Anti‐black currents in consumer affairs: An introduction to the special issue

The United States is experiencing a racial reckoning that has exposed the injustices experienced by Black and Indigenous People of Color. It is now untenable to declare the marketplace is a liberated space that discards the constraints imposed by race, sexuality, religion, or place of birth. Research studies and media reports have debunked the idea that consumers can navigate their worlds in any way they choose, so long as they have enough purchasing power, the willpower to plan, and the discipline to engage in the “right” behaviors. Instead, civilians and consumers have different encounters, some of them less than liberating, based on race. These encounters occur between civilians and police officers; patients and doctors; customers and salesclerks; borrowers and lenders. Greed has not managed to drive away racial discrimination (Becker, 2010), and money has not become a great leveler. Instead, as money has proliferated, so too has its meanings and its implications for social standing (Zelizer, 1994; Bandelj et al., 2017). Therefore, the question for us is not whether race operates in the marketplace, but how. Not whether we should wait for more research before acting, but how to translate existing findings into more just practices, policies, and understandings about the wellbeing of all consumers. This special issue of The Journal of Consumer Affairs grew out of the collaborative convenings of the race in the marketplace (RIM) Network with the goal of assembling work that centers race, racism, and acts of resistance as well as work that recognizes the generative creativity of besieged racial groups as they shape and are shaped by consumer affairs.