Introduction

Understanding the situated value, meaning, and importance of the life and existence of polarized otherness is something that a lot of the literature we covered this semester skipped.  While I must admit that I have an interest in this topic, in grasping a grounded concept in what I am proposing, I take the risk at being accused of having self-interest because understanding race, racialization, and racism as components of social reproduction is important and crucial to understanding how and who gets valued in America, when and where.  This paper aims to investigate the value of racial categorizations of persons in America and how the sociocultural status of living in a racialized dictatorship affects the value and social reproduction of people of African descent in America.  What I would like to discuss in this paper is how alternative exchange systems can be tethered to capitalism and how they influence and in some ways work against the rationality of capitalism that Weber referred to in “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”.  I want to investigate how Africans’ historical status was one of “currency” and how there is a complex difficulty in moving a people who were not considered human from money to person/commodity.  I would also like to investigate the idea of the consumption of “otherness” and how White supremacist racism creates a market for the consumption of racial and ethnic minority cultures via their subjugation and cultural appropriation.  Value and exchange in regards to White privilege and other forms of subjugation drastically influences economic spheres of exchange whether it be Black personhood, the dehumanization of Black people in America, the value of Black labor, or the devaluation of Blackness in and of itself.  The racial sphere of exchange in America heavily dictates who gets access to what resources and what relationship they have to the power structure.  Overall, through my investigation of these socio-cultural processes, I am aiming to explore how entwined these socio-cultural and alternative spheres of exchange are in America in the social reproduction of Blackness and its continued subjugation.  While Marx points out that capitalism has its own inherent form of exploitation that occurs, he does not leave room for how alternative systems of exchange that are tethered to capitalism can be exploitative as well.  Thus in this paper I attempt to use insights from market economies, gift economies, social reproduction, and alternative spheres of exchange to create a theory of the value of Blackness in the U.S. in an attempt to comprehend why people of African descent are limited by their phenotypically apparent ‘Blackness’.  This paper will include theory as well as praxis with respect to the classing of race, the racing of class, the gendering of class, the gendering of race, and the racing of gender.  What I attempt to posit is that people of African descent entered the capitalist American society as more than just commodity but in many ways as money.  Chattel slavery provided people of African descent in America with a unique status within the market economy as well as the social market.

Understanding Race, Racialization, & Racism

Race, racism, and racialization aren’t ‘natural’ but were created by people in power.  While it is easy to see how there are socio-economic contracts influencing social reproduction, it is easy to forget other social contracts/value systems that influence American capitalism, whether it be directly or indirectly.  “Race is a cultural construct, but one with deadly social causes and consequences.  Conscious and deliberate actions have institutionalized group identity in the United States, not just through the dissemination of cultural stories, but also through the creation of social structures that generate economic advantages for European Americans through the possessive investment in whiteness.  Studies of racial culture too far removed from studies of social structure leave us with inadequate explanations for understanding and combating racism” (Lipsitz, 2006:2).  We must understand as well as acknowledge the importance of understanding alternative exchange systems/social constructs/social contracts as powerful institutions that dictate the many convictions and ideologies that influence the behavior of individuals within society.  There are moments when racism underwrites capitalism and then there are moments and places where it overwrites capitalism.  In order for anyone to understand how racism as an alternative exchange system and contract interacts with capitalism to shape the intersectional experiences of Blacks in America, the entwined history of capitalism and slavery must be understood.

