Dan Simpson

“Situated in the period spanning World War I and the early Cold War, Black Scare / Red Scare has four key objectives. The first is to define the relationship between and imbrication of racialism and capitalist exploitation, what I call “capitalist racism,” and its inscription in the United States to produce what I call “US Capitalist Racist Society.” The second is to theorize how capitalist racism created the conditions for the Black Scare and the Red Scare and positioned Radical Blackness as a preeminent threat. The third is to explicate the codification of the Black Scare and the Red Scare in Wall Street Imperialism as the internal logic, anticommunism as the mode of governance, and True Americanism as the “legitimating architecture” of US Capitalist Racist Society. The final objective is to conceptualize the “Black Scare / Red Scare Longue Durée” as a problem space that illuminates striking continuities in the co-constitution of anti-Black and antiradical policy and practice.”
― Charisse Burden-Stelly, Black Scare / Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States