The ten million Negroes of America form a group that is more
essentially proletarian than any other American group. In the first
place the ancestors of this group were brought here with the very
definite understanding that they were to be ruthlessly exploited. And
they were not allowed any choice in the matter. Since they were
brought here as chattels their social status was fixed by that fact.
In every case that we know of where a group has lived by exploiting
another group, it has despised that group which it has put under
subjection. And the degree of contempt has always been in direct
proportion to the degree of exploitation.
Inasmuch then, as the Negro was at one period the most thoroughly
exploited of the American proletariat, he was the most thoroughly
despised. That group which exploited and despised him, being the most
powerful section of the ruling class, was able to diffuse its own
necessary contempt of the Negro first among the other sections of the
ruling class, and afterwards among all other classes of Americans. For
the ruling class has always determined what the social ideals and
moral ideas of society should be; and this explains how race prejudice
was disseminated until all Americans are supposed to be saturated with
it. Race prejudice, then, is the fruit of economic subjection and a
fixed inferior economic status. It is the reflex of a social caste
system. That caste system in America today is what we roughly refer to
as the Race Problem, and it is thus seen that the Negro problem is
essentially an economic problem with its roots in slavery past and
present.
Notwithstanding the fact that it is usually kept out of public
discussion, the bread-and-butter side of this problem is easily the
most important. The Negro worker gets less for his work—thanks to
exclusion from the craft unions—than any other worker; he works longer
hours as a rule and under worse conditions than any other worker, and
his rent in any large city is much higher than that which the white
worker pays for the same tenement. In short, the exploitation of the
Negro worker is keener than that of any group of white workers in
America. Now, the mission of the Socialist Party is to free the
working class from exploitation, and since the Negro is the most
ruthlessly exploited working class group in America, the duty of the
party to champion his cause is as clear as day. This is the crucial
test of Socialism's sincerity and therein lies the value of this point
of view—Socialism and the Negro.