Adam Shields
Summary: A reframing of the concept of racism, not as hatred on the basis of skin color, but as greed.
Racial capitalism is a concept that I have been aware of, but not dived deeply into. I read part of Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism by Jonathan Tran but put it aside when I had some other pressing things and never came back to it. I think, in part, I set it aside because I needed to grapple with some other things first. I have followed Malcolm Foley on social media (and his podcast) for a while. I have observed him from a distance coming across the concept of racial capitalism and how that shifted some of his language around racism. I pre-ordered The Anti-Greed Gospel a while ago precisely because I thought he could introduce the topic in a way that I could understand.
About a week before the book was released, Netgalley emailed and offered me an advance digital copy for review. The Anti-Greed Gospel fairly short. I read a chapter or so before bed and finished it in five days. (There are 8 chapters and the main text is about 165 pages. I had 55 highlights in my copy which you can see here.)
As I was reading I kept thinking that in some ways Critical Race Theory is centering how legal structures were the primary tool of racism while Racial Capitalism centered out greed and capitalism were the primary tool of racism. But that is both too simple and not nuanced enough. It is pretty well known that legal structures were essential to creating the concept of race. Race as we understand the modern category did not exist before the enlightenment when categorization became a mainstream tool of not just science, but also of economics and other areas of academics and culture. That is, of course, not to say that no one recognized that there were different skin colors, but to say that phenotypical skin color was not determinative of worth, value or identity in the way that scientific racism developed from the 18th to the 20th century.
Racial Capitalism and Critical Race Theory (CRT) both agree that legal structures were essential to creating a racial caste system in the US. And CRT and Racial Capitalism both agree that racial categories are a social reality, not a biological reality. There are other overlaps, but one of the common objections to CRT is that it believes that racism doesn't go away, it shifts. I think there are some nuances in how I (in my very non-expert way) see how some of the nuances of Racial Capitalism agree with that point, but shifts the view in a way that can be more helpful than CRT is broadly.
If racism is primarily an issue of greed and the oppression or subjugation of others for the purpose of wealth creation, then that approach is different from looking at legal structures that CRT does. Both of my introductions to Racial Capitalism were from Christians, so I do need to read a secular presentation to balance that out. But Foley and Tran are willing to talk about greed and the underlying capitalist system with a spiritual lens. (Similar to how some Christian presentations of CRT also can do that.) In spite of using a Christian lens, I think you can see that part of what racial capitalism is pointing out is that culture and systemic structures (law, capitalism, eduction, etc) work together to maintain the structures of racism so that neither interpersonal attacks not systemic attacks apart from one another get at the core problems of racism. Foley draws on the MLK and the civil rights movement for descriptive language.
"Race is not about hate and ignorance. It’s about greed. It always has been. And the purpose of this book is that you might understand the unholy relationship between race and greed, best understood not as a marriage but in terms of parentage: race and racism are children of Mammon....At its center is the claim that hate and ignorance are not at the root of race; rather, that root is greed. Notably, King, especially in the last few years of his life, drew attention to the three-headed evil that has plagued Western civilization: racism, materialism, and militarism. More pointedly, however, he drew attention to them in their most violent and common instantiations: white supremacy, capitalism, and war. These have been the inextricable evils of our day; we cannot address one of them apart from the two others. After revisiting King’s framework, I realized that self-interest binds these three evils together. This led me to recognize the three evils for what they really are: a demonic feedback loop of self-interest." (p1 and 6)
The early chapters are likely where most people will be doing the most highlighting. It is where the very nature of what racism is doing is being challenged. This is not a 100% change in approach, but I think a helpful refocus. Because it is an explicitly Christian presentation, it brings into play the role of distorted thinking and ethics brings into our larger societal systems. For Foley, the fact that slave owners must dehumanize to justify slavery or segregation means that other areas of ethical thinking are also distorted. Personal ethnics matters, but also so does systemic reasoning. The very nature of "efficiency" can be about minimizing waste, but once your ethics have been distorted, efficiency can use the loss of the concept of all being made in the image of God to justify profit over people.
