Scott Coley: White Superiority and Meritocracy

Scott M. Coley, Ministers of Propaganda: Truth, Power, and the Ideology of the Religious Right (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2024), 77:

In the 1950s, evangelicals believed that white families had more wealth because white families deserved more wealth – the fact that explicitly racist government policies effectively prevented people of color from accruing wealth was regarded as irrelevant. And today, evangelicals believe that white families have more wealth because white families deserve more wealth – it’s irrelevant that the explicitly racist policies of the Federal Housing Administration prevented people of color from accessing the financial instruments with which the US government created the white middle class. Somehow, by virtue of merit, racial oppression is never to blame for racial disparities in wealth: notwithstanding history or present circumstance, white families have more wealth because white families deserve to have more wealth. The ideological constant is an implied commitment to white superiority, veiled in propagandistic appeals to merit.