The Politics of Stratification Economics

Americas staggering racial and economic divides did not emerge by accidentthey were built. Stratification Economics exposes how centuries of law, policy, and institutional design manufactured inequality, from slavery and land dispossession to redlining, deregulation, and modern tax regimes that funnel wealth upward. Neoliberal ideology, the book shows, cloaks these structures in the language of markets and meritocracy, obscuring how privatization, austerity, and constitutional doctrine consistently entrench hierarchy. Across domainshousing, labor, education, corporate power, and the courtsthe same pattern recurs: policies that appear neutral in theory reproduce racial and class stratification in practice. Against this backdrop, the manuscript advances Stratification Economics as a transformative framework for understanding and undoing inequality. Drawing on cuttingedge empirical research, it reveals discrimination as a rational strategy of group advantage and offers a clear blueprint for equitable reform. In doing so, it reframes the American economy not as an engine of opportunity, but as a system we must redesign to achieve it.

Marvin P. King, Jr. is Associate Professor of African American Studies & Political Science at University of Mississippi, USA.