Much has been written about Ferguson. The rhetoric of self-defense espoused by law enforcement to justify its use of military-grade weaponry against black and brown bodies is mirrored by civilians’ use of firearms for the same purported reason. Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, Jonathan Ferrell, now Michael Brown: They are the tip of the iceberg, the few cases that did garner at least some mainstream media attention, where the invocation of self-defense was critically questioned. Dozens of victims will never be named, and in their files the principle of self-defense will remain unchallenged.
The importance of the events in Ferguson cannot be overstated. At a teach-in Tuesday, organized by the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, five speakers expertly contextualized Ferguson not as an incident, but as the direct consequence of a societal system that is ordered along the lines of race, class and gender. As Anthony Bogues, director of the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, suggested, Ferguson can be seen as a flashpoint, an instance in which a set of hidden, festering issues explodes into full view and that thereby illuminates realities about our own society.
One such reality is that self-defense is a concept that only works in favor of those already in positions of power, in positions of privilege. Power is the line between being called a murderer or a homeowner, a trespasser or a victim, a hoodlum or a citizen. Ultimately, the decisive factor in determining whether violence is justified or not has frequently depended on the general understanding of how both parties are positioned within this raced, classed and gendered system.
This violence plays out not just on a physical level, but on an economic level as well. For the rest of this column, I want to focus not on Ferguson, but on that other arena in which questions of self-defense and racial justice surfaced this summer: minimum wages.
Here the vocabulary of self-defense might change a little, but the implications are the same: Only those who benefit from keeping the minimum wage low oppose raising it. In Rhode Island, it was the Hospitality Association, a hotel industry trade group. Hotels would see their profit margins diminish significantly if the minimum wage were increased to $15, a proposal the City of Providence was said to be considering before the Rhode Island House of Representatives passed a ban on municipal minimum wage increases.
The issue of minimum wages has come to the forefront most prominently in the fast food industry. Over the past month, fast food workers across the nation went on strike in what CNN has called a campaign of “civil disobedience.” The workers are advocating for a hike in the minimum wage — currently about $8.74 on average — and the right to join labor unions without repercussions. In cities such as New York, Chicago and Detroit, dozens of protesting workers were arrested for disorderly conduct.
What links Ferguson and the fight of the fast food workers is the issue of racial justice. Economic justice and racial justice are inextricably connected. As Bryce Covert summarized in a column for ThinkProgress in 2013, “People of color are far more likely to work minimum-wage jobs” and are much more likely to fall below the poverty line as tipped workers than other groups. Female servers of color are especially at risk, as they make only 60 percent of what male servers earn in the food industry.
The real issue, however, is that minimum wage is not just a question of income, of what products a family can buy in any given month. The relative poverty of communities of color leads to a vicious cycle of housing inequality, unequal access to competitive education and situations such as the one in Ferguson, where the majority of the population is black and dramatically underrepresented politically. Five of the six city council members are white, as is the mayor.
The structural inequalities that underlie American society then express themselves on an economic, social and political level, and repeat ad infinitum. Fast food workers themselves, too, have called attention to economic rights as civil rights and the long history of their denial to workers of color. When New York City workers walked off the job in 2013 to protest the industry’s low wages and lack of unions, they did so on April 4, the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Like the sanitation workers that struck in Memphis in 1968, the fast food workers carried “I Am A Man” and “I Am A Woman” placards. The dehumanization of the minimum-wage worker thus cannot be seen separate from race or from civil rights, though clearly the circumstances are not the same as in ’68.
This issue hits close to home. While only about 2 percent of the American workforce are employed in a minimum-wage job, 26 percent hold a low-wage job. In other words, 35 million Americans earn $10.55 or less an hour. They are crucial not only to the economy but to our day-to-day lives.
Our connections to them may be tangential: we might frequent restaurants in the city, or our families might sleep in hotels when they visit Providence. Our connections to them may be profound, with campus employees, friends or family members working in minimum- or low-wage jobs. But no matter the form of these connections, we owe it to them to acknowledge that as Ivy League students, we are in a position of privilege, we are not marginalized, and we must stand in solidarity. As in the ’60s, it is the principle of human dignity that unites.
Corporatization wreaks havoc across the board. Labor groups in all sectors are prevented from unionizing, including graduate students. The University outsourced its mailroom operations over the summer. Solidarity between these groups — that is, acknowledging that these struggles are all different incarnations of the same dynamic — can bring much good. But while it may be similar corporate structures that underlie the process, this does not mean graduate students face the exact same structures of marginalization as fast food workers, as home care workers or as city employees.
To do justice to and to address fully the particular imbrication of race, gender and class that shapes the minimum wage debate, it is important to not lose sight of the differences. Racial stratification in the labor market affects some sectors disproportionately.
In Providence, fast food workers are not looking at any immediate improvement, either. In June, the Rhode Island House finance committee amended the state budget to prevent individual municipalities from establishing a minimum wage. The budget was signed into effect by Gov. Lincoln Chafee ’75 P’14 P’17. To some, linking the murder of an 18-year-old man to the efforts of these workers may seem far-fetched, but I disagree. While the particular means used to produce difference may vary, they are all rooted in the same mechanisms that function to preserve the order of the status quo.
Suzanne Enzerink GS is a graduate student in the Department of American Studies and can be reached at suzanne_enzerink@brown.edu.
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