Dismantling Racial Capitalism brought together more than 100 academics, organizers, policy-makers, students and change-makers to examine how racial capitalism drives inequality, exploitation, and destruction and how we can catalyze change.
AGENDA
DISMANTLING RACIAL CAPITALISM aspires to create space to develop and sharpen our understanding of racial capitalism, how it functions, its horrific consequences, and, most importantly, how we can challenge and dismantle it. This event brings together academics, organizers, policymakers, students and changemakers for a deeply rooted examination of how racial capitalism drives inequality, exploitation, and destruction, and how we can catalyze change.
The urgency of confronting this inequality, exploitation, and destruction, though, often leads us to focus on important, but small and more immediately “winnable’” campaigns for reform, given the significant limitations of our current power. But fundamental change to the systems that create and sustain racial capitalism requires ambitious, long-term organizing and work to challenge the ways these systems and institutions are legitimized by the law. We will focus our attention on bridging divides between social movements and academia to analyze and workshop together the efforts of thinkers, organizers, and attorneys who are thinking and acting big, leading ambitious challenges to the status quo and dreaming and making a more just and equitable future.
Under the themes of housing, environmental justice, and reparations, each discussion shares the following aims:
I. Demonstrate how injustice follows from imperatives of capitalism and racial systems.
II. Highlight efforts and successful campaigns in dynamic campaign work, with international examples.
III. Identify footholds to subvert and invert logic.
DISMANTLING RACIAL CAPITALISM CONVENING PROGRAM
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2022
MAIN VENUE:
NYU School of Law, Vanderbilt Hall, Greenberg Lounge,
40 Washington Square South, New York, NY 10012
BREAKOUT SESSIONS:
NYU School of Law, Vanderbilt Hall, Tishman Auditorium (right across the hall from Greenberg)
40 Washington Square South, New York, NY 10012
12:00–12:30 p.m. REGISTRATION AND LUNCH RECEPTION
12:30–1:25 p.m. WELCOME AND OPENING PLENARY
- DaMareo Cooper (Center for Popular Democracy)
- Christina Heatherton (Trinity College)
- Lester Spence (Johns Hopkins)
- Moderated by Joo-Hyun Kang (The Action Lab)
1:25–2:20 p.m. PANEL DISCUSSION 1—REPARATIONS AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE
This panel will focus on the role of reparations in struggles against the racially hierarchized exposure to precarity, inequality, and premature death at the core of racial capitalism. The panel will explore contemporary debates about reparations—as a project rooted in making amends in the present for historical wrongs and as a future-oriented project aimed at building a better social order. The discussion of reparations will be grounded in examples of concrete organizing efforts for distributive and racial justice.
Panelists:
- Missy Risser-Lovings (CUNY Law)
- Renee Hatcher (University of Illinois-Chicago Law)
- Katherine Franke (Columbia University)
- Moderated by Racquel Forrester (Urban Democracy Lab)
2:20–3:15 p.m. PANEL DISCUSSION 2— CLIMATE/ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
This panel will examine the often-overlooked role of climate change, environmental policy, and land use/ownership in perpetuating racial oppression and the legacy of slavery in the United States. Through a racial capitalism lens, panelists will explore the myriad ways in which Black and brown communities have been targeted and harmed historically by government and private entities in this country—often in the name of economic and social development—and the extraordinary efforts by local activists and community organizations to fight for environmental justice, advocate for collective land ownership, and otherwise challenge the existing social order.
Panelists:
- Safiya Omari (City of Jackson, MI)
- Brooke Floyd (JXN People’s Assembly)
- Alejandra Cruz (Sustainable Economies Law Center)
- Dorian Payán (Sustainable Economies Law Center)
- Moderated by Jason Williamson ’06 (Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law)
3:15–4:00 p.m. COFFEE AND SNACK BREAK
BREAKOUT DISCUSSIONS
4:00–4:55 p.m. PANEL DISCUSSION 3—HOUSING
It is impossible to consider housing and residential property in the United States without reference to racism. Starting with the history and definition of property in this country, racism, and the housing market have long been intertwined. Racial projects have been at the core of government and private sector efforts to expand markets and profits overthe past century. These include New Deal institutions like the Federal Housing Administration that excluded Black families from homeownership programs, to the segregated history of public housing, to more recent predatory mortgage lending practices. And even as fair housing laws have sought to outlaw discrimination, the housing market continues to profit from, and reinforce, racism and inequality. This panel seeks to deepen our understanding of racial capitalism as it functions in housing. Together we will discuss its specific manifestations and its institutional and legal anchors, and how we might challenge and dismantle it. We will examine both local campaigns and proposals as well as “big picture” perspectives.
Panelists:
- Tara Raghuveer (KC Tenants)
- Rasmia Kirmani-Frye (Hester Street)
- Marika Dias (Urban Justice Center Safety Net Project)
- John Whitlow (CUNY Law and Initiative for Community Power)
- Moderated by Sateesh Nori (JustFix) and
- Gianpaolo Baiocchi (Urban Democracy Lab/NYU Gallatin)
4:55–5:50 p.m. CLOSING REMARKS AND PLENARY
- Jordan Camp (Trinity College)
- Ntanya Lee (LeftRoots)
- Nara Roberta Silva (Brooklyn Institute for Social Research)
- Moderated by John Whitlow (CUNY Law and Initiative for Community Power)
5:50–7:30 p.m. EVENING RECEPTION
Resources
The idea of Racial Capitalism has its origins at the intersection of Black Radical Thought and Marxism. Cedric Robinson and his 1983 book, Black Marxism, are often credited as its starting point, though as Robinson himself notes in the book, the discussion has earlier origins, including in the writings of Oliver Cox, WEB Dubois, and others.
