Relationships Between Post Racial Ideology & a Post White America Paper Forum #3 Group A Question: 1. With specific and detailed reference to Cho’s essay

Relationships Between Post Racial Ideology & a Post White America Paper Forum #3 Group A Question:

1. With specific and detailed reference to Cho’s essay “Post-Racialism,” as well as to lecture, explain what you perceive to be the relationships between post-racial ideology and imaginations of a post-white America. Some of these relationships are spelled out in the lecture/Cho reading, and some are implied, so I want to see you putting these pieces together.

2. Following from #1, explain how imaginations of a post-white America create shifts in the meaning of whiteness. Your response should call upon details (claims, evidence, examples) from our additional articles — “The End of White America?” and “What Whiteness Means in the Trump Era.”

Discussion Forum Grading Rubric

Wrote a substantive response according to the instructions in your chosen question. Your response incorporated specific conceptual/theoretical vocabulary and content from the assigned readings and from lecture (40%). Theories are useful to us when they tell us how to look at things, and this becomes possible only if we can demonstrate a detailed and specific grasp of theoretical vocabularies. Theoretical vocabularies are contained in the definitions of major course concepts. If understood in a detailed and specific way, theoretical vocabularies direct our attention toward specific aspects of reality and allow us to develop applied critical thinking skills. Often students will think they understand a concept because they recognize an example of it, but this is mistaken. Theoretical vocabularies provide a general way of looking at the world that allows us to critically analyze and evaluate cultural patterns, problems, ways of thinking, tendencies, and so on. In short, a concept or theory serves as a general way of seeing social realities; an example is a specific thing we are able to see through a conceptual or theoretical lens. For these reasons, discussion participation must reflect a grasp of specific theoretical vocabulary from the readings.
Specific conceptual/theoretical vocabulary and content from assigned readings and from lectures applied with analytical rigor (40%). I want to see you taking ownership of course material and applying it to critical analyses. This means that simply describing material from readings and lectures, or stringing together quotes or paraphrases from the readings and lectures, will not receive a high grade. Your forum responses should focus on larger problems raised in the readings and the critical insights offered by particular approaches to these problems. Also, each question will require that you apply the concepts from required academic journal articles/book chapters to the popular news stories assigned for that same week. As you apply the concepts from academic readings, my expectation is that you will provide detailed, substantive connections between the concepts and the popular news articles. The purpose of these connections will be to demonstrate that you are able to apply major course concepts analytically to the events and trends of our current political moment.
Ideas/concepts were expressed in a clear and coherent manner (20%). Contributions will be held to high standards for clarity and coherence, including grammar. While no style formats will be imposed, forum contributions should meet formal academic standards similar to essays, where specific ideas, vocabulary, cases, examples and so on from the readings are referenced. Clear, carefully proofread writing is expected in all posts. A4 – CHO_FINAL.DOC
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Post-Racialism
Sumi Cho ?
ABSTRACT: Rather than treat post-racialism as a political trend or
social fact, this Article argues that post-racialism in its current iteration
is a twenty-first century ideology that reflects a belief that due to racial
progress the state need not engage in race-based decision-making or
adopt race-based remedies, and that civil society should eschew race as
a central organizing principle of social action. Post-racial logic calls
instead for a “retreat from race.” This retreat takes at least three forms:
material, as the retreat from state-imposed remedies; sociocultural, as
the retreat from white liberal/progressive deference to Black normativity
on the meaning of racial equality and justice; and political, as the
retreat from collective political entities organized along racial lines and
agendas as a legitimate protest or reform vehicle. In this Article, I
analyze postracialism as an ideology that both converges and departs
from its predecessor “colorblindness,” identify four key features of the
revamped ideology (racial progress or transcendence, race neutral
universalism, moral equivalence, and political distancing), and map
three of postracialism’s contemporary articulations in the legal, political
and intellectual contexts. I conclude by offering some suggestions for
how critical race and progressive scholars might approach their work to
resist the new racial hegemony of postracial ideology.
I. INTRODUCTION: THE PROBLEM ……………………………………………………… 1591
II. DEFINITIONS ……………………………………………………………………………….. 1593
A. POST-RACIALISM’S WORK AND TARGET AUDIENCE ………………………. 1594
? Professor of Law, DePaul University College of Law. I am indebted to my Dean, Glen
Weissenberger, for his generous support of this work; my stellar research assistant Jodi Schuette; my
