Editor’s Note: This article is a follow up to the Reportback from Chicago piece. We received many comments discussing the question of race and identity in relation to the communist movement, and forwarded them all to the author. This is their reply to many of the concerns raised.

“The task of history, therefore, once the world beyond the truth has disappeared, 

is to establish the truth of this world” – Karl Marx

Understanding Race

As communists, we are primarily concerned with how classes form, interact, and struggle against one another. “History” is simply the accumulation of these struggles and how they develop, with contradictory elements leading to new social syntheses. How the classes express themselves amidst contradiction, then, is important for a qualitative understanding of fomenting class struggle, what tactics to embrace, and in what manner we must carry the banner of communism forward. Yet, it often becomes strenuous to identify what is an expression of genuine class consciousness, in comparison to oppressed classes simply mimicking the slurred drawl of bourgeois reaction. In a time of American decline this language becomes all the more delirious; Reactionaries have proven they can grasp onto the most radical of ideas and defang them, of course after stabbing the communist movement with their sharpest ideological edge. 

With this in mind, we draw our attention to the content of the racial politic: That is, the question of race, its relevance to communist organizing and the task of immediate communisation. The communist-activist space has spiraled into drastically different views on this topic. So much so that a “non-radical” bystander could be forgiven for mistaking this flurry of debate as one that doesn’t quite all gather under the communist masthead. And depending on who you ask, the genuine communists are only the few who wholeheartedly embrace race, or only the few who reject any notion of its existence, or better yet, the majority of communists who only have some vaguely important notion of race as an equivalent to class or other identities, not a fleshed out politic or rejection thereof. For as contentious as this debate is-especially in the United States-we feel that it is also fairly straightforward. Race, in its very essence, is an idea arising out of historical contradictions, one that has transcended its own immaterial nature by its imposition on material society. As Marx states on this phenomenon:

“The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism by weapons, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses. Theory is capable of gripping the masses as soon as it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter. But for man the root is man himself. The evident proof of the radicalism of German theory, and hence of its practical energy, is that it proceeds from a resolute positive abolition of religion. The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest being for man, hence with the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved forsaken, despicable being.” ¹

As such, race can be considered a nonreal analysis of social relationships: In existence it is a kaleidoscopic view of class society and development, and typically one that is limited to a previous historical consciousness of man, which misses the juncture at which the communist movement has arrived. Take the stereotypical European conquistador or mercenary of the 16th century, who is contracted out to plunder the riches of the New World. They travel great lengths, perhaps to come upon a Native tribal community, only to gather their form of social relations as more “primitive” due to the differing use of labor as well as the distribution of goods and value. Whether they knew it, the European was attempting to-informed by their knowledge of European social relations-assess the basis of class society within this tribal community. However, due to the history of consciousness before them, they can only come to the conclusion that this social hierarchy, culture, and distribution of the Earth is a product of genetic-cultural potential. Regarding the tribal community as backwards due to its lack of resemblance with European society, the European can only make a shallow phenotypical judgement of his own species. While we understand solely phenotypical variations in nature do not exemplify differing species, many a time man has weaponized alternative geospatial development in making conclusions based on these variations.

With the existence of eugenics, race science, and the centuries of recent developments in regards to social-racial hierarchy, we can conclude that racialist pseudoscience has been bled material. The imposition of race as a social category into industrial life, i.e. chattel slavery, the subsequent segregation of American social life and labor (including the labor market, trade unions, etc.) and the effects of deindustrialization on redlined communities, has made it a material social phenomenon which we will account for in the following section.

When our fellow communists debate race, they pine for its relevance to class. For the racialists it burns class, and for many of our comrades it is a pseudoscience. The latter position is correct on the ideological basis of race, for we are discussing an idea which is a metaphysical, improper understanding of social relationships. However, this position misses the codification of race into social relationships. Meanwhile, the former often misses the historical purpose of race science: As a distorted insight on class, it has been codified within class, forever tied to it. It is not something apart from class altogether, but always a means to analyze social relationships from a reactionary lens. It is a categorized race system which has placed, for example, Black and White workers on altogether different rungs of the social ladder. This is an aspect of labor value studies as a whole, and ultimately is only most relevant when understanding both groups’ relation to the means of production.

