what is racial capitalism?

According to Nancy Leong, racial capitalism is the process of deriving social or economic value from the racial identity of another person. It is possible that any person of any race can engange in racial capitalism. The focus within this project is on racial capitalism operated by white institutions. Particularly, white institutions that derive social or economic value or status from association with non-white individuals.

This means that white Institutions use non-white people to 'create' diversity. Diversity is seen as something that can be measured and there for is seen as something profitable. These institutions 'create diversity' by for example hiring a certain amount of non-white people to meet a certain diversity quota or by including as much non-white people and minorities in advertisement as possible, to show that the institution is in fact 'diverse'. This way they hope to attract more non-white people to engage or become a part of that institution.

This does not mean that the institution is racist. But it does mean that these institutions manage to profit of off non-white people, which is problematic, because it turns non-white people into property, ignoring their identity and them as a person. Working on diversity is seen as something that needs to be done for the institution to be valid, instead of something that needs to be done because of the fact that society is becoming more diverse.