THIS IS REVOLUTION>podcast Ep. 82: The Case Against Race Reductionism w/ Toure Reed

"Many contemporary activists, broadly defined, are quick to dismiss as racist defection any attempts to view racial disparities through the lens of class inequality, but in the 1930s and 1940s mainstream African-American civil rights leaders — among them Lester Granger of the National Urban League, Walter White of the NAACP, John P. Davis of the National Negro Congress, and of course A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) — frequently argued that precisely because most blacks were working class, racial equality could only be achieved through a combination of anti-discrimination policies and social democratic economic policies. But by the 1950s, the anticommunism of the Cold War had a chilling effect on class-oriented civil rights politics, setting the stage for analyses of racism that divorced prejudice from economic exploitation — the fundamental reason for slavery and Jim Crow. Indeed, this was the era in which racism was recast as a psychological affliction rather than a product of political economy."

-Toure Reed, "Why Liberals Separate Race From Class" 

 

Captions like these are why I love to talking to people like Toure and Cedric Johnson.  Too often they get billed as "class reductionist", which to me is not only an insult to their work, but to their character as well.  

 

Toure and I had a great discussion on the claims of him being "class reductionist" we also talked his book that I have recommended "Toward Freedom: the Case Against Race Reductionism"

 

Get Toure's Book Here:

https://www.versobooks.com/authors/2427-toure-f-reed

 

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