Race and Capitalism Defined: A Graduate Student Symposium

This day-long conference on concepts of racial capitalism will involve papers from graduate students from around the country.

This symposium will focus on naming and defining the various aspects of racial capitalism and its use as a concept in academic and/or social justice work, as well as how the concept can be applied in across fields of inquiry. This conference will serve as an exploratory space to present to fellow graduate students and receive feedback on works-in-progress utilizing relevant themes, explanations, critiques, or historical studies of race and capitalism.

The Race & Capitalism Symposium will comprise a day of discussion and debate among local scholars regarding how we might address issues of racial capitalism and better utilize these concepts in our work. Though the symposium will be broadly constituted, we aim to consider the depth of racial capitalism as a theory, a history, and a device to explicate systems of exploitation, neoliberalism and world-making. Our aim is to refine and sharpen conceptualizations of ‘racial capitalism’ or ‘race and capitalism’ through our own empirical and theoretical work, which broadens the contexts under which the concept is studied. We especially draw upon Cedric Robinson’s foundational definitions of racial capitalism and the Black Radical Tradition, taking up the following key questions: How does racial capitalism structure the modern world? What are the institutions and systems that perpetuate racial capitalism? What are the problems with concepts of racial capitalism, as so defined? How can radical politics combat racial capitalism? Is capitalism aspirational for marginalized communities?