Racial Capitalism: Power, Precarity, and Resistance

 Stereotypes and Gendered Labour

The intersection of race, gender, and capitalism shapes labour markets in ways that maintain inequality. Racial capitalism, as Cedric Robinson (2000) explains, is not merely capitalism that exploits race; it is a system built on racial hierarchies from its origins, where economic expansion relied on both racial and gendered subordination. Stereotypes and institutional frameworks create economic roles and justify exploitation, while modern laws and policies reinforce precarity for marginalised groups.

Stereotypes are far from neutral. Stuart Hall (1997) notes that “stereotyping reduces people to a few, simple, essential characteristics, which are represented as fixed by Nature” (p. 257). In capitalist labour markets, these stereotypes are deeply gendered. Black women, epitomised by the “Mammy,” were confined to domestic service, valued for their “utter devotion” and loyalty rather than skill, normalising low-status care work. Black men, caricatured as “all brawn and no brains,” were portrayed as physically strong but intellectually inferior, denied authority, and forced into manual labour. Sexuality was also weaponised: enslaved Black men were stripped of power, and women’s economic mobility was constrained by sexualised stereotypes, such as the “Tragic Mulatto.” These archetypes naturalised inequality and justified hierarchical labour systems.

Figure 1: The “Mammy” in Gone With the Wind (1939) symbolised loyal servitude, masking the exploitation at the heart of racial capitalism.
Source: Silver Screen Collection via Getty Images / DWHerStory.

Institutional Reinforcement and Precarity

Institutions reinforce these patterns. Immigration controls, for instance, “shape certain forms of labour,” producing vulnerable, low-waged workers dependent on their employers (Anderson, 2010, p. 302). Gendered expectations intersect with these constraints, creating a labour force that is highly flexible yet vulnerable to exploitation. Sara Ahmed’s (2012) concept of non-performativity explains how commitments to equality often fail: “Non-performatives describe the ‘reiterative and citational practice by which discourse’ does not produce ‘the effects that it names’” (p. 117). In other words, institutions can talk about fairness without changing entrenched systems, leaving structural precarity intact.

Racial capitalism operates differently across the globe. In the Global North, the focus is internal: segmented labour pools and precarious migrant workers maintain cheap, compliant labour (Anderson, 2010). In the Global South, historical imperialism imposed direct control over populations and resources, justified by racialised knowledge and colonial ideology (Robinson, 2000). Both regions are linked through culture and representation; Hall (1997) observes that “power not only constrains and prevents: it is also productive,” producing imagery and narratives from the periphery that shaped perceptions and stereotypes in the core (p. 263), a process later described as commodity racism (McClintock, 1995).

Ride-share drivers protest unfair wages and corporate reclassification tactics, highlighting how racial capitalism exploits precarious, racialised labour under neoliberal reforms.
Source: Kate Munsch/Reuters, via The Guardian (2019).

Autonomous Resistance

Resistance exposes these structures. Robinson (2000) stresses that “for a people to survive in struggle, it must be on its own terms” (p. 168). From enslaved Africans using docility as a mask for survival to modern anti-racist movements, autonomous struggle challenges capitalism’s reliance on racial hierarchy and institutional precarity. Movements like Black Lives Matter and migrant worker advocacy reclaim representation, contest the non-performativity of institutions, and highlight how the state produces vulnerable labour. Robinson (2000) captures this resolve: “the inextinguishable resolve to refashion society according to some powerful but imperfect moral vision” (p. 170).

Conclusion: Understanding Racial Capitalism Today

Racial capitalism is not a historical relic; it remains a persistent and enduring phenomenon. It explains why labour markets remain unequal, stereotypes persist, and resistance must be autonomous. The shared past of oppression, as Robinson (2000) notes, is “precious… because it is the basis of consciousness, of knowing, of being” (p. 171). Recognising these patterns allows both scholars and activists to confront the racialised foundations of modern economic systems, demanding structural and ideological transformation rather than superficial reform.

Figure 3: Global distribution of modern slavery and forced labour, showing how economic precarity and migration intersect with racialised global inequalities. Source: World Economic Forum (2022), data from Walk Free Foundation.

References

Ahmed, S. (2012). On being included: Racism and diversity in institutional life. Duke University Press.

Anderson, B. (2010). Migration, immigration controls and the fashioning of precarious workers. Work, Employment and Society, 24(2), 300–317. https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017010362141

Hall, S. (1997). The spectacle of the ‘Other’. In Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices (pp. 223–290). Sage Publications.

McClintock, A. (1995). Imperial leather: Race, gender and sexuality in the colonial contest. Routledge.

Robinson, C. J. (2000). Black Marxism: The making of the Black radical tradition. University of North Carolina Press.

Figure 1 - https://www.dwherstories.com/timeline/the-mammy-figure-and-the-myth-of-contented-servitude

Figure 2 - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/16/racial-justice-corporations

Figure 3 - https://www.weforum.org/stories/2022/09/global-modern-slavery-trafficking/