Why should white people concern themselves with white racism? It doesn't harm them, correct?

I disagree. White racism (institutional and personal discrimination against black and other people of color) also dehumanizes white people. Treating nonwhite people as if they are invisible or worthless degrades the humanity of white people.

We have choices. One is passive racism. No person can be free if she or he goes along to get along in the racial humiliation of another.

Now, I'm not the first to say that race and class affect personal identity.

In some cases, white racism can encourage some working-class whites to identify with ruling-class whites instead of with working-class blacks and other minorities.

To be sure, racial identity is many things. One is "white-skin privilege."

For most whites most of the time, our skin color is the ticket to privileged treatment in America. Yet often this privilege is invisible--to us.

By contrast, ask a black or nonwhite person if he or she can "see" the privileges of white skin. Which is why we need to deal with our "white problem" openly and honestly. A look back at the recent century and people's attempts to do so is instructive. One worthy example is the anti-racist struggles led by the Communist Party during the 1930s. Leading the way were many whites who fought white racism. Another example is the civil rights struggles led by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the 1960s. Then, black and white people united to fight racial injustice. These people won many important victories. This was historic progress for a society steeped in white racism.

Karl Marx wrote: "The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living." The American Revolution created a system of liberty for white people, with the rich ruling. Yet this same liberty failed to end slavery for black people.

In our nation, white racism is a legacy of slavery capitalism. It spawned the belief in white supremacy and black inferiority, taken to be permanent features of both races. On one hand, slavery capitalism tried to control black slaves through violence. On the other, this ugly institution tried to justify the theft of the slaves' labor through propaganda that claimed enslavement helped slaves. Their fight on both fronts was the longest and, ultimately, the most successful working-class struggle in our history.

We return to our era. There has been an economic transformation in America during the past 25 years, due to the changed relations of economic and political power between our nation and others. Credit this change for ending the trend of improved living standards that followed World War II. This period of capitalist prosperity and stability was an exception. For the rule, look at our precarious living and working conditions today.

Part of the story is how the U.S. ruling class and their employees (our politicians) have manipulated white racism to combat whites' fear of economic instability. The ruling few have convinced many white people to blame black and other nonwhite people, instead of our economy that relies on bosses ruling over workers.

Take California. The military base closures and corporate downsizings and restructurings that cut stable, well-paying jobs during the 1990s paved the way for attacks on immigrants and affirmative action. Former Governor Pete Wilson led these attacks. He pandered to white racism, worsened by fear and anxiety about economic stability. Such a scheme meets the needs of the few who govern the many.

Well hidden by the communication and education systems they own and influence, our ruling class (corporate America and Wall Street) profits by funding political campaigns, which encourage racism that splits workers along the color line. This isn't new, of course. America's rulers have always sought to control worker unrest through the color line--white against black and other people of color.

Racism props up capitalism. Today the racial lines of our economic and social crisis are there for all who choose to see. Consider the status of black Americans: every fourth man in prison, on parole, or on probation; one of every three children in poverty. Laws and policies crafted by our corporate Democrats and Republicans have harmed black people. Why? Their labor is less and less needed to create wealth for the few. Incarceration has become a growing solution to the crisis of black employment.

There's no "driving while white." Yet "driving while black or brown" is part of daily life for many black and brown people. Likewise, "living while white" doesn't exist, but "living while black or brown" does, as the regular police killings of unarmed black and brown people show.

In the meantime, biracial resistance to white racism takes different forms in different places.

Historian Staughton Lynd has an interesting essay about black and white prisoners dealing with white racism during an uprising sparked by prison authorities in Ohio (Monthly Review, Feb. 2000). He writes: "The self-organized resistance of black and white prisoners can become a model for the rest of us in overcoming racism. Life will continue to ask of working people that they find their way to solidarity. Surely, there are sufficient instances of deep attitudinal change on the part of white workers to persuade us that a multi-ethnic class consciousness is not only necessary, but also possible."

Heeding Lynd's call are the blacks and whites of all ages in the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal and anti-police brutality movements. They show by example that people standing together can force the system to respond on their terms. Big public demonstrations for justice can work. We need more of them.

William Tabb observes that, "What fuels more fundamental change is a radical vision" (Monthly Review, Mar. 2000). It includes the abolition of white racism, the great weakness of the American working class. The seed of such a radical change may well be the Seattle demonstrations against the World Trade Organization and Washington D.C. demonstrations against the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.