Selling Social Justice

Americans have been sold a version of social justice that fails to deliver
The national racial reckoning that began in 2020 promised to radically
restructure American society from the bottom up. But five years on, it has
mainly served to strengthen the ruling class and deliver the rich an
opportunity to rehabilitate a profoundly unequal economic order precisely
at a moment when the stability of the system and the public’s trust in it
are drastically deteriorating. Corporations have used antiracism to
consolidate their political power and evade government regulation.
Employers have surveilled and undermined workers through counterproductive
diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings. Affluent professionals and
Democratic politicians have exacerbated a stark class divide by pushing
half-baked “racial equity” policies that come at the expense of the
majority of working people. And the right has reacted to these developments
by stoking a toxic culture war against “wokeness” that serves only as a
distraction from the increasing economic hardship faced by Americans of all
races. Selling Social Justice investigates the rise and spread of
contemporary antiracist ideology and shows how the rich came to embrace
this particular form of justice. In this provocative and thoroughly
researched account, Jennifer C. Pan explores why, in a twenty-first-century
economy of increasing scarcity, antiracism is the wrong frame for
understanding and fighting inequality.