Neoliberalism functioned as a defense against perceived erosion of white privilege

Evidence

Neoliberalism accordingly can be read as a response to this concern about the impending impotence of whiteness. Neoliberalism is committed to privatizing property, utilities, and social programs, to reducing state expenditures and bureaucracy, increasing efficiencies, and to individual freedom from state regulation. As the state was seen increasingly to support black employment, to increase expenditures on black education, and to increase regulation to force compliance, white neoconservatives found neoliberal commitments increasingly relevant to their interests. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1764

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: This causal reading—that the anti-state, privatization agenda of neoliberalism was substantially motivated by a racialized perception that the state served Black interests—unifies two usually separate analyses (economic ideology and racial politics) into one mechanism.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s knowledge of how political ideologies often carry unstated demographic anxieties; parallels the dynamic seen with sumptuary law and dress panics as class/identity signaling. — connects to: Neoliberal welfare attacks racialized dependency and framed the family as women’s natural sphere — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 175; Neoliberal decolonisation policy aimed to keep whites in former colonies as welcome partners. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 232; Neoliberal restructuring systematically further privileges the already privileged — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1742 (+4 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1764