What are the effects of racial capitalism?

Racial capitalism has negative effects, on both white and non-white people. Diversity being seen as something that is aquired to increase status, causes white institutions to use non-white people as tools. This is disadvangteous for both. Institutions lose the sense of identity that the non-white person has and the non-white person might feel used of insecure because of the fact that they are reduced to a tool to increase diversity. This feeling of being reduced to their racial identity causes confusion and insecurity about one's identity. It creates pressure for non-white people to uphold the standard of the 'token' non-white person, if this expectation isn't met, there will be dissapointment. This dissapointment could have a huge effect on one's self-image. To avoid this dissapointment, one could want to adjust theirself to not seem 'non-white'.It also causes feelings of anger, misunderstanding and being hurt. Mainly because of the fact that they are chosen to fill the gap of the non-white person, the realization that one is only engaging because of their race, could hurt one's feelings.

Below and on the sides are some examples of people who have experienced racial capitalism and have described their feelings in the moment:

Kekellie (21)
''I used to act when I was ten and I remember getting booked for a commercial and all I remember was that I was excited. The shoot was located in a old factory and they asked me to wear ''clothes that children in third world countries would wear''. This was weird to me, because I didn't understand what they meant, but I went along with it, because it was my first commercial. Once I arrived on set, I noticed that the whole cast was made up out of children of color, which at first didn't stand out to me. When the director (who was white) came to talk to us about the plot of the commercial, everything slowly started to make sense. The commercial was about child laborers in Brazil that made chocolat and they wanted me to play the 'mom' of the group. At that time I didn't really have a problem with it, until I got older and watched the commercial again. They typecasted me and turned me into a stereotype, all for the sake of some company getting sympathy. Once I realized this, I just felt very hurt, because I remember being extremely happy that I booked this job. They only needed me to get sympathy based on my skincolor and that is something that hurts, I felt like I was nothing more than that.

Museum Volkenkunde, wanted to have more diverse people to visit their museum.

Iman (24)
While I was doing my internship at museum Volkenkunde they asked me to be on a few pictures to show that they could be diverse too.
I just agreed to be on the picture because I was doing an internship and I wanted be to be nice to my mentor.

But then I was thinking at the moment they asked me at my school to be the face of the studies that I'm currently following as the only black girl again...

I just noticed that I get asked a lot for campaigns and pictures. First I thought because of my personality but I just noticed a pattern in this system and especially the white institutions. They are always looking for the colored girl or the muslim guy etc. It's an issue that's being ignored or not being acknowledged here in The Netherlands and it's disturbing me.

It made me feel used because their institutions are not changed or more diverse, it only seemed like that because of the campaign or pictures they showed for a period of time.

Pietro is a student at Willem de Kooning, he studies Lifestyle & Transformation design and he was approached to participate in the current recruitement campaign for WdkA, because he knows the producer and director who made the video. He trusts them annd that was one of the reasons he agreed to work with this concept of recruitment video.

He was initially asked to do the video because there aren't many men within his major, so to atract more men, they asked him to be in the video. He was told that he would get a minute to pitch his work and to tell what he does within the school.

When he arrived on the set, he expected a nice atmosphere but he was met with stress. He came in and the first question they asked him was if he had a white shirt with him. Which got him confused, because he wasn't told to bring one. When the director explained to him what he was going to do in the video, Pietro was shocked. They wanted him to play a scientist. Pietro felt like running away, but didn't. He decided to stay on set because he was told that he would be ablo to show his work, which eventually didn't happen.