Colonial Slavery and Contemporary Inequality: A Comparative Study of the US, Brazil and the Spanish Caribbean

• In Event: Marxist Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Marxist Sociology Section Roundtable 1

Abstract

This paper advances a theory linking present-day racial inequality in the Americas to historical variations in class relations under slavery. In the former slave societies of the Americas, the racialization of class depends on the degree of planter autonomy during colonial rule. In regions where colonial planters exercised substantial autonomous power—Brazil and British North America—racial boundaries became tightly coupled with economic exclusion. Where the metropolitan state constrained planter elites—as in the Spanish Caribbean—avenues for freedom, property, and skilled labor for the (formerly) enslaved produced lower levels of racial inequality in the long term.

Author

• Diego Clemente Ayala, University of California-Berkeley