American folkways: Laissez-faire and the economic objection to civil rights reform

This paper examines how Southern Democrats reframed their opposition to anti-discrimination efforts during the 1945–1946 Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC) debates by blending racial conservatism with free-enterprise discourse. Through a discursive institutionalist analysis, it shows how lawmakers combined William Graham Sumner's folkways theory with free enterprise discourse to recast civil rights not as a moral or constitutional necessity but as a dangerous expansion of federal authority. Drawing on Riker's concept of heresthetics, it argues that dimension manipulation shifted the debate from racial justice to state intrusion, enabling race-neutral resistance and alliances with economically conservative Republicans. This rhetorical shift functioned as an encasement strategy – isolating discrimination from legal challenges by recasting it as a private choice motivated by cultural customs. The analysis contributes to neoliberalism scholarship by tracing these discursive strategies that continue to frame equity reforms as threats to liberty, individualism and market autonomy.