Critical Race Theories and the Political Economy of Systemic Racism

Abstract This article demonstrates how political science, particularly the emerging field of American Political Economy (APE), can more robustly theorize and study the political economy of systemic racism by drawing on insights from critical race theories, including intersectionality and racial capitalism, and post/anti-colonial theory. A paired case study of the foreclosure “noncrisis” of the 1990s and the coerced sterilization of incarcerated women in California during the early 2000s highlights three key contributions of critical race theories: (1) intersectionality reveals nonuniformity, unintended consequences of purportedly progressive policy, and underscores the importance of margins-to-center resistance; (2) feudal-colonial roots illuminate how racialized hierarchies become institutionalized in law and policy, often without explicit racial language; and (3) racial capitalist logics explain how administrative tools, such as risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis, reproduce racial hierarchy through markets. This framework offers APE a more historically grounded, power-conscious, and theoretically expansive approach to systemic racism and underscores the urgency of resisting efforts to suppress such scholarship.