The question is of course not whether race exists, but its relevance and if it can be reconciled. In an age of declining standards for all American workers (real wages, health, debt, safety, etc.) do the Black workers and the White workers find any similar footing? And of course, what is the current battleground between communism and reaction, and how are these groups responding to their own protagonization? 

Labor Value & Race in the Mid-2020s

In J. Sakai’s defining work ‘Settlers’, the author comes to the conclusion that laboring American Whites and Blacks have never been class allies, citing the formulaic tendency of the former to ally with the bourgeoisie against the latter. Furthermore, they find the White “Euro-Amerikans” constitute the vast majority of the bourgeoisie, petit-bourgeosie, and labor aristocracy, thus being overwhelming non-proletarian. We disagree with their understandings of class, labor, and labor value here, but any communist can contend with this: Through extending their own lifeforce, the American bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie have feverishly dealt out concessions to the White workers. Many of these concessions have been likewise weapons pointed at the Black workers: We can point to the myriad of segregated workplaces, unions, neighborhoods, towns, and entire cities.

In 2025, this relationship extends through a reflection on each group’s share of social life. Let us look foremost at class. While there is no data accurately describing the total nature of the US population’s class structure, we can work with income levels, employment, and small business ownership to understand these factors. As a baseline, the US population in 2024 was roughly 57.5% White (not including those of Hispanic or Latino origin), and 13.7% Black.² Studies that can trace small business ownership (enterprises with sub-500 employees) find that roughly 85% are majority White-owned, whereas only 3% are on the part of Black Americans.³ Furthermore, in 2024 the median household income for Whites was roughly $92,000, while Black households made about 60% of that figure at $56,290. They were also the only racial group to see a decrease in gross household income-not even accounting for inflation- at a rate of 3.3% between 2023-2024. In this same time period, Whites saw no marginal decrease, and Asian ($121,700) and Hispanic ($70,950) households saw 5.1 and 5.5% increases in household income, respectively.⁴ Black Americans over 16 also held an unemployment rate of 7.8% compared to the national average of 4.6%, while 16.4% of Black families fell under the poverty line, almost double that of the national standard at 8.5%.⁵ It is thus apparent that of any major racial group in America, Blacks continue to hold the least labor value per capita, and likewise contain the largest proletariat per capita. This last study extends outward to access to healthcare and educational attainment (specifically undergraduate degree attainment), correlating in a lower lifespan and limit to professional/white collar work for Black workers as a whole. We can also get into the myriad of statistics on anywhere from segregation to gun violence to proximity to pollution: These all remain linear with the Black population bearing a much more extensive burden than any other group, especially Whites.

Regarding the weaponization of labor value to reconstitute its own position, it is important to be said that across the country, union membership as a whole is not a particularly white phenomenon. Black Americans 16 and older are now unionized at the highest clip of any racial group, still at a limp 11.8%, compared to a paltry 9.6% for Whites, and 8.5% for both Latinos and Asians, respectively.⁶ At the same time, a relative lack of access to white collar work or any formative training means that the most robust and enriching union structures are still exclusionary, and Black workers are still relegated to menial service labor with far less compensation. Even some traditional, disproportionately Black trades have suffered. The pinnacle of trade unionism in Chicago, the Chicago Teachers Union, has seen an astonishing decline in Black public school teachers in just 10 years, as they have plummeted from 50% to 20% of the teaching workforce.⁷ Likewise, more “blue collar” trades all report relatively vast occupational segregation; As of 2021 most Black union membership was limited largely to various transit unions.⁸ Thus, even as Black workers are more likely to enter a union, the entry to membership is still reliant on their relatively little training received. We could regurgitate federal statistics further, but at this time the case seems to be clear with little objection. 

As struggles against value accelerate and undermine the capitalist world in longer crises, many Black workers are relegated to the most meagre of social lives. They are afforded almost no safety net, and are seeing declining conditions at the quickest rate compared to other racial groups. This makes the Black workers prone to combust at any moment, particularly with the onset of even deeper crises. At the same time, there is a power vacuum in the cities and deindustrial near hinterland, where liberal strongholds are proving not so strong. As the communist movement fails to show its own muscle, the main threat to working class abolition is yet another story of allocationist demands. On these grounds which we will study in the next section, we can only say this feature of Marxism, liberalism, and fascism is the primary enemy of the proletariat. With an urgency we must resist any attempt to carve up capital, as an all too familiar language is sinking itself amongst the Black proletariat.

