Toward Freedom: The Case Against Race Reductionism (Jacobin)

The most brilliant historian of the black freedom movement reveals how simplistic views of racism and white supremacy fail to address racial inequalityand offers a roadmap for a more progressive, brighter future (Cornel West, author of Race Matters).The fate of poor and workingclass African Americanswho are unquestionably represented among neoliberalisms victimsis inextricably linked to that of other poor and workingclass Americans.Here, Reed contends that the road to a more just society for African Americans and everyone else is obstructed, in part, by a discourse that equates entrepreneurialism with freedom and independence. This, ultimately, insists on divorcing race and class. In the age of runaway inequality and Black Lives Matter, there is an emerging consensus that our society has failed to redress racial disparities. The culprit, however, is not the sway of a metaphysical racism or the modern survival of a primordial tribalism. Instead, it can be traced to far more comprehensible forces, such as the contradictions in access to New Deal era welfare programs, the blinders imposed by the Cold War, and Ronald Reagans neoliberal assault on the halfcentury long Keynesian consensus.