The bottom line is that the fate of poor and working-class African Americans–who are unquestionably overrepresented among neoliberalism’s victims–is linked to that of other poor and working-class Americans. Our road to a more just society for African Americans and everyone else is obstructed, in part, by a discourse that declares the New Deal to be the root of all modern racial ills (despite the fact that the New Deal helped lay the foundation for the civil rights movement), that derides unions as racist (despite blacks’ overrepresentation among unionists), that equates “working class” with crusty old white men while equating entrepreneurialism with freedom and independence (like Black Belt slaveholders weren’t petty capitalists), and that, ultimately, insists upon divorcing race from class.”
Toure Reed, Toward Freedom: The Case Against Race Reductionism, 172.