On a typical evening, we are inundated with images of people of color as criminals. While it is true that blacks are overrepresented in the prison population, there are more whites in prison. Associating blackness with criminality is but one of the ways in which whiteness maintains its hegemony. It reasserts the social myth that blacks have not developed a mature enough sense to avoid a desire for instant gratification.
In an economy that thrives upon consumerism, it is hypocritical to accuse blacks of an uncontrolled desire for commodities when any reduction in purchasing puts the economy into tailspin. The key to happiness and maintaining the American Way is to be found in over-extension and debt-laden trips to purchase items no one needs, as the response to 9/11 showed us.
The cycle of the production, purchase and ownership of commodities is laden with exploitation. Even some products with a “made in America” label are produced in poor countries through essential slave labour. While workers in Bangladesh toil for Walmart, the Walton family lives in splendour. This is not understood as theft because the Waltons own the means of production. The real criminals, we are told, are the prisoners that we have incarcerated in our racially biased criminal justice system for drug related offenses or petty theft – yet a man that robs a convenience store of two hundred dollars has no effect on the living standards of millions.
There are those who are not content to simply wage war through worker exploitation and they embezzle, or create Ponzi schemes, to accumulate wealth. Bernie Madoff stole billions in such an elaborate scheme, for example. Financial crimes of this magnitude are a particular form of violence in that they impact a person’s ability to subsist in our capital-intensive society.
Former Homegold chairman Jack Sterling was sentenced to five years in prison recently, “after a jury found him guilty of on one count of securities fraud, marking the end of the state’s lengthy investigation into a financial collapse that cost 12,000 people, most from the Upstate, an estimated $278 million.” These financial czars traffic in funds most can barely conceive of, especially as many still struggle for the barest essentials in life.
From Madoff to Jack Sterling to Marc Dreier, the criminality of the rich white CEO is being exposed as a commonplace event. What is alarming is that we continue to disassociate their behaviour from serious crime and put blind faith in others like them. Part of the reason that they were able to bilk people is because we assume that if someone is white and male and has the trappings of wealth – they are honest individuals.
The continual construction of blacks as criminals aids these men in their endeavours, because we view life in binaries, i.e. good vs evil. If black men are deemed inherently criminal then conversely white men are saintly. The values that we have associated with whiteness in part enable these men to steal. Their criminal behaviour comes at the cost to untold thousands of lives and yet we understand them as the actions of a rogue individual.
A black man that robs a bank or a convenience store, on the other hand, is a reflection on his race. The presumption of innocence is an integral part of our social justice system, but in reality, it is only readily applied to those that exist with race and class privilege.
A critical re-evaluation of how we understand goodness is necessary. These men cannot be continued to be granted the ability to perform financial violence upon vulnerable members of our society because we have wrongly privileged their identities. The sense of entitlement that we have allowed must also be challenged if we are to achieve any form of equity in terms of distribution of our global assets.
It is essential that marginalized bodies begin to learn how the economy works. Many of the Western poor have not engaged, because they do not have the money to invest in stocks; however, what happens on the exchange has a direct effect on our lives. If one reads daily newspaper articles or watches news in developing countries, it’s clearly obvious that though these people are marginalized, they are aware of how organizations like the IMF work. Trade is a part of their daily discourse, because they have witnessed personally the ways in which the dissonance in worth value translates to abject poverty.
It is time to move beyond the individualized apathy that has come to be reflective of economics. Whether it is increased engagement in union activities, or taking classes on finance at community colleges, the financial exchange must be understood. We cannot rally against the oppressors if we do not know the rules of the game. Solidarity is our only path forward.