Corporatization of Race: An A merican Case Study
An A merican Case Study
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23741199 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Bobby M Wilson (0000-0001-9631-7421, University of Alabama, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Pages | 1-14 |
| Publication date | 2017-03-06 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | International Encyclopedia of Geography (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg0519 |
| OpenAlex | W4230857351 |
| ISBN | 9781118786352 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 8 |
Corporations are key operational units of economies that can become too big to fail. Their success depends on sales as much as production; just as much surplus value can be made in retailing as in production or manufacturing. Indeed, the world's largest corporation, Walmart, is now a retailer. Corporations also carry meaning for consumers that extends well beyond the price of goods and services. Since the 1880s, the US Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are legal individuals entitled to free speech rights guaranteed by the Constitution. This entry examines how race benefited the corporation, focusing on blackness and whiteness. In order for the corporation to govern production, distribution, and consumption, it regulates race‐connected practices to remain within market reach of the black consumer market. The entry focuses first on how corporations in the United States were able to extract surplus under rules governing the racial doctrine of “separate but equal.” With the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, the corporate world became increasingly less dismissive of the black body as it sought to expand commodity exchange and consumption. Corporations became interested not only in the commodification of the labor component of the black body but also in its cultural meanings. Cultural manipulation of the black consumer extracted billions of dollars in profits from this community.
Business · Commerce · Commodification · Commodity · Consumption (sociology) · Corporation · Economics · Globalization · Market economy · Political science · Race to the bottom · Sociology · Supreme court · Finance · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Race, History, and American Society · Social and Cultural Dynamics
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |