Histories of Racial Capitalism

Destin Jenkins, assistant professor of history at Stanford, and Justin Leroy, assistant professor of history at the University of California, Davis, and the codirector of the Mellon Research Initiative on Racial Capitalism, have edited a thought-provoking collection of scholarly essays that reveal how racial oppression has informed capitalism through the centuries. The essays explain how economic interests dispossessed racial minorities of wealth through financial innovations such as foreclosure, and how these injustices persist to the present day. This eye-opening chronicle of race and capitalism will engage anyone interested in history, economics and contemporary politics.

The System Endures

Federally recognized Native American tribes, because they were a sovereign people before the United States existed, enjoy rights in the US political and economic spheres. The Supreme Court approved employment preferences for Indigenous Americans on the grounds that their identity is political, not racial. But this obscures the racial dimension of anti-Indigenous measures and frustrates Black demands for wealth redistribution, including reparations for slavery.