Why anti-neoliberalism means anti-racism

ABSTRACT

In this review of Arun Kundnani’s What Is Antiracism? And Why It Means Anticapitalism, I explore how the book portrays the relation between neoliberalism and racism. For Kundnani, racism is central to the neoliberal order, in both ideological and material terms. Ideologically, neoliberalism relies on a racist construct of non-Western cultures that imagines them to be unfit for political and economic freedom. Materially, neoliberalism utilizes racism to manage and discipline populations that capitalism has rendered surplus by cutting them off from waged work. On this basis, Kundnani argues that if we are to understand and fight back against neoliberalism we must engage with the Black radical tradition and its conception of racial capitalism.

KEYWORDS:

• Racism
• anti-racism
• racial capitalism
• neoliberalism
• colonialism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 To be sure, the United States constitutes the exception to this trend. There, much more so than in Europe, neoliberalism managed to weave itself into the instinctive libertarianism and rugged individualism of a sizeable part of the (white) population.