Selling Social Justice: Why the Ruling Class Loves Antiracism

by Jennifer Pan

Americans have been sold a version of social justice that fails to deliver

It’s not simply that big business has cynically co-opted an authentic grassroots uprising, but that an unwitting alliance exists between the main line of the racial justice movement and capitalism. In other words, capitalism has found a way to be antiracist without doing a thing to mitigate inequality, racial or otherwise.

87 companies on the S&P 100 released statements on racial justice; 79 pledged money to racial justice-related causes; 66 pledged to hire more diverse candidates; and 50 pledged to diversify their C-suites and boards. High-end gallerists open showrooms with all black staff and uptown Manhattan private schools have issued seemingly radical anti-racist manifestos. Budgets for DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) have ballooned. For all that commitment and spending, change has been fleeting for those at the bottom.

Using compelling journalistic prose combined with deep political analysis, Selling Social Justice investigates the rise and spread of contemporary racial justice ideology. In this critique from the left, Pan traces the evolution of seemingly radical ideas about race as they are integrated into the logic and policy of corporate America. And it is precisely the extent to which demands are adjusted to suit elite interests that they undermine the possibility of building a coalition capable of advancing distributive justice and greater equality.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Race, Audiobook, Social Justice, Political Science, Economics

190 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 6, 2025

Reviews

[Levi · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is amazing! there were a couple points where I raised my eyebrow and was like oop this is kinda racist but then I thought about it a little harder and was like oh shit she's right. for example, the part about the racist bird watching lady getting fired from her job. the author argues that allowing your boss to fire based on your conduct outside of work is harmful for EVERYONE not just racists. also the part about the culture war and how the right wing used it as a way to galvinize support for the republican party because EVERYONE was fed up with the democrats constant touting of "racial justice" and "antiracism" which ended up not helping black people at all and angering poor white people that felt like their issues (which are also the issues of the entire working class) were being ignored by the government (which they were because the government does not care about helping working class americans). there's so much to mention about this book that I absolutely love. you do have to go into it with an open mind (of course). moral of the story: unionize your workplace and be a communist

[teo · Rating 5 out of 5]

they for-profit DEI doing union-busting before gta6
I don't totally get the critiques of her argument. Maybe it's overdone but I don't think so unless you read a lot of this kind of stuff, and in that case you can stop reading it. One user review says "this book doesn't convince me that self-styled anti-woke leftists aren't useful idiots for Marc Andreessen, Chris Pavlovski, David Sacks, Paul Marshall, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and the vast web of Koch network think tanks and policy institutes that are dismantling public education, unions, and the social safety net before our very eyes". Huh? Are Marc Andreesen and Elon reading the Jacobin Series on Verso Books?
That disregards the fact that liberal identity politics has CREATED the conditions for the anti-woke – authoritarian merger i.e. with Trump's second term. How else would Trump have gotten a second term and won the popular vote? It's because liberals are laughable even more so than a hilarious orange dude. The Teamsters endorsed Trump. Kamala/Biden love Israel to pieces. The whole point is to get working people on the left again, because the left lost the working class by being too woke and making it easy for the right to say "these people don't care about you more than I do. they care about being woke". There are a lot of poor white people in America . etc . Voters care about bread and butter issues
The right didn't win more voters in 2024, the left just lost so many due to being 'woke' while arming genocidal Israel and Ukraine while no one has healthcare or money in America

[Harry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why has Starbucks embraced DEI (c-suite level DEI officers and an amicus brief for race-based consideration in college admissions) and simultaneously aggressively bust unions?

Selling Social Justice examines how America arrived at this sorry state. An incredibly astute condensation of the zeitgeist.

