The Persistence of White Supremacy in Contemporary Crisis

Jamelle Bouie claims in his Sunday Review of the NYTimes (April 19, 2020) article titled: “Why the coronavirus
is killing African-Americans more than others. The Racial Character of Inequality in America” that:
“If black Americans are more likely to suffer the comorbidities that make the coronavirus more deadly, it’s
because those ailments are tied to the segregation and concentrated poverty that still mark their communities.
What’s important to understand is that racialized inequality isn’t a mistake – it isn’t a flaw in the system. It
reflects something in the character of American capitalism itself, a deep logic that produces the same
outcomes, again and again. American capitalism did not emerge ex nihilo into the world. It grew out of existing
social, political and economic arrangements, toppling some and incorporating others as it took shape in the
second half of the 19th century.
White supremacy was one of those arrangements. … Whiteness, the philosopher Charles Mills notes,
underwrote “the division of labor and the allocation of resources, with correspondingly enhanced
socioeconomic life chances for one’s white self and one’s white children.”
It was not that life was particularly good for white workers, but that blacks faced additional challenges, from the
denial of formal political rights to social exclusion and widespread, state-sanctioned violence. …
By the time we reach the New Deal era, the racial differentiation of capitalist inequality was part of the pattern
of American life, even in the midst of the Depression. … At the same time, state-subsidized education, lowinterest home loans and the interstate highway system helped turn a working class of ethnic Europeans into a
middle class of whites.”
This long quotation from Bouie encapsulates our work over the course of the semester. The fortunate aspect of
the quotation is that it attempts to find support from the reading we undertook since January. So please

1. Explain why it may be true that the COVID 19 pandemic will exacerbate the comorbidities in the African
   American communities more so than in others.
2. Use Locke’s work to trace the trajectory of American Capitalism and
3. Determine whether Bouie is correct in his assessment of the Capitalism that we have inherited
4. Tell us whether the sorts of social arrangements we have inherited, say from J.S. Mill for example, have
   travelled well from the 19th century to the present and
5. Whether they would protect us from leaving others behind or in any way exclude them?
6. Are the social structures of exclusion, and the manner in which they have impacted this American version of
   Capitalism, indeed inevitable?
7. Offer some alternative structures drawn from Honig, as an example, that could redeem the legacy of white
   supremacy to which Bouie refers.
8. What physical and psychological consequences do the categories, if there are, that promote White
   Supremacy engender?
9. As you consider Perry’s work for the previous question, conclude your paper with some evaluations of the
   solutions you might you offer to the persistence of whiteness: social contract, Liberalism, Racial- or Genderspecific policies or might democratic cosmopolitanism be the road to follow?
   Readings:
   J. S. Mill, On Liberty, preferably the Norton Edition edited by David Spitz c.1975 (first 4 Chapters)
   John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, (first 6 Chapters)
   Bonnie Honig, Democracy and The Foreigner, (first 4 Chapters)
   Imani Perry, More Beautiful and More Terrible, (1,2, & 4,5)

Sample Solution