequately understood without reference to economic and political factors related to developments and changes, historically and contemporaneously, in national, continent-wide and global capitalism.

Using the Marxist concept of endemic systemic all-pervasive institutional racism and stressing that the racialisation of groups through history and geopolitically is not dependent on skin colour, is less ambiguous and more straightforward than reducing racism to ‘whiteness’ and stressing that who is perceived as ‘White’ can change. Racialisation, unlike ‘White supremacy’, makes this point articulately, and crucially also provides inherent links with capitalist economic systems.

The Black/White binary

I do not want to underestimate in any way how racism is perceived by and the extent to which it affects Black people (Walton's second justification of ‘White supremacy’ as explaining all forms of racism). Indeed, I have consistently stressed anti-Black racism in my work (e.g. Cole, 2016: 29–42, 97–108, 135–152; Cole, 2018a: 55-64). However, like Miles, I cannot concur with the ‘Black/White binary’ because of the widespread existence of racism that impacts on non-Black people. This binary is also rejected by most Critical Race Theorists, as reflected in the existence of LatCrit; Asian American Jurisprudence; and impacts Native Jurisprudence (Cole, 2017a: 19–26). In the US, racism has impacted historically and impacts contemporaneously not just on Black people but on Native Americans; Alaska Natives; Latinax Americans; Asian Americans (Cole, 2016: 87–124); and Jewish Americans (Cole, 2019: 50–77). In the UK, colour-coded racism dating back to Britain’s colonial past remains a dominant form of racism, and, indeed accelerated for Black Britons as a result of the Windrush scandal, itself a direct result of Prime Minister Theresa May’s ‘really hostile environment’ (e.g. Cole, 2020b: 8, 76–95, 97, 99, 102, 114, 124). However, other forms of racism, dating back to the colonial era and still existing today include colour-coded anti-Chinese racism (e.g. Cole, 2016: 57–64); and non-colour-coded anti-Irish racism (e.g. Cole, 2018a: 65–68) and antisemitism (e.g. Cole, 2018a: 68–70). Yet other forms of racism abound. These include that older non-colour-coded form of racism: anti-Gypsy Roma and Traveller racism and newer non-colour-coded racism: xeno-racism (that directed at Eastern European migrant workers and their families (e.g. Cole, 2018a: 73–78). Both forms of racism are not skin colour related.

As I write this (April, 2019) a House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee Report reveals that the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities have the worst outcomes of any ethnic group across a huge range of areas, including education, health, employment, criminal justice and hate crime, that little is being done to tackle long-standing inequalities, and that the communities have been ‘comprehensively failed’ by the government (cited in Mohdin, 2019). With respect to education, the Report, in the wake of a two-year inquiry, noted that students from Gypsy, Roma or Traveller backgrounds had the lowest attainment of all ethnic groups throughout their school years (Mohdin, 2019). Debby Kennett, of London Gypsies and Travellers, commented:

There have been many reports produced over the last few decades giving evidence of the huge inequalities faced by Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities in the UK but little action has been taken by governments to address this situation. This latest report gives yet more evidence to show the persistent failure by government to tackle these inequalities, or to recognise and challenge the shocking level of racism and discrimination that the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community face in their everyday lives. (cited in Mohdin, 2019)

In my view, it is more informative and instructive to view racism as fluid rather that ‘whiteness’. Given the obvious fluidity of racism (who would have predicted in the 1980s that White Poles would be subject to similar racist abuse in the UK to post-World War 11 migrants from Britain’s [former] colonies?). Additionally, prioritising one form of racism over another is also suspect (‘never again’ was confidently proclaimed in public pedagogy in the decades following the holocaust, but now we are faced with the imperative of actively working against a global rise in antisemitism).

Racism between non-White groups

It is extremely difficult to see how the CRT concept of ‘White supremacy’ can explain racism between non-White groups. The Young Researcher’s Working Papers Archive (Mapping Global Racisms, 2012, ongoing) maps ongoing worldwide racism. They include the racialisation of non-White peoples by non-White peoples in a large number of countries, including, in alphabetical order: Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Côte d’ivoire, Dominican Republic, Honduras, India, Iraq, Iran, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Thailand and Uganda.

