Racist Logic

Essays examine how capitalism continues to subjugate minorities in Trump's America, considering the most crucial aspects of racial disparity in the United States today.

Two years ago, Boston Review's Race Capitalism Justice helped introduce the general reading public to the concept of “racial capitalism”: the idea that slavery was not an aberration from capitalism, but central to its founding. Racial Capitalism in the Age of Trump revisits this theme, exploring how capitalism continues to subjugate minorities in Trump's America. In the lead essay, Donna Murch looks at how Trump's revived war on drugs racializes the opiate crisis, blaming Latino and black street gangs to distract the public from the true twin culprits: government deregulation and rapacious drug executives.

Murch's wide-ranging essay touches on the most crucial aspects of racial disparity in the United States today, including public health, hyperincarceration, and the turn to punitive immigration practices. Other essays in the volume look at how assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) incentivize the reproduction of whiteness while relying on the exploited labor of women of color; how for-profit universities disproportionately prey on communities of color; and how the reform of predatory lending practices has done little to alleviate the disadvantages faced by would-be black homeowners. Contributors not only explore the institutional structures that profit from black suffering, but also point the way to a vision of racial justice.