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What Is Antiracism?: And Why It Means Anticapitalism
This scintillating intellectual and political history provides a new understanding of racism, and a better way to fight it
Liberals have been arguing for nearly a century that racism is fundamentally an individual problem of extremist beliefs. Responding to Nazism, thinkers like gay rights pioneer Magnus Hirschfeld and anthropologist Ruth Benedict called for teaching people, especially poor people, to be less prejudiced. Here lies the origin of today's liberal antiracism, from diversity training to Hollywood activism. Meanwhile, a more radical antiracism flowered in the Third World. Anticolonial revolutionaries traced racism to the broad economic and political structures of modernity. Thinkers like C.L.R. James, Claudia Jones, and Frantz Fanon showed how racism was connected to colonialism and capitalism, a perspective adopted even by Martin Luther King.
Today, liberal antiracism has proven powerless against structural oppression. As Arun Kundnani demonstrates, white liberals can heroically confront their own whiteness all they want, yet these structures remain.
This deeply researched and swift-moving narrative history tells the story of the two antiracisms and their fates. As neoliberalism reordered the world in the last decades of the twentieth century, the case became fighting racism means striking at its capitalist roots.
Liberals have been arguing for nearly a century that racism is fundamentally an individual problem of extremist beliefs. Responding to Nazism, thinkers like gay rights pioneer Magnus Hirschfeld and anthropologist Ruth Benedict called for teaching people, especially poor people, to be less prejudiced. Here lies the origin of today's liberal antiracism, from diversity training to Hollywood activism. Meanwhile, a more radical antiracism flowered in the Third World. Anticolonial revolutionaries traced racism to the broad economic and political structures of modernity. Thinkers like C.L.R. James, Claudia Jones, and Frantz Fanon showed how racism was connected to colonialism and capitalism, a perspective adopted even by Martin Luther King.
Today, liberal antiracism has proven powerless against structural oppression. As Arun Kundnani demonstrates, white liberals can heroically confront their own whiteness all they want, yet these structures remain.
This deeply researched and swift-moving narrative history tells the story of the two antiracisms and their fates. As neoliberalism reordered the world in the last decades of the twentieth century, the case became fighting racism means striking at its capitalist roots.
371 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 13, 2023
66 people are currently reading
1669 people want to read
About the author
Arun Kundnani
11 books42 followersKundnani writes about racial capitalism and Islamophobia, surveillance and political violence, and Black radical movements. He is the author of The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and the domestic War on Terror (Verso, 2014) and The End of Tolerance: racism in 21st century Britain (Pluto, 2007), which was selected as a New Statesman book of the year. He has written for the Nation, the Guardian, the Washington Post, Vice, and The Intercept. Born in London, he moved to New York in 2010. A former editor of the journal Race & Class, he was miseducated at Cambridge University, and holds a PhD from London Metropolitan University. He has been an Open Society fellow and a scholar-in-residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
July 30, 2023
Liberal states and liberal practice are both extremely good at incorporating and defanging radical critique, reducing anti-racist and feminist struggles to questions of representation and leaning in. Our workplaces are woven through with similar demands, training in ‘unconscious bias’, and overburdening especially People of Colour with representational and advocacy work while the rest of us carry on despite the eloquent strategy documents our committees produce (Sara Ahmed is extremely good on these problems). Arun Kundnani is having none of it!
Kundnani opens his powerful critique of contemporary anti-racist politics with a two-stranded criticism. The first is of liberal anti-racism as focused in building inclusion in a tolerant but still oppressive class system, while the second is focused on the Left view that racism is a tool deployed by the class elite to divide working class struggle. The first is a criticism that class oppression is still oppressive, while the second is based in the recognition that this Left view fails to recognise racial capitalism and imperialism as fundamental to the global capitalist order.
Throughout the first half of the book there is a powerful, internationalist, perspective n anti-racism as anti-imperialist practice, and a clear sense that racial capitalism is fundamentally grounded in imperialism. Yet I couldn’t help the feeling as the argument progressed that his analysis become increasingly focused on neo-liberal capitalism as the focus of opposition, rather than capitalism per se. Thankfully, by the time he got to the conclusion to weave together these threads it was clear that the neo-liberal emphasis is a question of currency and the dominant form capitalism takes. In the last few pages it all comes together powerfully, with, on p243, the observation that “Neo-liberal ideology has been wracked by a tension between its aspiration to establish a universal market system and its well-founded fear that such a system would not be readily accepted”. In his view, then, the neo-liberal model acts against racist abuse and discrimination because it is antithetical to its idealised market, but at the same time he notes (on p246) that “recent electoral successes of racist politicians and parties are not the result of a backlash against antiracist progress; they are winning by making explicit in their political rhetoric what is already implicit in the violently racist practices of nominally liberal states”. In this way he weaves the imperialist character of capitalism into the bordering regimes and carceral states of contemporary practice.
It’s a sweeping a powerful analysis and call to action, not to immerse anti-racist struggles in wider class-based politics, but to recognise alliances, politically shared interests, and the multiple paths to the shared end. He does so with a three part sweep through key strands of 20th century thinking, action and practice. The first is the emergence on liberal anti-racist ideals in (it might seem paradoxically) Germany in the 1920s and 1930s and in the USA in work by anthropologists such as Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict. The second is the long Marxist engagement with imperialism from the mid-1910s, and the fraught debates and decisions of the Comintern in the 1920s around the place of anti-colonial, national liberation struggles in the development of socialism, with its communist goal. The third is the place of ideas of race in neo-liberal capitalism, and bordering and other carceral regimes as disciplining working class practice and maintaining oppressive regimes that become so pervasive that there is no need to explicitly enforce them.
Kundnani builds these arguments based on an impressive array of literature and engagements – drawing on key anti-colonial thinkers – MN Roy, Fanon, Nkrumah, Claudia Jones, Stuart Hall, A Sivananandan – as well as less well known or recognised analysts such as Anton De Kom, Johnnie Tillmon, and H Rap Brown. Amid this he also recovers Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King from the liberal civil rights discourse to the much stronger anti-colonial and class conscious that is obvious in their work. It’s an intriguing collection of thinkers and activists, or rather thinker-activists, that shore up his case delineating anti-racism and anti-capitalism from liberal practices of inclusivity, as well as asserting the fundamental centrality of racial capitalism to contemporary struggles, and the ways that the neo-liberal version of capitalism upholds that fundamental centrality of race.
