Critical Political Science Plenary Lecture, APSA 2023

Abstract This article interrogates the contradictions of neoliberal multiculturalism as the newly hegemonic model for race relations in the United States. Neoliberal multiculturalism emerged in the 1990s as a model of governance that incorporates historically racialized, and or excluded groups into the political, social, and cultural institutions of power to create a more inclusive, equitable, and democratic society. It is in response to an aging White population that was rooted in historically specific regimes of racial domination, and an ever more diverse working-age population. Nonetheless, like all measures to resolve capitalist crisis, neoliberal multiculturalism has generated new contradictions. The most important being that multiculturalism alone could not resolve the principal tensions between capitalism and labor, the environment, and liberalism. Drawing on examples from ongoing research from the Inland Empire, I argue that the convergence of these historic contradictions has put multiculturalism as a project of the left at a historic impasse.