Communism Was Never About Race; It Was About Class
The foundational principle of communism is that capitalism is a system designed to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few by exploiting the many—the working class. This exploitation doesn't discriminate based on skin colour, though it absolutely uses race as a weapon to divide workers.
Racism is not merely a personal prejudice; it is functional for the ruling class. It creates a low-wage, vulnerable labour force and drives down conditions for all workers by pitting them against each other. Therefore, fighting racism is not a distraction from class struggle—it is central to it. The communists understood this perhaps better than any other political organization of their time. They recognized that you could not liberate the white worker while the Black worker remained in chains. This idea is timeless: labour with a white skin cannot free itself where labour with a black skin is branded.