editor-collaborator, Gil Gott; and my superb Iowa Law Review editors, Cassie Peterson, Joshua
Mandelbaum, and Christine Huggins. I thank Angela Onwuachi-Willig for her community-building
work to help conceptualize and organize, along with all the organizers, the twentieth-anniversary
commemoration of Critical Race Theory at the University of Iowa College of Law in April of 2009 that
inspires this volume. I am grateful to the participants at the African American Policy Forum’s Social
Justice Writers’ Retreat IV for the space to receive quality feedback on works-in-progress, and for the
incredibly helpful comments and suggestions of Devon Carbado, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Luke Harris,
George Lipsitz, Saúl Sarabia, Alvin Starks, and Barbara Tomlinson.
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B.
[2009]
POST-RACIALISM’S KEY FEATURES ……………………………………………. 1600
1. Racial Progress and Transcendence…………………………………… 1600
2. Race-Neutral Universalism………………………………………………. 1601
3. Moral Equivalence………………………………………………………….. 1602
4. Distancing Move…………………………………………………………….. 1603
III. POST-RACIALISMS ……………………………………………………………………….. 1604
A. LEGAL POST-RACIALISM ………………………………………………………….. 1604
1. Historical Context …………………………………………………………… 1604
a. The Pre-Civil Rights Era’s Jim Crow “Racialism”—
Racial Dictatorship…………………………………………………… 1605
b. The Civil Rights Era “Racialism”—Racial Remediation .. 1610
c. Post-Civil Rights—Getting Beyond Race to
Colorblindness…………………………………………………………. 1612
2. The Post-Racial Court?: Racial Subordination = Racial
Equality…………………………………………………………………………. 1614
B. POLITICAL POST-RACIALISM …………………………………………………….. 1619
1. Obama’s Interest Convergence …………………………………………. 1619
2. Towards “A More Perfect Union”? …………………………………… 1622
C. INTELLECTUAL POST-RACIALISM ………………………………………………. 1624
1. Radical Critiques of Capitalism ………………………………………… 1625
2. Liberal Post-Racialists and the Critique of Racial
Opportunism ………………………………………………………………….. 1631
IV. CONCLUSION: RESISTANCES ………………………………………………………….. 1641
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I.
INTRODUCTION: THE PROBLEM
When Critical Race Theory burst upon the legal academic scene in the midto-late 1980s at the tail end of Ronald Reagan’s second term, it was at the sunset of
the civil-rights era. During this Guns n’ Roses/Wall Street-inflected time, social
conservatives began quietly but actively developing a cultural and legal movement
to reverse the gains of the civil-rights movement. As a young attorney working in
the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice, Lee
Cokorinos detailed how the architects of the far right began a social, political, and
financial network to pursue an audacious anti-civil-rights agenda. 1 The
simultaneous, if not homologous, generation of a race-conscious Critical Race
Theory movement in legal academe, alongside a Racial Backlash movement
carefully constructed by a confederation of inequality-activists, provides
perspective to reflect on the successes and failures of Critical Race Theory twenty
years later. It also sets the stage for the urgent challenges the twenty-first-century
faces. 2
The inherent tension between the Critical Race and Racial Backlash
movements over the past two decades is also reflected in the disparate signifiers of
racial equality presented by the historic election of Barack Obama as president. On
the one hand, Obama, as the first African American head of the United States,
represents to many commentators the personification of “We Shall Overcome.” On
the other hand, his road to the White House was marked by contradiction—a
rhetoric and campaign of “post-racial” universalism by Obama, 3 contrasted with a
campaign trail often racialized by the mainstream media and Republican
challengers. Instances emerged throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, such as
the racial/religious “othering” on the cover of The New Yorker, depicting a terrorist
fist-bump between Barack and Michelle, which was later defended as merely
1. LEE COKORINOS, THE ASSAULT ON DIVERSITY: AN ORGANIZED CHALLENGE TO RACIAL AND
GENDER JUSTICE, at ix, 7–14 (2003).
2. Id. at 129 (arguing that America now needs to “recover its sense of fairness and justice . . . to
turn the tide” toward social justice again).
3. Recall Obama’s 2004 Democratic National Convention speech that catapulted him to the
presidential campaign with its post-racial language:
There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America;
there’s the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into
Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But
I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we
don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little
League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who
opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us
pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of
America.
Barack Obama, Keynote Address at the Democratic National Convention (July 27, 2004), available at
http://www.barackobama.com/2004/07/27/keynote_address_at_the_2004_de_
php.
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“satire” about bigots who view the Obamas in this way. 4 The Republican
challengers also racialized the campaign using a desperation strategy marking
Obama as an outsider and terrorist-sympathizer in a way that drew upon his
exoticized racial pedigree. 5
Despite the ironies of the racialized post-racial campaign, the fact that the
Obama campaign relied upon a “post-racial” strategy that ultimately prevailed
