Black Scare / Red Scare with Charisse Burden-Stelly

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Nov 21, 2023

Charisse Burden-Stelly discusses the history and pervasive nature of the Red Scare and Black Scare in the U.S., exploring their impact on policies, collective consciousness, and social movements. The podcast highlights examples of anti-black and anti-communist governance, challenges faced by black radicals, and the dangerous nature of combining race and class consciousness. It also examines the presence of these scares in modern times and the importance of joining organized movements for effective engagement in the class war.

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Introduction

00:00 • 4min

The Black Scare and the Red Scare

04:03 • 10min

Exploring Racial Capitalism and Racial Hierarchy in Capitalism

13:57 • 4min

The Black Scare and the Red Scare in US Policy

18:14 • 27min

Combining Race and Class Consciousness in Social Movements

44:47 • 3min

The Red Scare and Black Scare Today

47:38 • 11min

Building an Organized Movement for the Class War

58:31 • 6min

The Red Scare — perhaps most well known through the era of McCarthyism that dominated the social, political, and legal spheres of the U.S. in the 1950s — is actually much more than just a brief window of time where communists in the United States were vilified, criminalized, and blacklisted. The Red Scare is actually much more pervasive and longstanding, originating decades before McCarthyism and stretching well into the present. And, when combined with the Black Scare — the fear and hatred of Black people in the United States — it really forms an entire mode of governance that has shaped the character, policies, and collective consciousness of much of U.S.’s 20th and 21st centuries.

To talk about the Black Scare, the Red Scare, and how they work together to create a specific hegemonic atmosphere and policy landscape in the U.S., we’ve brought on Charisse Burden-Stelly, an Associate Professor of African American studies at Wayne State University, a fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University, a member of the Black Alliance for Peace, and author of Black Scare / Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States, published by the University of Chicago Press.

In this conversation, we discuss the history of the Red and Black Scares by looking at a few different examples of how these modes of governance overlapped and shaped both policies and people in the 20th century. We also explore how these scares have followed us into the present and how they shape and color more contemporary moments like the George Floyd uprisings, the Stop Cop City movement, or the various solidarity movements for Palestinian liberation here in the United States.

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