Date: TBD

Time: TBD

SPECIAL

CFP 75 - Author Meets Critics: Author Meets Critics: Anti-Racism as Communism by Paul Gomberg, Bloomsbury, 2024
Room: TBD

Sponsor: Program Committee

Organizer &

Presider: Alan J. Spector, Purdue University Northwest

Description: 

The author’s thesis is that capitalist society has processes and structures that create and perpetuate modern racism and as long as inequality exists, it will be impossible to eliminate racist practices and ideas. His use of the word “communism” is meant to express Marx’ definition of “From each according to ability, to each according to need.” The core of the book expresses optimism. The book gives example after example of black/white unity especially in the South, in workplaces and communities in the pre-WWII era. The second part of the book is more analytical as he develops his anti-capitalist, anti-classist argument. The optimism is an antidote to the psychological reductionism of some antiracists but Gomberg critiques narrow class reductionism as well.

Author:

Paul Gomberg, University of California, Davis

Critics:

David G. Embrick, University of Connecticut

Laura López-Sanders, Brown University

Johnny Eric Williams, Trinity College

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