White supremacy and the rise of the far right and fascism

I would like to make one final brief observation about the CRT use of ‘White supremacy’, one that is also briefly noted by Walton (p. 83) when referring to my own work, namely that with the rise of the far right and fascism, ‘White supremacy’ in its traditional sense is on the rise in many parts of the world, including the US (Cole, 2019) and the UK (e.g. Parmenter, 2019), ⁴ key features of which are not just a hatred of anyone whose skin is not ‘White’, but neo-nazism and accompanying virulent antisemitism. Using ‘White supremacy’ in the CRT sense can serve to desensitise us to this frightening development. If micro-aggressions and other forms of everyday racism are lumped together with demands for the creation of White ethno-state (e.g. Anglin, 2016; see Cole, 2019: 49 for a discussion of the alt-right conception of the White ethno-state), we are in danger of not being fully aware of the extreme dangers posed by this ominous rise.

CRT and emancipatory change

Referring to my work, Walton (p. 80) accurately asserts that I have on a number of occasions argued that CRT is ineffective in bringing about emancipatory change for oppressed groups. My most recent attempt to demonstrate this is in Cole, 2020a, where I argue that since its origins, CRT has been a progressive force for social justice but with no programme. CRT, I maintain, is in general inhibited by a lack of a concrete program and vision of a future society. While Critical Race Theorists by definition are active in formulating progressive critical analyses of racism, and, of course, are fully committed to challenging racism and their (bespoke) interpretation of ‘White supremacy’, their pronouncements about a less racist future (for Critical Race Theorists, racism is permanent) are vague, non-specific and embody neither political nor economic specificities. According to CRT pioneers, Kimberlé Crenshaw et al. (1995: xiii) Critical Race Theorists share ‘an ethical commitment to human liberation’ but ‘often disagree among [themselves], over its specific direction’. Introducing their edited collection, Critical Race Theory in Education: All God’s Children Got a Song (Dixson and Rousseau, 2006), Central CRT figures Adrienne Dixson and Celia Rousseau (2006) talk about ‘the struggle’ (pp. 2–3); ‘a vision of hope for the future’ (p. 3); ‘social action toward liberation and the end of oppression’ (p. 3); ‘the broader goal of ending all forms of oppression’ (p. 4) and ‘the ultimate goal of CRT – social transformation’ (p. 7). Dixson and Rousseau (2006: 2–3) also argue that ‘CRT scholars acknowledge the permanence of racism’ but that this should lead to ‘greater resolve in the struggle.’ They also refer to a CRT focus on ‘praxis,’ which incorporates ‘a commitment not only to scholarship but also to social action toward liberation and the end of oppression’ (Dixson and Rousseau, 2006: 3). They talk of ‘eliminating racial oppression as part of the broader goal of ending all forms of oppression’ (Dixson and Rousseau, 2006: 4), and state that the ‘ultimate goal of CRT [is] social transformation’ (p. 7). However, no indication is given of what they are struggling toward, what liberation means to them, or what is envisioned by social transformation and the end of all forms of oppression.

The same degree of nebulousness is apparent in most of the more recent developments in CRT theorising. A few examples from Gillborn’s flagship journal, Race, Ethnicity and Education suffice. Thus Aurora Chang (2016) writes about ‘the challenge to dominant ideologies and a steadfast commitment to social justice’ while Sara Tolbert and Serina Eichelberger (2016) describe themselves as ‘critical educators for social justice’; and Nichole Garcia et al. (2018) state that ‘CRT is motivated by social justice and characterized by a passionate activism to eliminate racism as part of a broader effort to end subordination on gender, class, sexual orientation, language, and national origin lines’. Nancy López et al. (2018) are unusual in that they show awareness of ‘class/capitalism’. However, they conclude not with a call for its abolition but with an elusive request of readers to:

consider how you can use your own networks to cultivate a community of practice around Critical Race Theory and more specifically ‘QuantCrit’ and intersectional knowledge projects that are anchored in community-based participatory methods and praxis (listening, action, and reflection) for social justice transformations

Finally, in an engaging and informative analysis of the effects of colonialism on Kānaka Maoli (native Hawaiians), Sallis Reyes (2018: 747), herself Kānaka Maoli’ draws on CRT (specifically AsianCrit and TribalCrit, as well as intersectionality to offer a number of ‘KanakaCrit’ (2018: 750) tenets towards a ‘critical decolonizing framework’. These include ending occupation and colonialism; adopting an ‘Ecological Model of Native Hawaiian Well-being’ (p. 750); highlighting stories and counterstories in breaking hegemonic narratives (p. 751) and using Indigenous peoples’ knowledge to bring together, challenge, surprise, encourage Kānaka Maoli awareness (p. 752). Sallis Reyes’ overall aim is nationhood and sovereignty in the context of social justice (p. 752). While she (2018: 747) shows awareness of the importance of ‘the economic’ when she describes the purpose of colonialisation as allowing for ‘the global expansion of European economy through the subjugation of Indigenous peoples’, and while as we shall see shortly see, socialists would support this aim, as well as the centrality of ecology and fully respecting Indigenous cultures, Reyes does not move us forward in the socio-economic and/or political foundations of the nature of the future society she envisages.

