Black Rights - White Wrongs the-critique

( 122 ) Black Rights/White Wrongs

exploitation exists does not imply that it is the only form of exploitation.
All of us will have different hats, and so it will not merely be possibly but
routinely the case that people are simultaneously the beneficiaries of one
system of exploitation while being the victims of another, as with white
women, for example. Society can be thought of as a complex of interlocking
and overlapping systems of domination and exploitation, and I  am by no
means asserting that race is the only one. My contention rather is that it is
an under- theorized one and that it has repercussions for holding the overall
system together that are not generally recognized.

Racial Exploitation versus Class Exploitation

Let us contrast then racial and class exploitation. To begin with, assuming
that the dominant position on the origins of race is correct, race is a prod-
uct of the modern period,^20 so that racial exploitation is limited to the last
few hundred years and is much younger than class exploitation— and even
more so by comparison with gender exploitation. Moreover, it is a histori-
cally very contingent form of exploitation. While it is almost impossible to
imagine the development of human society as having taken place without
class and gender hierarchy and exploitation, the fact that race might never
even have come into existence to begin with implies that racial exploitation
might likewise never have happened.
Suppose we use the terms R1 and R2 for the races involved, respectively
dominant and subordinate. (Obviously, it is possible to have more than two
races, but we will make this simplifying assumption.) Now, to begin with,
it needs to be pointed out that the mere fact that two races are involved in
relations of exploitation does not mean it is a relationship of racial exploita-
tion. Racial exploitation is, as emphasized, just one variety of exploitation,
and if it is a necessary condition that races be involved in the transaction, it
is not a sufficient one. For it could be that the relations between R1 and R2
are simply standard capitalist relations. Imagine, say, that a group of capi-
talists from one racial group hires a group of workers from another racial
group, but race plays no role in the establishment or particular character
or reproduction of the relations of exploitation. What is also required is
that the relations of race play a role in the nature and degree of the exploi-
tation itself. What makes racial exploitation racial exploitation, then, is
not merely that the parties to the transaction are racialized persons, but
that race determines, or significantly modifies, the nature of the relation
between them. (Note also that it is not necessary for racial exploitation that
the parties in every transaction be of different races, for it could be that the
overall structure of R2 subordination allows for a few R2s to participate in

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