Introduction
The Introduction lays out the subject matter of the book, identifies key assumptions and methodological choices, presents the core arguments, and identifies the intended audience for the book. It opens with the story of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s famous speech on black poverty at Howard University to introduce the subject matter. It then articulates the argument that liberalism is historically entwined with racism, and that American liberalism is much more intertwined with conservativism than is generally recognized, and that the concept of racial capitalism is particularly useful for understanding this. The Introduction makes clear that the book is an intellectual history of postwar liberal thinking on black poverty, particularly the idea of a culture of poverty.