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We currently reside in what Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci called “A Time of Monsters.” Exacerbated by the catastrophic COVID-19 pandemic, the Black working classes continue to struggle under what Black Studies scholar Sundiata Cha-Jua has dubbed “the New Nadir.” For this New Nadir, the lowest point in the socioeconomic conditions for African Americans, the transformation to financialized global racial capitalism has occurred through three interlocking processes: globalization of production and markets that have restructured how we work; federal, state, and local neoliberal social policies; and financialization. This combination amounts to an anti-Black-working-class agenda, reinforced through the underemployment of Black workers—deindustrialization and the dominance of service sector, unskilled, unstable, low-wage labor—racialized mass incarceration, a resurgence in state terrorism and private racial hate crimes, new disenfranchisement, political fragmentation via gentrification, and social humiliation. As a result, the dwindling material resources make current attempts at Black grassroots social movements relatively ineffective. With little social-movement progress, Blacks experience a drastic devolution in our roles in the political economy, social status, and cultural representation. Continue reading →

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