What Is Antiracism?: And Why It Means Anticapitalism

A groundbreaking account of neoliberalism that puts race at the center of the story-the ideal follow up to Ibram X. Kendi's How to Be an Antiracist

What is "racial capitalism" and how do we overcome it? This sharp, slim, revelatory book argues that we misunderstand contemporary capitalism if we miss the centrality of racism to neoliberalism.

From David Harvey to Wendy Brown, the leading scholars of neoliberalism's rise treat racism as an ornamental feature of recent capitalist politics--an ugly ornament, to be sure, but not one that is central to neoliberalism.

In crisp, accessible prose and via descriptions of some key moments of modern history in the US (like the Black Power movement) and the UK (like Enoch Powell's introduction of neoliberal ideas in parliament), Arun Kundnani argues that this misapprehension of the role of race in neoliberalism contributes to the Left's inability to build a successful movement connecting race and class.

Author: Arun Kundnani
Publisher: Verso
Published: 06/13/2023
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.83lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.70w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9781839762765

Review Citation(s):
Booklist 05/31/2023

About the Author
Arun Kundnani is Visiting Assistant Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University and a former editor of the journal Race & Class. Born in London, he has lived in New York since 2010. He has appeared regularly on broadcast news media, such as CNN and BBC News, and has written for the Guardian, Intercept, Washington Post, the Nation, and Dissent. His last book, The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror (Verso, 2014) sold 12,847 copies by the end of 2017 and was translated into Arabic and Spanish. A review in the Guardian described him as "one of Britain's best political writers." His first book, The End of Tolerance: Racism in 21st Century Britain (Pluto, 2007), was selected as a book of the year by the New Statesman. He has been a scholar-in-residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at New York Public Library and an Open Society Fellow. He is the lead author of Leaving
the War on Terror (Transnational Institute, forthcoming), which develops a detailed policy agenda as an alternative to Britain's current counterterrorism policies. He holds a PhD from London Metropolitan University, and an MA from Cambridge University.