Anthropology, race, and racism have a long and complicated history.  Much of anthropological theory and disciplinary components was borne out of its obsession with formulating scientific justifications for the enslavement and genocide of people of African descent in America.  Much of the worldwide historical imagination posits Hitler and Nazi Germany as the monsters in the nightmares of mankind.  But oddly enough, Hitler and Nazi Germany were inspired and followed the blue print laid out for them by American anthropologists (e.g. Blumenbach, Hooton, Glidden, Coon, Hrdlicka, etc.).  Anthropology as a discipline played a crucial role in the perpetual solidification of the concept of what we identity and understand as race and the continuation and justification of the racial caste system we know as America.  Understanding how the processes and social constructs came to be is crucial in understanding how Blackness came to be and how Whiteness came to be constructed as a global power.  The construction of the closest to what historians and racial theorists understood as the conceptualizations of separating humans into races came from Carolus Linnaeus (around 1758) and then Johann Blumenbach (1775).  The categorization that was created by Blumenbach is still utilized in the United States today and abroad.  Capitalism came first (the colonization of the African continent began in the 1400s), then came race and racism.  Capitalism and racism are two systems that are reliant upon one another.  In order for capitalism to make the biggest profit, racism is required to provide a social script of naturalism (biological determinism) to justify creating slaves required for profit.  Here, within the relationship between capitalism and slavery we can see the construction of Whiteness and Blackness for profit, whether that profit be economic, social, or political.  Capitalism would be nothing without slavery.  Capitalism would not have become as dominant as it has without the imperialistic and racist projects that led to the enslavement and murder of Africans, First Nations peoples, and oppressed Europeans.  The conditions of capitalism lead to chronic individualism, commidification of the self, objectification of the other, & an underlying profit motive perspective.  In Western capitalist societies the self is the main means of focus.  People become a means to an end, tools for exploitation, discard-able objects.  A simplified timeline showcases that racism and the concept of race were after thoughts, they came as justifications for the enslavement of Africans and First Nations people.  Colonizers needed to justify their actions, and you cannot do wrong to a thing or something that isn’t human.  Racism was the best way to fulfill the earth scratching that Adam Smith stated was crucial to the prosperity of a new colony (Williams 1944:5).  An article written by Donnell Alexander this week discussed the recent research conducted by John Hopkins, Brandeis, and Harvard Universities that demonstrate that racism literally costs Americans two trillion dollars a year;

A more complete accounting of the toll taken by race-based chauvinism has arrived in the form of a W.K. Kellogg Foundation study that shows fallout from racism slashing the country’s wealth. The study, released in October, posits that an income gap resulting in part from racism costs the country $1.9 trillion dollars each year.  The study, titled “The Business Case for Racial Equity,” was conducted with the institute and scholars from Johns Hopkins, Brandeis, and Harvard universities and demonstrates how “race, class, residential segregation and income levels all work together to hamper access to opportunity.” (http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/12/13/racism-literally-costs-america-too-much-continue)

Racism does not operate on the same rationalism of capitalism.  Racism isn’t interested in making a profit.  While this is true, separating capitalism and racism can be seen as almost impossible to many.  The inherent exploitation of capitalism seems in many ways committed the racial exploitation of people of color.  While racism isn’t seeking a profit, we know that it kills people of color, racism is at the heart of many genocides; we do not have a clear understanding of whether or not racism has a logic or a rationality.

It is crucial for us to understand that the globalized world that we know today would be nothing without White supremacy.  Capitalism, commodity economy, required alternative exchange systems for its success.  White supremacist racism is an alternative exchange system that is tethered to capitalism.  Capitalism cannot succeed without alternative exchange systems that provide other forms of value that can supplement the logic of the ethic of capitalism.  Racism is commonly understood as, “the use of race to establish and justify a social hierarchy and system of power that privileges, preferences, or advances certain individuals or groups of people usually at the expense of others.  Racism is perpetuated through both interpersonal and institutional practices” (Goodman et al., 2012:251).  The problem with this definition and many of the common supposed understandings of what racism is, is the fact that White supremacy can and is very easily left out.  People of color cannot be ‘racist’ because they do not possess the social capital nor power to commit structurally sound racist acts against Whites.  But what every person possesses is the ability to use White supremacist racism against another person; the extent to which they are successful at committing that act is another discussion.  It is best articulated by bell hooks, “It is necessary to remember, as we think critically about domination, that we all have the capacity to act in ways that oppress, dominate, wound (whether or not that power is institutionalized). It is necessary to remember that it is first the potential oppressor within that we must resist – the potential victim within that we must rescue – otherwise we cannot hope for an end to domination, for liberation.”  White supremacist racism is a system that privileges and praises “Whiteness”.  “Whiteness” or white identity has a purpose, to maximize the privileges received by those people who are a part of the White racial group.  Whiteness is an unmarked racial category.  Whiteness; thanks to the power structures that support it, is the perfect conceptualization of normality and operates as an unmarked racial category.  “Whiteness is everywhere in U.S. culture, but it is very hard to see.  As Richard Dyer suggests, “[W]hite power secures its dominance by seeming not to be anything in particular.” As the unmarked category against which difference is constructed, whiteness never has to speak its name, never has to acknowledge its role as an organizing principle in social and cultural relations” (Lipsitz, 2006:1).  Contrary to what many of us believe,

