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Black Scare / Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States
A radical explication of the ways anti-Black racial oppression has infused the US government’s anti-communist repression.
In the early twentieth century, two panics emerged in the United States. The Black Scare was rooted in white Americans’ fear of Black Nationalism and dread at what social, economic, and political equality of Black people might entail. The Red Scare, sparked by communist uprisings abroad and subversion at home, established anticapitalism as a force capable of infiltrating and disrupting the American order. In Black Scare / Red Scare , Charisse Burden-Stelly meticulously outlines the conjoined nature of these state-sanctioned panics, revealing how they unfolded together as the United States pursued capitalist domination. Antiradical repression, she shows, is inseparable from anti-Black oppression, and vice versa.
Beginning her account in 1917—the year of the Bolshevik Revolution, the East St. Louis Race Riot, and the Espionage Act—Burden-Stelly traces the long duration of these intertwined and mutually reinforcing phenomena. She theorizes two bases of the Black Scare / Red US Capitalist Racist Society, a racially hierarchical political economy built on exploitative labor relationships, and Wall Street Imperialism, the violent processes by which businesses and the US government structured domestic and foreign policies to consolidate capital and racial domination. In opposition, Radical Blackness embodied the government’s fear of both Black insurrection and Red instigation. The state’s actions and rhetoric therefore characterized Black anticapitalists as foreign, alien, and undesirable. This reactionary response led to an ideology that Burden-Stelly calls True Americanism, the belief that the best things about America were absolutely not Red and not Black, which were interchangeable threats.
Black Scare / Red Scare illuminates the anticommunist nature of the US and its governance, but also shines a light on a misunderstood tradition of struggle for Black liberation. Burden-Stelly highlights the Black anticapitalist organizers working within and alongside the international communist movement and analyzes the ways the Black Scare/Red Scare reverberates through ongoing suppression of Black radical activism today. Drawing on a range of administrative, legal, and archival sources, Burden-Stelly incorporates emancipatory ideas from several disciplines to uncover novel insights into Black political minorities and their legacy.
In the early twentieth century, two panics emerged in the United States. The Black Scare was rooted in white Americans’ fear of Black Nationalism and dread at what social, economic, and political equality of Black people might entail. The Red Scare, sparked by communist uprisings abroad and subversion at home, established anticapitalism as a force capable of infiltrating and disrupting the American order. In Black Scare / Red Scare , Charisse Burden-Stelly meticulously outlines the conjoined nature of these state-sanctioned panics, revealing how they unfolded together as the United States pursued capitalist domination. Antiradical repression, she shows, is inseparable from anti-Black oppression, and vice versa.
Beginning her account in 1917—the year of the Bolshevik Revolution, the East St. Louis Race Riot, and the Espionage Act—Burden-Stelly traces the long duration of these intertwined and mutually reinforcing phenomena. She theorizes two bases of the Black Scare / Red US Capitalist Racist Society, a racially hierarchical political economy built on exploitative labor relationships, and Wall Street Imperialism, the violent processes by which businesses and the US government structured domestic and foreign policies to consolidate capital and racial domination. In opposition, Radical Blackness embodied the government’s fear of both Black insurrection and Red instigation. The state’s actions and rhetoric therefore characterized Black anticapitalists as foreign, alien, and undesirable. This reactionary response led to an ideology that Burden-Stelly calls True Americanism, the belief that the best things about America were absolutely not Red and not Black, which were interchangeable threats.
Black Scare / Red Scare illuminates the anticommunist nature of the US and its governance, but also shines a light on a misunderstood tradition of struggle for Black liberation. Burden-Stelly highlights the Black anticapitalist organizers working within and alongside the international communist movement and analyzes the ways the Black Scare/Red Scare reverberates through ongoing suppression of Black radical activism today. Drawing on a range of administrative, legal, and archival sources, Burden-Stelly incorporates emancipatory ideas from several disciplines to uncover novel insights into Black political minorities and their legacy.