There are other books that lay out some of the history of how Christianity and business interests intersected in unhelpful ways. Kevin Kruse points out that business interests used Christian rhetoric and institutions to mobilize Christians politically. Jesse Curtis talks about how business principle snuck into church planting and church growth models to maintain segregated churches. Sean McGever talks about how evangelism and mission of the church blinded the 17th and 18th century church to slavery’s evil. There are a lot of other books I have not gotten to about how extractive industries, particularly oil interests influenced modern evangelicalism. The development of capitalism has definitely impacted Christianity's understanding of the role of economics.
Foley's PhD dissertation was about lynching and his background in the historical study of lynching is central to The Anti-Greed Gospel. After the introduction and two chapters laying how the idea of racial capitalism and how it is engrained in our society, Foley lays out three examples of how we tend to respond to racism in the case of lynching. Two of those are mostly inadequate examples and one is a more positive examples. Francis Grimké and Atticus Haygood are the two negative examples. Grimke sees the problem of lynching as domination and exploitation. But his response as a pastor starts with black self improvement and white education. “Grimké falls into the same trap that many of us do: we see the material effects of racism, yet we address only the spiritual and mental remedies.” (p62) Later Grimké shifts to accepting violence when he sees that racial uplift and white education are not stopping lynching. (Grimké came to understand what many have learned, that information alone will not stop racism.)
Atticus Haygood also is opposed to lynching and, as the president of Emory University, was viewed as a racial progressive. But as with many white progressives before and after the civil war, he opposed the structures of slavery or Jim Crow, but not the underlying cultural assumption of racial hierarchy.
"Haygood’s theological and ethical imagination had atrophied to the point that he could claim that Black Americans were “brothers and sisters” and yet deny racial equality in every sense of the word. As much as he called for Black education and so-called brotherhood, Haygood still categorized Black people as a “national problem.” The point at which people themselves become a problem rather than the injustices that they are subjected to is the point at which ethical thought dies." (p72)
Foley's third figure, Ida B Wells, understands the structural nature of lynching and probably most importantly, that the surface level blame on black men raping white women was almost never the actual precipitating factor. In most cases, lynching was primarily about terrorism for the purpose of maintaining economic superiority. Whether it was individuals or communities, lynching was more likely to happen in communities where there was increasing Black economic self sufficiency. The KKK is one factor but at the time of most of Wells' work, the larger KKK movement had been pushed underground. The KKK from the 1880s until the 1920 less important structurally than it was before or after that period. Foley is pointing out here that Wells saw that economic independence was the center of lynching and how she maintained her Christian faith, about repentance and grace, while also drawing attention to how the lies of lynching worked to hide its actual reality.
Lynching no longer worked as a wide spread reality when economic systems changed and federal and state officials were no longer allowed to just look away from the problems. One of the point of her writing was that racial hierarchy placed the blame of lynching on the black victim's "crime." But the actual "burden was on white communities not to lynch but rather to be faithful to the faith that they claimed because, rather simply, one could not lynch and be Christian at the same time. As simple as that declaration may sound to us, it yielded death threats for Ida." (p 85)
"When lynching was conceived of as punishment, the only question that some asked was whether victims did something to deserve it. The proper moral imagination saw the brutality of lynching and concluded that no human being was worthy of it. Wells not only readjudicated every lynching but also indicted the very system that made lynchings appear reasonable." (p 87)
After the end of the introduction of the concept of racial capitalism and the exploration of the idea in history through the model of lynching, Foley spends the last third of the book grappling with how Christianity understands the problem of greed and how solidarity is a solution to that problem. A full chapter is spent on how Christianity grapples with violence as a response to oppression before moving onto another chapter about the role of truth in opposing sin. The final chapter call on the reader to look at a new vision of the kingdom of God to inspire creative thinking about how we can oppose racism (and greed) in a church that values truth and love and lives out that truth and love in solidarity with the vulnerable.
