This article uses labor history and black history to highlight how labor education can be a crucial tool for unions to respond to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in a way that supports and respects its main demands. It suggests that unions are unlikely to answer the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organization’s (AFL-CIO) call for the labor movement to be “partners, allies, and fellow community members” of the BLM movement unless they recognize the structural nature of contemporary “colorblind racism” and confront the root causes of divergent attitudes about the fairness of the criminal justice system. Such causes include the long-standing associations of blackness with criminality and whiteness with innocence, which have long justified the punishment of black workers and the control of all U.S. workers. This article highlights the structural violence of mass incarceration, the spectacular violence of police murder, the symbolic violence of anti-black cultural production, and the sexual violence directed at black women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) blacks. Building on black feminist theory, it argues that labor education that foregrounds the interwoven histories of race and crime, and examines how racism works through class, gender, and other kinds of hierarchies, could serve to capacitate grassroots bridge-builders inside unions. The article suggests that the history of domestic work could be a particularly valuable way for labor educators to discuss the fundamental messages of the Movement for Black Lives.
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