323 pages, Paperback
Published November 14, 2023
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April 10, 2024
This book had a lot of good points and really laid out the structure of this specific period of US history, making a great point for the intertwined nature of the Red Scare and what the author calls the Black Scare. At the same time, for such a short book it was incredibly dense and difficult to read. I felt like I had to really concentrate to understand what was said because it was so technical. Also, the author uses the same terms over and over, which means that they get lost in the noise of the text and don't have the same impact as if they were used more sparsely. I thought she also overemphasized some points where she could have just trusted the reader to remember the main points of her argument and connect the dots themselves instead of repeating the same things over and over.
That said, the book did a good job of showing how US Capitalist Racist Society created two boogeymen, the Red Scare of foreign socialists/communists seeking to infiltrate and overthrow the US Government, and the Black Scare of Black nationalists trying to overthrow white society, and connected them all the time. It shows how Black radicals were treated worst of all, goes into detail about the different types of Blacks and Reds deemed dangerous, and goes into several trials and periods of governmental backlash against both of these groups. It shows the insidious nature of punishing people for ideas rather than actions, and I think is the only time I've really seen an articulation of the American version of "Freedom," as well as a description of what it means to be "American" and hence why racial agitation and organizing for better working conditions, unions, or living conditions is seen as "un-American." I thought the last chapter, relating the time period of the Black Scare/Red Scare to the present day, was the most relevant and relatable chapter, as the author breaks out of that academic tone for a second and it's a lot more readable. I learned a lot about Marcus Garvey in particular.
This book would pair well with "Black Socialism and Liberation," which covers a lot of the same figures and movements in Black history, "the Warmth of Other Suns," which describes the racialized terror faced by Black Americans and the Great Migration (but doesn't detail the economic incentives for racial discrimination, which Black Scare/Red Scare contributes), the collection of Zora Neale Hurston essays "You Don't Know Us Negroes," because she very much believed in the Red Scare and thought that communists were taking advantage of Black intellectuals such as Richard Wright, and Richard Wright's "Native Son."
That said, the book did a good job of showing how US Capitalist Racist Society created two boogeymen, the Red Scare of foreign socialists/communists seeking to infiltrate and overthrow the US Government, and the Black Scare of Black nationalists trying to overthrow white society, and connected them all the time. It shows how Black radicals were treated worst of all, goes into detail about the different types of Blacks and Reds deemed dangerous, and goes into several trials and periods of governmental backlash against both of these groups. It shows the insidious nature of punishing people for ideas rather than actions, and I think is the only time I've really seen an articulation of the American version of "Freedom," as well as a description of what it means to be "American" and hence why racial agitation and organizing for better working conditions, unions, or living conditions is seen as "un-American." I thought the last chapter, relating the time period of the Black Scare/Red Scare to the present day, was the most relevant and relatable chapter, as the author breaks out of that academic tone for a second and it's a lot more readable. I learned a lot about Marcus Garvey in particular.
This book would pair well with "Black Socialism and Liberation," which covers a lot of the same figures and movements in Black history, "the Warmth of Other Suns," which describes the racialized terror faced by Black Americans and the Great Migration (but doesn't detail the economic incentives for racial discrimination, which Black Scare/Red Scare contributes), the collection of Zora Neale Hurston essays "You Don't Know Us Negroes," because she very much believed in the Red Scare and thought that communists were taking advantage of Black intellectuals such as Richard Wright, and Richard Wright's "Native Son."
November 10, 2023
A deeply researched, clearly and passionately told analysis of the links between the anti-Blackness and anti-Communism - both repressive ideologies - that still work in tandem to enshrine white supremacy.
The Black Scare that Burden-Stelly explores is even beyond anti-Blackness: it is acknowledgement of the threat that Black radicalism presents to an oppressive empire. It is a rebellion against what Burden-Stelly names the Structural Location of Blackness, a central position of super exploitation necessitated by american racial capitalism.
As we come to terms with the nation’s involvement in genocidal projects at home and abroad, Burden-Stelley’s monumental work provides an important lens through which to view the violent form of capitalism developed within the united states, which, in her words employs “war, warmongering, and militarism as principal tools of accumulation”
The Black Scare that Burden-Stelly explores is even beyond anti-Blackness: it is acknowledgement of the threat that Black radicalism presents to an oppressive empire. It is a rebellion against what Burden-Stelly names the Structural Location of Blackness, a central position of super exploitation necessitated by american racial capitalism.
