> The US has historically been one of the most racist and discriminatory organizations in North America.
That seems like a very US-lib centric POV where the US is a cartoonish evil-dooer.
In my experience Mexico is pretty much just as bad, even more so in different ways too - classism, racism, anti-indigenous sentiment, Malinchismo, rampant feminicide, etc.
You have a point, but the key difference is the US is able to export its product worldwide using the military and corporations. I don't think Mexico has the same level of power.
My point is that these countries aren’t cosmic forces. We’re all humans that instantiate the same fundamental prejudices, instincts, biases, etc. wherever you find us.
I totally agree with that point. The cartoonish depiction was intentional, in response to the cartoonish depiction of unions. The statement is defensible in the sense that I left it wiggly: “one of the most racist orgs” is kinda vague. I’m past my “US out of North America!” Phase, and all generally irritated with one dimensional interpretations of the world, though I could still play a radical leftist on TV
I would partly agree. We're all in a single global system of social organization and it's hard to see outside that (capitalist realism). Often these divisions are sown intentionally by the upper classes. I don't want to say humans aren't shitty, but I don't think they fundamentally have to be. I think they respond to their material conditions and an appropriate kind of social organization and material support can reduce the bad stuff a lot.
Cash-only and cash-intensive businesses are an incredibly easy and common vehicle for money laundering. The less customer information involved, the more effective. Such businesses are incredibly widespread and vital to organized crime, and their ease of operation in this manner is baked into their DNA.
Sure some of them have, but their foundational democratic and working class structure makes it possible for them to have a progressive effect on society. By contrast, the corporations that they are in conflict with supported the Nazis and planned a coup against FDR because their foundational interests in a regimented, nationalist, power hungry, and elitist society were aligned.
1. Union busting since the New Deal era resulted in one of the most oppressed working classes in the world. Hence, low union enrollment.
2. FDR saved capitalism. I'm not his biggest fan. I'm a socialist.
3. Serious money was offered during the business plot. It didn't come to fruition, but the danger was real. Corporations are the real power in America.
Working class are people that have to sell their labour to get income; capitalist class are those that live off capital income. (Dividends, rent, etc)
If someone is employed in a government organization, like the CDC or a secretary of the white house, and they don't have capital income then they are working class.
> This is so unhelpful and dumb. The US has historically been one of the most racist and discriminatory organizations in North America. Does that mean we shouldn’t engage the US? Does that mean the US can’t be less racist? Does that mean the US isn’t a tool we can try to use to make the world a better place?
I'm not sure this makes much sense. "Racism" (I'm guessing you mean things like slavery or de jure discrimination) were practiced concurrently in the US and elsewhere in North America, not to mention many other countries. The US was one of the first countries to have major movements to end slavery (Britain was the first global power to do so, and they preceded the US). I think it would be most accurate to say that the US has historically been both among the most racist and least racist countries, just depending on how
you measure.
> Unions provide countervailing power to corporate power. Racist people are racist. Sometimes these can overlap.
Unions, on the other hand... Unions are a monopoly on labor. Monopolies reduce the amount of a good they supply and drive up prices. This means unions depend on certain people leaving the labor market that a union has captured. When a bunch of unions formed in the late 19th century and early 20th centuries, which people did the unions choose to exclude? More or less across the board, they excluded women, immigrants and black people. This was extra convenient, as members of those groups would typically work voluntarily for less pay, so the unions had double incentives to get rid of them. Many early Progressives were quite proud of this and other policies like a minimum wage forcing "inferior" groups to have to work harder to catch up to the white man.
The question we should be asking is why unions, minimum wage, hours restrictions, etc. were useful in eliminating "undesirables" from the labor force 100 years ago but help these same groups today.
For the former, I'd recommend chapter three of Thomas Sowell's Black Rednecks & White Liberals, about the history of slavery.[1]
For the latter, I'd recommend Illiberal Reformers, about the Progressive Era and its devotees.[2] Later Progressives were responsible for the school-to-prison pipeline and militarized police.[3] The Progressive Era has a wide array of interesting literature, including the writings of many of its early exponents (since they tended to be writers or academics).