It’s a compelling analysis, challenging us to view many of the takens-for-granted and dominant approaches in new ways – or at least more sceptically, and pushing us a more fundamental way of approaching anti-racist politics and practice. That means it’s not an easy read – it is clearly argued, well written, engaging, and accessible, but the argument is likely to be a profound challenge to many. That makes it essential reading.
Kundnani opens his powerful critique of contemporary anti-racist politics with a two-stranded criticism. The first is of liberal anti-racism as focused in building inclusion in a tolerant but still oppressive class system, while the second is focused on the Left view that racism is a tool deployed by the class elite to divide working class struggle. The first is a criticism that class oppression is still oppressive, while the second is based in the recognition that this Left view fails to recognise racial capitalism and imperialism as fundamental to the global capitalist order.
Throughout the first half of the book there is a powerful, internationalist, perspective n anti-racism as anti-imperialist practice, and a clear sense that racial capitalism is fundamentally grounded in imperialism. Yet I couldn’t help the feeling as the argument progressed that his analysis become increasingly focused on neo-liberal capitalism as the focus of opposition, rather than capitalism per se. Thankfully, by the time he got to the conclusion to weave together these threads it was clear that the neo-liberal emphasis is a question of currency and the dominant form capitalism takes. In the last few pages it all comes together powerfully, with, on p243, the observation that “Neo-liberal ideology has been wracked by a tension between its aspiration to establish a universal market system and its well-founded fear that such a system would not be readily accepted”. In his view, then, the neo-liberal model acts against racist abuse and discrimination because it is antithetical to its idealised market, but at the same time he notes (on p246) that “recent electoral successes of racist politicians and parties are not the result of a backlash against antiracist progress; they are winning by making explicit in their political rhetoric what is already implicit in the violently racist practices of nominally liberal states”. In this way he weaves the imperialist character of capitalism into the bordering regimes and carceral states of contemporary practice.
It’s a sweeping a powerful analysis and call to action, not to immerse anti-racist struggles in wider class-based politics, but to recognise alliances, politically shared interests, and the multiple paths to the shared end. He does so with a three part sweep through key strands of 20th century thinking, action and practice. The first is the emergence on liberal anti-racist ideals in (it might seem paradoxically) Germany in the 1920s and 1930s and in the USA in work by anthropologists such as Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict. The second is the long Marxist engagement with imperialism from the mid-1910s, and the fraught debates and decisions of the Comintern in the 1920s around the place of anti-colonial, national liberation struggles in the development of socialism, with its communist goal. The third is the place of ideas of race in neo-liberal capitalism, and bordering and other carceral regimes as disciplining working class practice and maintaining oppressive regimes that become so pervasive that there is no need to explicitly enforce them.
Kundnani builds these arguments based on an impressive array of literature and engagements – drawing on key anti-colonial thinkers – MN Roy, Fanon, Nkrumah, Claudia Jones, Stuart Hall, A Sivananandan – as well as less well known or recognised analysts such as Anton De Kom, Johnnie Tillmon, and H Rap Brown. Amid this he also recovers Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King from the liberal civil rights discourse to the much stronger anti-colonial and class conscious that is obvious in their work. It’s an intriguing collection of thinkers and activists, or rather thinker-activists, that shore up his case delineating anti-racism and anti-capitalism from liberal practices of inclusivity, as well as asserting the fundamental centrality of racial capitalism to contemporary struggles, and the ways that the neo-liberal version of capitalism upholds that fundamental centrality of race.
It’s a compelling analysis, challenging us to view many of the takens-for-granted and dominant approaches in new ways – or at least more sceptically, and pushing us a more fundamental way of approaching anti-racist politics and practice. That means it’s not an easy read – it is clearly argued, well written, engaging, and accessible, but the argument is likely to be a profound challenge to many. That makes it essential reading.
December 4, 2023
I have been suspicious of mainstream diversity and inclusion politics and the framing of the fight against racism residing in the need to better represent people of other racial/gender/sexuality backgrounds and tackle the individually held racist beliefs. These are obviously important but are depoliticized in a manner that seems incongruous - capitalism has achieved unity under the un-biased forces of the market, we need to assess our unconscious bias and re-educate ourselves and then the world will be free of oppression and everyone will be happy. This analysis ignores the racial ordering of international labor markets through oppressive border regimes and the holding of populations deemed excess to capitalism in prisons and in refugee camps. It ignores the marginalized illegal migrant communities upon whose cheap labour and lack of access to workplace organization under threat of deportation a large amount of our industries thrive upon (in the US - 25% of dishwashers, 25% construction workers, 17% cleaners, 12 % food preparers, 1/3 garment workers, 1.5 million farm workers). It ignores the disproportionately policed war on drugs and the war on terror leading to culturally associated and therefore hidden forms of racism against black people and Muslims.
This individualistic vision of antiracism, blossoming in the 1940's is as this book shows integral to the functioning of neo-liberalism in it's ability to depoliticize stratifications of race and class in relation to cultural values.
The book posits that there is a relationship between super exploited worker's in the global south, unfree migrant workers and free citizen workers, in order to maintain these boundaries the new class borders were redefined in a cultural basis with terms vilifying migrants without any specific reference to race and white superiority despite the systems operation being contingent upon these things. This for example allowed for the expression from the 80s and intensifying post 9/11 of Islamaphobic sentiment, framing Muslim beliefs as a monolithic culture that was a threat to western values of liberty, freedom and diversity and in framing armed struggles in a cultural (completely ignoring the colonial history of the middle east) rather than resource/political context allowed the west a moralistic standpoint from which to conduct neo-colonial wars and pacify a new frontier of resource extraction for capitalism under the pretext of bringing freedom and democracy.
There is a lot of meat on these pages and I have not done it justice, there is so much more on the development of a parallel antiracism flowering in the colonial nations. This is a book to come back to. Verso publications never disappoint, read in conjunction with Revolting Prostitutions I have a more keen understanding of the role of borders in the creation of an exploitable migrant under class.
