Class discord and racial order: economic interests and racial domination in South Africa and the United States

Abstract

Do economic forces account for the construction of legal racial domination? Comparative historical analysis suggests that varying forms of official segregation and citizenship exclusion by race cannot be reduced to either rising competition or specific class interests. Apartheid in South Africa and Jim Crow in the United States both developed amid industrialisation but differed, notably in being less pervasive and more locally imposed in the US. In these two prominent cases, economic interests were neither uniform in their demands nor powerful enough to consistently determine differing racial orders. This article argues instead that it was inter‐ and intra‐class conflict which impelled the construction of specific racial orders, building upon past prejudice. In South Africa and the United States, white labour and capital were in open conflict internally and with each other, with specific forms of uniform or regionalised racial domination used to unify whites across class. Racial domination in its varying forms emerged as a basis of class compromise refined by the state to preserve itself and its economy in response to ongoing pressures. This application of class compromise to the issue of racial domination counters class reductionist explanations for the role of the state in forging divergent outcomes, refining our image of state autonomy, race and class.