The alternative causes transitions that fail to adequately address material harms of racial capitalism.

IV. A WAY FORWARD Racial capitalism is rampant in American society. As I have shown, the commodification of non-whiteness harms both non-white individuals and society as a whole. But how do we decommodify race? In this relatively brief Part, I sketch the contours of a solution to the problem of racial capitalism. My account is intentionally impressionistic, and this Article will serve as a foundation for future work offering both broader discussion of identity capitalism and a more detailed account of how we should go about decommodifying race.314 The first obstacle is that decommodification poses what Radin describes as a “transition problem”: there are difficulties inherent in moving from our current, nonideal world to an ideal one.315 With respect to race, the view of race as a commodity is so deeply wrought in our collective imagination that it will take time to work the fundamental change in individual minds and collective social norms necessary for decommodification. Yet even if instant decommodification were possible, the prospect raises what Radin describes as a “double bind”: commodification powerfully symbolizes and legitimates racial hierarchy, yet an immediate, wholesale decommodification of race would freeze existing racial hierarchies as they currently stand.316 Radin’s approach to these difficulties is a pragmatic one.317 In the nonideal world in which we live, “it may sometimes be better to commodify incompletely than not to commodify at all,” and “in choosing the best alternative now available to us . . . we may have to tolerate some things that would count as harms in our ideal world.”318 Put another way, “[w]e cannot make progress toward the noncommodification that might exist under ideal conditions of equality and freedom by trying to maintain noncommodification now under historically determined conditions of inequality and bondage.”319 The challenge, then, is to “structure an incomplete commodification that takes account of our nonideal world, yet does not foreclose progress to a better world.”320 Radin analyzes the transition problem in the contexts of sexuality and family life. Taking the transition problem into account leads her to conclude that the commodification of sex, infants and surrogacy impedes human flourishing, and that in an ideal world such things would ideally remain market-inalienable.321 In our nonideal world, however, she believes that the sale of sexual services should be governed by a regime of incomplete commodification.322 We should decriminalize the sale of sexual services, but we should work to prevent a domino effect of sexual commodification by banning pimping, recruitment, and advertising.323 The commodification of race raises a particularly difficult transition problem. As I discussed in Part III, many harms ensue from commodification, and collectively, these harms instantiate inequality. In an ideal world race would not be commodified. Yet the harms that ensue from commodification in the present also highlight the difficulty of disallowing commodification. Racism and discrimination are deeply entrenched both in the very structure of society and in the hearts and minds of even the best intentioned of us. Although the diversity rationale has reinforced a way of thinking of race as a commodity, it has also had material positive effects on the life trajectories of many individuals.324 To wholly decommodify race now would remove a potential tool—flawed, but not entirely useless—for addressing lingering social inequality. I therefore propose a solution of reactive commodification.325 We should discourage commodification of racial identity. But when commodification does occur, we should respond to it by identifying it as commodification, calling attention to its harms, and ensuring that non-white people receive compensation for the commodification of their racial identity. Where possible, some of the compensatory measures should be directed to the project of furthering equality and reducing future commodification, and the transaction should be structured so as to express those goals.326 Consider the following three examples arising in the social, educational, and employment contexts. Albeit satirically, How to Rent a Negro illustrate the possible implementation of reactive commodification in social settings. ayo envisions a fantasy world where white people have to pay when they use (or, as she puts it, “rent”) black people in social settings. That is, “renting” a black person as a way of demonstrating one’s own non-racism, or as a way of diversifying one’s social circle, requires compensating the black person for that use. ayo suggests that many white people may be “behind in their rental payments,” and imagines presenting white people with bills for services rendered. Of course, explicit rentals are both improbable and undesirable, but they do suggest how reactive commodification might be implemented. A nonwhite person who finds herself used in a social setting might call attention to the behavior of the person using her—“It’s offensive when you keep referring to me as your black friend.”