Profs and Pints Online presents: “Understanding Racial Capitalism,” with Olufemi Taiwo, assistant professor of philosophy at Georgetown University and scholar of Black political movements.

[This talk will remain available in recorded form at the link used here for tickets and access.]

What does a properly intersectional movement against racism—and, for that matter, transphobia, patriarchy, and ableism—demand of us in terms of our relationship with our capitalist economic system? Do we have to be against capitalism to oppose racism? Is the struggle against racist police violence an anti-capitalist struggle? Are the struggles for universal healthcare, a jobs guarantee, or climate justice anti-racist ones?

Join Professor Taiwo as he offers answers to these questions based on a long line of neglected Black political thought. His talk will cite a host of prominent Black thinkers and span the disciplines, drawing from political science, sociology, Black Studies, and geography.

Spurred in part by the increasing prominence of these kinds of questions, the term “racial capitalism” is rising in use. Some take the term to mean that there is a fundamental, necessary relationship between racism and capitalism. Others take it as a description of how capitalism functions. Some are bitterly opposed to the use of the term “racial capitalism” entirely, viewing “racial” as an unhelpful, arbitrary, or misleading appendage to the term “capitalism.”

We’ll learn about the political theorist Cedric Robinson’s classic book Black Marxism, which is largely credited with introducing the term “racial capitalism” to describe the construction of a global political system that advantages whites and exploits Black people and other people of color. Also covered by the talk will be contemporary scholars like geographer and abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore, who used the same way of thinking about the world to describe the incentive structures that built mass incarceration and helped incentivize racist and militarized policing.

Professor Taiwo’s provocative Profs and Pints talks always win applause for expanding minds and challenging how people think about the issues of our day, and this one promises to do so as well.

Profs & Pints Online: Understanding Racial Capitalism