…whiteness defined through European ancestry was a calculated racial solution developed by colonial leaders to the economic and physical threat of laboring-class solidarity…European laborers’ acceptance of ‘personal whiteness’ as ‘something that could be owned as an asset and as an identity’ ensured continued political and economic dominance by the propertied class.  In return, they received material benefits associated with full citizenship as well as the ‘public and psychological wage’ of codified social distance and deference from their former allies.  The white worker’s political independence existed in contrast to the black worker’s lack of such.  By agreeing to help ensure the lowest social stratum consists of exclusively nonwhites (and primarily of blacks), they also established a powerful and enduring economic incentive for systematic working-class racism (Goodman et al., 2012:44-45).

But while race, Whiteness, and racism were constructed in conjunction with the success of colonialism; whiteness is an ongoing project, race and racism are ongoing projects.  The making of Whiteness took time.  “White” didn’t show up in legal documentation in the United States till 1691 in a colonial Virginian statute (Goodman et al., 2012:44).  Whiteness is social, political, and economic construction and Whiteness is nothing without its contrast to Blackness.  “White settlers institutionalized a possessive investment in whiteness by making blackness synonymous with slavery and whiteness synonymous with freedom, but also by pitting people of color against one another” (Lipsitz, 2006:3).  Inherent to the construction of Whiteness is its contrast, its antithesis.

People interact and relate to one another in valued ways (e.g. race, gender), and all of these values are connected to social and economic institutions that objectify and dehumanize people, turning them into commodities.  In a capitalist society, people exploit one another in an aim to exchange each other on the social, political, and economic market.  Whiteness and maleness have cash values that account for advantages that come to individuals a number of intersecting institutional inequalities (e.g. housing discrimination, unequal education opportunities, etc.).  Racism functions in a very particular way, without a clear logic, like that of capitalism.  White supremacist racism is continually valuing Whiteness and devaluing Blackness/ultimate otherness.  White supremacist racism is an ongoing project, people are being made, remade, destroyed, and consumed based on racial categorizations, the script of White supremacy, stereotypes, and hundreds of years of historical investments in the oppression of nonwhite peoples.  “The possessive investment in whiteness today is not simply the residue of conquest and colonialism, of slavery and segregation, of immigrant exclusion and “Indian” extermination.  Contemporary whiteness and its rewards have been created and recreated by policies adopted long after the emancipation of slaves in the 1860s and even after the outlawing of de jure segregation in the 1960s. There has always been racism in the United States, but it has not always been the same racism. Racism has changed over time, taking on different forms and serving different social purposes in each time period” (Lipsitz, 2006:4).  White supremacist racism tells us how to value or not value people.  The category of “White people” are attributed with the best of qualities: physical, beauty, success, intelligence, perfection, normality, etc..  “Opening a magazine or book, turning on the television set, watching a film, or looking at photographs in public spaces, we are most likely to see images of black people that reinforce and reinscribe white supremacy. Those images may be constructed by white people who have not divested of racism, or by people of color/black people who may see the world through the lens of white supremacy-internalized racism” (hooks, 1992:1).  Whiteness is an image that is constantly invested in.  These images mean nothing without their antitheses.  Blackness is the polar scapegoat.

In “Toward An Anthropological Theory of Value”, Graeber refers to value as having meaning or being understood as language/linguistics, action, as well as exchange in social interaction.  What was agreed upon throughout the number of theories of value was that value is a process of comparison (2001:87).  Graeber referred to Evans-Pritchard when he mentioned that values, “are embodied in words through which they influence behavior” (2001:13).  So much of our language and how we understand it has to do with how it contrasts with its opposite.  For example, Graeber discussed that classic understanding of colors being defined based off of one another.  “Objects are defined by the meaningful distinctions one can make between them.  To understand the meaning (value) of an object, then, one must understand its place in a larger system” (Graeber, 2001:14).  While I understand what is being said here, this passage led to me thinking that understanding the meaning of an object requires tracking how society negotiates its context in response to innumerable sociocultural forces/variables.  So much of what we understand is within oppositional relationships.  This was pointed out in Graeber’s discussion of Saussure in Sahlins;

In the same way a word can be exchanged for something dissimilar, an idea; besides, it can be compared with something of the same nature, another word.  Its value is therefore not fixed so as long one simply states that it can be “exchanged” for a given concept; i.e., that it has this or that signification: one mist also compare it to similar values, with other words that stand in opposition to it (Graeber, 2001: 15).

The common stereotypical American understanding of what it means to be a Black person is constructed via a very similar framework.  So many of the common conceptions of what Black/African American culture ‘is’, is conceptualized based off of the definition of what it means to be White in America.  Thus, the Black being is constructed in exchange for the value of the White American; Black is simply not-White.  For example, the common racial slur of referring to an intelligent Black person as “acting White”.  This curious slur is one that operates off of such exchange that is rooted in the racist and supremacist ideological construction of the oppressor and then that of the oppressed.  “…two entities…involve evaluation…That is, they are meant to establish whether one entity is better, or more important, or more desirable, than the other.” (Graeber, 2001: 43).  This dynamic of values being exchanged for one another creates an opposing distinction that leads to a ranking within a larger system of categories.   “Stereotypes, however inaccurate, are one form of representation.  Like fictions, they are created to serve as substitutions, standing in for what is real. They are there not to tell it like it is but to invite and encourage pretense. They are a fantasy, a projection onto the other that makes them less threatening” (hooks, 1992:170).  Some of the common stereotypical American constructions of the Black being/person are: not intelligent, violent, emotional, dramatic, out of control, lazy, etc..  These values do not exist because there is proof of their prevalence among the African American population.  They exist based on the remnants of the supremacist forms of understanding Blacks which are embedded in the ideal of the “other”.  But instead of simply having characteristics that are different from American Whites, Blacks were stripped of their original culture, leaving them to be reconstructed by the overarching imperialist white supremacist racist cisheteropatriarchal capitalist system that reigned.  If you take some of those same constructions of the Black being and reverse them then you are left with characteristics that can be associated with the civilized or Euro-American White being: smart, rational, logical, controlled, hard-working, etc..  Commonly understood American conceptions of the Black being are mostly defined based upon what the “White” man is NOT.  Barack Obama fought such accusations when he stated, “Hard work, dressing well, speaking well, and ambitiously pursuing a fulfilling life is not a “white” thing” (Christie, 2010:6).  In many ways these conceptions are Black exchanged for White; they are cultural concepts created in opposition of what is understood as American/European/White.   Thus the racial stereotypes and dynamics function much like a value system, exchanging meaning within the larger racially charged social structure of America.

On the other hand, one must consider the state of Black identity in America and not just through the eyes of the Black American/African American.  The interactions and identity constructs of other Americans are also crucial to Black identity.  I say this because so many components of Black identity are; as originally noted, exchanged.  Many Black Americans have been robbed of the control/freedom in choosing what is or is not Black.  This calls economic theory, ethnicity theory, and class theory all into play.  This is where what Graeber calls “politics of value” plays out.  I have proposed via economic theory that Black culture and identity is consumed for the benefit of White supremacy/Euro-American culture and identity.  Through this sociocultural exchange you get the resulting racial climate in America.  Ethnicity theory proposes that racial formation is based on, “…the questions of group identity; with the resolution of tensions between the twin pressures of assimilation (dissolution of group identity) and cultural pluralism (preservation of group identity); and with the prospects for political integration via normal political channels” (Omi & Winant, 1994:48).  Ethnicity theory calls the continual struggle for assimilation and cultural pluralism into the picture; these are two core components to the survival and transition of cultural groups in America.  When considering class theory, other proponents are taken into consideration, some which happen to be acknowledged in economic theory.  Class theory sees racial inequality as a “…outcome, not a cause, of market imperfections, political power structures, or the search for secure means of labor control” (Omi & Winant, 1994:48).  When taking all of these theoretical perspectives into consideration, one can construct a theory that points to the perpetuating oppression of the American minority.

