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.
