Episode 28 - Internal Colonialism in the United States w/ Sam Klug
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About this episode:
In this episode, I’m joined by intellectual historian Sam Klug, author of The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization (University of Chicago Press, 2025), to discuss the idea of ‘internal colonialism’ as it applies to the situation of African Americans and other racialized peoples in the United States. We explore how this concept developed within the Black radical tradition, how it evolved over time, and how it was taken up by an astoundingly diverse array of thinkers and activists across the ideological spectrum, and discuss what this radical way of thinking about the politics of race can offer us on the anti-racist and colonial left today.
About the show:
Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts! If you’re able, please also consider supporting my work—which encompasses both my writing and this podcast, as well as various other political education projects—by becoming a paid subscriber to my Substack at: www.culture-shock.xyz/subscribe.
Sources and helpful links:
Sam Klug — The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization (University of Chicago Press, 2025)
Return to Bandung interview with Adom Getachew (October 2025)
Angela Davis — Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (Haymarket, 2016)
Aziz Rana — Race and the American Creed (n+1, Winter 2016)
Eugene Puryear — Harry Haywood’s contributions to the national question and the fight for class unity (Liberation School, February 2024)
Harold Cruse — Revolutionary Nationalism and the Afro-American (Studies on the Left, 1962)
Kenneth Clark — Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power (Harper and Row, 1965)
Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton — Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (Random House, 1967)
James and Grace Lee Boggs — The City is the Black Man’s Land (Monthly Review, April 1966)
Vine Deloria, Jr. — Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (Macmillan, 1969)
Return to Bandung interview with Nick Estes (February 2025)
Huey P. Newton — Speech at Boston College on Revolutionary Intercommunalism (November 1970)
Return to Bandung interview with Julian Go (February 2025)
Sam Klug — Who’s Afraid of Frantz Fanon? (Boston Review, March 2024)
Stokely Carmichael — What We Want (New York Review of Books, September 1966)
Social links:
Return to Bandung:
Twitter: twitter.com/returntobandung
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/
Pranay Somayajula:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/p_somayajula
Website: https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/
Substack: https://www.culture-shock.xyz/