New Article: Carmen G. Gonzalez and Athena Mutua, Mapping Racial Capitalism: Implications for Law, 2 J. of L. & Pol. Econ. 127 (2022). Abstract Below:
Racial capitalism is a conceptual framework that illuminates the relationship between race and class in the global economy. Formulated initially by South African scholars and activists, the theory of racial capitalism has been invoked in recent years by scholars in a variety of disciplines, including law, because it sheds light on seemingly unrelated phenomena, including rampant economic inequality; increasingly militarized policing and border control; the ongoing dispossession of Indigenous peoples and others racialized as inferior; the resurgence of right-wing authoritarian ethno-nationalism; the expulsion to the margins of society of growing numbers of humans (including persons who are unemployed, incarcerated, or homeless); and the unprecedented degradation of the ecological systems that support human and non-human life.
This article contributes to the theory of racial capitalism by describing its historical foundations and analyzing what we believe to be its two key structural features: profit-making and race-making, for the purpose of accumulating wealth and power. We understand profit-making as the extraction of surplus value or profits through processes of exploitation, expropriation, and expulsion, which are grounded in a politics of race-making. We understand race-making as including racial stratification, racial segregation, and the creation of sacrifice zones, which reflect the strategies and outcomes of profit-making. The structural features of racial capitalism thus are mutually constitutive: profit-making processes create and reinforce the making of racial meaning, while race-making, underwritten by white supremacy, structures and facilitates the economic processes of profit-making. Together, they constitute a global system dependent on the unbridled extraction of wealth from both humans and nature.
Law is deeply implicated in racial capitalism’s profit-making and race-making processes. The article highlights, with concrete examples, the ways that law and legal institutions shape, justify and naturalize the injustices that racial capitalism creates. For example, law defines, in part, what constitutes sovereignty, property, and citizenship; it delineates acceptable levels of environmental degradation; and it determines who is entitled to housing, health care, clean air and water, food, childcare, and a semblance of real freedom and choice (those who can pay). Among the areas of law discussed in the article are property, real estate, labor, immigration, housing, antitrust, trade, investment, environmental, and corporate law – as well as foundational principles of international law (such as sovereignty).
Poverty Law 