As we come to terms with the nation’s involvement in genocidal projects at home and abroad, Burden-Stelley’s monumental work provides an important lens through which to view the violent form of capitalism developed within the united states, which, in her words employs “war, warmongering, and militarism as principal tools of accumulation”
June 25, 2025
I want to echo the reviews that say this book was very dense and difficult to get through- it took me much longer than usual to break through the first few chapters, but overall, I think this analysis tying anti-blackness to anti-communism is very important. I liked how the author explained the externalization of racialized imperialism by the US, showing how once slavery was abolished at home, the US expanded internationally to poorer territories like Haiti, PR, and Liberia, among others, to perpetuate the institution of slavery to continue maximizing profits purely for corporate wall street greed. I also think the discussion on repressive legislation like the McCarran Act is increasingly relevant in the present (June 2025) re: silencing/ stripping rights away from immigrants based on holding anti-US imperialism/ pro-Palestine stances. Some passages in the book turn repetitive to the point that the message feels diluted (and the overuse of certain keywords also detracts from the reading) but nonetheless this was an interesting contextualization of anti-black racism within anticommunism in the US!
June 16, 2025
Incredible and rigorously researched investigation into the ways the Red Scare persists to the present day as well as how it both informs and legitimizes anti-black racism.
August 9, 2025
trying to brush up on political economy, Dr CBS has her pen on the scales of US anti-blackness and anti-communism!
December 9, 2023
Phenomenal.
July 21, 2025
This book effectively argues that anti-Blackness and anti-communism are mutually reinforcing and co-constitutive in the United States, especially as twin opponents of racial capitalism. Agitation against racism, discrimination, superexploitation, and violence against Black people threatens a primary base of capitalism in the sense that Black workers are a major source of profit extraction. Black communists are especially suspect and threatening to the American political order because they represent everything the white ruling class is afraid of. Burden-Stelly provides many great, thoroughly-researched examples during the Black Scare / Red Scare longue duree of the 20th century illustrating particular individuals, laws, government institutions, and events that highlight the connections between anti-Blackness and anti-communism. I learned a lot, especially about Black (labor) militancy pre-WWII.
That being said, I think the book could have benefited from a different organization of its ideas. It felt repetitive at times, both in repeating its thesis and in repeating certain case studies. The fact that, for example, Marcus Garvey's UNIA came up as an example used in multiple chapters to analyze different aspects of the Black Scare / Red Scare dyad made me feel like perhaps each chapter could have been a separate case study, each of which could illuminate how anti-Blackness and anti-communism functioned together. Paul Robeson, Claudia Jones, Ben Fletcher, Angelo Herndon came up multiple times in slightly different contexts. I wonder if the book could have been more effective if it was organized chronologically. As it is structured now, it felt more like a series of related essays, variations on the same theme, drawing from the same bibliography.
Finally, while the book does criticize racist labor organizers who dismissed racism as a separate issue and reduced it to merely a class issue and it does draw attention to how many Black people, regardless of their support or even hostility for communism, were scapegoated as communists or radicals and considered always-foreign/suspect, it didn't dig as deeply as I had hoped into the tensions between Blackness and communism. The Black Scare and Red Scare seemed to function roughly on the same level with roughly the same amount of importance given to each. However, I was anticipating an interrogation of anti-Blackness a primary contradiction at an even more fundamental level than anti-communism if only for the simple reason that even when capitalism is eradicated, anti-Blackness will still survive. Black Scare / Red Scare discusses how anti-communism is a mode of governance in American society, but I would argue that anti-Blackness is another mode of governance and one that is even more enduring and even more fundamental, one that overdetermines the Structural Location of Blackness. A white person is not under government surveillance and repression unless they have some (real or imagined) ties to communism. A Black person is always under government surveillance and repression regardless of whether or not they are a communist, even if they are vehemently anti-communist. This imbalance is worthy of paying closer attention to in order to better understand the relationship between the Black Scare and Red Scare.
