...Contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance have their roots in slavery, colonialism and imperialism, which sought the denial of social, political, and economic rights according to race, class, caste, gender, sexuality and geography in order to advance the European capitalist imperialist project. In addition to seizing control over natural resources in vast swathes of the world, Western imperialism sought to gain control over human labour, through slavery and when slavery was abolished, through other means of controlling and ensuring access to cheap and often forced or coerced labour on a massive scale. Addressing root causes of racism therefore needs an understanding of the historical and contemporary relationship between capital, the construction of racial (and other) hierarchies and capital’s imperative to control labour for the purposes of profit and wealth accumulation. 

This paper attempts to look at some of the work that has been done by anti-racist and decolonial scholars and activists globally to offer propositions as to (i) why racism and white supremacy (as a legacy of slavery, imperialism and colonialism) remain entrenched in the global political economy and (ii) how the resurgence of both overt and covert racism, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance are constitutive of neoliberal globalisation...