LOS ANGELES, September 3—"Don't shoot me! I'm going to college!" was, according to the bosses' radio, what students chanted when they walked out of Augustus Hawkins High School last week in protest of the racist police murders of Michael Brown, Ezell Ford and Omar Abrego. Does that mean that it was OK to shoot Ezell Ford, who wasn't going to college, or to beat truck driver Omar Abrego to death?

Racist capitalism in crisis hits black & Latino workers hardest

Capitalism worldwide is in crisis, and its essentially racist nature means that black and Latino workers have been hit hardest. Black workers, historically oppressed since the institutionalization of slavery in the US, continue to experience higher rates of poverty, lower wages, higher unemployment. The black-white income gap is 40% greater than it was in 1967. The US now has a greater wealth gap by race than South Africa did under apartheid. (NYTimes, 8/30/2014) Ferguson, Missouri, is no different from any other neighborhood—or ghetto—in this regard. Capitalism is racist to the core.

Red youth bring communist ideas and Red Flag to protests against racist police murder

US rulers fear black workers

Since the late 1970s, the rulers, terrified by the 1960s urban rebellions against racism and even more by the rebellions of black soldiers in Vietnam,  have pursued a strategy of mass incarceration of black workers. Nearly 70% of middle-aged black men who never graduated from high school have been imprisoned; black men in their 20s without a high school diploma are more likely to be incarcerated today than employed. (NYTimes, 8/30/2014)   Black youth are systematically pushed out of school, faced with economic pressures and a racist educational system.

This has only gotten worse since 9/11, when the federal government began paying for body armor, mine-resistant trucks, night-vision goggles and other military gear for local police forces. Even school police are now militarized. Parents in Compton, California, recently protested the school board's decision to  arm school cops with semi-automatic AR-15 assault rifles, as have LA Unified, San Diego Unified and Fontana Unified in Southern California.  At the same time, recent Supreme Court decisions have emphasized what black folks have always known: killer cops have a free pass. (NYTimes 8/26/2014)

Bosses divide & rule working class

But the bosses have a problem: they want to win black and latino/a youth to support this murderous racist system, especially as interimperialist rivalry sharpens and world war looms. So they encourage  people to register and vote for black politicians who will supposedly come up with less racist policies, although looking at Obama should teach us that changing the skin color of the politician doesn't change the capitalist political agenda. They organize protests that call for reforms like more video cameras on cops, as if that will make them hold back or persuade a racist injustice system to lock them up the next time they murder a black youth.

And they push a blame-the-victim ideology: "If you don't succeed, it's your own fault! Look at Obama!" A particularly vicious form this takes is "Don't shoot me! I'm going to college!" Does this mean that black youth who don't go to college are worthless thugs  who deserve to be shot in the back? This anti-working class idea ignores the millions of black workers who go to work every day, who drive buses, make airplanes, mop floors, flip burgers, just trying to make ends meet and feed the children who chant, "Don't shoot me, I'm going to college!"

Build working-class unity to fight for communism

We must not fall victim to capitalist ideology which tells black and latino/a youth to reject the working class and their working-class parents, that college is the way out, and that they should strive for the illusion of capitalist success. We must fight against the racism that the bosses use to divide our class. We must build a movement which can mobilize the masses for communism. The lives of all workers are important, regardless of color.  This will only be realized in a communist society where the division between mental and manual labor has been abolished along with class rule, and we can work together to produce what we need, without cops or bosses or money.