It's Not about Whiteness, It's about Wealth

Book excerpt: 'Remi Adekoya is a welcome blast of unsentimental rigour into a race debate clogged up with emotion and moralism. His dissection of the economic underpinnings of the world's racial and national hierarchies will make uncomfortable reading for both liberals and conservatives' David Goodhart 'This terrifically illuminating book . . . offers a new way of understanding modern racial structures' i Newspaper 'This is a courageous and urgent intervention into one of the most important debates of our time - one in which we often seem curiously incurious about what would lead to genuine equality among groups. In clear and elegant prose Dr. Adekoya will shift the way you think about hierarchies of race' Thomas Chatterton Williams 'Remi brings a unique international perspective to the race debate, allowing the reader to understand complexities in the discussion that they won't have considered before' Katharine Birbalsingh 'It's Not About Whiteness, It's About Wealth form[s] part of the urgent and long-awaited intellectual work needed to create a genuinely fair and socially just society, one that doesn't depend on treating ethnic minority people like children . . . The strength of Adekoya's book is that it is rooted in concrete, material questions in the context of a debate transfixed by the performative and the representational' Critic 'Adekoya's book is one of the rare works which problematize the Woke stereotypes: it correctly grounds "racist prejudices" in wealth differences. All sincere liberal anti-racists should read this book to grasp why their efforts are so counterproductive. And since liberal anti-racism is the hegemonic ideology in our countries, this means that EVERYBODY should read Adekoya's book' Slavoj Žižek 'At once witty and fact-filled-but also self-deprecating and sometimes very moving-It's Not About Whiteness, It's About Wealth turns current debates about racism and privilege on their heads' Helen Dale What really matters when it comes to race? Western conversations on race and racism revolve around familiar themes; colonialism, the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and the ideology of white supremacism form the holy trinity of the race debate. But what if we are neglecting a key piece of the puzzle? Something that explains why a racial order persists today despite a moral consensus it should not. In It's Not About Whiteness, It's About Wealth, Remi Adekoya persuasively argues that - in our capitalist world - it is socioeconomic realities which play the leading role in sustaining racial hierarchies in everyday life and in the global big picture, something regularly overlooked in the current debate. Financial power is what enables ultimate influence over events, environments, and people, and, as Adekoya expertly demonstrates, it is money more than anything else that maintains the racial pecking order. Exploring immigration, technology, media, group stereotypes, status perceptions and more, this book cleverly shows how wealth determines what's what in key domains of modern life, and how this affects racial dynamics across the globe. An incisive, insightful and open investigation into the links between financial power and racial hierarchies, Adekoya sheds much needed light on the status and power imbalances shaping our world and reveals what needs to be done to combat them going forward.