I think there are a number of reasons why at least on this initial introduction to racial capitalism, the concept of racism as primarily a problem of greed is more convicting than racism as a problem of individual hatred. First, basically no one self identifies as racist at this point. Even George Wallace after his overtly segregationist run for president in 1968 denied that he was a racist. But it is pretty hard to deny that greed does not have influence in our lives.
Second, I think that what I find most helpful about CRT is that it thinks about the problems of race in systemic terms not individual terms. For the purposes of CRT it does matter if you have racial animus as an individual, CRT is really only looking at systems. Racial capitalism maintains that systems oriented view, while having space for personal introspection. David French (I am paraphrasing from memory) says something like, "many non-racist people uphold racist policies for non-racist reasons." What French is pointing out is that systems do not fix themselves and once in place there are many reasons why those systems perpetuate themselves without individual motivations. Racial capitalism makes sense of school boundaries maintaining segregation for economics reasons. The impact is still segregation and still needs to be opposed. But I think a lot of white moderates or progressives are far more interested in maintaining their economic position than they are in addressing racism.
I think a third potential for racial capitalism is the history of Christian thinking about wealth. There are a number of other illustrations in The Anti-Greed Gospel, but this quote talking about Basil hints at the larger tools of Christianity to deal with greed.
"Basil utters a heart-stopping line in his sermon, aptly titled To the Rich: “The more you abound in wealth, the more you lack in love.” Basil, in his particular context, sees that the Scriptures frame a world in which accumulation almost always happens at someone else’s expense, and that person is often needy. Thus, the more you have and hold, the less you love your neighbor.
Basil here gives the reason for Christian generosity: it is not an extra nice-to-have element of the Christian life; rather, it is a fundamental act of obedience to the Great Commandments and, particularly, to the eighth and tenth commandments. It is difficult to steal and covet when your primary relationship with goods is thinking of how they can be redistributed to meet needs. None of this denies familial obligation, but it does remind us that love of neighbor requires redistribution, not just a different attitude about money." (p 20)
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/anti-greed-gospel/
Originally posted at bookwi.se.
Summary: A reframing of the concept of racism, not as hatred on the basis of skin color, but as greed.
Racial capitalism is a concept that I have been aware of, but not dived deeply into. I read part of Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism by Jonathan Tran but put it aside when I had some other pressing things and never came back to it. I think, in part, I set it aside because I needed to grapple with some other things first. I have followed Malcolm Foley on social media (and his podcast) for a while. I have observed him from a distance coming across the concept of racial capitalism and how that shifted some of his language around racism. I pre-ordered The Anti-Greed Gospel a while ago precisely because I thought he could introduce the topic in a way that I could understand.
About a week before the book was released, Netgalley emailed and offered me an advance digital copy for review. The Anti-Greed Gospel fairly short. I read a chapter or so before bed and finished it in five days. (There are 8 chapters and the main text is about 165 pages. I had 55 highlights in my copy which you can see here.)
As I was reading I kept thinking that in some ways Critical Race Theory is centering how legal structures were the primary tool of racism while Racial Capitalism centered out greed and capitalism were the primary tool of racism. But that is both too simple and not nuanced enough. It is pretty well known that legal structures were essential to creating the concept of race. Race as we understand the modern category did not exist before the enlightenment when categorization became a mainstream tool of not just science, but also of economics and other areas of academics and culture. That is, of course, not to say that no one recognized that there were different skin colors, but to say that phenotypical skin color was not determinative of worth, value or identity in the way that scientific racism developed from the 18th to the 20th century.
Racial Capitalism and Critical Race Theory (CRT) both agree that legal structures were essential to creating a racial caste system in the US. And CRT and Racial Capitalism both agree that racial categories are a social reality, not a biological reality. There are other overlaps, but one of the common objections to CRT is that it believes that racism doesn't go away, it shifts. I think there are some nuances in how I (in my very non-expert way) see how some of the nuances of Racial Capitalism agree with that point, but shifts the view in a way that can be more helpful than CRT is broadly.
