Full Title: How Monopolies Leverage Systemic Racism to Dominate Markets
Author(s): Susan Holmberg
Publisher(s): Institute for Local Self-Reliance
Publication Date: June 20, 2024
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Description (excerpt):
After decades of unchallenged consolidation, antimonopoly fervor is growing in the United States, with a renewed recognition that corporate concentration is a deep systemic problem. However, even as the movement gains influence to affect policy, the racial oppression that is embedded in American capitalism continues to hamper our ability to democratize economic and political power.
ILSR’s new report, Power Play, makes the case that while tackling monopoly power is crucial to achieving racial justice, targeting structural racism is also essential to dismantling monopoly power. Through four industry case studies, Associate Director for Research Susan Holmberg details the ways that dominant corporations have leveraged structural racism as a tactic to eliminate competition and control markets. Its central thesis is that racial disparity is not merely an outcome of monopoly power, but rather a means by which corporations attain it. By identifying racial exploitation as a strategy that can fuel monopolization, Power Play aims to both advance racial justice and sharpen our ability to combat concentrated corporate power.