Moreover, let’s consider how these perspectives actually play out.  Ethnicity theory points out to the fact that assimilation is non-existent for Blacks in America based on one proponent: they can change/exchange everything except for their skin color.  The common denominator or base of group identity is skin color.  Class and economic theories both point out to the inequality whether it is on a political, economic, or institutional level.  What are the results of these processes?  It is easy to just simply say that the result is bias, racism, discrimination; but these processes play out in complex intricate ways.  Looking at how Blacks are losing in their struggle to gain freedom in establishing their own “politics of value” can explain some of the cultural processes that are present within the Black community.  What needs to be noted is that these processes are all the result of the Black American response to the social, political, and very physical changes that occurred to Blacks historically and presently.  These processes result in a colonialized personhood.  According to Tommie Shelby,

Part of the oppression that Blacks have experienced thus involves the malicious deprecation of their culture.  This assault on the value of Black cultural contributions has been so thoroughly damaging to the self-esteem of Blacks that many fail to identify with and take pride in their unique cultural heritage (2005:169).

Black/African American identity cannot be simply seen as a hybrid of Euro-American and African components.  It is a form of personhood that is responding to a history of colonialism and thus resulting in the construction of another identity.  The value exchange that constructs perceptions of Black culture at large and also results in the attack of Black culture is part of racial formation in the American sociocultural market.  These value exchanges help shape Euro-American perceptions of the Black being.  Graeber states that, “…part of the overall process of “social production”: forming people both in their capacities, and more publicly, in terms of their identities, of what sorts of person they are taken to be” (2001:79-80).  Blacks/African Americans are not being consulted or even considered in their own social production.  Within the results of Black exchanged for White you also get the massive generalizations.  This results in the loss of social production of identity on an individual level as well as on the group level.

What I would like to point out is that this cultural value exchange is a struggle over establishing what the Black being in America is.  “The ultimate stakes of politics, according to Turner, is not even the struggle to appropriate value; it is the struggle to establish what value is. … Similarly, the ultimate freedom is not the freedom to create or accumulate value, but the freedom to decide (collectively or individually) what it is that makes life worth living” (Graeber, 2001:88).  Black/African Americans have never been awarded the freedom of value determinism within the larger American society.  And in the many political and social attempts to seize that said freedom many have become entangled in establishing their identity: Am I African or am I American?  How can I be both?  Classic case of colonial personhood.  In so many ways the idea of the value or meaning of what/who the Black being is in America continues to be artfully and purposely perpetuated via social/institutional/conversational media.  The stereotypical Black/African American is the one that is most perpetuated in America while any other form of identity that speaks against common American perceptions of Blacks is rejected.  Some argue that there are individuals within the Black/African American community that perpetuate these incorrect values; my response to that is the American public sees what the majority chooses.  If the society at large chose to see the positive accomplishments and truth of Black culture then the discourse would change.  It is difficult for Americans today to acknowledge the racism that affects the lives of Blacks due to the detached colorblind discourse.

Whiteness has a transcending value, a value that also dictates how other racial categories are valued, used, exchanged.  As stated by George Lipsitz,

Whiteness has a cash value: it accounts for advantages that come to individuals through profits made from housing secured in discriminatory markets, through the unequal educational opportunities available to children of different races, through insider networks that channel employment opportunities to the relatives and friends of the those who have profited most from present and past racial discrimination, and especially through intergenerational transfers of inherited wealth that pass on the spoils of discrimination to succeeding generation (2006:vii).

There are multiples types of value at play here.  There are loads of transactions and exchanges that occur every day in relation to racism alone in the United States.  Whiteness has a cash value and Blackness is a debt.  Racialization occurs, people are valued, people are devalued, and those who lives are deemed less valuable based on the rules of White supremacy (as well as other forms of systemic domination) are lost whether it be through violence or the slow genocide of intersectional oppression.

