The economists Patrick Mason and Mwangi wa Githinji (2008) pointed to the overwhelming representation of the humanities in black studies and the relative absence of the social sciences, especially economics. This was not always the case; in its early development, political economy and economic development were important sub-foci. However, by 2008, when a special issue of Journal of Black Studies focusing on the role of political economy in black studies was published, only 1.75 per cent of faculty members in the  
discipline were economists, and economics courses represented just over 1 per cent of those that were offered. By contrast, faculty members with specialties in literature and history represented a plurality of the core faculty; and these disciplines, along with music, were the dominant fields among faculty affiliated with black studies. Moreover, radical black political economists in, and the contributions of critical political economy to, black intellectual thought has been all but forgotten. According to economist Julianne Malveaux (2008), 'traditional and theoretical disciplinary formulations' of black studies - in other words, its overdetermination by history, literature, and the politics of identity - have been largely influenced by the exigencies of institutional accommodation, which are best served by the field's cultural studies approach.