[Tuesday Gloom · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolutely fantastic and put so many thoughts into words that previously all my friends would have just side eyed me across the dinner table about. now i can just tell them to read this 😄

there needs to be a touchpoint on the left for those who reject a politics of shame and hollow symbolism—this is a step in the right direction

[Johannes S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great overview how social justice was driven by business to obfuscate class issues and liberals took the bait hook and sink. Don't expect too much, but it's helpful to get a feeling for getting a left critique of antiracism and it's commodification. Only broad alliances can meaningful change politics

[Chris W · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the writing, a nice combination of clarity, brevity, and personality. Also antiracist Gushers and DEI/union-busting combo packs are both hilarious

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Selling Social Justice” is a book that sets out to explain “Why the rich love antiracism” as stated in the subtitle.

While the book is interesting and well written, I think it came up short in trying to achieve its goal. I believe that the author is on to something and that she was able to make points that at least corporations, benefit from the divisiveness that “antiracism” causes. That said, she didn’t nail this conclusion.

The first problem with the book relates to definitions. Not everyone understands and shares the author’s definition of anti-racism. Most people clearly know what racism is but, according to the author, anti-racism is not only about being against racism. It’s taking an active role to push back against racism – even if that means practicing racism as a “countermeasure”.

This is best seen in the quote from Ibram X Kendi who said “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination”. (Page 156.)

While this is one definition of anti-racism, it’s clearly a strong, if not extreme one. The author recognises this when she talks about how the American people are generally not in favor of Affirmation Action.

I agree with the thinking the argument that the author raises where race is used by the wealthy to divide and conquer the middle and lowers classes for the advantage of the rich. From my perspective, this should have been more of the crux of her argument and the way to structure the book.

The author did a good job of this when she demonstrated how DEI initiatives give company’s power over individuals and distract from scrutiny of corporate behavior. Clearly companies have used DEI as a smokescreen and to gain more power over their employees – bringing non work issues to extract leverage over them. Also, companies deflect from otherwise bad behaviour in other areas such as bilking a whole nation with subprime mortgages by highlighting what they are doing to adjust their hiring practices to hire more minorities. DEI becomes a smokescreen.

There is also some reference to how politicians use race to advance their positions. I liked her quote from Steve Bannon who said, “I want them (the Democratic Party) to talk about racism every day” because “If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats”. This clearly shows how race has become another source of distraction to cover for inequalities.

Overall, I thought that this book had tremendous potential to focus the main problem in America (and much of the developed world) upon the great and growing inequalities of wealth versus race.

Clearly the wealthy use race to distract from inequality. And while this was mentioned, I think this argument needed to be explored in greater detail and made into a stronger case. This is where I think the book failed to deliver.

I was a good book, that could have been a great book. That said it’s well worth the read.

[Rhuff · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a time when DEI has come under vicious right-wing assault, Jennifer Pan's critique might seem an equivocating rationale in a polarized "kulturkampf." In truth, what really is wrong with the concepts of diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace and society in general? Who but a misogynist Scrooge or Stephen Miller could find fault with it?

Yet as Ms. Pan demonstrates in her slim but full volume, the construct was immediately hijacked by professional social justice consultants of the BLM era as a means to a lucrative end; and by Corporate America as yet another stick with which to beat and control its workforce. By focusing on race and gender identity the real inequities of class are ignored: necessarily, as liberals profit from the class status quo as much as their adversaries. Both are knee-deep in neoliberal economics and mutually hostile to unions, or any workplace empowerment that takes the bosses out of the driver's seat. DEI thus became another HR racket.

Gilded Age robber baron Jay Gould allegedly said he could hire half of the working class to kill the other half. The policy continues in corporate America, with DEI's brief rise and ascendancy as part of the modern equation. As white workers are diverted by the old "poor white" demagoguery of MAGA culture war, so are racial and gender minorities a wedge issue to beat these white workers. At bottom neither wants to tackle one of the root causes of social stagnation: a nepotistic insider system that excludes 90% of the population. Better to have them claw at each other than come after us in a multiracial mob with torch and pitchfork.

Now as DEI initiatives are demonized and Corporate America ready like any snake to again shed its skin, there will be nostalgia for those lost days of humanism in the workplace and culture. But the misuse of equity policy for promoting dubious schemes, like reparations; or transgender athletics over peace in Ukraine or Palestine, will leave a sour taste on the lips of anyone drinking at the liberal trough.

