Introduction: Racialized poverty in U.S. cities: Toward a refined racial economy Perspective

This discussion hones and refines one conceptual orientation in geography and urban studies increasingly used to understand racialized poverty and marginalization in U.S. cities: racial economy. The article illuminates two aspects of this perspective, as an ongoing ontological project with six dominant features and as a base of epistemological understandings about contemporary racialized realities in current U.S. cities and society. This discussion shows racial economy to be still developing and in need of deeper theorizing.