American Monument: Racism and Class

Based on American Monument, a project by lauren woods [lower-case intentional], this paper asks: when we say that racism is systemic, where in the system can we see it? When we use the term ‘structural racism’, how can we identify the particular properties, internal organisation, and types of connections that determine a white supremacist structure? Structure, as used in this article, is an outcome of function. The function of racism is domination, its purpose exploitation – the appropriation of labour, as it is shaped by the type of social relations specific to each historical period. As an ideology, racism has been used to rationalise plantation slavery, maintain segregation after emancipation, and divide and conquer workers for industrial exploitation. With the globalisation of production and its movement to the (so-called) global south, racism has been politically instrumentalised, under the guise of slogans such as ‘tough on crime’ or ‘war on drugs’ that are often wielded in contradiction to actual statistics, to justify incarceration and state-sanctioned killing of the army of labour that was left behind at the metropole. Racism is one of capitalism’s survival strategies.1 Pertinent to us is the question of how a civil society and its ‘civilised’ institutions (for example universities and museums) sustain and maintain structures that determine the actions of individuals who do not intend to be racist, but nevertheless are. This article takes two iterations of the work American Monument, as it reveals some principles in the interaction of individuals with structure and system.