The United States is experiencing a racial reckoning that has exposed the injustices experienced by Black and Indigenous People of Color. It is now untenable to declare the marketplace is a liberated space that discards the constraints imposed by race, sexuality, religion, or place of birth. Research studies and media reports have debunked the idea that consumers can navigate their worlds in any way they choose, so long as they have enough purchasing power, the willpower to plan, and the discipline to engage in the “right” behaviors. Instead, civilians and consumers have different encounters, some of them less than liberating, based on race. These encounters occur between civilians and police officers; patients and doctors; customers and salesclerks; borrowers and lenders. Greed has not managed to drive away racial discrimination (Becker, 2010), and money has not become a great leveler. Instead, as money has proliferated, so too has its meanings and its implications for social standing (Zelizer, 1994; Bandelj et al., 2017). Therefore, the question for us is not whether race operates in the marketplace, but how. Not whether we should wait for more research before acting, but how to translate existing findings into more just practices, policies, and understandings about the wellbeing of all consumers. This special issue of The Journal of Consumer Affairs grew out of the collaborative convenings of the race in the marketplace (RIM) Network with the goal of assembling work that centers race, racism, and acts of resistance as well as work that recognizes the generative creativity of besieged racial groups as they shape and are shaped by consumer affairs.

Our work distinguishes the concept of race from that of racism. For the former, the classification is applied to individuals as members of a group, regardless of how they self-identify, and is assumed to carry essential (or at least comparable) information about the group relative to other racial groups. For the latter, a hierarchical ranking justifies the differential treatment of a racial group, not only for individuals engaged in racist actions but also, and most importantly, for the institutions that develop the rules and the terms of access to vital resources. These rules are deemed to be reasonable in their implementation, or colorblind, though they result in racially inequitable outcomes (Johnson et al., 2019).

To interrogate the role of race in the marketplace, we ally critical race theory with the social sciences, offering measures of social experience while being aware of the limitations of these very measures. Three tenets from CRT run through our volume: (a) “Our racial past exerts contemporary effects”; (b) “Racial inequality is hardwired into the fabric of our social and economic landscape”; and (c) “Because racism exists at both the subconscious and conscious levels, the elimination of intentional racism would not eliminate racial inequality” (Carbado and Roithmayr, 2014, p. 151). Some social scientists identify with CRT, while others do not. Given its usefulness in making visible patterns that some modes of inquiry leave hidden, we privilege its tenets as we make sense of the papers analyzing race in the marketplace, whether its authors do so. We recognize that to create a more just marketplace for consumers requires knowing how racism works, especially when it is unacknowledged—the waves on the surface of the water and the invisible currents pulling below. This special issue navigates these rather choppy waters and identifies their undertow.

美国正在经历一场种族清算，暴露了黑人和有色人种原住民所经历的不公正。现在宣布市场是一个解放的空间，摒弃了种族、性取向、宗教或出生地所施加的限制，这是站不住脚的。研究和媒体报道驳斥了这样一种观点，即消费者可以以他们选择的任何方式驾驭他们的世界，只要他们有足够的购买力、计划的意志力和参与“正确”行为的纪律。相反，平民和消费者有不同的遭遇，其中一些不是基于种族的解放。这些遭遇发生在平民和警察之间；患者和医生；客户和售货员；借款人和贷款人。贪婪并没有设法消除种族歧视（贝克尔， 2010），而金钱并没有成为一个伟大的平衡器。相反，随着货币的激增，其意义及其对社会地位的影响也随之激增（Zelizer ，  1994 年；Bandelj等，  2017 年）。因此，我们的问题不是种族是否在市场上运作，而是如何运作。不是我们是否应该在采取行动之前等待更多的研究，而是如何将现有的发现转化为更公正的实践、政策和对所有消费者福祉的理解。本期《消费者事务杂志》特刊起源于市场种族 (RIM) 网络的协作召集，其目标是汇集以种族、种族主义和抵抗行为为中心的工作，以及认可被围困种族群体在塑造和被围困时的创造性创造力的工作受消费者事务影响。

我们的工作将种族概念与种族主义概念区分开来。对于前者，该分类适用于作为群体成员的个人，无论他们如何自我认同，并假定该群体相对于其他种族群体具有基本（或至少具有可比性）信息。对于后者，等级排名证明了种族群体的差别待遇是合理的，不仅对于从事种族主义行动的个人，而且最重要的是，对于制定规则和获取重要资源条件的机构。这些规则在实施中被认为是合理的，或者说是色盲，尽管它们会导致种族不平等的结果（Johnson等人，  2019 年）。

为了探究种族在市场中的作用，我们将批判性种族理论与社会科学结合起来，提供社会经验的衡量标准，同时意识到这些衡量标准的局限性。CRT 的三个原则贯穿我们的书：(a) “我们的种族过去对当代产生影响”；(b) “种族不平等与我们的社会和经济格局紧密相连”；(c) “因为种族主义存在于潜意识和意识层面，消除故意种族主义不会消除种族不平等”（Carbado 和 Roithmayr，  2014 年），第 151)。一些社会科学家认同 CRT，而另一些则不认同。鉴于它在使某些调查模式隐藏的可见模式方面很有用，我们在理解分析市场种族的论文时，我们优先考虑它的原则，无论其作者是否这样做。我们认识到，要为消费者创造一个更公正的市场，需要了解种族主义是如何运作的，尤其是当它未被承认时——水面上的波浪和水下看不见的水流。本期特刊在这些波涛汹涌的水域中航行，并确定了它们的暗流。