Racial Capitalism and the Propaganda of Conservative Economics

Abstract

Racial capitalism has been an active terrain of political economy debate since the 1970s, but the last 5 years have seen a wider diffusion of the concept. We identify one modern component of racial capitalism that has seldom been discussed in extant work: the role of conservative economics at legitimating racial capitalist processes. To this end, we raise the following question: What does a narrative of support for racial capitalism look like in contemporary political economies, where racism denial is pervasive in political discourse, and trust in authorities are at an all-time low? We submit that narratives legitimating contemporary racial capitalism exist, but they are more subtle, indirect, and more plausibly deniable than the narratives that supported chattel slavery and the 100 years of Jim Crow that followed. The Civil Rights Era provided a legal basis for anti-discrimination efforts previously diluted by American jurisprudence and law. In this essay, we engage in a broader conversation about the intersections between discourse and structure before explicating exactly how conservative economics supports and reinforces racial capitalism. Explicating the components of this architecture is crucial to illustrating the value of racial capitalist approaches within the political economy canon.