[Ewan Lindsay]

Discovered this through Jen Pan’s Doomscroll interview and am pretty happy with it. It’s largely an expansion on what she said there but it’s also got a good bit of brevity to it, only being 5 chapters. I’m impressed by how well she avoids treading over her own words here and not just repeating different ways to say ‘the rich like antiracism because it distracts from class issues’.

I think it’s the way she basically comes at it from every angle, challenging it historically, structurally, and even directly on its supposed only purpose. Putting so early on in the book the evidence that DEI does not reduce prejudice or bias at all whereas unions and social programs provably do essentially destroys the legs of the antiracism case and allows from there the exploration of why it perpetuated itself so much then.

I do wonder how long it’s all going to keep going for. Trump’s victory again doesn’t really seem like the rejection of it as much as just trying to do it the other way now. There’s no indication in the book that corporations are turning away from this and in fact the bit about them expanding it under the Reagan administration seems like evidence they’ll just double down. The public seems back to pre-2020 levels of disinterest in it tho which is something.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I agree with the overall premise - that capitalist leaders use racial divides as a distraction from working class solidarity. The book helpfully reviews the ways in which corporations and politicians have created more animosity and harm in the name of antiracism (either purposefully or accidentally), and the book was well-written and easy to read. I differ a bit on some of the interpretations, however. An interesting premise - that people are more content with their lot if they have someone else to look down on - is glossed over. The author goes on to use Idaho as an example of how people will vote to expand Medicaid - even mentioning that the state is 90% white - but fails to explore if the homogeneity of the group is what led to their acceptance of social support. The author argues that we should promote worker's rights, but I am still left with a lingering concern that worker's rights are not achievable if we don't understand the ways in which systemic racism has imbedded itself into our belief systems.

But I'm nitpicking - I agreed with the majority of this book and it was interesting to read about how Republican and Democratic parties have twisted themselves into knots to ignore the rights of the working class.

[Ohdee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Selling Social Justice: Why the Rich Live Anti-Racism provides an in-depth historical and modern analysis at how the DEI industry serves capital more than people, and intentionally distracts from class as the primary contradiction. The book doesn't dismiss racial disparities, but rather examines how class solutions have and will continue to better resolve those disparities than any corporate DEI or race-based governmental policy. The ruling class is greatly invested in promoting race as the primary contradiction, as it breeds culture wars, distracts from them ruling class as the culprits of oppression, and allows them to frame themselves and their corporate and governmental policies as solutions all without actually threatening their class power. This book is for anyone who questions the focus on identity politics as the primary contradiction and wants the facts to back-up the how and why they aren't the answer, even for the disparities within specific populations. Thank you Jennifer Pan, very well done.

[Griffin E. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was frankly shocked to read a book that challenged progressive orthodoxy this succinctly and punctually. What’s in here could be conveyed to someone who isn’t deeply entrenched (and maybe shouldn’t be) in the leftist/progressive milieu. I see some people say now “isn’t the time” for these discussions- to them I ask “how did we get here?”, as in- “how did the multiracial working class turn on the Democratic Party?”, an answer that can, increasingly, only be found in absurd postmodernist pessimism or, as the author demonstrates, a serious reevaluation of mainstream progressive politics. Heterdox progressivism is how we best trump, how we shed the elitist capture of the American left- that’s is why this is, in fact, the BEST time to have these discussions.

[Paul Narvaez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know Jennifer Pan from the Jacobin Show podcast, so the subject matter in this book is certainly a topic that has been well-covered over the past several years. Nonetheless, it is good to have a brief reminder/refresher of how squirrelly corporate America was (and remains) in addition to bringing to mind how self-serving and obvious their pandering at the time actually was to say nothing of the 'get rich quick' opportunism from a coterie of antiracism authors, "advisors" and "coaches". A big ruse, to distract workers from what real working-class justice would look like.

