In his second article, “Race Prejudice,” Harrison argued that racism had economic causes and that capitalist’s deliberately fostered race prejudice, which divided workers along racial lines to the benefit of capitalism and the detriment of workers. It was in the interest of employers to maintain the inferior economic status of African-American workers and to use them as a source of cheap low wage labor to threaten the unionization and striking tactics of white labor.
This pitting of black and white workers against each other, according to Harrison, kept the wage level as low as possible. In asserting this line of analysis, Harrison challenged the defenders of white supremacy who maintained that racial prejudice was innate and based on a natural aversion of the superior white race to the intellectual and moral degeneracy of the inferior races as seen in African-Americans. Certainly, this belief system was manifest in the speeches of southern politicians like James K. Vardaman, writers like Thomas Dixon in his novel, The Clansman (1902), and in D.W. Griffith’s movie, Birth of a Nation (1915).
“It was in the interest of employers to maintain the inferior economic status of African-American workers and to use them as a source of cheap low wage labor to threaten the unionization and striking tactics of white labor.”
Harrison’s third article, “The Duty of the Socialist Party,” in the Call series called upon the party to condemn racial prejudice and reject what he termed “southernisms” or the ideology of Southern Jim Crow with its demands for racial segregation, disfranchisement of black voters, and anti-black pogroms throughout the South. The historic mission of the Socialist Party was to unite all workers across racial, ethnic, and religious lines.
This duty involved the reeducation of white workers about the threats to their economic well-being from racism, and it dictated that the party reach out to and aggressively recruit black workers. Harrison did not believe that socialism would immediately remove all racial prejudice, but he did think it would reduce the oppression on white workers and their susceptibility to racist propaganda and use as a tool to repress blacks.
Perry cogently notes, Harrison considered this “duty” of the Socialist Party to be sacred and virtually a litmus test of sincerity, commitment, and ideology. In a following article, “How to Do It – And How Not,” Harrison gave advice warning against paternalism and condescension in addressing and recruiting black workers and urged party members to treat them as they would any white workers.
In “Summary and Conclusion,” the fifth and concluding article in the series, Harrison believed that a trans-racial working class movement held out the promise of a socialist victory over capitalism and racism. In 1911, Harrison was optimistic and saw social, economic, and racial justice on the horizon. Perry’s close reading of the writings of Hubert Harrison results in a clear and through analysis of his political philosophy.