Care, Profit, and the Politics of Race

Abstract This essay relies on the historical insights of Black feminism and racial capitalism to better understand how capitalism has incorporated care as an institutionalized, hierarchical, profit-oriented system which contributes to social and economic inequality. There is a long history of profit extraction and labor exploitation from the care economy in US racial capitalism, particularly when Black and Brown workers and communities are involved. Because of neoliberal restructuring and the middle-class care crisis over the last few decades, this form of capital accumulation increasingly became a hallmark of the US economy. The care economy illustrates exploitation from care labor as well as from the bodies of people being cared for. The importance of the care economy also creates new opportunities for resistance and creating alternative, nonhierarchical and anticapitalist forms of caring.