Image: Cedric J. Robinson, who coined the term “racial capitalism.”
Getting started: read Robin D. G. Kelley’s article, What Did Cedric Robinson Mean by Racial Capitalism? Listen to the podcast, Black Work Talk. Read the book, Histories of Racial Capitalism.
BOOKS
Edward E. Baptist: The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism.
Sven Beckert: Empire of Cotton: A New History of Global Capitalism.
Sven Beckert & Seth Rockman: Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development.
Charisse Burden-Stelly: Modern U.S. Racial Capitalism: Some Theoretical Insights.
Ruth Wilson Gilmore: Change Everything: Racial Capitalism and the Case for Abolition.
Destin Jenkins & Justin Leroy (editors): Histories of Racial Capitalism.
Manning Marable: How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems in Race, Political Economy, and Society.
Jodi Melamed: Represent and Destroy: Rationalizing Violence in the New Racial Capitalism.
Cedric J. Robinson: Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition.
Walter Rodney: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.
Jackie Wang: Carceral Capitalism.
Eric Williams: Capitalism and Slavery.
ARTICLES
African American Intellectual Historical Society: see their large roundup of articles under the tag, racial capitalism.
Nawal Arjini: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Says There Is No Housing Crisis: ‘It’s Just Housing Under Capitalism’.
Sven Beckert (interview): The Clear Connection Between Slavery and American Capitalism.
Liam Kofi Bright & Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò: The point of theorizing about racial capitalism is to focus our attention on the broader forms of organization that are constitutive of social life under capitalism, beyond how it organizes work and production.
Brown University: History of Capitalism Bibliography.
Charisse Burden-Stelly:
- The Capitalist Foundations of Racialization.
- Modern U.S. Racial Capitalism: Some Theoretical Insights.
The Economic Historian: Capitalism and Slavery: A Discussion with Caitlin Rosenthal, Tom Cutterham, and Eric Hilt.
Eric Foner: A Brutal Process.
Terri Friedline & Anna K. Wood: The Deadly Mix of Individual Responsibility and Racial Capitalism: Poor people of color are dying in droves so that a privileged few can enjoy pretending life is “back to normal.”
Walter Johnson: To Remake the World: Slavery, Racial Capitalism, and Justice.
Robin D. G. Kelley: What Did Cedric Robinson Mean by Racial Capitalism?
Minkah Makalani: Cedric Robinson and the Origins of Race.
Whitney N. Laster Pirtle: Racial Capitalism: A Fundamental Cause of Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic Inequities in the United States.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor: see roundup of Taylor’s articles on her website.
VIDEOS AND PODCASTS
Black Work Talk: Perspectives on Race, Class, and Organizing. (This podcast explores racial capitalism on the regular.)
Angela Davis: We can’t eradicate racism without eradicating racial capitalism.
Ruth Wilson Gilmore: Geographies of Racial Capitalism.
Robin D. G. Kelley: What Is Racial Capitalism and Why Does It Matter?
Jodi Melamed: Operationalizing Racial Capitalism: Administrative Power and Ordinary Violence.
Barbara Ransby: Racial Capitalism, Power & Resistance.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor: Racism and Capitalism in Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s Race For Profit.
For more resources on systemic racism, visit the systemic racism section of the website.