The problem of racism is not specifically an American problem, though Americans have made it into an important political and social issue as they have tried to find a way to eliminate racism from their society. Racism occurs whenever there is a dominant racial group that uses its position to discriminate against a minority racial group on the basis of racial characteristics. Traditionally, discrimination has been seen as a creature of prejudice, and until the late 1960s the dominant perspective among social science analysts of discrimination was that prejudice and intolerance were the causes of discriminatory actions. Other observers have focused on individual racists and have seen the problem as the individual motivated by hatred of a given "outgroup." Still others consider the issue in terms of patterns of segregation and community practices (Feagin and Feagin, 1986, 1).
Racism in the United States has been related to the issue of slavery, since the blacks in American society are nearly all descended from slaves brought to this country beginning at the end of the seventeenth century and only freed from slavery at the end of the nineteenth century. Many Americans probably believe that the problem of racism has been virtually eliminated from American life, though there is ample evidence to the contrary, evidence that is unfortunately increasing with racial incidents all across the country, including the massive riots in Los Angles in 1992 and the incidents that preceded it. The Civil Rights Movement has made great changes in American society, but it has not eliminated racism.
Marx examines society in terms of the political economy.
Marx argues that bourgeois society is a system of domination, with the bourgeoisie dominant over the proletariat. The economic system that is explained in this fashion came about with the demise of the feudal society that preceded it. Marx says his own epoch is the epoch of the bourgeo...