White spaces: how marketing actors (re)produce marketplace inequities for Black consumers

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper interrogates how racially discriminatory practices by real estate agents, lenders, and retailers produce and reproduce marketplace inequities for Black consumers. Drawing on Critical Race Theory (CRT) and interdisciplinary research, the paper reveals the normalisation and permanence of racism in practices and policies aimed at protecting White spaces. Marketing actors racially discriminatory approaches have morphed from overt to more covert strategies, but they persist in spite of regulatory changes. Impacts on Black consumers have created profound marketplace inequities including constricted and restricted choices, devalued housing assets, housing segregation, retail discrimination, restricted and expensive access to credit, wealth gaps, and retail desertification. When viewed through a CRT lens, we conclude that in the American context, the invisible hand of the market is not invisible. Rather, it is White. The study draws implications for practice, and urgently calls for more research to unmask racism in marketing – because Black Lives Matter!