Neoliberalism required white supremacy to dismantle the welfare state

Evidence

Rooted in possessive individualism and worshipful of the “free market,” it ran counter to the state-centered, generally democratizing legacies of the New Deal, World War II, and the Great Society. These programs and policies had a lot of popular support; to roll them back required a great deal of political effort. Only by tapping into the deep current of white supremacy that was fundamental to U.S. development and that structured the country’s political unconscious could an assault on the welfare state be mounted. — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 203

Categorization

• XREF: This underscores the racial formation thesis as a causal force; connects well to vault claims about race as a structural rather than merely attitudinal category.
• QUESTION: The phrase ‘political unconscious’ of the country is evocative but undefined — is this Freudian, Žižekian, or Althusserian inheritance? Worth chasing.