Watch: What is Antiracism?

A book launch and conversation with Dr Arun Kundnani, author of What Is Antiracism? And Why It Means Anticapitalism, also featuring Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore.

13th July 2023 | Brunei Gallery, SOAS University of London | Co-hosted with the Independent Social Research Foundation

Why has liberalism been ineffective at combating racism? And what would a more radical anti-racism look like?

In his important new book, What Is Antiracism? And Why It Means Anticapitalism, Arun Kundnani traces two traditions of anti-racist activism. Against liberal anti-racism, which views racism as an individual problem of extremist beliefs, he advocates a radical anti-racist tradition, which argues that fighting racism means striking at its capitalist roots.

Arun is joined in conversation by noted prison abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore.

Arun Kundnani writes about racial capitalism and Islamophobia, surveillance and political violence, and Black radical movements. He is the author of What is Antiracism? And Why It Means Anticapitalism, The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror and The End of Tolerance: racism in 21st century Britain.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore is Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and American Studies, at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where she is also director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics. She is the author of Golden Gulag, Change Everything, and Abolition Geography.

The ISRF & the IRR would like to thank SOAS University of London for hosting this event. We are also grateful to videographer Ralph Pritchard, who filmed this event, and publishers Verso Books.

13th July 2023 | Brunei Gallery, SOAS University of London | Co-hosted with the Independent Social Research Foundation

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