Economic Determinism and Racism

Economic determinism is the idea that economic relationships are the basis of all social and political arrangements.

This term started attracting attention during the primary campaign of Bernie Sanders, when the term was used as a perjorative by a minority of Clinton supporters to accuse Sanders of not having a solid platform on race and insensitivity to racial issues. It implied that Sanders thought that racism could be cured if the US were to become, in his words, a democratic socialist country, which is in keeping with Howard Zinn's "racism is based on economic power differential" hypothesis in his A People's History of the United States.

My view on this is that those supporters were wrong to assume that of Sanders (and yes, I supported Clinton in the primary, for her economic views), but that absolute economic determinism is also plainly not demonstrated in historical evidence; increased economic egalitarianism in the US, such as in the 1950s and early 1960s, did not necessarily result in the elimination of racism. In Britain during that same time, also very economically egalitarian as measured by the Gini coefficient, "No blacks, no dogs, no Irish" signs could still be seen hanging from shops and businesses. To the contrary, in our much more economically unequal period, racism has been on the decline, with the possible exception of the last few years.

To what extent do you think racism is rooted in economic relationships? I would argue that there is a relationship to at least some degree - discriminated-against minorities tend to be economically poorer, and even more so in the past due to explicit discrimination - but just because we have our current anti-discrimination laws and we make economic opportunity more equal to everyone does not necessarily eliminate racism at at least the individual level if not the institutional level.