- TO CHANGE OUR WORLD FIRST UNDERSTAND OUR WORLD -

There is no question that we as a people are fragmented and
fractionalized today---molded by racism's hammer blows. Yet and still,
we constitute one single race-class in respect of the dominant racist
social relations. White America has one predominant social reaction to
Black America---a paranoic one. It used to be the fashion to say that
the whole white working class was exploited by the whole class of
capitalists. This dogma was deemed to characterize class conflict in
Europe and European-dominated societies. Current wisdom deems this
portrayal an error, or an overstatement, or only true in part, or
dependant on one's personal perspective. When it comes to Black folk,
however, no such hedgings are warranted. We maintain flat out that the
entire African-American minority in North America is super-exploited and
discriminated against as one entity by the entire racist white
establishment. In subtle ways often unnoticed by the general white
public, white supremacy accords with the interests of nearly all white
persons in America, including white wage workers.

Modernization of white supremacy is unending as long as the system
survives. This is a law of its existence, a conditional requirement.

In fact, throughout most of history the proper generic name for
"welfare" in America should have been transfer payments to whites, many
of the recipients being anything but poor. In the propaganda war over
reparations it furthers our claims for instance to recall the free
grants the federal government has made to whites throughout the 19th and
20th centuries. Largesse from resources stolen from American Indian
tribes or from tax revenues, including taxes and values appropriated
from the toil of African Americans. In this context Black reparations
would merely be a long-delayed effort to reach a norm long since
established by government practice on behalf of whites. >From the
Homestead Act (1862) during the Civil War on into the first years of the
20th century, the federal government made handsome concessions of
licenses, grants and franchises to whites---native-born citizens and
those just off the boat. Whites in America were the first to freeload
off the government. The handouts and their value consequences are worth
trillions of dollars today and are still owned by the descendants of the
original grantees. Some of the descendants are direct blood offspring,
others are financial offshoots. The predecessors of today's wealthiest
elite received huge government grants and privileges allocated free of
charge under strict racist handouts-for-whites-only policies. Much of
this government largesse for white persons came during the fifty years
following Reconstruction. While they were pocketing handouts, our
ancestors were locked mostly in the Jim Crow South, occupied cleaning up
after white folks, sharecropping and doing time as convict lease
laborers---farm, mine and domestic labor. The early "Robber
Barons"---the Carnegies, Mellons, Rockefellers, Fords, etc.---fed from
the pork barrel of government dole, getting real estate, utility and
railroad franchises, mineral rights and broadcast licenses.

The government did much for ordinary whites too. Particularly after the
Second World War poor whites benefited from a public housing program and
national mortgage system which encouraged home ownership among ordinary
white families. Tax incentives, exemptions and preferences boosted white
middle class consumption. Meanwhile, the very same lending institutions
were redlining Black neighborhoods, denying mortgage money. The public
housing program which spurred single family home ownership in white
suburbs, built the bleak projects, casting in concrete the residential
segregation we find today.

Dr. C.J. Munford
Professor Emeritus
Department of History
University of Guelph