But the concept has also come to encompass the ways that elites appropriate political projects and monopolize attention.Ĭatch up on the conversation with scholars across disciplines. It initially referred to the tendency of the upper class to gain control over foreign aid in other words, the rich get richer. Elite capture, he explains, is a concept that emerged from the study of developing countries. Now, building on that essay as well as a related piece in Boston Review, Táíwò has published a short book: Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (and Everything Else). “The same tactics of deference that insulate us from criticism,” he wrote, “also insulate us from connection and transformation.” What’s more, compulsory deference is no way to forge authentic relationships. Amplifying certain voices on the basis of group membership, he argued, could serve as a merely cosmetic change, leaving structural problems unaddressed. In practice, Táíwò wrote, such calls often mean passing the mic to someone like him, because he is Black - even though he is also a tenure-track professor who grew up among the highly educated Nigerian diaspora.
He first garnered broad attention with a 2020 essay for the British magazine The Philosopher that explored the limitations of “epistemic deference”: that is, calls “to ‘listen to the most affected’ or ‘centre the most marginalized.’” Táíwò has gained notice for his lucid, subtle writing on such subjects as identity politics, climate change, reparations, and more. In the past few years, the Georgetown University philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O.
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