Elite Capture

A powerful indictment of the ways elites have co-opted radical critiques of racial capitalism to serve their own ends&quote;Identity politics&quote; is everywhere, polarizing discourse from the campaign trail to the classroom. But the &quote;identity politics&quote; so compulsively referenced bears little resemblance to the concept as first introduced by the radical Black feminist Combahee River Collective. While the Collective articulated a political viewpoint grounded in their own position as Black lesbians with the explicit aim of building solidarity across lines of difference, &quote;identity politics&quote; is now frequently weaponized as a means of closing ranks around ever-narrower conceptions of group interests.But the trouble, Olufemi O. Taiwo deftly argues, is not with &quote;identity politics&quote; itself. Through a substantive engagement with the global Black radical tradition, Taiwo identifies the process by which a radical concept can be stripped of its political substance and become the victim of elite capture-deployed by political, social, and economic elites in the service of their own interests.Taiwo's crucial intervention both elucidates this complex process and helps us move beyond a binary of &quote;class&quote; vs. &quote;race.&quote; By rejecting elitist identity politics in favor of a constructive politics of radical solidarity, he advances the possibility of organizing across our differences in the urgent struggle for a better world.