This article critically interrogates how colorblind racial ideology and the disadvantage thesis, a common explanation for immigrant entrepreneurship, rhetorically inform one another. I interview 81 representatives of Korean banks and seven US federal government institutions to determine how they explain the concentration of Korean immigrants in USA-based entrepreneurship. Consistent with the sociological literature, I find that respondents cite disadvantage as the main reason for Korean immigrants’ over-representation in small business ownership. Also consistent with the literature are respondents’ emphases on Koreans’ group-level characteristics as mediating factors against disadvantage. I analyze how three dimensions of colorblind racial ideology are embedded in respondents’ discourse; these three dimensions include the minimization of the role of racial ideologies and major institutions in shaping socioeconomic patterns, the promotion of cultural racism, and the incorporation of Asian Americans into a universal immigrant paradigm.
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