In the half century since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the United States has made measurable progress toward racial egalitarianism. But despite this progress, there are still deep racial disparities in social, economic, and political outcomes. In this book, Carter A. Wilson argues that these racial disparities persist due to a concerted effort to undermine racial egalitarianism. He engages in an ongoing discussion within American political development that seeks to explain modern political cleavages through the lens of racial coalitions. In Wilson's view, on one side is an egalitarian coalition that seeks to ameliorate racial disparities. On the other side is a conservative coalition that seeks to promote policies that will, intentionally or not, undermine the successes achieved by past egalitarian advances. This coalition, he argues, is largely motivated by “metaracism.”

Metaracism can best be understood as a form of racism that accepts and promotes continuing racial disparities in the United States. Unlike “old-fashioned racism,” which actively supports racial disparities on the basis of the perceived biological inferiority of African Americans, metaracism instead places the blame for disparities on the personal or cultural failings of African Americans. Though not necessarily motivated by racial animosity or bigotry, metaracism still leads to an opposition to government interventions aimed at promoting racial egalitarianism. Whereas old-fashioned racists were motivated by a sense of the biological inferiority of African Americans, metaracists are motivated by images of welfare queens and a black culture that does not value hard work and American values. Instead of believing that all African-Americans are inherently inferior, metaracists laud middle-class African Americans for their work ethic, while denouncing the lack of effort by the urban poor. Although the motivations of metaracism and old-fashioned racism differ, Wilson argues, the political outcomes of these two racial ideologies are the same.

Wilson begins his argument by tracing the ways in which race has shaped the development of modern ideological coalitions. This familiar argument posits that racial coalitions were central to the realignment that occurred beginning in the 1960s and 1970s and led to the exodus of southern conservatives from the Democratic Party. This argument is fairly well accepted within the scholarly literature on race and the party system. More controversial is the argument, which he advances, that modern ideological coalitions essentially remain coalitions on the issue of race. Central to this argument is the idea that metaracism serves a useful purpose to an antiegalitarian conservative coalition. The author argues that the maintenance of inequality, especially racial inequality, has an instrumental value for corporate, moral, and Tea Party interests within this coalition.

Wilson then analyzes how this conservative coalition has acted against the interests of egalitarianism in several policy areas: the economy, social welfare, mass incarceration, and voting rights. On economic inequality, he points to specific policies that have contributed to its rise in the United States. Although many of these policies are largely race-blind—such as deregulating the financial sector or opposing organized labor—others contribute directly to racial inequality. Wilson highlights the perennial understaffing of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and racially targeted predatory lending practices as prime examples of policies that benefit corporate interests while undermining racial equality. He then goes on to identify how the use of such racial imagery as the black welfare queen has been used as a tool to undermine support for welfare policies and to promote the mass incarceration of African Americans. In his penultimate chapter, Wilson then grapples with an emerging issue—the erosion of protection for minority voting rights. As with these other issues, he argues that a corporate-centered antiegalitarian coalition directly benefits by making it relatively more difficult for poor and minority voters to cast their ballots. He argues that by gerrymandering, requiring voter identification, and purging voter rolls, the antiegalitarian coalition is attempting to suppress minority voting in order to benefit their preferred candidates at the ballot box. Although it is important to note that there is little evidence that such efforts actually succeed in reducing minority turnout, identifying these efforts does strengthen the author’s argument that there is a conscious effort to undermine racial egalitarianism.

It is on this point that Wilson diverges from others who view politics through the lens of racial policy coalitions. In many ways, this book is a direct response to the argument advanced in Desmond S. King and Rogers M. Smith’s Still a House Divided: Race and Politics in Obama's America (2011). In his final chapter, Wilson is highly critical of their portrayal of two coalitions—one color-blind, the other race conscious—that both seek to adopt the mantle of racial egalitarianism, albeit through different means. Where King and Smith see a sincere belief that race-conscious policies such as affirmative action are wrongheaded, Wilson sees a veneer of respectability masking metaracism. On many of these issues, Wilson has a clear point. It is hard to argue, for example, that the well-documented racial basis of opposition to welfare fits within a color-blind framework. Yet it is not clear that all the policies analyzed by Wilson tell a consistent story about the role of metaracism in driving opposition to egalitarian policies. Certainly, understaffing the EEOC is suggestive of an acquiescence to continuing racial disparities. But does supporting financial deregulation tell a similar story about accepting racial inequality? Moreover, Wilson does not offer a thorough theoretical justification why the policies he chooses to examine are the most appropriate for demonstrating metaracism.

The book would also have benefited from a more careful and clear consideration of the concept of metaracism itself. Where are the boundaries between metaracism and old-fashioned racism? Public policies that are ostensibly color-blind yet produce disparate racial effects might best be understood through metaracism. But what about more direct attempts to deny equal opportunities to African Americans? Wilson discusses experiments that demonstrate employer discrimination against applicants perceived to be African American. Should this be considered a kind with understaffing of the EEOC? The latter might best be described as motivated by metaracism, but there is nothing “meta” about the racism inherent in the former. Given the evidence in favor of continuing old-fashioned racism, a careful delineation of metaracism would have improved the theoretical contribution of this book.

Ultimately, Metaracism offers an interesting perspective on the growing literature concerning the role of race in shaping contemporary ideological coalitions in American politics. Although this book is far from the last word on the subject, Wilson makes a contribution by criticizing the perhaps naive assertion that most opposition to race-conscious policies is motivated by a color-blind approach to fixing racial inequality. His work would have been strengthened by a more theoretically guided selection of policy areas and by a more thorough conceptual discussion of the concept of metaracism. But the evidence presented by Wilson provides an interesting counterpoint to the narrative that racial policy coalitions differ mainly in their preferred means of addressing racial inequality.