The fate of poor and working-class African Americans-who are
unquestionably represented among neoliberalism’s victims-is
inextricably linked to that of other poor and working-class Americans
Reed contends that the road to a more just society for African
Americans and everyone else is obstructed, in part, by a discourse
that equates entrepreneurialism with freedom and independence. This,
ultimately, insists on divorcing race and class. In the age of
runaway inequality and Black Lives Matter, there is an emerging
consensus that our society has failed to redress racial disparities.
The culprit, however, is not the sway of a metaphysical racism or the
modern survival of a primordial tribalism. Instead, it can be traced
to far more comprehensible forces, such as the contradictions in
access to New Deal era welfare programs, the blinders imposed by the
Cold War, and Ronald Reagan’s neoliberal assault on the
half-century long Keynesian consensus.