The only way to an equitable and free society for all is socialism and a socialism that is radical in its internationalist in its outlook. Liberalism grasps identity in a hollow, desiccated, superficial manner, de-fanged but also centralized, pedestaled and appropriated, someone's cultural identity is their main defining point - racism becomes an offense to market rationality, a more diverse workforce allowing a larger labour pool. This embrace of diversity and a racial conception of culture however allows neoliberal ideology to interpret opposition as the acting out of cultures lacking in traits of individualism and entrepreneurism and strips opposition movements of their political histories.
A socialist radical antiracism embraces a fluid identity politics. Identity isn't a fixed and unchanging inner personhood and any framing as such redefines racism not as a system of racial oppression and exploitation of race and class but of cultural differences and their acceptability. This liberal understanding of identity "only allows the possibility of solidarity based upon shared experiences or interests" and a narrowing of antiracism - exemplified in the manner that black elected representatives signed off bill Clinton's racist 1994 violent crime control and law enforcement act bill, African Americans represented in the political system and signing off racist laws because of the successful decoupling of race and class oppression from conceptions of racism.
"Unity has to be made in the struggle, not assumed in the abstract. Understood in this way, antiracism does not fragment class struggle but radicalises it. Culture is neither a distraction from economic struggles nor a fixed identity that determines a groups political desires. Instead the socialist tradition is one of making and renewing cultures through our struggles for working people. And because our struggles are unbounded, so is our sense of who we might be"
Embrace socialism and fuck capitalism, liberalism and conservativism.
This individualistic vision of antiracism, blossoming in the 1940's is as this book shows integral to the functioning of neo-liberalism in it's ability to depoliticize stratifications of race and class in relation to cultural values.
The book posits that there is a relationship between super exploited worker's in the global south, unfree migrant workers and free citizen workers, in order to maintain these boundaries the new class borders were redefined in a cultural basis with terms vilifying migrants without any specific reference to race and white superiority despite the systems operation being contingent upon these things. This for example allowed for the expression from the 80s and intensifying post 9/11 of Islamaphobic sentiment, framing Muslim beliefs as a monolithic culture that was a threat to western values of liberty, freedom and diversity and in framing armed struggles in a cultural (completely ignoring the colonial history of the middle east) rather than resource/political context allowed the west a moralistic standpoint from which to conduct neo-colonial wars and pacify a new frontier of resource extraction for capitalism under the pretext of bringing freedom and democracy.
There is a lot of meat on these pages and I have not done it justice, there is so much more on the development of a parallel antiracism flowering in the colonial nations. This is a book to come back to. Verso publications never disappoint, read in conjunction with Revolting Prostitutions I have a more keen understanding of the role of borders in the creation of an exploitable migrant under class.
The only way to an equitable and free society for all is socialism and a socialism that is radical in its internationalist in its outlook. Liberalism grasps identity in a hollow, desiccated, superficial manner, de-fanged but also centralized, pedestaled and appropriated, someone's cultural identity is their main defining point - racism becomes an offense to market rationality, a more diverse workforce allowing a larger labour pool. This embrace of diversity and a racial conception of culture however allows neoliberal ideology to interpret opposition as the acting out of cultures lacking in traits of individualism and entrepreneurism and strips opposition movements of their political histories.
A socialist radical antiracism embraces a fluid identity politics. Identity isn't a fixed and unchanging inner personhood and any framing as such redefines racism not as a system of racial oppression and exploitation of race and class but of cultural differences and their acceptability. This liberal understanding of identity "only allows the possibility of solidarity based upon shared experiences or interests" and a narrowing of antiracism - exemplified in the manner that black elected representatives signed off bill Clinton's racist 1994 violent crime control and law enforcement act bill, African Americans represented in the political system and signing off racist laws because of the successful decoupling of race and class oppression from conceptions of racism.
"Unity has to be made in the struggle, not assumed in the abstract. Understood in this way, antiracism does not fragment class struggle but radicalises it. Culture is neither a distraction from economic struggles nor a fixed identity that determines a groups political desires. Instead the socialist tradition is one of making and renewing cultures through our struggles for working people. And because our struggles are unbounded, so is our sense of who we might be"
Embrace socialism and fuck capitalism, liberalism and conservativism.
November 9, 2025
Absolutely stunning. If you want to understand modern racism, this is the book to start with. It goes right to the heart and stays there for just under 300 deeply researched and powerfully written pages.
Despite its title, which might suggest a manifesto of some kind, this is a straightforward history of modern racism in all its forms, and how those forms have been wielded by specific strains of capitalism for specific economic purposes. Whether you're wondering how antisemitism fits into white supremacy, why modern borders are what they are, how liberalism and socialism differentially conceptualize racialization, how national industrial capitalism treats immigrants vs how international neoliberalism treats them - your answers are here. If they aren't in the text, they're in the massive references section, which constitutes an entire fifth of the book and includes all the classics from Lenin to Fanon and beyond.
Bonus points for Kundnani's sparing but effective sense of humor, as when he muses on deportation officials and international capitalists examining their unconscious biases, or when he opens his acknowledgements section by thanking New York University for firing him so he could access the unemployment benefits that funded the writing of this book.
Despite its title, which might suggest a manifesto of some kind, this is a straightforward history of modern racism in all its forms, and how those forms have been wielded by specific strains of capitalism for specific economic purposes. Whether you're wondering how antisemitism fits into white supremacy, why modern borders are what they are, how liberalism and socialism differentially conceptualize racialization, how national industrial capitalism treats immigrants vs how international neoliberalism treats them - your answers are here. If they aren't in the text, they're in the massive references section, which constitutes an entire fifth of the book and includes all the classics from Lenin to Fanon and beyond.
Bonus points for Kundnani's sparing but effective sense of humor, as when he muses on deportation officials and international capitalists examining their unconscious biases, or when he opens his acknowledgements section by thanking New York University for firing him so he could access the unemployment benefits that funded the writing of this book.