Contending with Black Nativism 

It’s a sour Wednesday morning, and I’m in my car, driving home a handful of radical Black trade unionists. These proletarians were, and are to this day, some of the most resilient, advanced, and militant members of the American working class. A daily life compounded by capitalist misery on the edge of society, I had grown to admire their tenacity and raw strength amidst the decay. In these friends, I am convinced that there exists the ability for the working class to abolish itself. 

We had just finished an action, berating various Chicago Aldermen for being beholden to capital, opening up their communities to private finance and enriching themselves in the process, while leaving thousands of Black workers in Section-8 Public Housing’s most miserable conditions. It was a self-indulgent action, but for these unionists it had been meaningful to finally see the power in City Hall that had been so keen on working in darkness in their redlined and poverty-stricken neighborhood. Of course, that is how Chicago politics have always worked. Outside of the mayoral debates and pageantry in the heart of the city, the far-Southside, Chicago’s very own hinterland, is auctioned off every few years to private developers and the most debased of capitalists. Aldermen and neighborhood councils here usher in a wave of neoliberal development in the name of jobs, safety, and economic integrity. When the rug pulls and the jobs either amount to $16.50 at an Amazon warehouse or simply an empty plot of land, there is no organized opposition to rally against the entire process. Federal funds and grants paid for by taxpayers wind up missing or utilized dubiously by shadowy developers. Unemployment skyrockets, leading to more bouts of drug usage and supposedly random acts of violence, symptomatic of the rollercoaster to nowhere. Outside of a few uncomfortable moments, the Aldermanic machine will continue, and the working class will either grow nihilistic or revolutionary, if they cannot scrape together the means to leave Chicago’s outskirts altogether. Even if they seek revolt here, there are no faces to direct their pain. The private equity firm in California that bought up their housing project is not planning a visit to the property anytime soon, only intending to collect millions in annual revenue from the Feds to reward them for their safekeeping. Everything is dubious, everything is cloaked in fraud and sick mystery.

As the ride from Chicago’s Loop to its border with Indiana came to an end, we continued to rattle off our woes at the system. The topic, as always, breached the territory of the federal government. My unionist friends, politically conscious and full of stories to tell, frequently railed against it to no end; This of course was no problem for me. Joining in, I recounted how capital’s crisis only evoked more terroristic measures on part of Chicago, Illinois, and DC. 

“And these fucking pigs in the government, what they don’t give to these slumlords they give to immigration!”

I went on for a minute recounting how American tax dollars went directly back into the very tools of our demise, accumulation and allocation, when I realized I was being met with a car full of blank stares. After a moment of quiet, one of the younger unionists, roughly 30 years old, responded.

“Yeah, that’s right. But personally I don’t like all that money going to the immigrants up in Roseland” (the predominantly Black neighborhood directly north). “It’s a lot for their housing, not ours.”

One by one, other folks chimed in, echoing the same sentiment until we broached the topic of ICE itself. For my friends, they held strong beliefs that corrupt Democrats were siphoning money off to illegal Mexican or Puerto Rican immigrants, and that that the federal government had every right to deport them all. I pushed back on the mutual bond of labor, the enslavement the migrants face in relation to the menial service and logistical work the unionists undertook to feed their families. I let them out of the car, and before a last slam of the door against the light drizzle of the rain, the middle-aged woman who sat in my passenger seat shot me an exasperated glance.

“These politicians are doing everything for everyone besides us.”

In many aspects of this, she was right. This woman, I will call her R, lived in the Roseland and West Pullman neighborhoods all of her life. She grew up hearing stories about the glory days of Roseland, its commercial district packed to the brim with flashing lights, businesses, and children chasing each other through the street. In her childhood, through the late 70s, 80s, and early 90s, the decay had been immortalized in an avalanche of foreclosures, empty businesses, gang expansion and unemployment. Her own apartment complex, which had been close to 80% White until the late 70s, quickly became 100% Black, and the site of a string of murders and drug dealing activity. In truth her community is more newsworthy than its ever been, of course all for the wrong reasons. Outside of the housing, it doesn’t take much of a walk through the vacancies and abandoned buildings-turned trap houses to see what she’s talking about. Today there are but a handful of remaining businesses and Baptist or Evangelical storefront churches in the area, with everything else boarded up or caving in.

