Rich Benjamin

Rich Benjamin will work on a book investigating how White anxieties about White demographic decline, both real and perceived, shape economic, political, and racial inequality in the United States. His book will reveal how seemingly race-neutral issues such a fiscal policy and the social safety net are defined by racial anxiety over perceived White decline. More specifically, the project will illuminate how White status threat creates opposition to, or support for, presumably “universalist” economic policies such as investment in universal preschool and increasing the federal minimum wage. Benjamin’s book will deliver an original analysis of how social, economic, and legal regimes designed to disadvantage Blacks and Latinos are harming society as a whole, and how the U.S. becomes a collateral victim to systemic White fear.