A review by dalmavatai
Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (and Everything Else) by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

informative reflective fast-paced

3.5

This book had some great ideas, especially deference politics and elite capture as well as value capture (not that all of these are the author's original ideas). I'm very interested in reading about cancel culture, "wokeness" and social justice on social media so this was a good read, but in the second half it kind of fell apart for me in terms of the way the author built and organized their argument. It felt a bit surface-level at times when discussing the links between concepts in their own thinking but at the same time they would dedicate the majority of a chapter to detailing historical events. I also feel like the concept of "being in the room" which the author repeated throughout the book was never sufficiently defined. Interesting ideas but they didn't end up coming together as well as I hoped they would. 
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