If racism is primarily an issue of greed and the oppression or subjugation of others for the purpose of wealth creation, then that approach is different from looking at legal structures that CRT does. Both of my introductions to Racial Capitalism were from Christians, so I do need to read a secular presentation to balance that out. But Foley and Tran are willing to talk about greed and the underlying capitalist system with a spiritual lens. (Similar to how some Christian presentations of CRT also can do that.) In spite of using a Christian lens, I think you can see that part of what racial capitalism is pointing out is that culture and systemic structures (law, capitalism, eduction, etc) work together to maintain the structures of racism so that neither interpersonal attacks not systemic attacks apart from one another get at the core problems of racism. Foley draws on the MLK and the civil rights movement for descriptive language.
"Race is not about hate and ignorance. It’s about greed. It always has been. And the purpose of this book is that you might understand the unholy relationship between race and greed, best understood not as a marriage but in terms of parentage: race and racism are children of Mammon....At its center is the claim that hate and ignorance are not at the root of race; rather, that root is greed. Notably, King, especially in the last few years of his life, drew attention to the three-headed evil that has plagued Western civilization: racism, materialism, and militarism. More pointedly, however, he drew attention to them in their most violent and common instantiations: white supremacy, capitalism, and war. These have been the inextricable evils of our day; we cannot address one of them apart from the two others. After revisiting King’s framework, I realized that self-interest binds these three evils together. This led me to recognize the three evils for what they really are: a demonic feedback loop of self-interest." (p1 and 6)
The early chapters are likely where most people will be doing the most highlighting. It is where the very nature of what racism is doing is being challenged. This is not a 100% change in approach, but I think a helpful refocus. Because it is an explicitly Christian presentation, it brings into play the role of distorted thinking and ethics brings into our larger societal systems. For Foley, the fact that slave owners must dehumanize to justify slavery or segregation means that other areas of ethical thinking are also distorted. Personal ethnics matters, but also so does systemic reasoning. The very nature of "efficiency" can be about minimizing waste, but once your ethics have been distorted, efficiency can use the loss of the concept of all being made in the image of God to justify profit over people.
There are other books that lay out some of the history of how Christianity and business interests intersected in unhelpful ways. Kevin Kruse points out that business interests used Christian rhetoric and institutions to mobilize Christians politically. Jesse Curtis talks about how business principle snuck into church planting and church growth models to maintain segregated churches. Sean McGever talks about how evangelism and mission of the church blinded the 17th and 18th century church to slavery’s evil. There are a lot of other books I have not gotten to about how extractive industries, particularly oil interests influenced modern evangelicalism. The development of capitalism has definitely impacted Christianity's understanding of the role of economics.
Foley's PhD dissertation was about lynching and his background in the historical study of lynching is central to The Anti-Greed Gospel. After the introduction and two chapters laying how the idea of racial capitalism and how it is engrained in our society, Foley lays out three examples of how we tend to respond to racism in the case of lynching. Two of those are mostly inadequate examples and one is a more positive examples. Francis Grimké and Atticus Haygood are the two negative examples. Grimke sees the problem of lynching as domination and exploitation. But his response as a pastor starts with black self improvement and white education. “Grimké falls into the same trap that many of us do: we see the material effects of racism, yet we address only the spiritual and mental remedies.” (p62) Later Grimké shifts to accepting violence when he sees that racial uplift and white education are not stopping lynching. (Grimké came to understand what many have learned, that information alone will not stop racism.)
Atticus Haygood also is opposed to lynching and, as the president of Emory University, was viewed as a racial progressive. But as with many white progressives before and after the civil war, he opposed the structures of slavery or Jim Crow, but not the underlying cultural assumption of racial hierarchy.
