Summary Of Jodi Byrd's Critique Of Blauner

Jodi Byrd in her critique of Blauner’s internal colonial model. Blauner asserts that although Black people aren’t under the classic conditions of colonialism they still are subjugated to internal colonialism.Byrd through her examination of Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma’s 2007 vote to disenfranchise approximately 2,800 Cherokee Freedmen and how theories of internal colonialism or other similar models erase American Indigenous groups. Blauner constructs his theory mainly thinking about it in black and white. Indigenous groups suffered expulsion and genocide and unlike Black Americans were colonized on their own land.”Part of what has made internal colonialism appealing as a model to describe the economic and political inequities that develop within a state is that it is
Cultural hegemony is “the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class, who manipulate the culture of that society”.
Marxism states that through the “free” market one is free to sell one’s work/labor but this is inapplicable to black bodies who are “slaves” and obviously slaves are unable to own themselves therefore Gramsci's argument erases black bodies and places them outside of the free market. This idea that because of white supremacy black individuals are not free are not capable of “selling” their labor. Marxism and class oriented theories reduce black existence to the working class when in reality this doesn’t fully encapsulate the experience the black people experience under white supremacist capitalist society. This falls in line with Blauner and his theory of internal colonialism the black community is subjugated by the US which is a (neo)colonialist power and within the internal society blacks are subjugated