'You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.” ' - Republican strategist Lee Atwater.

As you say, it's never been possible to cleanly separate economics and social justice, as if there is somehow no moral dimension to how and where we choose to allocate our resources. Sometimes these things are straight up dogwhistles for more overtly prejudiced acts, and sometimes they reflect deeper and more subtle biases about the world. But there is always a moral dimension to everything we do.