After I said goodbye to her and walked through the housing project, sitting in the living rooms of other union members and discussing life, the curiosity of the earlier conversation gnawed at me. I began to ask these friends about ICE activity, including the murder of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez. I expected natural apathy at a political question not overtly implicating Black workers, but was surprised to find a rage bubbling over in each unit I visited. In conversations with about 20-25 active union organizers and local agitators, friends that I looked up to and admired, support for ICE was unanimous, with only 2 having even neutral opinions on the matter. For some, the question was of Mayor Brandon Johnson and his inability to look after Black people. Others were concerned with the hotels and motels housing migrants, especially in nearby Roseland. Another predominant fear was the lack of safety in the area, and the proposition Trump made of sending the National Guard to clean up crime. Despite concerns about the allocation of wealth, all felt ICE was legitimate in its force, and were not concerned about the explosion of federal funding if it meant less migrants would be in Chicago or the United States, as well as criminals in general. The mangled string of ideology that I managed to tie together from each member, their life story, and local history of the area can adequately be described as Black nationalism turned Black nativism. Or, if we are to be correct, an ongoing decay of nationalist sentiment leading to its most likely offspring: Allocationist nativism and subservience to the American bourgeoisie. Let us continue.

  Once considered a bastion of radical politics, it has been roughly a half century since the epoch of Black nationalism and the Black power movements. Following its bloody dismemberment on part of the police State and numerous extrajudicial killings of movement leaders and youth, Black Power today feels like a relic of a bygone era. Its sentiment is still popular among activists, but any real movement for a Black nation has seemingly been wiped out by COINTELPRO. Which is why it is all the more surprising that its remnants have found an unlikely home with the conservative bourgeoisie, manifesting itself in opposition to the recent liberal-democratic anti-ICE movement. 

The anti-ICE movement is an agglomeration of things: Class interests, political consequences regarding the correction of capital’s labor quota, and racial and nationalist conflict. As the contradictions of capitalism buckle, the cheap labor of migrants is both systematically eradicated and glorified. The bourgeoisie of various industries grow shaky, fearing for their bottom lines, and will attack or sustain the migrant on this basis. Thus it is no surprise that ultimately, opportunists seeking to protect the bourgeois right to domestic extraction promise a return to status-quo American civic nationalism. This return entails no reform, but rather codifies the conditions prevalent so far this century: Growing poverty, alienation, and slavery. For the Black worker, this also guarantees the White supremacy of the State and American society at large.

Who else more than the Black worker would be incensed by this very proposition? A chasm of cries to “return to normal” by liberals and the Black liberal capitalist see the Black worker at the absolute bottom of the social hierarchy, pressed into the most menial, degrading, and alienating of labor. Migrants continue to meet the inexhaustible needs of the bourgeoisie, and in exchange many will climb higher than the Black working class within a generation or two. Correspondingly, we have outlined the circumstances on which the Black workers hold the least labor value in American society, and the introduction of undocumented workers who-through no fault of their own-further drive down the value of Black labor. What’s left is a moral, racial, and national crisis in which Blacks and migrants are posed to engage in struggle against one another, both subjected to the degradation of value. Liberals only cough up a solidarity politic, choosing not to fan flames of class war but ask folks to be kind to one another. Communists, however, understand that the subject of Black and migrant misery is simultaneously the source of their potential allyship: Only workers themselves, as those that hold all of the labor power in society, have the ability to abolish their own codification as workers. In light of this, the bourgeoisie has decided to enlist class collaborators and racialists in an absurd nativist program.

As Black bourgeois, petit-bourgeois, and workers lead all racial demographics in Democratic support (83% of Black voters cast ballots for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump in 2024, 93% for Democrats in the House in 2022, 92% for Biden over Trump in 2020, 92% for Democrats in the House in 2018, 91% for Clinton over Trump in 2016, etc. etc.), both liberals and leftists have taken for granted Black consciousness.⁹ In place of communists building strength, many Black communities are sandwiched between useless NGOs, class collaborators, and abjectly dour political representation, all manifestations of their being left to the devices of bourgeois and local petit-bourgeois nonsense. Many times we White workers fail to notice these developments: After all, even the Black rulers tend to twist their lies in the language of racial liberation, love and freedom. 

