Beyond the book club: white antiracist organizing before and after the 2024 election

The 2024 US presidential election results show that large portions of the white electorate continue to endorse the politics of nativism, anti-Blackness and misogyny. Yet what white people think and do in relation to white supremacy is neither uniform nor sedimented. My research examines how movement groups seek to organize white people away from white supremacy and towards racial justice. In this essay, I establish how a liberal, middle-class approach to antiracism has been insufficient to the political project of challenging white supremacy. I then draw on four years of field work and interviews with the largest US-based organization seeking to organize white communities towards intersectional racial and economic justice. I offer two examples from the field to show what politically strategic approaches to organizing white people for racial justice can entail. These include centering poor and working-class white people and situating antiracist learning in the service of collective action.