[...] if Coates merits recognition for introducing the ill effects of specific policies to a popular audience, his insistence that race is a force that operates independently from political economy leads him to the erroneous conclusion that modern liberalism’s failures are owed to a refusal to acknowledge that racism is a distinct evil that warrants its own solutions. Contrary to Coates’s characterization of US history, postwar liberalism was actually typified by a tendency to divorce race from class. Coates’s fundamental claim is, therefore, incorrect.