Black Radical futures

In his book, Back to Black: Retelling Black Radicalism for the 21st Century (Andrews, 2018), Kehinde Andrews (p. 98) argues that racism ‘is a global system and therefore any politics that offers a national solution can never be radical, because it will never overturn the existing system’ (emphasis added). Central to Andrews (2018: 70) exposition of Black Radicalism is the concept of a ‘global Black nation’. By this he means that:

Black radicalism … necessitates an analysis of racism that transcends nation state boundaries [given that] … African Diasporas separated by thousands of miles are more similar than those experienced by their allies ‘of colour’ in the adjacent neighbourhood. (Andrews, 2018: 81).

Since ‘Black people in both American and the Caribbean found themselves in a post-enslavement society where they remained firmly at the bottom’ (p. 82), and that ‘in terms of discrimination the experience of African Caribbeans and African Americans … are mirror images’ (p. 82), and further, when both peoples ‘are viewed as a colonised minority it necessitates a transformation, rather than reform of the societies in which … [Black people] reside’ (p. 83). The solution, Andrews (2018: 84) concludes, is the overthrow of the Western empire. Black political leader Marcus Garvey, he points out, ‘born a subject of the British crown on the island of Jamaica long before the pretence of independence was bestowed’ (p. 85), saw the solution as the physical return of Black people to Africa (p. 85).

What then, is Andrews’ solution? First, there is a need to create a movement that is led by the masses (p. 92). Second, this mass movement must be ‘rooted in the revolutionary concept of the global Black nation’ (p. 94). He approvingly endorses Malcom X’s moving away from ‘Black capitalist ideas of advancement to considering the global battle against imperialism’ (p. 95). ‘This meant’, Andrews (2018: 95) explains, ‘engaging with, though not wholeheartedly embracing, Marxism’. He then quotes Malcolm at the Militant Labor Forum in 1965:

it is impossible for this system; this economic system; this political system; this social system; this system, period. It is impossible for it as it stands to produce freedom right now [for Afro-Americans] … in the same way it is impossible for a chicken to produce a duck egg. (cited in Andrews, 2018: 96)

‘Black independence’, Andrews (2018: 260) insists, ‘is the basis of the politics of Black radicalism’ and this is why ‘Africa is so important for the Black revolution’ since ‘Black independence in the West is impossible’ (p. 260). Andrews (2018: 297) concludes the book by insisting that Black people must never lose hope that revolutionary change is possible and noting that it is 50 years since the cusp of the Black revolution in the 1960s. ‘In the next fifty years’, he goes on, ‘the world can be a completely different place if we choose to build it’ (p. 297):

The West was built on our backs because they have been able, through various means, to control us. But we have always had the power to bring the system crashing down, which is why they invested so much effort in shackling us …There can be no shortcut to our liberation, no freedom without sacrifice. We cannot theorise or perform our way to revolution …The only vehicle to liberation is building an organisation that can empower the global Black nation. (p. 297)

Marxism and socialism

When asked by Afua Hirsch (broadcaster, journalist and author of the book, Brit(ish) [Hirsch, 2018], and friend of Andrews) in an interview at the promotion of his book about his views on socialism, Andrews states that we don’t need to rely on ‘experiments’ in the progression towards radical overhaul, and that his work is about formulating the blueprint not for any specific revolutionary occurrence but for the reclaiming of an ideology that would lead to developed discussions about what happens next. (cited in Esplen, 2018).

Thus, whereas Critical Race Theorists have no identifiable strategy to achieve social change, nor any concrete proposals for a more just future, Kehinde Andrews, from a Black Radical perspective, clearly identifies Western Imperialism as the edifice that needs to be overthrown. In so doing, he aims, with a considerable degree of success, to provide a most credible basis – a scorched earth – upon which deliberations about the future might proceed.