That being said, I think the book could have benefited from a different organization of its ideas. It felt repetitive at times, both in repeating its thesis and in repeating certain case studies. The fact that, for example, Marcus Garvey's UNIA came up as an example used in multiple chapters to analyze different aspects of the Black Scare / Red Scare dyad made me feel like perhaps each chapter could have been a separate case study, each of which could illuminate how anti-Blackness and anti-communism functioned together. Paul Robeson, Claudia Jones, Ben Fletcher, Angelo Herndon came up multiple times in slightly different contexts. I wonder if the book could have been more effective if it was organized chronologically. As it is structured now, it felt more like a series of related essays, variations on the same theme, drawing from the same bibliography.
Finally, while the book does criticize racist labor organizers who dismissed racism as a separate issue and reduced it to merely a class issue and it does draw attention to how many Black people, regardless of their support or even hostility for communism, were scapegoated as communists or radicals and considered always-foreign/suspect, it didn't dig as deeply as I had hoped into the tensions between Blackness and communism. The Black Scare and Red Scare seemed to function roughly on the same level with roughly the same amount of importance given to each. However, I was anticipating an interrogation of anti-Blackness a primary contradiction at an even more fundamental level than anti-communism if only for the simple reason that even when capitalism is eradicated, anti-Blackness will still survive. Black Scare / Red Scare discusses how anti-communism is a mode of governance in American society, but I would argue that anti-Blackness is another mode of governance and one that is even more enduring and even more fundamental, one that overdetermines the Structural Location of Blackness. A white person is not under government surveillance and repression unless they have some (real or imagined) ties to communism. A Black person is always under government surveillance and repression regardless of whether or not they are a communist, even if they are vehemently anti-communist. This imbalance is worthy of paying closer attention to in order to better understand the relationship between the Black Scare and Red Scare.
May 20, 2025
Burden-Stelly traces how the Red Scare – in which all three branches of the US government, state governments, business, civil society, and bottom-up efforts targeted communists, anarchists, fellow travelers, and broadly progressive forces in the first half of the 20th century – evolved alongside a Black Scare. The state and capital used tropes like the outside agitator, the West Indian, and the Black red or red Black to attack Black communists, socialists, organizers, and workers, for, among other things, their interracial organizing, commitment to internationalism, and work to destroy the racist order that underpins capital accumulation. Tellingly, the US elite expressed that Black people's grievances against racism were a concern, not because racist oppression is bad in itself, but only because it might drive or delude them to support communism.
She introduces many new and precise theoretical concepts. For example, with “capitalism racism” and “structural location of Blackness,” she’s specifically analyzing Blackness and racism from a political economy perspective – super-exploitation of Black workers, violences that maintain the capitalist system, super-profits drawn from laborers in the US and abroad through imperialism. I appreciate the emphasis on war and violence as constitutive elements of the system, as, for instance, Black organizing against lynching was accused of making the US look bad and thus hampering the US’ war effort.
To develop these concepts and this history, she draws from an impressive array of names (particularly Black communist women), organizations, and (both state and activist) documents. The reader is introduced to the work of Charlotta Bass, Dorothy Hunton, Claudia Jones, Maude White Katz, Louise Thompson Patterson, and Eslanda Goode Robeson; newspapers such as Negro World, Crusader, The Messenger, and The Crisis; and anti-communist agencies such as the Overman Committee, Lusk Committee, Fish Committee, Dies Committee, Housing Committee on Un-American Activities, and Subversive Activities Control Board.
I liked her nuanced and thorough take on Black nationalism. While at times the UNIA used anti-communist messaging that may have reinforced the Red Scare, it also articulated valid concerns (about white communists’ sincerity, whether Black organizers would become an appendage of white-led organizations). Indeed, the Garvey movement proved a threat to capitalist racism and Wall Street imperialism and the insistence on Black self-determination, even parts that were ambivalent about anti-capitalism, allowed Black people to participate in interracial organizing from a position of strength. This point is missed by many white leftists dismissive of supposedly “narrow” nationalisms.
The relevance for the present is eerie. For example, Claudia Jones excoriated US immigration policy for admitting “fascist scum from Europe” while deporting immigrant radicals from Asia and the Caribbean. Just as, the US now happily accepts white South Africans “aggrieved” by the possibility of land reform (In South Africa, whites are 8% of population and control 75% of privately owned land, while Black South Africans are 80% of the population and own only 4%), while plainclothes ICE officers detain Palestine solidarity activists.