May 14, 2025
I've finally decided to abandon this after aprox 2/3rds of the book. Not because I think the book is not important, it is badly written or because it is too hard to read. Simply because I couldn't put myself to it because it's quite history dense and I needed some casual reading to get me to sleep.
In fact, I think this book should be on schools readinglists and everybody should read it. Especially the first three Chapters would fit in any decolonial classroom.
Kundnani takes the reader by the hand and walks with you through history, investigating what racism and antiracism has meant to many historical figures, thinkers and philosophers over the ages.
It describes how racism is one of the core building blocks of capitalism and how the two are intertwined.
Voor mijn mede-Dutchies: In het begin van het boek schrijft Kundnani over het concentratiekamp in Vught, en de gevangenis die nu vooral gebruikt wordt om 'geradicaliseerde' moslims in op te sluiten. Wat hebben we geleerd van vroeger? Wie bestempelen wij als 'radicaal' of 'gevaar tot radicaliseren'. Pijnlijke blik op Nederlandse politiek van toen én nu. Als je het hele boek niet wilt lezen, lees dan in ieder geval dit stukje:
"Today, a national memorial exists at the site of the Vught concentration camp. ... The final part of the memorial is a reflection room where several short films aim to tie the camp’s history to the “here and now.” Written on the wall in large type is the question: “How do you make a difference?” The films answer with the message that you should not be a bystander when you see others needing help. ...
But more significant is the lack of discomfort at another aspect of the Vught site. ... The memorial, in fact, takes up only a small part of the original concentration camp site. A larger part is occupied by a functioning prison. ...
Dutch prison authorities opened the high-security unit in 2006 at the behest of the domestic intelligence agency, the Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst (AIVD).11 These agencies organized a regime in the unit to prevent its prisoners from having any meaningful contact with other human beings. Prisoners are isolated and confined for up to twenty-two hours per day. ... Adding to this mental torture in the Vught high-security unit are the regular and invasive full-nudity strip searches of inmates. ...
Approximately 170 prisoners were held in the high-security unit at Vught in its first ten years of operation. The majority were not convicted of a crime but were awaiting trial, which can take up to twenty-seven months. Among those at Vught who had been convicted were a woman found guilty after retweeting a single tweet that allegedly encouraged people to fight in Syria, and a man convicted for giving a thousand Euros to a childhood friend who had traveled to Syria— these are terrorism offenses under the Dutch counterterrorism system that emerged in the first decade of the twenty-first century. ...
Such was the logic of the War on Terror in a nutshell: violence is deemed necessary, not primarily to prevent terrorism, but to bring about a cultural change among Muslims around the world. ... This argument carries a terrifying implication: that the cultural problems in Islam are so deeply embedded that they can only be resolved through the the kind of industrial violence that destroys over a million lives. ... Only by imagining barbarism as somehow a 'natural' feature of Islam can government agencies present war, torture, assissination and arbitrary improsonment as necessary. ...
Genocidal violence does not always announce itself in the rhetoric of overt harted; it can also be hidden by the manegerial language of cultural reform.
The AIVD, the Dutch agency that encouraged the opening of the high-security unit at Vught, played an important role in developing the idea of the Muslim extremist. Before other countries' national security agencies took up the concept of Muslim "radicalization", the AIVD had pioneered it as a way to refer to a process through which moderates are turned into extremists by religious ideology, rather than by social or political factors. ... the purpose of extreme isolation at Vught is to break down the personalities of extremist Muslims and remold them as moderatre muslims - part of a broader program of violently imposed cultural change"
In fact, I think this book should be on schools readinglists and everybody should read it. Especially the first three Chapters would fit in any decolonial classroom.
Kundnani takes the reader by the hand and walks with you through history, investigating what racism and antiracism has meant to many historical figures, thinkers and philosophers over the ages.
It describes how racism is one of the core building blocks of capitalism and how the two are intertwined.
Voor mijn mede-Dutchies: In het begin van het boek schrijft Kundnani over het concentratiekamp in Vught, en de gevangenis die nu vooral gebruikt wordt om 'geradicaliseerde' moslims in op te sluiten. Wat hebben we geleerd van vroeger? Wie bestempelen wij als 'radicaal' of 'gevaar tot radicaliseren'. Pijnlijke blik op Nederlandse politiek van toen én nu. Als je het hele boek niet wilt lezen, lees dan in ieder geval dit stukje:
"Today, a national memorial exists at the site of the Vught concentration camp. ... The final part of the memorial is a reflection room where several short films aim to tie the camp’s history to the “here and now.” Written on the wall in large type is the question: “How do you make a difference?” The films answer with the message that you should not be a bystander when you see others needing help. ...
But more significant is the lack of discomfort at another aspect of the Vught site. ... The memorial, in fact, takes up only a small part of the original concentration camp site. A larger part is occupied by a functioning prison. ...
Dutch prison authorities opened the high-security unit in 2006 at the behest of the domestic intelligence agency, the Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst (AIVD).11 These agencies organized a regime in the unit to prevent its prisoners from having any meaningful contact with other human beings. Prisoners are isolated and confined for up to twenty-two hours per day. ... Adding to this mental torture in the Vught high-security unit are the regular and invasive full-nudity strip searches of inmates. ...
Approximately 170 prisoners were held in the high-security unit at Vught in its first ten years of operation. The majority were not convicted of a crime but were awaiting trial, which can take up to twenty-seven months. Among those at Vught who had been convicted were a woman found guilty after retweeting a single tweet that allegedly encouraged people to fight in Syria, and a man convicted for giving a thousand Euros to a childhood friend who had traveled to Syria— these are terrorism offenses under the Dutch counterterrorism system that emerged in the first decade of the twenty-first century. ...
Such was the logic of the War on Terror in a nutshell: violence is deemed necessary, not primarily to prevent terrorism, but to bring about a cultural change among Muslims around the world. ... This argument carries a terrifying implication: that the cultural problems in Islam are so deeply embedded that they can only be resolved through the the kind of industrial violence that destroys over a million lives. ... Only by imagining barbarism as somehow a 'natural' feature of Islam can government agencies present war, torture, assissination and arbitrary improsonment as necessary. ...
Genocidal violence does not always announce itself in the rhetoric of overt harted; it can also be hidden by the manegerial language of cultural reform.
