ARTICLE Race, poverty, and markets: urban inequality after the neoliberal turn John N. Robinson III Washington University in St Louis, USA Correspondence John N. Robinson III, Washington University in St Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA. Email: jnrobinson@wustl.edu Abstract Classic scholarship on the problem of urban inequality tends to highlight the absence of “the market” and the correspondingly prob- lematic and inadequate role of the state in poor communities. This article explores how the relationship between markets and urban poverty has shifted in recent decades. Scholars have become increasingly attentive to the growing influence of market logics and privatization—core features of “neoliberal” change—in areas such as housing, education, federal policy, local politics, employ- ment, and social services. I discuss how this recent work adds to our understanding of how markets shape urban disadvantage. I also argue that—given the rising influence of market logics in city gover- nance—urban scholarship stands to benefit from a deeper engage- ment with insights from the field of economic sociology. Building bridges between the two subfields, I argue, will help to specify what markets mean in the lives of the urban poor, and also can bring issues of race and poverty to the attention of economic sociologists. 1 | INTRODUCTION On June 12, 1990, Jack Kemp—then Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under the George H. W. Bush administration—published an Op‐Ed in the Wall Street Journal. The piece, entitled “Liberate America’s Other Economy,” showcased Kemp’s tendency to resist the dogma embraced by his conservative peers of opposing federal aid to poor families and neighborhoods in urban areas. 1 Rather than pushing to simply eliminate federal housing and urban programs, Kemp sought to use policy as a tool to establish private markets as a more powerful force in the everyday lives of poor residents and their communities. The “other economy” that Kemp was proposing to liberate could be found in “pockets of poverty throughout urban…America,” which he saw as burdened by “maximized welfare bureaucracy and social costs,” amounting to a “virtual absence of economic incentives and rewards.” As Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Kemp would create policies meant to invite poor residents and communities into the “democratic and capitalist, market‐oriented and entrepreneurial … mainstream economy [where] incentives abound for productive economic and social behavior.” Likening urban America to the Soviet collapse, he concluded that “East Europe is looking to us for market‐oriented answers, but so is East Harlem, East St. Louis and East Los Angeles.” Received: 3 June 2016 Revised: 15 August 2016 Accepted: 23 August 2016 DOI 10.1111/soc4.12433 1090 © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Sociology Compass 2016; 10: 1090–1101 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/soc4