The New Age of Empire
with Kehinde Andrews
Hosted by CBC's Adrian Harewood
Provide[s] readers with a solid grounding in the 500-year history of racial capitalism – the enduring significance of the genocide of Native Americans, the transatlantic slave trade and European colonialism – as he works, convincingly, to reveal the ‘colonial logic and neocolonialism’ still at play in the workings of contemporary global institutions such as the UN, the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO.
CBC’s Adrian Harwood hosts a conversation on the many ways in which the effects and logic of anti-black colonialism continue to inform our modern world with author Kehinde Andrews, director of the Centre for Critical Social Research at Birmingham City University.
Colonialism and imperialism are often thought to be distant memories, whether they're glorified in Britain's collective nostalgia or taught as a sin of the past in history classes. Multiculturalism, immigration and globalization have led traditionalists to fear that the west is in decline and that white people are rapidly being left behind; progressives and reactionaries alike espouse the belief that we live in a post-racial society.
But imperialism, as Kehinde Andrews argues in his latest book, The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World, is alive and well. It's just taken a new form: one in which the U.S. and not Europe is at the center of Western dominion, and imperial power looks more like racial capitalism than the expansion of colonial holdings. The International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization and even the United Nations are only some of these modern mechanisms of Western imperialism. Yet these imperialist logics and tactics are not limited to just the west or to white people, as in the neocolonial relationship between China and Africa. Diving deep into the concepts of racial capitalism and racial patriarchy, Andrews adds nuance and context to these often over-simplified narratives, challenging the right and the left in equal measure.
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