ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the author's engagement with EJ scholarship as well as the literature's minimal attention to racial formation. As the US transitioned from liberal multiculturalism to neoliberal multiculturalism, the moral authority of the CRM was replaced by explicitly racist discourses and projects, such as Black criminalization, the prison industrial complex, the war on drugs, and the criminalization of immigrants. The ballast of the Southern Strategy has been long and powerful and has been instrumental in distracting attention from growing levels of economic insecurity associated with neoliberalism, especially among whites, as well as endless war. Neoliberal multiculturalism is distinguished from its predecessor in that its sphere is increasingly global, it affirms the role of the market in organizing society, it is largely abstracted from specific groups and their struggles, and invokes a deracialized language. One of the hallmarks of neoliberal multiculturalism is the election of President Barack Obama.