I would like to read more about “Wall Street imperialism,” a term she takes directly from Black communist writings of the period, and how the expropriations or ongoing primitive accumulation in the periphery she mentions are being theorized. How does her discussion intervene in recent debates about imperialism? I’m also thinking about Tariq Khan’s recent book that puts the roots of the anti-anarchist red scare in anti-Indigenous policies of the 19th century – the US considered Indigenous governance and collective decision-making far too democratic or communalistic for the onward march of private property and capitalism. In what ways did the Red Scare / Black Scare extend, build upon, or depart from this foundation?
She introduces many new and precise theoretical concepts. For example, with “capitalism racism” and “structural location of Blackness,” she’s specifically analyzing Blackness and racism from a political economy perspective – super-exploitation of Black workers, violences that maintain the capitalist system, super-profits drawn from laborers in the US and abroad through imperialism. I appreciate the emphasis on war and violence as constitutive elements of the system, as, for instance, Black organizing against lynching was accused of making the US look bad and thus hampering the US’ war effort.
To develop these concepts and this history, she draws from an impressive array of names (particularly Black communist women), organizations, and (both state and activist) documents. The reader is introduced to the work of Charlotta Bass, Dorothy Hunton, Claudia Jones, Maude White Katz, Louise Thompson Patterson, and Eslanda Goode Robeson; newspapers such as Negro World, Crusader, The Messenger, and The Crisis; and anti-communist agencies such as the Overman Committee, Lusk Committee, Fish Committee, Dies Committee, Housing Committee on Un-American Activities, and Subversive Activities Control Board.
I liked her nuanced and thorough take on Black nationalism. While at times the UNIA used anti-communist messaging that may have reinforced the Red Scare, it also articulated valid concerns (about white communists’ sincerity, whether Black organizers would become an appendage of white-led organizations). Indeed, the Garvey movement proved a threat to capitalist racism and Wall Street imperialism and the insistence on Black self-determination, even parts that were ambivalent about anti-capitalism, allowed Black people to participate in interracial organizing from a position of strength. This point is missed by many white leftists dismissive of supposedly “narrow” nationalisms.
The relevance for the present is eerie. For example, Claudia Jones excoriated US immigration policy for admitting “fascist scum from Europe” while deporting immigrant radicals from Asia and the Caribbean. Just as, the US now happily accepts white South Africans “aggrieved” by the possibility of land reform (In South Africa, whites are 8% of population and control 75% of privately owned land, while Black South Africans are 80% of the population and own only 4%), while plainclothes ICE officers detain Palestine solidarity activists.
I would like to read more about “Wall Street imperialism,” a term she takes directly from Black communist writings of the period, and how the expropriations or ongoing primitive accumulation in the periphery she mentions are being theorized. How does her discussion intervene in recent debates about imperialism? I’m also thinking about Tariq Khan’s recent book that puts the roots of the anti-anarchist red scare in anti-Indigenous policies of the 19th century – the US considered Indigenous governance and collective decision-making far too democratic or communalistic for the onward march of private property and capitalism. In what ways did the Red Scare / Black Scare extend, build upon, or depart from this foundation?
May 31, 2025
so brilliant. highly highly recommend!!. very compelling account of how anti-Blackness and anti-communism in america are morphed into two parallel modes of governance that have long reinforced one another + cemented Wall Street imperialism as the racist center of American society, these axes being fundamental components of US capitalism. the mechanisms of labor superexploitation of the Black proletariat through time are explained just brilliantly here. the relationship between subjugation and racism at home and imperialism and looting abroad is essential to understand; this book lays out exactly how spheres of influence through colonial power are propped up by racialization and dehumanization domestically.
"In "Genocide Stalks the USA," Paul Robeson wrote that, as the petition was being finalized, a delegation of the Women's International Democratic Federation witnessed in Korea "how the American government was practicing genocide against a colored people struggling for their independence." The womens report and We Charge Genocide needed to be understood together, he argued, because the subjection of Black Americans and the massacre of Koreans were twin functions of Wall Street Imperialism and its will to war.
