UCLA

This dissertation bridges the gap between the role of racial ideology and its material impact. I have done this by extending understanding of what appear to be distinct but related ideologies—colorblindness and the free market—into a larger framework of racecraft. My work draws from Barbara and Karen Fields’ concept of racecraft, which describes how racism creates and shapes beliefs about race and, as a result, influences a person’s perception and experiences of reality. I build on this theoretically and empirically by showing how it can occur. Utilizing the American National Election Study from 2000 to 2020, my research contains three main findings. I argue that racist beliefs, such as colorblindness, are related to economic beliefs that justify and influence people to prefer free-market capitalism. Colorblindness and free-market beliefs, which are based on misconceptions of political and economic liberalism or fairness, serve to normalize and minimize the role of racism while simultaneously rejecting active intervention efforts by institutions or governments that favor equity. Colorblindness and free-market beliefs are aligned and work together to justify inequality and the policies that continue to reproduce it. I then demonstrate how racecraft affects policy preferences for funding social programs, such as assistance for poor people, Social Security, and crime prevention. The broader theoretical contribution of my dissertation is that I link racial ideology with material impact. I analyze the relationship and interaction between colorblindness and free-market beliefs. My examination has provided empirical evidence for previous theoretical claims about the relationship between colorblindness and neoliberal ideology. The implications of this finding help to expand understanding of how apparent “free-market” policies are, in fact, not race neutral but racialized. Moreover, policy rationales based on free-market beliefs are a source of the persistence of inequality. In other words, these policies use a race-blind and free-market justification that reinforces racism and inequality to end government interventions that support equity. This dissertation builds on sociological literature to highlight how race neutral attitudes reinforce racist beliefs among voters in the first two decades of the 21st century.