A radical explication of the ways anti-Black racial oppression has
infused the US government’s anti-communist repression.
In the early twentieth century, two panics emerged in the United
States. The Black Scare was rooted in white Americans’ fear of
Black Nationalism and dread at what social, economic, and political
equality of Black people might entail. The Red Scare, sparked by
communist uprisings abroad and subversion at home, established
anticapitalism as a force capable of infiltrating and disrupting the
American order. In Black Scare / Red Scare, Charisse
Burden-Stelly meticulously outlines the conjoined nature of these
state-sanctioned panics, revealing how they unfolded together as the
United States pursued capitalist domination. Antiradical repression,
she shows, is inseparable from anti-Black oppression, and vice versa.
Beginning her account in 1917—the year of the Bolshevik Revolution,
the East St. Louis Race Riot, and the Espionage Act—Burden-Stelly
traces the long duration of these intertwined and mutually
reinforcing phenomena. She theorizes two bases of the Black Scare/Red
Scare: US Capitalist Racist Society, a racially hierarchical
political economy built on exploitative labor relationships, and Wall
Street Imperialism, the violent processes by which businesses and the
US government structured domestic and foreign policies to consolidate
capital and racial domination. In opposition, Radical Blackness
embodied the government’s fear of both Black insurrection and Red
instigation. The state’s actions and rhetoric therefore
characterized Black anticapitalists as foreign, alien, and
undesirable. This reactionary response led to an ideology that
Burden-Stelly calls True Americanism, the belief that the best things
about America were absolutely not Red and not Black, which were
interchangeable threats.
Black Scare / Red Scare illuminates the anticommunist nature
of the US and its governance, but also shines a light on a
misunderstood tradition of struggle for Black liberation.
Burden-Stelly highlights the Black anticapitalist organizers working
within and alongside the international communist movement and
analyzes the ways the Black Scare/Red Scare reverberates through
ongoing suppression of Black radical activism today. Drawing on a
range of administrative, legal, and archival sources, Burden-Stelly
incorporates emancipatory ideas from several disciplines to uncover
novel insights into Black political minorities and their legacy.
