 The fact that racial groups are led to compete with one another for economic advantages is itself socially engineered rather than natural, but it may have heterogeneous causes. The concept of overdetermination allows us to expand the concept of what is in one’s rational “interest” to include pride and self-regard, group self-affirmation, relational advantage over other groups, the desire to enact domination and to protect longstanding special entitlements. Is the imbrication of this complex array of motives such that we should see the economic as the main determinant, operating behind what look to be identity-protections? In other words, are racist motives ultimately caused by a choice structure crafted by capitalists?