Postbellum race relations in commodity exchange |
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Authors: | Bobby M Wilson |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Geography, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA |
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Abstract: | A structural imperative of capital is to expand commodity exchange. To realize surplus value, capitalists not only have to
exploit workers in the production process, but also make workers buy what they produce. This paper examines how this imperative
of capital shaped race relations from the end of slavery through the Jim Crow era. The racism that sustained black slavery
was highly exclusionary––a fixed racism that undermined this imperative of capital to expand commodity exchange. A more flexible
racism would resolve this contradiction. Reconstruction was a move to erase all vestiges of the fixed racism that sustained
slavery from relations of commodity exchange. Jim Crow countered with a more flexible racism that maintained the racial status
quo but was less of a barrier to blacks participating in commodity exchange in the consumption process. |
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Keywords: | |
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