W. E. B. Du Bois made a similar connection that brought together US domestic and foreign policy. He reasoned that the use of fear by "powerful interests in the United States" to rationalize armament and aggression had particularly detrimental consequences on the racialized, the colonized, and the working class. Through perpetual war, the ruling class extracted cheap land and labor from Africa, Asia, Russia, and the Balkans; weakened organized labor power in the US and Europe to increase private profit; and continued corporate control in Latin America and the Caribbean. Additionally, Wall Street Imperialism meant increasing war expenditures, training young men
"for murder," and overshadowing any possibility for peace with the threat of nuclear war."
"Ultimately, the role of war in maintaining Wall Street and other imperialisms and in ensuring superprofits rendered peace a crime against US Capitalist Racist Society."
"In "Genocide Stalks the USA," Paul Robeson wrote that, as the petition was being finalized, a delegation of the Women's International Democratic Federation witnessed in Korea "how the American government was practicing genocide against a colored people struggling for their independence." The womens report and We Charge Genocide needed to be understood together, he argued, because the subjection of Black Americans and the massacre of Koreans were twin functions of Wall Street Imperialism and its will to war.
W. E. B. Du Bois made a similar connection that brought together US domestic and foreign policy. He reasoned that the use of fear by "powerful interests in the United States" to rationalize armament and aggression had particularly detrimental consequences on the racialized, the colonized, and the working class. Through perpetual war, the ruling class extracted cheap land and labor from Africa, Asia, Russia, and the Balkans; weakened organized labor power in the US and Europe to increase private profit; and continued corporate control in Latin America and the Caribbean. Additionally, Wall Street Imperialism meant increasing war expenditures, training young men
"for murder," and overshadowing any possibility for peace with the threat of nuclear war."
"Ultimately, the role of war in maintaining Wall Street and other imperialisms and in ensuring superprofits rendered peace a crime against US Capitalist Racist Society."
May 25, 2025
Dr. CBS has written a foundational work on racial capitalism. This book is packed with history that was unknown to me or that I knew very little about. This is essential reading for American history. I can't believe that I never knew of Angelo Herndon before reading this book. Angelo Herndon is featured on the cover and was a communist and labor organizer who was arrested for attempting to organize black and white workers in Atlanta. Those who read the works of radical historians will notice a common theme in American history, and that is that working class racial solidarity is the ultimate sin to racial capitalism. I can't reccomend this book enough.
June 2, 2025
Any who dare advocate for true democracy and equality in the so called united states of america are deemed subversive and are targeted by the systems of power both via legal and extralegal mechanisms.
Dr. Burden-Stelly brilliantly traces the methods by which US Capitalist Racism holds onto and exerts its power and highlights how racism against Blacks has often been tied to accusations of Communism/McCarthyism and how the supposed most dangerous agitator of all is the Black Red/Red Black who dares advocate for equal rights. Apparently equality and democracy are too much to ask for in US Capitalist Racist Society.
Dr. Burden-Stelly brilliantly traces the methods by which US Capitalist Racism holds onto and exerts its power and highlights how racism against Blacks has often been tied to accusations of Communism/McCarthyism and how the supposed most dangerous agitator of all is the Black Red/Red Black who dares advocate for equal rights. Apparently equality and democracy are too much to ask for in US Capitalist Racist Society.
March 1, 2024
This is an absolutely necessary read, especially now with an impending election that threatens either more of the same or worse. The first step to organizing is education and this book should definitely be on everyone's list who seeks to arm themselves with knowledge as they hit the streets.
October 18, 2024
Essential reading for Marxists, socialists, and anyone interested in a just and equal world
December 6, 2024
I like CBS a lot, and where this excels most is in the lexicon of capitalist racism and its manifestations in the state - Wall Street Imperialism perhaps the most instructive.
August 10, 2025
History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.
September 24, 2025
Absolutely masterclass that everyone needs to read
March 7, 2025
I think this book is important in this day and age. So often we find ourselves asking “why can’t the black American community advance as much as our other counterparts” and proven by this book, everything isn’t always as simple as it seems. Time and time again we’ve been thwarted for over 100 years by having the red scare paired with black progression and both dismantle by J Edgar Hoover and the FBI.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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