Racial and class oppression are inextricable, with whiteness holding six times the wealth.

Evidence

The emphasis on class does not minimize other forces shaping social hierarchies, such as racial oppression. Clearly, important social differences exist beyond the fact that Black American workers earn 25 percent less than their white counterparts. Black Americans are incarcerated, sentenced to death, and victimized by predatory loans at much higher rates than white Americans with the same economic status. However, focusing on class dynamics helps illuminate those power structures that are constitutive of capitalism and for this very reason typically swept under the rug. Class and racial oppression are inextricable. The history of slavery and systemic racism codified under Jim Crow has long dispossessed Black Americans of their means of production, resulting in white Americans having over six times more wealth than Black Americans. It is no coincidence that only 1 percent of the top 1 percent of Americans are Black. The majority of Black American households are also Black American working-class households. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 89

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to the reader’s existing work on racial capitalism and how dispossession of means of production drives wealth gaps. — connects to: Whiteness itself functioned as inheritable wealth for white Americans — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations: How Building a…, 566; Nearly every white American holds wealth tainted by racial discrimination; Whiteness operates as property that can be strategically claimed or disguised. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 73 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Whiteness itself functioned as inheritable wealth for white Americans #corroborates (0.90) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 566
• Nearly every white American holds wealth tainted by racial discrimination #expands (0.85)
• Whiteness operates as property that can be strategically claimed or disguised. #expands (0.80) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 73
• Whiteness functions as structural privilege rather than mere social identity. #expands (0.80)
• Whiteness structurally occupies top income positions in the racial state #expands (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 406