A Moving Picture of Racial Capitalism

Chapter 2 relates the Reconstruction-era arrival of Chinese immigrants to the Mississippi Delta. After devising “the Delta Chinese business model,” they became simultaneously successful and Christian by exploiting food deserts created under the conditions of white supremacy. Focused on “aftermarkets,” this “moving picture” shows what racial capitalism is, how it works, and what it looks like. Fueled by chattel slavery, racial capitalism became the driving force behind America’s rise to global dominance. The chapter details racial capitalism’s ideological, cultural, and material “processes and commitments,” which employed a use-identity-justification moral psychology that today continues the aftermarket principle of exploitation begetting exploitation. The chapter then shows how racial capitalism accommodates itself to Southern Baptist religion and how Delta Chinese converts to Southern Baptist religion accommodate themselves to racial capitalism. Throughout, the Delta Chinese navigate what it means to be Chinese and American.