All the same it makes for a dubious solution for the liberation of the Black proletariat. There is yet to be any evidence that Black capitalism, Black liberalism, or Black parliamentary language has granted even a degree of liberation for any proletarians. Thus while these industrial and local heroes prop themselves up-with the language of the Democratic stronghold in hand-Black workers draw away from this politic. When they do, they open themselves up to revolutionary sentiment. But as with any social vacancy, this also leaves room for the Right to swoop in if antagonized on the wrong line. Case in point: Race & Nation.

Black Power movements have sought to liberate the Black Race and Nation in what they identified as a land of settler-oppressors. The bourgeoisie, meanwhile, only has to perpetuate a fractional view of this national outline. In wake of the neoliberal order, the illegal migrant now represents a new generation of “settlers”, painted in a caricature as all nativist programs have done in the past. Using economic-allocative language (When will the resources be distributed to my group?), nativist campaigns appeal to the cold economic logic of supply and demand. In there is the kernel of truth that capital requires the influx of labor to drive down the cost of production. For communities having already faced collapse, it is then relatively easy to instill fear of an ever steeper decline on the horizon. It’s already there.

For my unionist friends, the most advanced section of the proletariat, they are ready to abolish capitalism in one swoop. But in this quest the question of resource distribution and racial history remains, flagrantly waiting to be broached by the opportune. Instead of communist protagonization on the prospect of wage abolition, it is both the bourgeoisie and much of the communist Left advocating vaguely for Black power and Black national interests. There can only be so much room for both, as they directly implicate each other. The abolition of the wage system implies the dissolving of the State apparatuses which upheld accumulation, while the construction of a Black ethnostate directly implicates the movement of migrants and their enslavement, as any and all nations will have allocationist demands. While most Leftists can agree that Black nationalism is surely an improvement on the conditions of today, this fails to approach the working class with any communist rhetoric or language. If we are to believe the workers and everyday people genuinely have the power to abolish work, we cannot at the same time point towards an intermediary stage of development where allocation prevails, where the workers fight each other for a declining pile of scraps.

Let us revisit the language of nationalism. The onboarding strategies of right-wing conspiracist groups like ‘Chicago Flips Red’, referencing the desire to turn Chicago into a Republican stronghold, have capitalized on this, often using progressive racial-nationalist rhetoric, slyly coating their American nationalism in a streak of Blackness. Utilizing immigration as a trigger point for the decline of American capitalism, CFR represents the conservative bourgeoisie’s willingness to incorporate Black people into a new, cosmopolitan American nationalism. This thesis can be seen in the decline of White supremacism after 2017’s infamous Charlottesville ‘Unite the Right’ Rally. Following the violent congregation of the far-right, more mainstream, palatable reactionaries took the chance to prosecute and sever ties with their racialist co-conspirators. In the wake of this, many far-right groups rebranded as nativist, nationalist types. The Proud Boys are one example of a group that is certainly racist, but ultimately prioritizing the Nation over the White race (perhaps to build power and pivot back to racialism later, but who can be sure). 

In this pivot, some of the far-right are finally courting Black American support for the National project, and it is beginning to seep into the trade unions and progressive organizations while their collaborationist leaders cry for a return to normal. Now, just as many great revolutionaries have waved the flag of allocationist nationalism, the far-right does the same. They, not the Democrat liberal, appear here as great cosmopolitan reformers, arguing that there is a place for Black America within America. It is the Democrats who want a continued reign of terror in Black neighborhoods, a continued lack of resources, a prolonging of wage slavery and sorrow. The Democratic establishment, with the great trade unions in tow, can only bow to normalcy to avoid their own contradictory nature. This allows new Rightists to weaponize economic backslide, health, education, and safety issues to prove these points. 

What is important to understand is that, even in the midst of a 10 point swing towards Donald Trump, the far-right has still failed to mobilize anything material in Chicago’s Black community. There is no movement. They hold little material power outside rhetoric. But we cannot underestimate them, on the fact that they have managed to capture the attention of alienated workers who are otherwise waging their own battle for survival against slumlords and the bourgeoisie. Circulation of their material has begun in its infancy. The task of communists at this moment is to emphasize our own strength, and illuminate the folly of allocative struggle. This can only be done with a physical presence and desire to cultivate communal relationships. Theories of what this may look like are to be thoroughly dissected, experimented on, and so forth. But we must retire the banner of race and nationalism just as we have of reform. This does not mean to pretend race is not bled material, but to emphasize the radical shattering of class and all of its transgressions.

