Rethinking Racial Capitalism(s) as Sexual Capitalism/Capitalist Sexism

This chapter considers the proletariat experiences of black womanhood as relative to an economic situation, as that which is invested in questioning the capitalist moment through racial capitalism and the black radical tradition. To further question black womanhood’s capitalist moment, this chapter places hooks in conversation with racial capitalism, as a means for understanding how the capitalist utility of race becomes, for hooks, the capitalist utility of sex, given hooks’ emphasis on sexism and black female slave experience. This emphasis is framed by the conceptualization of capitalist racism, which becomes, for hooks, capitalist sexism, or sexual capitalism, in order to think through how the proletariat experiences of black womanhood are indicative of the capitalist surpluses of exploitation, profit, and expropriation, toward what is assessed as hyperexploitation, hyperprofit, and hyperexpropriation, and then, as superexploitation, superprofit, and superexpropriation.