The AIVD, the Dutch agency that encouraged the opening of the high-security unit at Vught, played an important role in developing the idea of the Muslim extremist. Before other countries' national security agencies took up the concept of Muslim "radicalization", the AIVD had pioneered it as a way to refer to a process through which moderates are turned into extremists by religious ideology, rather than by social or political factors. ... the purpose of extreme isolation at Vught is to break down the personalities of extremist Muslims and remold them as moderatre muslims - part of a broader program of violently imposed cultural change"
March 11, 2024
If you want to be radicalized, read this book. Kundnani outlines the current trajectory of neoliberalism under global capitalist imperialism with poignant words. Nearly every page of this book is dog-eared, underlined, and starred.
In a rare occurrence within theoretical books, this text does not read like it is another piece of academic jargon. It reads like a dream; Kundnani's words gripped me with each page I turned. With a vivid historical analysis of the exploitation and oppression under colonial imperialism, he demonstrates to the reader why racism is more than mere personal biases and prejudice. Instead, it permeates the systems of power that govern the global world and is incited by those within the West and Europe. Through tracing the lineage of radical political activists such as Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, MLK, Malcolm X, and other Black radicals who were often lynched, murdered, or imprisoned within the early part of the 20th century for speaking up against the systemic injustice experienced by Black and First Nations people; Kundnani sets the stage for his argument that anti-racism means being diametrically opposed to capitalism.
If you want to understand how neoliberalism rose to power and better comprehend the systems of injustice and oppression that bind us all, read "What is Antiracism: and Why it Means Anti-Capitalism." Neoliberalism is colonial imperialism presented to the Global North under the guise of diversity, equity, and inclusion. These measures alone will not save us; they will not save those experiencing the disproportionate impact of oppression within the majority world (Global South). These are just some of the arguments that are central to this book. Furthermore, the author doesn't merely rely upon radical political theorists to make his arguments. Part of what Kundnani does best in this book is utilizing the arguments of those staunchly opposed to anti-colonial imperialism. He often draws upon American and British politics to show the reader how these global power-houses exploit, oppress, and further marginalize those within the majority world and those members of "surplus" populations (for example, racialized/gendered) groups of people in the global north.
My advice to anyone who is questioning the mass incarceration, increase in border security, and imperialist warfare that the West and Europe enact is to read this book. You don't need to be an academic to understand the arguments being made. The language and arguments used are accessible to even a non-academic audience. After reading this book, I promise you will not see the world or systems of power that govern us the same way again.
In a rare occurrence within theoretical books, this text does not read like it is another piece of academic jargon. It reads like a dream; Kundnani's words gripped me with each page I turned. With a vivid historical analysis of the exploitation and oppression under colonial imperialism, he demonstrates to the reader why racism is more than mere personal biases and prejudice. Instead, it permeates the systems of power that govern the global world and is incited by those within the West and Europe. Through tracing the lineage of radical political activists such as Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, MLK, Malcolm X, and other Black radicals who were often lynched, murdered, or imprisoned within the early part of the 20th century for speaking up against the systemic injustice experienced by Black and First Nations people; Kundnani sets the stage for his argument that anti-racism means being diametrically opposed to capitalism.
If you want to understand how neoliberalism rose to power and better comprehend the systems of injustice and oppression that bind us all, read "What is Antiracism: and Why it Means Anti-Capitalism." Neoliberalism is colonial imperialism presented to the Global North under the guise of diversity, equity, and inclusion. These measures alone will not save us; they will not save those experiencing the disproportionate impact of oppression within the majority world (Global South). These are just some of the arguments that are central to this book. Furthermore, the author doesn't merely rely upon radical political theorists to make his arguments. Part of what Kundnani does best in this book is utilizing the arguments of those staunchly opposed to anti-colonial imperialism. He often draws upon American and British politics to show the reader how these global power-houses exploit, oppress, and further marginalize those within the majority world and those members of "surplus" populations (for example, racialized/gendered) groups of people in the global north.
My advice to anyone who is questioning the mass incarceration, increase in border security, and imperialist warfare that the West and Europe enact is to read this book. You don't need to be an academic to understand the arguments being made. The language and arguments used are accessible to even a non-academic audience. After reading this book, I promise you will not see the world or systems of power that govern us the same way again.
March 6, 2025
There are many reasons why I loved this incredibly edifying book. One: because I came to know of all the unsung anti colonial, anti racist thinkers and activists like Anton de Kom, M. N. Roy and Jamil al Amin (who continues to languish in prison to this day).
Two: because it distills the ideas of the aforementioned thinkers and historical geopolitical decisions to answer the question, “How the hell did we end up here?”
One of the blurbs says this book is “going to be a major staple for decades to come”. I really hope it does.
Two: because it distills the ideas of the aforementioned thinkers and historical geopolitical decisions to answer the question, “How the hell did we end up here?”
One of the blurbs says this book is “going to be a major staple for decades to come”. I really hope it does.
July 11, 2024
You can’t be one without the other
Well written. Thought provoking. And well researched. You should read this over and over again. Today. In the world where DEI and woke are being removed, socialism is the answer.
Well written. Thought provoking. And well researched. You should read this over and over again. Today. In the world where DEI and woke are being removed, socialism is the answer.
June 19, 2024
This book taught me more about how capitalism works than any other source. Should be required reading for all.
May 18, 2024
The book of Kundnani discusses two main approaches to anti-racism: liberal and radical.
Liberal Anti-Racism:
Focuses on individual prejudice and changing hearts and minds.
Often involves diversity training and education.
Seen as mainstream in the US and promoted by corporations.
Emerged in the 1930s as a response to Nazism.
Radical Anti-Racism:
Views racism as a systemic issue built into economic structures.
Argues that capitalism inherently benefits certain races over others ("racial capitalism").
Traces its roots to anti-colonial movements and thinkers like CLR James and Frantz Fanon.
Emphasizes understanding the connection between race and economic exploitation.
The book criticizes liberal anti-racism for being superficial and not addressing the root causes of racism. It argues that true anti-racism needs to challenge the economic system itself, particularly "racialized capitalism" where racial groups have unequal access to resources and opportunities.