"Haygood’s theological and ethical imagination had atrophied to the point that he could claim that Black Americans were “brothers and sisters” and yet deny racial equality in every sense of the word. As much as he called for Black education and so-called brotherhood, Haygood still categorized Black people as a “national problem.” The point at which people themselves become a problem rather than the injustices that they are subjected to is the point at which ethical thought dies." (p72)
Foley's third figure, Ida B Wells, understands the structural nature of lynching and probably most importantly, that the surface level blame on black men raping white women was almost never the actual precipitating factor. In most cases, lynching was primarily about terrorism for the purpose of maintaining economic superiority. Whether it was individuals or communities, lynching was more likely to happen in communities where there was increasing Black economic self sufficiency. The KKK is one factor but at the time of most of Wells' work, the larger KKK movement had been pushed underground. The KKK from the 1880s until the 1920 less important structurally than it was before or after that period. Foley is pointing out here that Wells saw that economic independence was the center of lynching and how she maintained her Christian faith, about repentance and grace, while also drawing attention to how the lies of lynching worked to hide its actual reality.
Lynching no longer worked as a wide spread reality when economic systems changed and federal and state officials were no longer allowed to just look away from the problems. One of the point of her writing was that racial hierarchy placed the blame of lynching on the black victim's "crime." But the actual "burden was on white communities not to lynch but rather to be faithful to the faith that they claimed because, rather simply, one could not lynch and be Christian at the same time. As simple as that declaration may sound to us, it yielded death threats for Ida." (p 85)
"When lynching was conceived of as punishment, the only question that some asked was whether victims did something to deserve it. The proper moral imagination saw the brutality of lynching and concluded that no human being was worthy of it. Wells not only readjudicated every lynching but also indicted the very system that made lynchings appear reasonable." (p 87)
After the end of the introduction of the concept of racial capitalism and the exploration of the idea in history through the model of lynching, Foley spends the last third of the book grappling with how Christianity understands the problem of greed and how solidarity is a solution to that problem. A full chapter is spent on how Christianity grapples with violence as a response to oppression before moving onto another chapter about the role of truth in opposing sin. The final chapter call on the reader to look at a new vision of the kingdom of God to inspire creative thinking about how we can oppose racism (and greed) in a church that values truth and love and lives out that truth and love in solidarity with the vulnerable.
I think there are a number of reasons why at least on this initial introduction to racial capitalism, the concept of racism as primarily a problem of greed is more convicting than racism as a problem of individual hatred. First, basically no one self identifies as racist at this point. Even George Wallace after his overtly segregationist run for president in 1968 denied that he was a racist. But it is pretty hard to deny that greed does not have influence in our lives.
Second, I think that what I find most helpful about CRT is that it thinks about the problems of race in systemic terms not individual terms. For the purposes of CRT it does matter if you have racial animus as an individual, CRT is really only looking at systems. Racial capitalism maintains that systems oriented view, while having space for personal introspection. David French (I am paraphrasing from memory) says something like, "many non-racist people uphold racist policies for non-racist reasons." What French is pointing out is that systems do not fix themselves and once in place there are many reasons why those systems perpetuate themselves without individual motivations. Racial capitalism makes sense of school boundaries maintaining segregation for economics reasons. The impact is still segregation and still needs to be opposed. But I think a lot of white moderates or progressives are far more interested in maintaining their economic position than they are in addressing racism.
I think a third potential for racial capitalism is the history of Christian thinking about wealth. There are a number of other illustrations in The Anti-Greed Gospel, but this quote talking about Basil hints at the larger tools of Christianity to deal with greed.
"Basil utters a heart-stopping line in his sermon, aptly titled To the Rich: “The more you abound in wealth, the more you lack in love.” Basil, in his particular context, sees that the Scriptures frame a world in which accumulation almost always happens at someone else’s expense, and that person is often needy. Thus, the more you have and hold, the less you love your neighbor.
Basil here gives the reason for Christian generosity: it is not an extra nice-to-have element of the Christian life; rather, it is a fundamental act of obedience to the Great Commandments and, particularly, to the eighth and tenth commandments. It is difficult to steal and covet when your primary relationship with goods is thinking of how they can be redistributed to meet needs. None of this denies familial obligation, but it does remind us that love of neighbor requires redistribution, not just a different attitude about money." (p 20)
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/anti-greed-gospel/
Originally posted at bookwi.se.