More than half a century ago, shortly before his death, Malcolm X spoke boldly of the entangled relationship between racism, poverty, and the geopolitical conditions of his time: 

I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice, and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation . . . it is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a racial conflict of black against white, or as a purely American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter.

Yet even today, it is easy for us to forget, in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by the Minneapolis police, that this fatal atrocity was not just a matter of brutality against black communities. Instead, what the world witnessed was the barbarous enactment of racism, as part of a wider system of exploitation.