This book is recommended as a deep dive into the antiracism
Liberal Anti-Racism:
Focuses on individual prejudice and changing hearts and minds.
Often involves diversity training and education.
Seen as mainstream in the US and promoted by corporations.
Emerged in the 1930s as a response to Nazism.
Radical Anti-Racism:
Views racism as a systemic issue built into economic structures.
Argues that capitalism inherently benefits certain races over others ("racial capitalism").
Traces its roots to anti-colonial movements and thinkers like CLR James and Frantz Fanon.
Emphasizes understanding the connection between race and economic exploitation.
The book criticizes liberal anti-racism for being superficial and not addressing the root causes of racism. It argues that true anti-racism needs to challenge the economic system itself, particularly "racialized capitalism" where racial groups have unequal access to resources and opportunities.
This book is recommended as a deep dive into the antiracism
November 18, 2023
“…white liberals do not see racism as linked to capitalism and are parochially indifferent to imperialism; as such, they also limit themselves to opposing manifestations of racism in personal relationships, demanding diversity in media representations, and calling for greater policing of far-right extremism. They fail to see that liberal democracies die not when they are threatened by extremists, but when they see themselves as finished products, needing only to protected from external dangers.”
July 11, 2025
i say this all the time but this is actually my everest … a full month for 250 pages omg
November 27, 2024
3.75 cos that’s what I did on fable x
September 21, 2025
The density of the book felt like a mountain climb, but once at the top you can see MILES beyond what you knew existed before. Will be planning to read it again at least twice to get all the info - thank goodness the author took time to put all of this history together, it would have taken eons for me to make the connections and see the larger picture presented via my own studies.
August 2, 2023
Good information that has been well researched.
February 20, 2024
he used to teach at NYU!!?! i could’ve taken his course
September 11, 2023
Back in April 2021 the government-backed Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities published an upbeat report which claimed that Britain had emerged from the grim days of overt racism and could now consider itself an ‘open society’. If ‘disparities’ with regard to the life chances of ethnic groups continued to exist (and it couldn’t be denied that they did) these had to be seen as legacy issues which could be dealt with by a final push to build trust, promote fairness, create agency and achieve inclusivity. In short, anti-racism through liberal lens.
The Sewell report was a barely-disguised attempt to rally moderate, centrist opinion around the Panglossian vision of everything working out for the best in the best of all possible worlds. The fear that Toryism was losing out in the battle for public opinion in the wake of revelations about the Windrush affair, the racial component of wealth inequalities, and the evidence of markedly different health outcomes for ethnic minorities during the Covid pandemic lay behind its convening by the then prime minister, Boris Johnson. It had in its sights the far more radical take on how things were working out being promulgated by Black Lives Matter and its call for the decolonisation of just about everything supporters of the government, and a large part of the official Labour opposition, held dear.
Kundnani’s book is a vigorous reassertion of the claims of the radicals that the fight against racism needs to go far beyond the platitudes of ‘building trust’, etc. A British writer and activist who has long been based in the United States, the bulk of his references deal with the situation in the latter country. But this goes further to support his core argument that the lineaments of racism were laid down in the earliest period of capitalist development, driven by the expropriation of the resources of non-European lands, crucially through the enslavement of their peoples.
Liberal anti-racism protests that these things happened long ago and modern society has evolved into a far more generous space in which, in principle at least, anyone can succeed providing they are prepared to work hard enough. What remains of that past is the prejudices that have lodged in the skulls of segments of the population – particularly the middling and lower income strata of the White working class – which is prone to misguided populist forms of politics and which needs to be challenged through education. Far from insisting on an account of empire that centres on unequal exchange and brute oppression the story that needs to be told is how the colonisers and colonised learnt new things from each other and were able to rub along in a mutually beneficial sort of way.
The retort to this line of reasoning has been set out many times: the supremacy of the nations of the Global North has been reconfigured in the forms of capitalism that succeeded the original mercantilist colonial system, traced through the laissez-faire that prevailed in the 19th century, the state regulation of the 20th, and now the mechanisms of debt bondage which have reached their apogee under the neoliberal financialised capitalism of the present day. There seems to be no reason to baulk at a term which most accurately describes this state of affairs – White supremacy.
However, it is also critical to Kundnani’s argument to acknowledge that the racism being confronted today has also evolved as it has taken its place within the changing contours of capitalism. The analysis of racism that hinges on its structural features, embedded as they are in state practices which are intended to make the racial component of modern society manageable through measures that range from immigration control through to the promotion of ‘diversity’ programmes, calls for political responses that are specific to the age. Decolonisation of educational curriculum would support a more vigorous challenge to the complacency of liberal anti-racism. More far-reaching is the call for the straightforward abolition of state practices, such as border controls directed against refugees and migrant workers, and a criminal justice system which licenses oppressive police practices against Black communities and steers thousands towards incarceration in the prison system.
The book is welcome evidence that the radical response to racism revealed in the BLM protests of the last half decade continues to roll on and add analytical depth to its perspectives. Contrary to the vacuous liberal prevaricators on these matters, militant anti-racism continues to build itself as a movement, and not just a moment.
The Sewell report was a barely-disguised attempt to rally moderate, centrist opinion around the Panglossian vision of everything working out for the best in the best of all possible worlds. The fear that Toryism was losing out in the battle for public opinion in the wake of revelations about the Windrush affair, the racial component of wealth inequalities, and the evidence of markedly different health outcomes for ethnic minorities during the Covid pandemic lay behind its convening by the then prime minister, Boris Johnson. It had in its sights the far more radical take on how things were working out being promulgated by Black Lives Matter and its call for the decolonisation of just about everything supporters of the government, and a large part of the official Labour opposition, held dear.
Kundnani’s book is a vigorous reassertion of the claims of the radicals that the fight against racism needs to go far beyond the platitudes of ‘building trust’, etc. A British writer and activist who has long been based in the United States, the bulk of his references deal with the situation in the latter country. But this goes further to support his core argument that the lineaments of racism were laid down in the earliest period of capitalist development, driven by the expropriation of the resources of non-European lands, crucially through the enslavement of their peoples.
