Anti-blackness in management and organization studies: challenging racial capitalism in organizing and knowledge production

The papers in this special issue engage Black radical intellectual ideas to highlight the related concepts of anti-Blackness and racial capitalism. As such, these works challenge white supremacy in scholarship and beyond by providing case studies, interviews, essays, and theoretical explorations that center Black liberational thought and radical Black knowledge-making. Underpinning these efforts, is a commitment to challenge anti-Blackness in management and organization studies. Anti-Blackness is an organized and stubborn form of racism that targets Black communities by removing or denying their full humanity. In our introduction, we discuss the relationship between anti-Blackness and racial capitalism, and suggest that these are critical concepts for scholars of management and organization to meaningfully engage with. Racial capitalism has rapidly emerged over the last 10 years as a significant analytic of race and its materiality as a socioeconomic formation. We write this introduction to offer deeper insights into this concept and how its foundational ideas can be applied to current debates in the organization of scholarship, public policy, and corporate activity. Specifically, the special issue highlights the role of context and positionality in the formation of capitalism and urges scholars and activists to pay greater attention to how our analysis of race and capitalism must retain a focus on specific mechanisms and arrangements that shape these relations.