Race to Labor Can Organized Labor Be an Agent of Social and Economic Justice?
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Race to Labor Can Organized Labor Be an Agent of Social and Economic Justice? By BILL FLETCHER, JR. — 4 — INTRODUCTION In the face of escalating and dialogue. We asked nationally-recognized indiscriminate killings of unarmed labor leader, scholar, and thinker Bill black and brown men and women at the Fletcher to help facilitate this discussion hands of law enforcement in America, and to help us develop trainings and United Food and Commercial Workers materials to address the internal racism Union Local 21 (UFCW 21) introduced within the labor Resolution 12 on Race and Labor at the movement, before 2015 Washington State Labor Council engaging the broader (WSLC) Convention. community. Resolution 12 (see a copy on Page 36 Since 2015, at the end of this document) called upon Bill has led us in the WSLC to create “a serious and open- an investigation of ended conversation about what we can systemic racism and do, (and) what we should do,” regarding implicit bias in the FLETCHER race and the labor movement. labor movement and As a labor movement, we were has done so in a way that has created a called upon to address the institutional non-threatening place for leaders to tackle racism and implicit bias that permeates extremely difficult and emotional issues our movement within our leadership in a deeply introspective and productive structures, local labor unions, our way. workplaces, our bargaining teams and One young labor delegate told us our trainings and leadership development that he “had never felt comfortable in programs. We were also called upon to discussions about race because they consider the implications of institutional made him feel guilty and so he chose and structural racism on the struggles the not to participate. But Bill’s discussion labor movement undertakes in working of systemic racism, and how that is for social and economic justice. perpetuated in custom, practice, and In the fall of 2015 we created a law brought him to that “aha” moment committee of elected and rank and where he can understand the damage that file leadership to begin this deep-dive institutional racism does to the human — 1 — soul…” and he wants to do something differently. about it. As a labor movement we need While this is just a reflection on one to understand this and to educate our man’s evolution of thought, it is precisely members about the threat this poses to what we hope to have happen across the our common struggle and to our souls. labor movement. We want to develop Over the past several months the through discussions and trainings an world has reacted with horror at the understanding on the part of union separation of immigrant families at leaders about the need to create a racial the U.S. southern border. What kind of justice lens through which we view our country could possibly tear babies and work and build stronger unions. infants from the arms of their parents, Race is the preeminent tool the surely not us? elite have historically used to divide the As horrifying as this is, it is nothing working class from acting together on new to black and African American their common goals and dreams. As Bill families. From slavery to boarding has said so clearly and plainly – “there is schools for indigenous children, to the just one race – the human race.” mass incarceration of black and brown And that’s where our work begins. men and women, separating families This primer traces the historical creation has been a mechanism for profit and and underpinnings of race. Race, rather quashing resistance. We must understand than being a biological construct, is a our history if we are to act together to political-social construct devised to keep effectively change it. working people from recognizing their We hope that you enjoy this common struggle and uniting against historical primer and that it inspires their oppressors. you to participate in one or more the So long as people believe that WSLC’s racial justice trainings. We some folks are superior and some are especially hope that you will be inspired inferior, then treating people differently by recognition that the struggle against and codifying those differences in laws, racial injustice is and must be a working customs, practices and culture gives rise class struggle in which the entire working to notion that we are racially different class participates. That is the meaning of and that races can and should be treated solidarity; it is not a matter of charity. Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO In Solidarity, Jeffrey G. Johnson Lynne Dodson President Secretary Treasurer December 2018 — 2 — Race to Labor: Can Organized Labor Be an Agent of Social and Economic Justice? By BILL FLETCHER, JR.1 Introduction: kidnapping took place in both Europe Colonial Beginnings and Africa, and those kidnapped were mainly brought over as indentured Race and the course of organized servants. In the case of Africa, those labor are inextricably bound and have kidnapped were brought over as both been since workers made their first indentured servants and slaves. appearance on the shores of North Contrary to many of the myths America. And that is where our story with which we are familiar, life in co- must begin. The settlers who arrived lonial North America was difficult and on North American shores, beginning tyrannical. The conditions of the in- in 1607, immediately encountered two dentured, or bond, servants were slave- problems, in addition to basic matters like for the seven years and longer in of survival. The first: What to do about which they were held bondage.2 The the people who were already occupying conditions for actual slaves were abys- the land, i.e., the Native Americans or mal, and, unlike their indentured coun- First Nations? The second: Who was terparts, their terms of servitude were going to do the work? Both questions for life (and, by the end of the 1600s, were fundamental. Would the settlers for the life of one’s children as well). recognize the existence of the indig- Despite the difference in their enous population, or would they seek status, these captive workforces in- to remove them? And, how would the termingled and occasionally united actual work of building a capitalist so- in risings—so-called “bond servant ciety in the colonies take place? revolts”—against the colonial elite. As Lerone Bennett, Jr. (1975) dis- The motivations for such revolts were cusses in The Shaping of Black Amer- varied. The famous Bacon’s Rebellion ica, the workforce for colonial North of 1676, for instance, was sparked by a America was largely kidnapped. The demand for land (which meant further 1 This paper could not have been written without the involvement and assistance of Kelly Coogan- Gehr, who served as an excellent editor; Roneva Keel, who served as an outstanding researcher; and Evan Woods, who offered pointed and useful research and feedback. This was an amazing team project. To this we must add that the support of Washington State Labor Council President Jeff Johnson and Secretary Treasurer Lynne Dodson has been essential not only in the writing and completion of this document, but in advancing the entire racial justice education project undertaken by the Washington State Labor Council. 2 Indentured servants were typically contracted to work for seven years for their masters in return for passage to North America; masters often extended these terms beyond seven years as penalties for minor infractions, extracting as much labor as possible from their servants on whose labor, along with that of slaves, the survival of the colonies depended. See Morgan 1975, 216. — 3 — invasions of territories occupied and Europeans existed in a racial twilight controlled by Native Americans) but zone, in some cases for centuries, e.g., morphed into a revolt by both inden- Irish. tured servants and slaves that shook the The arbitrary and artificial division colonial system.3 of people into different races was made During the 1600s, in the face of real and concrete through various legal challenges from Native Americans on provisions designed to foster whites’ the frontier and incipient united revolts contempt for Blacks and Indians and by bondservants and slaves in the co- thereby prevent them from making lonial workforce, the colonial elite im- common cause and coming together posed a system, the prototype of which against the colonial elite. Blacks could had been developed during the English be enslaved, and, over the course of the occupation of Ireland to divide and 1600s, slavery became a system for life weaken the Irish people.4 It involved and for the life of one’s child (chattel the construction of a social-political slavery). Whites could be bondser- system of giving people different rights vants but not slaves.6 In 1680 Virginia based on a non-scientific—yet very passed a law prescribing thirty lashes real—category called race. to any “negroe or other slave” who lift- In the context of North America, ed his hand against a Christian. As his- race involved the division of humanity torian Edmund Morgan has explained, into different categories, and it is here “This was a particularly effective pro- that the notion of being white came vision in that it allowed servants to into existence. Anyone with a drop bully slaves without fear of retaliation, of African blood was black. Native thus placing them psychologically on Americans were red; however, in an ex- par with masters” (331). Another law ample of perversity associated with so- in 1705 ordered the dismemberment of called race, one drop of Native Ameri- unruly slaves but specifically forbade can blood did not make one a Native masters from whipping white servants American.5 Europeans could become without an order from a justice of the white—this meaning that certain Eu- peace (Morgan 1975, 352–60).