Liberal anti-racism protests that these things happened long ago and modern society has evolved into a far more generous space in which, in principle at least, anyone can succeed providing they are prepared to work hard enough. What remains of that past is the prejudices that have lodged in the skulls of segments of the population – particularly the middling and lower income strata of the White working class – which is prone to misguided populist forms of politics and which needs to be challenged through education. Far from insisting on an account of empire that centres on unequal exchange and brute oppression the story that needs to be told is how the colonisers and colonised learnt new things from each other and were able to rub along in a mutually beneficial sort of way.
The retort to this line of reasoning has been set out many times: the supremacy of the nations of the Global North has been reconfigured in the forms of capitalism that succeeded the original mercantilist colonial system, traced through the laissez-faire that prevailed in the 19th century, the state regulation of the 20th, and now the mechanisms of debt bondage which have reached their apogee under the neoliberal financialised capitalism of the present day. There seems to be no reason to baulk at a term which most accurately describes this state of affairs – White supremacy.
However, it is also critical to Kundnani’s argument to acknowledge that the racism being confronted today has also evolved as it has taken its place within the changing contours of capitalism. The analysis of racism that hinges on its structural features, embedded as they are in state practices which are intended to make the racial component of modern society manageable through measures that range from immigration control through to the promotion of ‘diversity’ programmes, calls for political responses that are specific to the age. Decolonisation of educational curriculum would support a more vigorous challenge to the complacency of liberal anti-racism. More far-reaching is the call for the straightforward abolition of state practices, such as border controls directed against refugees and migrant workers, and a criminal justice system which licenses oppressive police practices against Black communities and steers thousands towards incarceration in the prison system.
The book is welcome evidence that the radical response to racism revealed in the BLM protests of the last half decade continues to roll on and add analytical depth to its perspectives. Contrary to the vacuous liberal prevaricators on these matters, militant anti-racism continues to build itself as a movement, and not just a moment.
November 1, 2023
Quite lacking in any new insight into any of the concepts in the title. Seems like there is a growing "scholarship" of copy-pasta these days. Assembling a series of encyclopedia - or Wikipedia for the youthful researcher - articles and stitching them together to provide a chronology of some larger idea is not scholarship to me. Yes, I read encyclopedias in my youth, and now read Wikipedia too. The former are almost non-existent, replaced by the latter, which is duly informative, but is also not scholarship for me. Collections of facts and figures, helpful for a starting point, but not scholarship. As my youngest sister puts it, "there's smart, and there's Wiki-smart". I'm sure you get it.
Anyway.
There is absolutely nothing in here that isn't in another much longer, denser, more intensely researched book about any of the several topics ranged across its pages. Racism, anti-racism, colonialism, anti-colonialism, capitalism, anti-capitalism. A bit of a trend this anti-something-ism, isn't it? I digress. The thrust of the argument seems to be twofold: 1) two theories of racism (liberal/individual and radical/structural), and 2) Capitalism is racist, therefore anti-racism is anti-capitalism. Mostly, I think. There just isn't any analysis, just fact-recitation. I read a lot, and while I will say this reminded me of other great books, I didn't need to re-read snippets from those great books copy-pasta-ed into this one.
TL:DR part:
Don't get me wrong, the premise id dead-on. I don't buy the historically Republican and now-advanced-by-Democrats opinion that racism is a personal problem and being nicer to Black People, for example, will fix it. Racism is 100% a structural problem. Racism is systematic and embedded and impossible to ignore, unless you are in the US government, of course. If you ignore the reality of the Western Civilization Imperialism Project as required racism to advance itself, then you're 100% wrong. Period. The system of wealth and power (called Capitalism, and now linked with neo-liberal racism) of White christian Nationalist nations (USofA, most of Europe) was built from racist beliefs and racist violence, so any attempt to break this stranglehold would first require acknowledgement of that fact. Not going to happen, ever. And even if liberal racism was eliminated (i.e. - everyone was nice...), whole cloth, that changes nothing, since nearly all the wealthy and power would still be held by White christian Nationalists, which means the structural racism that built the system stays in place even after the "nice" moment. Since this is getting rather long, I'll sum up the "anti-racism=anti-capitalism" quickly. Since Capitalism was built on racism (it IS its structural bedrock), being pro-capitalist mean being racist. True, quite true. Like it or not, it IS just that simple. So if you want to be anti-racist, you can't celebrate capitalism, you just can't. And if you want to fight racism, you must also fight capitalism. You can't be anti-racist and get all googly-eyed about shopping. Until White People accept that racism and capitalism work together to keep Black People oppressed socially, politically, AND economically nothing will change.
Beyonce being wealthy as fuck doesn't mean Capitalism isn't racist.
Barack Obama being elected president doesn't mean racism is dead.
In fact, both of these "Exceptionals" prove the rule.
Anyway.
There is absolutely nothing in here that isn't in another much longer, denser, more intensely researched book about any of the several topics ranged across its pages. Racism, anti-racism, colonialism, anti-colonialism, capitalism, anti-capitalism. A bit of a trend this anti-something-ism, isn't it? I digress. The thrust of the argument seems to be twofold: 1) two theories of racism (liberal/individual and radical/structural), and 2) Capitalism is racist, therefore anti-racism is anti-capitalism. Mostly, I think. There just isn't any analysis, just fact-recitation. I read a lot, and while I will say this reminded me of other great books, I didn't need to re-read snippets from those great books copy-pasta-ed into this one.
TL:DR part:
Don't get me wrong, the premise id dead-on. I don't buy the historically Republican and now-advanced-by-Democrats opinion that racism is a personal problem and being nicer to Black People, for example, will fix it. Racism is 100% a structural problem. Racism is systematic and embedded and impossible to ignore, unless you are in the US government, of course. If you ignore the reality of the Western Civilization Imperialism Project as required racism to advance itself, then you're 100% wrong. Period. The system of wealth and power (called Capitalism, and now linked with neo-liberal racism) of White christian Nationalist nations (USofA, most of Europe) was built from racist beliefs and racist violence, so any attempt to break this stranglehold would first require acknowledgement of that fact. Not going to happen, ever. And even if liberal racism was eliminated (i.e. - everyone was nice...), whole cloth, that changes nothing, since nearly all the wealthy and power would still be held by White christian Nationalists, which means the structural racism that built the system stays in place even after the "nice" moment. Since this is getting rather long, I'll sum up the "anti-racism=anti-capitalism" quickly. Since Capitalism was built on racism (it IS its structural bedrock), being pro-capitalist mean being racist. True, quite true. Like it or not, it IS just that simple. So if you want to be anti-racist, you can't celebrate capitalism, you just can't. And if you want to fight racism, you must also fight capitalism. You can't be anti-racist and get all googly-eyed about shopping. Until White People accept that racism and capitalism work together to keep Black People oppressed socially, politically, AND economically nothing will change.
