A Race and Capitalism Framework to Study Financial Access

Racialized economic inequality remains a central concern across the social sciences, yet the role of financial access in reproducing inequality has been comparatively underexplored. Existing scholarship demonstrates how credit markets, banking practices, and lending policies shape economic outcomes, but more attention can be paid to the ways these mechanisms sustain racialized patterns of advantage and disadvantage. This article argues that a race and capitalism framework provides a powerful lens for analyzing financial services, as it shifts focus from individual choices to structural dynamics, rejects the separation of race and class, and highlights how racialization and economic disadvantage are mutually reinforcing. Applying this perspective to financial access emphasizes three interlocking features: exclusionary access, extraction, and valuation (perceived risk and creditworthiness), that further illuminate how financial markets reproduce inequality in their quest to generate profit. The contribution is theoretical: developing a conceptual framework that bridges research on financial access with lessons from the race and capitalism literature.