We value people by racially categorizing them.  Every time we see someone we ‘race’ them, this is also done in social interactions.  The racialization of others is a value system that consumes otherness for the benefit of systematic White supremacy.  White supremacy is the reigning rule; through racialization people are valued, their life, their humanity, their labor value, their decency, whether or not they are deemed creditable.  Racialization is value theory that Americans (and many others around the world) use every day.  Alternative systems of exchange were entangled with the capitalist system of exchange in America from its conception.  Racialization dictates the value of Black work, Black bodies, Black spaces, & White responses (e.g. employment, murder, health disparity, professionalism, etc.).

A core component of this theory of value is what Toni Morrison refers to as American Africanism (1992:6).  Blackness matters in the upholding of the social, economic, and political value in regards to the meaning of “Whiteness” and thus Blackness is core in constructing the market value of Whiteness.  Without Blackness, White supremacy cannot cash in on its investment because the value of Whiteness is extracted from the devaluing and ‘othering’ of Blackness/African-ness in America.  The American conceptualizations and social strains of White supremacy have the ultimate purpose of investing the greatest social capital and value in what is White; because of this, Blackness must be subjugated, through the subjugation of Blackness as the ultimate otherness, other people of color become subjugated and subsequently erased.  Whiteness is built off of everything it conceptualizes Blackness of not being.  Whiteness is the embodied meaning of the ultimate distancing from Africanism/African-ness/Blackness.  What Whiteness is and is not creates a perpetual meaning making cycle, which remakes and reconstructs racial boundaries, as it deems necessary to secure its social and institutional survival.  The process of racialization and thus creating racial others works in such a way that individuals of all racial categories are encouraged to engage in it every day; “White supremacy is an equal opportunity employer; nonwhite people can become active agents of white supremacy as well as passive participants in its hierarchies and rewards. One way of becoming an insider is by participating in the exclusion of other outsiders…The power of whiteness depended not only on white hegemony over separate racialized groups, but also on manipulating racial outsiders to fight against one another, to compete with each other for white approval, and to seek the rewards and privileges of whiteness for themselves at the expense of other racialized populations.” (Lipsitz, 2006: viii, 3).  This demonstrates how we must not make the mistake of missing a point of vital importance: social reproduction, social contracts, racialization as an alternative exchange system is also about identity.  The making and breaking of people, their meaning/value in between those points as well as beyond them.  “Systems of domination, imperialism, colonialism, and racism actively coerce black folks to internalize negative perceptions of blackness to be self-hating.  Many of us succumb to this. Yet, blacks who imitate whites (adopting their values, speech, habits of being, etc.) continue to regard whiteness with suspicion, fear, and even hatred. This contradictory longing to possess the reality of the other, even though that reality is one that wounds and negates, is expressive of the desire to understand the mystery, to know intimately through imitation, as though such knowing worn like an amulet, a mask, will ward away the evil, the terror” (hooks, 1992:166).  Racism is a process of valuation that says so much about how we produce people, consume them, prize them, or justify their destruction.  Racialization as an alternative exchange system shows us that the value of others, the self, and those we deem ‘like’ us are always at stake, always in flux.  A system of domination is invested in and maintained by our daily interactions and racializing of one another.  Through the racialization and othering of people with skin that is and is not ours we make judgment calls that extract or deposit value and meaning into ourselves and/or others.  The daily transactions leave the Whiteness teeming with value that can be cashed in on and leaving people of color consumed by its privileged heists.

White Privilege, Controlling Images, & Cultural Appropriation

Much has been said about the degradation of people as a consequence of racial dictatorship in the US and abroad (especially since White supremacy is a global supremacy, with its own contexts outside of the US).

Whiteness does its work in the United States as a structured advantage, as a built-in bias that prevents hard-working people from securing just rewards for their labor and ingenuity. It produces unfair gains and unjust rewards for all whites, although not uniformly and equally.  As a matter of justice, whites should be interested in abolishing it, in relinquishing the unfair gains and unearned enrichments that flow from it. Yet the possessive investment in whiteness is not an aberration in an otherwise just society. It works in concert with—and flows from—many other forms of inequality and injustice. It is one of the key practices that make unfairness seem necessary, natural, and inevitable.  To understand how whiteness works offers us information about more than whiteness. It gives us essential information about the nature of inequality in our society, about how privilege is created and sustained but protected from political critique (Lipsitz, 2006:106).

