Intersectional and historical contingencies in racial capitalism: credit scores and predatory inclusion in American political economy

This article develops a racial capitalist theory of predatory inclusion to explain how consumer credit reproduces racial hierarchy in the United States. Predatory inclusion describes how marginalized groups gain access to credit on exploitative terms, transforming inequality into profitability. I argue that predatory inclusion is best understood as a racial capitalist logic of accumulation through dispossession, naturalized by race and structured through intersectionality. Historically, three pivotal contingencies entrenched this logic: the Fair Credit Reporting Act institutionalized credit bureaus, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act prohibited explicit discrimination while legitimating actuarial risk, and the Supreme Court’s Marquette decision dismantled state usury laws, enabling banks to profit directly from interest and fees. Drawing on survey and administrative data, I show how credit scores map structural disadvantage into individualized “risk,” sorting borrowers by race, gender, class, and place. These hierarchies expose Black, Hispanic, American Indian, and working-class borrowers – especially in the South and border regions – to persistent debt that subsidizes the rewards and lower costs enjoyed by disproportionately White and Asian prime borrowers and drives credit card profitability. Financial inclusion, far from closing the racial wealth gap, embeds inequality into credit markets and stabilizes racial capitalism at the core of American political economy.