Reparations, racial exploitation, and racial capitalism

We live in a starkly racialized economy: an economy whose history includes the Atlantic slave trade, enslaved plantation labor, and Jim Crow. The economic relations and social practices that have emerged from that history constitute, as Charles Mills puts it, "a system that is run by whites for white benefit." The question guiding this set of papers is how to pursue a racially just economy in light of this history. In the first paper, "Reparations and the Racial Wealth Gap," I evaluate the argument that the closure of the racial wealth gap is owed as reparations for the injustices that created it. I argue that there are a number of problems with the argument; most importantly, it treats racial populations as separate corporate bodies, and in doing so obscures class differences within them. In the second paper, "Racial Exploitation and the Race-Class Nexus," I argue against Charles Mills's theory of racial exploitation.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Lenehan, Rose(Rose Elizabeth)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Sally Haslanger.

• Linguistics and Philosophy.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/124099

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/124099