The recent exchanges between Ta-Nehisi Coates, Cedric Johnson, and Brian Jones are part of a growing discussion about the exploitation, exclusion, and oppression of black people in the US. Centrally concerned with questions of race and class, these debates draw on a distinguished intellectual pedigree that includes scholars like Cedric Robinson, whose concept of “racial capitalism” emphasizes how “the development, organization, and expansion of capitalist society pursued essentially racial directions.”

Black freedom struggles, acting on this analysis without necessarily giving it the same name, have placed employment and economic sustenance at the core of their agenda since at least Reconstruction. Indeed, arguably no social force in American society has fought as strenuously for these goals as the multifaceted black left.

The Black Panther Party and civil rights activist Bayard Rustin did not agree on many things in 1967, but they both thought the government should ensure that everyone who wanted a job had one. The recent calls for guaranteed employment from both the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists and the Black Youth Project 100 affirm and continue this long history.