A book reading and discussion of Azfar Shafi and Ilyas Nagee’s new book Race to the Bottom: Reclaiming Antiracism (2022).

Antiracist movements are more mainstream than ever before. Liberal democracies boast of their policies designed to stamp out racism in all walks of life. Why then is racism still ever-present in our society?

This is not an accident, but by design. Capitalism is structured by racism and has relentlessly attacked powerful movements. Race to the Bottom traces our current crisis back decades, to the fragmentation of Britain's Black Power movements and their absorption into NGOs and the Labour Party.

The authors call for recovering radical histories of antiracist struggle, championing modern activism and infusing them with the urgency of our times: replacing anxieties over 'unconscious bias' and rival claims for 'representation' with the struggle for a new, socialist, multi-racial organising from below.