[Maxwell Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting review of concepts of antiracism and classism imbedded in the milieu taking a sober analytical approach to practice, impact, and little-p philosophy. It contains rigorous research and details the political scientifically inclined would enjoy dissecting, but I found tedious. The broader theme of imposition by American aristocracy struck closer to home and gave purchase to a building consensus that if we aren’t careful, good intentions always easily go astray.

[N G · Rating 5 out of 5]

The heart and soul of my class-first (or decried as class reductionist) politics painted out so perfectly that all you can do is give Pan her flowers for this one.

The universalist heart of the principles of trade unionism not division and elite wealthy fingers jabbing at you for your language missteps is the future we need.

I wish I had this book in Uni when I was the only one making these arguments against the self flagellating “intersectionality” libs

[James]

Scathing appraisal of DEI initiatives, focusing specifically on their failure to meaningfully address disparities in social/economic mobility.

Woke is dead, I guess??? Or, rather, is doing exactly what the ruling class intended: distract the masses from class-based mobilization.

[Camiel Leake]

Enjoyed this! Joshua citarella got me to read it after her appearance on his podcast

If you dont wanna read this book listen to “only a pawn in their game” by bob dylan which is the core

[Tom Polek · Rating 5 out of 5]

great stuff here 👍

[Mark Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

it's a must-read for leftists.

[Scott · Rating 1 out of 5]

Jennifer Pan is a brilliant writer, and I've enjoyed reading her essays over the years. However, I have two main problems with this book.

1) Unoriginality

The premise of this book has been done to death over the last decade. Readers of Adolph Reed, Walter Benn Michaels, Dustin Guastella, Catherine Liu, Susan Neiman, Freddie DeBoer, Christian Parenti, Vivek Chibber, and a long list of other contrarian leftists will have already encountered all of these arguments before: the commodification of antiracist symbolism, the superficiality of diversifying the corporate boardroom as a remedy for capitalist labor exploitation, and the cynical weaponization of diversity and equity against unionization drives by some employers. But in reiterating these familiar and well-established critiques of what Nancy Fraser calls progressive neoliberalism, the book adds very little that is new.

2) Telling Half the Story

The book only tells half the story. Yes, we should critique corporate Democrats kneeling in Kente cloth, and what Cedric Johnson has called the "blackwashing" of corporate brands that exploit workers while making performative donations to racial justice non-profits and well-paid anti-racist entrepreneurs. But while criticizing conservative ideologues like Mark Levin and Chris Rufo, Pan doesn't really grapple with the systematic weaponization of anti-woke ideology by the foot soldiers of the billionaire class in their attack on public sector unions, public education, and freedom of speech in the U.S. and other parts of the world. In 2025, with the world's richest man raging against wokeness while dismantling labor rights and the social safety net, and mega-billionaires like Charles Koch and Tim Mellon funding policy institutes that churn out hundreds of anti-CRT and anti-DEI model bills, anti-wokeness is the dominant ideology of the ruling class in Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Washington, D.C. However, you wouldn't know that from reading this book. Furthermore, for all her incisive analysis of co-optation, Pan ignores the co-optation of a segment of the left by right-wing billionaires, through the amplification of anti-woke leftists (and former leftists) on platforms they fund or outright own such as Compact, UnHerd, Rumble, Rockfin, Callin, etc. See Eoin Higgins' book Owned, and Peter Thiel's financial support for the hippest hangout of the reactionary left, Compact magazine, where bitter mid-career academics like Liu and Parenti drone on about the very thing a certain Palantir board chairman also professes to hate: wokeness. At this point, you could also write a book called $elling Anti-Wokeness: How Silicon Valley Billionaires Co-Opted the Critique of Corporate Antiracism.

In the end, while Pan's critique is true as far as it goes, it is both too much a rehash of what others have already said and insufficiently attentive to the full-throated embrace of anti-wokeness by some of the most powerful fractions of the capitalist class. Insofar as they accept the terms of debate established by elite-funded entities like Compact, self-styled anti-woke leftists risk becoming useful idiots for Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Chris Pavlovski, David Sacks, Paul Marshall, Elon Musk, and the vast web of Koch network think tanks and policy institutes that are dismantling public education, unions, and the social safety net before our very eyes.