Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life

by Karen E. Fields

Up to the day before yesterday, the orthodox catechism in America held that inequality is a good thing because it promotes economic growth that (ultimately) benefits everyone, even if the benefits accrue only modestly, if at all, to those on the bottom. According to the dogma, efforts to lessen inequality, through progressive taxation or redistributive public spending, infringe the liberty of the rich. Furthermore, the rich deserve their reward. Ostensibly buttressing that view were studies suggesting that inequality in wealth and income results from genetically programmed differences in IQ. Intelligence determines merit, and merit apportions rewards. The racist implications of the most celebrated declaration of that thesis deflected attention from its implications for working-class white people: that, like Afro-Americans, white people consigned to the lower reaches of society were there because of low intelligence.