Conclusion

While the bourgeoisie capitalizes on the common anxiety of allocation, the crux of this issue is always value. Value is the price of one’s being and penance for their consciousness. And it is still exceptionally clear that the Black workers have the most fraught relationship to value, on the understanding that their life force is bargained for on the most absolute cheap. Likewise, the remaining effects of chattel slavery and the ongoing bribes of the White working class have resulted in an American proletariat whose value has been codified by color, and which has often failed its historical mission. It has only led the more reactionary elements to further entrench themselves in genocide, slavery, imperialism, and colonialism. 

To ignore these stark contrasts is to ignore the ongoing bribes of the conservative bourgeoisie toward the Black workers, which is really no bribe at all and rather a defined calculation. All the same we must understand what impedes us: It is both the White supremacy of the nationalist anti-ICE movement, and the defensive racial-allocationist demands of the conservative bourgeoisie. In these contradictions the struggle for communism is as obvious as ever, as we must no longer attempt to play progressive bourgeois against one another. We must no longer envelope and tolerate any ideology of States and borders. 

The workers’ vices are those of their movement masters: Nationalism, Statism, Allocationism, Justice and Fairness and Moralism. They will only scream and cheer on the side of “either” bourgeoisie as they continue to wade in nihilist misery. In this time we can only raise to them a possibility of abolition and all the movement entails. We are workers against work, and in this sacrilege we have discovered that no idea is truly holy.

Footnotes:

1. Marx, K. (1844). Abstract from The Introduction to Contribution To The Critique Of Hegel’s Philosophy Of Right. Marxists. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/df-jahrbucher/law-abs.htm ↩︎
2. U.S. Census Bureau quickfacts: United States. (2025). https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/RHI225224 ↩︎
3. Leppert, R. (2024, April 22). A Look at Small Businesses in the U.S. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/22/a-look-at-small-businesses-in-the-us/#:~:text=Looking%20at%20small%20businesses%20where,other%20Pacific%20Islander%20majority%20owners. 
   ↩︎
4. Scherer, M. K. and Z. (2025, September 9). Income in the United States: 2024. Census.gov. https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-286.html ↩︎
5. Black/African American Health. Office of Minority Health. (2024b). https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/blackafrican-american-health ↩︎
6. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2025, January 28). Union Membership (annual) News Release – 2024 A01 results. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.htm ↩︎
7. Chicago Teachers Union. Facebook. (2025, January 5). https://www.facebook.com/ctulocal1/posts/over-the-last-decade-the-percentage-of-black-educators-in-cps-has-dropped-from-n/1008739441297210/ ↩︎
8. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2023, January 1). Composition of the Labor Force. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/race-and-ethnicity/2021/#:~:text=Hispanics%20accounted%20for%2018%20percent,(See%20table%208.) ↩︎
9. Hartig, H. (2025, June 26). Voting Patterns in the 2024 election. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patterns-in-the-2024-election/ 
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References

• Marx, K. (1844). Abstract from The Introduction to Contribution To The Critique Of Hegel’s Philosophy Of Right. Marxists. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/df-jahrbucher/law-abs.htm
• U.S. Census Bureau quickfacts: United States. (2025). https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/RHI225224  
• Leppert, R. (2024, April 22). A Look at Small Businesses in the U.S. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/22/a-look-at-small-businesses-in-the-us/#:~:text=Looking%20at%20small%20businesses%20where,other%20Pacific%20Islander%20majority%20owners. 
• Scherer, M. K. and Z. (2025, September 9). Income in the United States: 2024. Census.gov. https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-286.html 
• Black/African American Health. Office of Minority Health. (2024b). https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/blackafrican-american-health 
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2025, January 28). Union Membership (annual) News Release – 2024 A01 results. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.htm 
• Chicago Teachers Union. Facebook. (2025, January 5). https://www.facebook.com/ctulocal1/posts/over-the-last-decade-the-percentage-of-black-educators-in-cps-has-dropped-from-n/1008739441297210/ 
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2023, January 1). Composition of the Labor Force. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/race-and-ethnicity/2021/#:~:text=Hispanics%20accounted%20for%2018%20percent,(See%20table%208.) 
• Hartig, H. (2025, June 26). Voting Patterns in the 2024 election. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patterns-in-the-2024-election/