Abstract

The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.1"In the antiblack world there is but one race, and that race is black. Thus, to be racialized is to be pushed 'down,' toward blackness, and to be deracialized is to be pushed 'up' toward whiteness." This does not mean, of course, that there are only blacks and whites in some anthropological sense. It does not mean that political reality with regard to race simply reduces to two positions...