A key element has been missing from the dominant discourse in regards to race, racialization, and racism: how racism socially reproduces people.  So much of popular American understandings of racism is that it puts people of color at a disadvantage.  There is so much missing from the other realms of that cycle; how racism puts other populations at a massive advantage.  Racism extracts value out of Blackness so that it is ultimately socially (politically, historically, economically, etc.) worthless but that value, that humanity, that capital is invested elsewhere.  For every racial disadvantage, the White populace gains advantage and privilege.  The destruction (physically, socially, economically, psychologically, historically, etc.) of people of African descent provides the social reproduction and meaning of “Whiteness”, it defines what it means to be “American”.  Another element of this process is the eroticism and exoticism of people of color by White Americans.  Generally within this process the culture (e.g. whether it be rhetoric or clothing) of people of color is demonized when practiced by that people BUT is celebrated, eroticized, and exoticized by an individual outside of that culture.  This is referred to as cultural appropriation.

Cultural appropriation is the adoption or theft of icons, rituals, aesthetic standards, and behavior from one culture or subculture by another. It generally is applied when the subject culture is a minority culture or somehow subordinate in social, political, economic, or military status to the appropriating culture. This “appropriation” often occurs without any real understanding of why the original culture took part in these activities or the meanings behind these activities, often converting culturally significant artifacts, practices, and beliefs into “meaningless” pop-culture or giving them a significance that is completely different/less nuanced than they would originally have had.  Cultural appropriation is a by-product of imperialism, capitalism, oppression, and assimilation. Imperialism is the creation and maintenance of an unequal cultural, economic, and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination. Imperialism functions by subordinating groups of people and territories and extracting everything of value from the colonized people and territories. In the case of cultural appropriation, culture is treated as a “natural resource” to extract from People of Color.  Cultural appropriation is profitable. Objects and traditions (but not the people) of marginalized cultures are seen by the dominant culture as exotic, edgy, and desirable, which translates to profits. Cultural appropriation is harmful because it is an extension of centuries of racism, genocide, and oppression. Cultural appropriation treats all aspects of marginalized cultures (also known as targets of oppression) as free for the taking (UnsettlingAmerica.Wordpress.com).

Cultural appropriation is an example of how people of color are only valued through eroticism and exoticism via the White imagination.  The very cultures of people of color are not valued until a White person deems it interesting via racist gaze.  For example, the popular culture phenomenon recently has been twerking, a dance that has been done by African American women and has West African roots.  Twerking was previously only done in the Black/African American community and was deemed a distasteful and unladylike behavior until a number of White female pop performers began to perform the same dance and even did so while objectifying the bodies of Black female dancers.  For example, for this past year Miley Cyrus has twerked, smoked marijuana, wore grills in her mouth, taken pictures that imply the imagery of a ‘thug’ and much of White America (and even some people of color) came to her defense, claiming that she was just being ‘young’ or ‘expressing herself’.  Mind you, during the George Zimmerman trial, photos of his victim Trayvon Martin doing the same things, the fact that Travon Martin smoked marijuana were all utilized as justifications to kill him.  Miley Cyrus deserves to express herself, Trayvon deserved to die, Rekia Boyd deserved to die, and countless Black youths deserve to die or be imprisoned for the exact same behaviors.  This highlights how it is not the behaviors that are necessarily deemed problematic or criminal, it is who the behavior is performed by.  When a White person cultural appropriates Black culture through their engagement in popular American cultural ideals of what hip hop and gangster rap is, they are allowed to do so, cheered on, supported, and make a boat load of money doing so in the process.  Every Halloween is a time of year where White people wear Black face, dress up as First Nations people, and many other people of color to mock and harass them.  This behavior is deemed acceptable.  It is acceptable because the value of White skin allows White people to consume the cultures of people of color and even imitate them through controlling images.  Unfortunately, the awareness and/or intent of White Americans is not important nor necessary for the perpetual use & investment into their social reproduction and the social destruction of people of color.  Making popular culture love of cultural appropriation and Black face during Halloween celebrations just as dangerous as the prison industrial complex.  All of these occurrences are part of the same institution and perpetuated by the same value system.  People of African descent in America were originally a commodity and still are a commodity that is consistently being consumed in America, whether it be for the entertainment of White Americans via cultural appropriation or their direct economic exploitation, leaving them earning less on the dollar next to White Americans.  The failure of the inclusion of people of African descent in capitalism in America is due to the fact that they are still commodity or reserve workforce based on the social contract and script of White supremacist racism.  Black Americans are consumed: politically, socio-culturally, and economically.  The consumption places them at a traumatizing disadvantage and places White Americans legions ahead of all people of color.

