The whiteness of markets: Anglo-American colonialism, white supremacy and free market rhetoric

Jessica Eastland-Underwood

New Political Economy, 2023, vol. 28, issue 4, 662-676

Abstract: Building on the burgeoning raced markets literature, I examine the function of markets in colour-blind racism. I argue that ‘the market’ is a useful rhetorical mechanism in everyday political thinking that reproduces white supremacy. To demonstrate this, I look at the work of white supremacist and early American political economist: Thomas Roderick Dew. Focusing on his political economy lectures, I find that the emergent study of markets gave Dew the language to frame the American racial order as the product of natural laws that generate social good. I suggest that the efficacy of his pro-slavery argumentation is contingent on an imbalanced imagination of market histories that over-represents the white experience. Using an un-colourblinding historiography, I amplify the different experiences of Native Americans and enslaved Black Americans as well as challenging the idealisation of the white settler, which exposes the assumptions behind Dew’s pro-slavery rhetoric. Turning to a children’s podcast in the twenty-first century, I reveal how ‘the market’ is a reconfiguration of the same rhetorical strategy, where the white experience is over-represented and idealised, ultimately reproducing the material outcomes of white supremacy: maintaining and deepening the racial wealth divide.

Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2159354

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