This short primer is an introduction to the discussion, less with a goal of uncovering its history and more to provide accessible and useful tools to think with.
Recommended Materials
To Read
Cedric Robinson, “Racial Capitalism: The Nonobjective Character of Capitalist Development” in Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (2000)
Robin D. G. Kelley, “What did Cedric Robinson Mean by Racial Capitalism?” Boston Review, Jan. 2017
Jodi Melamed, “Racial Capitalism,” Critical Ethnic Studies (2015), Vol. 1(1): 76-85,
Olúfẹ́mi O Táíwò, “On Liberty, Security, and Our System of Racial Capitalism,” aeon, Oct. 2020
Olúfẹ́mi O Táíwò, “The Fight for Reparations Cannot Ignore Climate Change,” Boston Review, Jan. 2022
Nikita Stewart, Ryan Christopher Jones, Sergio Peçanha, Jeffrey Furticella and Josh
Williams, “Underground Lives: The Sunless World of Immigrants in Queens,” Oct. 2019
To Listen
Kali Akuno: Racism, Jackson’s Water Crisis, And The Need For Mass Movements (23 mins), The Marc Steiner Show, Sep. 2022
Suggested Materials for Further Learning
To Watch
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Geographies of Racial Capitalism (17 mins), Antipode
Foundation Film, Jun. 2020
To Read
Excerpts from: W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy inAmerica, 1860–1880 (1935) (“The Black Worker”; “The White Worker”; “The Propaganda of History.”)
Excerpts from Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (2007) (“Introduction”; “The California Political Economy”)
Excerpts from Nikhil Singh, Race and America’s Long War (2017) (“Preface”;“Introduction”)
Stuart Hall, “Race, Articulation, & Societies Structured in Dominance,” in Essential Essays, Volume 1: Foundations of Cultural Studies (2019)
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “Fatal Couplings of Power and Difference: Notes on Racism and Geography,” The Professional Geographer (2002), Vol. 54(1): 15-24
Michael C. Dawson, “Racial Capitalism and Democratic Crisis,” Items, Dec. 2018, link.
Jodi Melamed and Chandan Reddy, “Using Liberal Rights to Enforce Racial Capitalism,” Items, Jul. 2019.
Chandan Reddy, “Neoliberalism then and Now: Race, Sexuality, and the Black Radical Tradition,” GLQ (2019), Vol. 25(1): 150-155
Denise Ferreira da Silva, “No-Bodies: Law, Raciality, and Violence,” Griffith L. Rev. (2009) Vol. 18(2): 212-236
Renee Hatcher, “Solidarity Economy Lawyering,” Tenn. J. of Race, Gender, and Social Justice (2019), Vol. 8, link.
Amna A. Akbar, “Demands for a Democratic Political Economy,” Harv. L. Rev. F., Vol. 134(1), link.
Ed Whitfield, “What must we do to be free? On the building of Liberated Zones,” Prabuddha: Journal of Social Equality (2018), Vol. 2(1) 45-58, link.
Sameer Ashar, Renee Hatcher, And John Whitlow, “Law Clinics and Racial Capitalism,” LPE Blog, Nov. 2022, link.
Robin D.G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2002).
Angela Davis, Women, Race and Class (1983).
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1963)
Policing the Planet, Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter (Jordan T. Camp and Christina Heatherton eds., 2016).
Jordan T. Camp and Christina Heatherton, “The World We Want: An Interview with Cedric and Elizabeth Robinson," in Futures of Black Radicalism (Gaye Theresa Johnson and Alex Lubin eds., 2017).
Nara Roberta Silva, “‘Defund the Police’: Strategy and Struggle for Racial Justice in the US,” in Social movements and Politics during COVID-19: Crisis, Solidarity and Change in a Global Pandemic (Breno Bringel and Geoffrey Pleyers eds., 2022).
Lester K. Spence, Knocking the Hustle: Against Neoliberal Turn in Black Politics (2015).
To Listen
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Robin Kelley, and Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Interview from the Socialism
2022 Conference in Chicago (96 mins), The Dig, Sep. 2022
To Watch
David Harvey, David Harvey and the City (13 mins), Antipode Foundation Film, Jun. 2020.
Robin D. G. Kelley, What Is Racial Capitalism and Why Does It Matter? (62 mins), Simpson Center for the Humanities, Nov. 2017.
Jordan T. Camp, Resurgent Nationalisms and the Challenges of the Current Conjuncture (an interview with Gillian Hart) (60mins), Conjuncture S1 Ep. 2, Jan.
2022.
Jordan T. Camp, Against Pessimism (an interview with Robin D. G. Kelley) (72 mins), Conjuncture S2 Ep. 1, Aug. 2022.
Selected Sources
LPE’s Racial Capital Bibliography.
UC Davis’ Selected Readings on Racial Capitalism.
Destin Jenkins’ Histories of Racial Capitalism Syllabus.
Pedro A. Regalado’s Race and Capitalism in American Cities Syllabus.