Through racism and racialization people are valued based on the color of their skin, the controlling images, stereotypes, and the superiority of Whiteness.  The devaluing of Blackness is an exchange.  The humanity, equity, and lives of people of African descent is extracted and exploited for the purposes of maintaining White supremacist racism.   Because racism acts as an alternative exchange system, it in many ways dictates how capital is distributed, whether that capital be economic, social, or political.  The social contract of racism helps dictate how and why Black, Latino, and First Nation peoples are sought out and destroyed every day and yet the majority consensus of the American society is that they had it coming.  Health disparities are raced and gendered; life experiences and the value of life is raced/colored.  In his article on takepart.com, Alexander states,

The Kellogg study opts to focus on racial inequity in arenas such as education and health care, where leveling the playing field creates inarguable gains.  “We didn’t want to frame it as winners and losers,” she said, “where if some groups have their life circumstances improved, will others be less well off.”  Instead, the report presents breathtaking figures. One last bit of statistical analysis: Altarum found that closing the minority earnings gap by 2030 would grow federal tax revenues by more than $1 trillion and that a 10 percent reduction in Medicaid and income support would reduce expenditures by almost $100 billion.  “When you look at the way our demographics are moving, the cost of inaction is very high,” [Ani] Turner said. “The numbers we put out there are large, but we don’t have to get there all the way to have a substantial impact.”

Racism and rationalization as alternative exchange systems are costly in every context.  Earlier this semester we discussed how America should be a natural economy that is interested in the kind of people its society produces, not the products it makes.  I would argue that we also need natural exchange systems that are interested in the kinds of people our society produces.  Capitalism is a monster that is tethered to many other monstrous exchange systems outside of the commodity market.  Capitalism is not alone in its operation in the United States or elsewhere.   It is a many headed dragon, a hydra, with other systems of domination intersectionally exploiting millions everyday outside of the market economy.

We must understand that social interaction is market and see that racism is a theory of value and this theory of value is contextual (specifically an American Africanism), a certain type of Blackness is produced and used in certain ways depending upon the context.  Through the production of Whiteness and Blackness, other peoples of color are situated in between.  Racism is a value system and racialization is part of assessing the value of the person and whether or not they are creditable and deserving of resources and equitable treatment.

Conclusion

Capitalism is about profit, and to make any profit you need to exploit others.  This by default creates the disturbing globalized sociopathic society that we live in today.  Capitalism is systemic domination, it feeds off of exploitation, murder, and slavery.  As Adam Smith stated, capitalism cannot survive without slavery, without a reserve workforce.  While many believe that the days of enslaving people are over, the truth provides a completely different picture.  Slavery has adapted, capitalism has adjusted.  Now the slaves are the underclass of the world, those in the prison industrial complex, marginalized peoples.  The global empires created by imperial states of the past never ended, they simply became more pervasive.  Over time systems of domination went from being the norm to being practically invisible.  Patriarchy, White supremacist racism, and capitalism (neoliberalism, neocolonialism) are almost perfect systems of blindness, providing the scripts and social contracts that dictate the values and decisions made by those with privilege and power.  These “scripts”, “value systems”, and “social contracts” provide justifications for decisions made to murder entire peoples, to justify objectification, commodification, and dehumanization for the purpose of making the largest profit possible.  Grow or die.  And to grow you must devour others, by any means necessary.

 

References

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