Beyonce being wealthy as fuck doesn't mean Capitalism isn't racist.
Barack Obama being elected president doesn't mean racism is dead.
In fact, both of these "Exceptionals" prove the rule.
Read
May 23, 2024Q: What's this book's deal?
A: It traces anti-racism's internationalist intellectual history.
Q: How do you throw shade with this book?
A: I recognise that this book is primarily responding to the neoliberal appropriation of anti-racism through the performance and politics of diversity and representation, but it should also be read by Marxist buddies who may still proclaim that the link between capitalism and imperialism is very weak, at best. Come on.
Q: TLDR?
A: Sigh. The chapter on racial capitalism is so eloquent. What a solid chapter (not that I'm biased against other 'states').
This book is a tremendous contribution to the pressing dilemmas between redistribution and recognition, and what structural truly means, when we talk about various structures of oppression, especially racism. Cheers to a darker red!
And I shall sign off with this quote: "Thus, behind the images of the Black woman on welfare, the radical Muslim, and the violent immigrant lie fears of the actual Black feminist radicalism, of the actual Palestinian national movement, and of the actual politicization of the working classes induced by migrant organizing."
A: It traces anti-racism's internationalist intellectual history.
Q: How do you throw shade with this book?
A: I recognise that this book is primarily responding to the neoliberal appropriation of anti-racism through the performance and politics of diversity and representation, but it should also be read by Marxist buddies who may still proclaim that the link between capitalism and imperialism is very weak, at best. Come on.
Q: TLDR?
A: Sigh. The chapter on racial capitalism is so eloquent. What a solid chapter (not that I'm biased against other 'states').
This book is a tremendous contribution to the pressing dilemmas between redistribution and recognition, and what structural truly means, when we talk about various structures of oppression, especially racism. Cheers to a darker red!
And I shall sign off with this quote: "Thus, behind the images of the Black woman on welfare, the radical Muslim, and the violent immigrant lie fears of the actual Black feminist radicalism, of the actual Palestinian national movement, and of the actual politicization of the working classes induced by migrant organizing."
September 14, 2025
A vastly comprehensive and enjoyable analysis of the history of racism, from British colonialism to the U.S forging of neoliberalism and the dozens of coups it orchestrated to instil it, to the vile contemporary articulators of these historical truths into policing, border fortification and scapegoating. This is interwoven with a history of radical anti-racism developed primarily by anti-colonial socialists from the global south who are ridiculously under-researched by the western left as well as an analysis of liberal anti-racism and it’s weaponisation by capitalism. If you ever thought fighting oppression was one bit distinct from building working class power, this book will prove you wrong.
October 21, 2025
tira pel terra les identity politics i el liberalisme d'estats units fent una passa per la història del racisme com a concepte i les lluites d'esquerra antirracistes des de moviments locals fins a moviments internacionals. Parla de la lluita real i de les estructures que fan que l'opressió sigui possible, així com també de les tàctiques modernes del liberalisme per desviar l'atenció de l'estructura a l'individuu i la cancel•lació, o per altra banda, a reconfigurar el discurs de l'opressió cap a una "manca de representació i diversificació". No, el problema no està en que no hi hagi ceo dones o rics negres. I això ell ho explica molt bé. Una pena q no està traduït i es un poc mes feixuc per mi llegir essaig polític en anglès. L'he de rellegir i fer apunts.
November 12, 2025
Qué esclarecedor y necesario.
Tremendamente denso: se me ha hecho bola en algunos puntos, porque cita a muchísimos autores con posturas distintas sobre el tema.
Es un libro que analiza, sobre todo, cómo la izquierda blanca ha fallado (y sigue fallando) a las personas racializadas y al sur global, desviando la atención hacia gestos simbólicos (más representación en Hollywood, eliminar sesgos inconscientes) y olvidando que el racismo no es un problema individual, sino estructural, profundamente ligado al capitalismo y al colonialismo.
Siempre he creído que la educación era la vía para acabar con las opresiones. Este libro me ha hecho ver que, aunque educar puede generar empatía y apertura, no basta sin un cambio estructural radical.
Tremendamente denso: se me ha hecho bola en algunos puntos, porque cita a muchísimos autores con posturas distintas sobre el tema.
Es un libro que analiza, sobre todo, cómo la izquierda blanca ha fallado (y sigue fallando) a las personas racializadas y al sur global, desviando la atención hacia gestos simbólicos (más representación en Hollywood, eliminar sesgos inconscientes) y olvidando que el racismo no es un problema individual, sino estructural, profundamente ligado al capitalismo y al colonialismo.
Siempre he creído que la educación era la vía para acabar con las opresiones. Este libro me ha hecho ver que, aunque educar puede generar empatía y apertura, no basta sin un cambio estructural radical.
Read
January 9, 2024While liberal anti-racists obsess over diversity; new forms of racism have seeped into the routines of liberal regimes. Arun Kundnani's 'What Is Antiracism?' instead theorises an anti-racism that is radical, universal, and anti-capitalist.
Read our review here: https://www.newarab.com/features/how-...
Read our review here: https://www.newarab.com/features/how-...
August 17, 2025
I would give this book a 100 stars if I could; it integrates everything so well and makes it understandable for those educated within a western context of history which is flawed to say the least. I hope to meet this Uncle one day.
Read
July 17, 2023100% would recommend!
November 27, 2023
Excellent and useful text
January 1, 2024
This was such a great overview of the history of racial capitalism and it’s major players. Would be a great book companion to any class relating to the subject
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