Text of a talk by Arun Kundnani at the Havens Wright Center for Social Justice, University of Wisconsin-Madison, October 15, 2020 In recent years, the term “racial capitalism” has proliferated among scholars and activists. Articles in places such as New Yorker and Vox have introduced the term to a wide readership. The term is beginning…
As a new generation rises up against racist police and vigilante violence, organizers are thinking through how to build a mass movement that fully engages the most marginalized. Useful lessons can be found in the history of the Black Panther Party, if one reaches beyond the imagery of leather jackets and shotguns. Susie Day’s new…
To neoliberal states, the pandemic is a racialized security threat and a market opportunity. Our fight is for the right to breathe — in every sense. Ruling elites are pursuing the convergence of two dreams in their response to COVID-19: a state dream and a market dream. The state dream entails emptying public space of…
Co-authored with Jeanne Theoharis Declaring white nationalism a form of terrorism won’t combat white nationalism — but it will grant more arbitrary powers to a carceral state that preys on the most vulnerable. Over the last few months, there have been growing calls to categorize white nationalism as a form of terrorism and to extend…
There is a growing acceptance in the US that the war on drugs has led to a system of mass incarceration which, in many ways, resembles the Jim Crow system of segregation and disenfranchisement – as Michelle Alexander has argued. Even the conservative billionaire Koch brothers, who, over the last few decades, have backed almost every…
Until recently, US academia maintained a strong division between the analysis of racism and the analysis of capitalism. The former flourished within certain limits while the latter was neglected; each was artificially separated from the other. But that is no longer true. A body of work has emerged in the last few years that draws…
A post-election analysis of the UK government’s new proposals to tackle extremism. From 1 July, a broad range of public bodies – from nursery schools to optometrists – will be legally obliged to participate in the government’s Prevent policy to identify would-be extremists. Under the fast-tracked Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, schools, universities and health service…
Co-authored with Deepa Kumar Beginning in June 2013, a series of news articles based on whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s collection of documents from the National Security Agency (NSA) took the world by storm. Over the course of a year, the Snowden material provided a detailed account of the massive extent of NSA’s warrantless data collection. What…
Co-authored with Harmit Athwal Britons following the news of protests against police killings of black people in the US should not feel too smug about the situation in the UK. Not for the first time, our outrage at American racism goes hand in hand with complacency about Britain’s own history of institutional racism and…