The urban process under racial capitalism: Race, anti-Blackness, and capital accumulation

ABSTRACT This paper employs racial capitalism as a framework for understanding the urban process. The purpose of this paper is two-fold: (1) to center the racial character of the urban process within a broader political economy of racial capitalism and (2) to position capitalism and racism as mutually dependent systems of exploitation. The paper begins by discussing the omission of race and racism within urbanization processes. Here, the work of David Harvey is critiqued in order to highlight not only the contradictions of capitalism, but also those of Marxist scholars in understanding urban development. The paper then discusses the forms of racial capitalism through modalities of dispossession and displacement, the agents engaged in this process, and the competing ideologies that structure the urban political economy, particularly in the U.S. The paper ends with suggestions for future research to consider the constitutive nature of capitalism and racism in producing urbanization processes.