I now turn to Marxism as my preferred explanatory framework and socialism as my favoured solution. Here is not the place for a detailed exegesis of my own interpretations of Marxism and socialism (but see Cole, 2008, 2018b). Marx (1939) [1973]: 488) argued that, rather than being the accumulation of material possessions, real wealth is ‘the universality of individual needs, capacities, pleasures, productive forces etc’. As Michael Lebowitz (2016) explains, the activity through which people develop their capacities is not limited to the sphere of production: we produce ourselves in homes, communities, neighbourhoods and society as a whole. This cannot happen if we relate to others as a means to satisfy our individual material self-interest. Crucially, therefore, 21st-century socialism, he goes on, as a system of reproduction, ‘contains not only social production organized by workers but also social ownership of the means of production for the purposes of satisfying communal needs and purposes’ (Lebowitz, 2016). Referring to Hugo Chávez’s notion of ‘the elementary triangle of socialism’ – social property, social production and satisfaction of social needs – Lebowitz (2016) states that ‘[w]ithout production of social needs, no real social property; without social property, no worker decision making oriented toward society’s needs; without worker decision making, no transformation of people and their needs’.

My geopolitical focus on racism, capitalism and socialism has been primarily in the context of the US and the UK. In the former we currently have the blanket fascistic noxiousness of Trump and his fascist base (Cole, 2019); in the latter, the ongoing Tory ideological decision to unleash austerity on the working class, accompanied by the rampant and escalating racism of Theresa May’s ‘really hostile environment’ (Cole, 2020b). In these climates of hate, threat and fear, addressing alternative possible economic, political and social scenarios is even more pressing.

Under Trump, the overthrow of ‘White supremacy/authoritarian domination’ is inconceivable, as is progress toward social democracy. In the UK, given her obsession with decreasing net migration, the end of the ‘hostile environment’ while Theresa May and the Tories remain in power is inconceivable.

However, with the ascendancy of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the US and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, social democracy has recently hit the mainstream agenda, and brought with it, a renewed interest in socialism. In the US, in the summer of 2018, for the first time in Gallup’s measurement over the past decade, Democrats or Democratic-leaning voters had a more positive image of socialism (57%) than they did of capitalism (47%). At the same time, fewer than half of young Americans as a whole (aged 18–19) viewed capitalism positively (45%), with 51% being positive about socialism (Newport, 2018). Another poll, conducted in February 2019, revealed that 61 per cent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 (born after 1995) viewed socialism in a positive light. Furthermore, 73.1 per cent of Millennials (those born between 1980 and 1994), and Generation Z (those born after 1995) believed the government should provide universal health care, while 67.1 per cent thought college should be tuition free (Austin, 2019).

The top three voting issues for Gen Z, according to the Harris poll, were mass shootings, racial equality and immigration policy and treatment of immigrants. Millennials’ top issues were access to health care, global warming/climate change and mass shootings (Austin, 2019).

In the UK, the grassroots socialist group that supports the Labour Party under Corbyn, Momentum has 40.000+ members (Momentum, 2019). As Heather Stewart (2019) points out, turning Labour into a mass ‘social movement’, involved in community activism year-round as well as knocking on doors during election campaigns, is a central element in Corbyn’s project to transform his party. Membership of the party itself, as of 2019, is over half a million, having peaked at 575,000 in the Summer of 2017, after a strong performance in the General Election. While membership dropped slightly between December 2018 and February 2019 because of Labour’s ambivalent stance on Brexit, and possibly perceptions that it has adequately tackled cases of antisemitism in the Party, ⁵ it is by far the biggest political party in Britain, approximately four times the size of May’s Conservative Party (Stewart, 2019).

These indicative developments do not, of course, herald the imminent demise of capitalism However, as Guardian columnist Gary Younge (2018) argued in an article advocating open borders, ‘It’s not naïve to hope that what does not seem possible in the foreseeable future is nonetheless necessary and worth fighting for’:

we should all be able to roam the planet and live, love and create where we wish … [in] a world with open borders [that] would demand a radical transformation of much of what we have now. It would demand a rethinking not only of immigration, but our policies on trade and war, the environment, health and welfare, which would in turn necessitate a re-evaluation of our history, of our understanding of ourselves as a species. (Younge, 2018).

It cannot be stressed enough that the last two bullet points self-evidently are a precondition for the building of socialism (for an analysis of climate change, the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the case for ecosocialism, see Cole, 2020c). In October, 2018, a landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5 C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people (Watts, 2018).

At the same time, the devastating onslaughts of neoliberal capitalism are increasingly being questioned, with austerity being exposed as an ideologically-driven fraud. Time is running out for humankind to save the planet. It may be the last chance for those of us who refuse to acquiesce in the environmentally destructive hegemonic world capitalist order to engage in revolutionary dialogue.