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Class
2 articles on Class
Class
Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass
Word Count: 4468 Includes: Seeking Status | “Fortunate” Slaves | African American Slave-Owners | Building Wealth | Civil Rights and Political Success | BibliographyThe discussion of class among African Americans in the centuries before the industrial revolution encountered significant conceptual difficulties. Did “class” as the philosopher Karl Marx described it exist among a people who were almost entirely enslaved? African Americans were industrial laborers in parts of the early United States, but the vast majority were agricultural workers, whose skills and statuses seem superficially to have been interchangeable. At the same time, the great transformation occurring in white society “from feudalism to capitalism” entailed the commodification of money, land, and labor. African Americans' lives were inextricably entwined in each of these changes. Undoubtedly, exploitation helped create the capital value of landowner and merchant. African Americans also made themselves. African American slaves can be viewed as the first true proletarians in America. A leading scholar of early African American business argues cogently that race, not class, was the key variable for African Americans. Examination of a number of categories reveals how, despite general economic ...
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Source: Black Women in America, Second Edition
Word Count: 8894 Includes: Civil Rights and Beyond | BibliographyWhile class has been a driving force in American history, it has been particularly central to the story of both racism and African American life. Throughout its history, America developed a racialized class system, by which African Americans were often shut out of venues of political and economic power, regardless of individual circumstances. Race and class have been virtually inseparable in America from its inception. Furthermore, as the black middle and upper classes grew following Emancipation, so, too, did tensions among African Americans across class lines. Thus, the story of class for African Americans is one of blacks as a racialized class and one of class divisions among blacks. Undeniably, there have been instances in American history when blacks and whites have come together to protest shared economic exploitation, and African Americans of different classes have fought side-by-side against institutional or structural racism. However, these fleeting moments of solidarity excepted, class all too often proved divisive, both within ...
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