poses a unique crisis for critical-race theorists. 6 The Critical Race Theory
movement faces great danger if it fails to acknowledge that one of the great
successes of the Racial Backlash movement is the promotion of a larger national
and legal consensus that ignores the bulk of racial disparities, inequities, and
imbalances in society, and pursues race-neutral remedies as a fundamental, a priori
value. The movement also faces great danger if it fails to understand how forging a
national consensus of race-neutral universalism is so effective that post-racialism
has now become the presumed calling card of the first African American president.
The movement faces further danger if it fails to recognize the proliferation of
intellectuals, ranging from liberal to radical allies, who adopt post-racialism as a
guiding theoretical framework and gestalt. It faces danger if it fails to recognize
how the legal, political, and intellectual post-racialisms generated may form a type
of cultural hegemony whose presentist, “yes we can” optimism—slouching
towards solipsism—resonates widely with youth, including youth of color. Finally,
the Critical Race Theory movement faces great danger if it fails to notice that the
“new Black leadership” in the “post-racial era,” which is touted by the mainstream
4. See Barry Blitt, The Politics of Fear, NEW YORKER, July 21, 2008, at cover. For coverage of
The New Yorker’s explanation for its cover, see Eric Lee, The New Yorker and Old Racism, L.A.
SENTINEL, July 17, 2008, available at http://www.lasentinel.net/The-New-Yorker-and-OldRacism.html.
5. This racialized “Hail Mary” strategy prompted McCain friend and congressional colleague,
John Lewis, to denounce the McCain campaign for “sowing the seeds of hatred and division” by using
toxic language that harkens back to “another destructive period in American history.” John Lewis
stated:
During another period, in the not too distant past, there was a governor of the state of
Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate. George
Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the
conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply
trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little
girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham,
Alabama.
Rebecca Sinderbrand, Rep. Lewis Clarifies Controversial Remarks About McCain, Palin, CNN.COM,
Oct. 12, 2008, http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/12/mccain.lewis/. See also Lola Adesioye,
Palling Around with Racists, GUARDIAN ONLINE, Oct. 14, 2008, http://www.guardian.co.
uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/14/mccain-palin-obama-racism (noting that the 2008 Republican
presidential-campaign rhetoric created “an incendiary, polarizing ‘us’ versus ‘them’ position whose
only aim seems to be to inflame tensions and push supporters further to the right”).
6. For a report on the Obama campaign’s post-racial strategy, see Ginger Thompson, Seeking
Unity, Obama Feels Pull of Racial Divide, N.Y. TIMES, Feb. 12, 2008, at A1.
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press, ridicules collective political organization by people of color (as people of
color) as hopelessly “old school.”
Although post-racialism has great appeal for a wide range of actors—mostly
from the political center to the radical Left—this Article argues that even when
practiced by progressives of color, it is a dangerous ideology. First, post-racialism
obscures the centrality of race and racism in society. Second, it more effectively
achieves what the Racial Backlash movement sought to do over two decades ago—
forge a national consensus around the retreat from race-based remedies on the
basis that the racial eras of the past have been and should be transcended. Third,
post-racialism as an ideology serves to reinstate an unchallenged white
normativity. Post-racialism is fast becoming the “race card” of whites, deployed
with obligatory reference to Barack Obama’s presidency in an effort to trump the
moral high ground held by survivors of racial discrimination in a country with
centuries of racial injustice and inequality. Finally, post-racialism denigrates
collective Black political organization. 7
To begin my argument, Part II of this Article provides a definition of postracialism and discusses what “work” it does in contemporary political culture, its
targeted audience, and its primary features. In Part III, I elaborate on the different
contemporary articulations of post-racialism and provide an historical context
explaining why post-racialism is a uniquely twenty-first-century “end of history” 8
ideology. Finally, Part IV concludes with a discussion of possible avenues for
resistance available to the next generation of Critical Race Theory scholars and
activists.
II. DEFINITIONS
Given the proliferation of media coverage of Obama’s campaign and election
as “post-racial,” one might wonder why the term has gotten so much traction. One
might also reasonably ask: what is “post” about post-racial, and what is it
replacing? How does post-racialism differ from colorblindness? Or, what “work”
does post-racialism do ideologically, that colorblindness does not or cannot? Who
is the intended audience for the post-racial message? Do conservatives, liberals, or
progressives favor and/or deploy post-racialism or post-racialist rhetoric? And
what are the common characteristics of a post-racial/ideological move?
7. Throughout this Article I use the term “Black” in a British sense, denoting those who are
racialized as minority-outsiders in the United Kingdom.
8. Based on his 1989 essay, Francis Fukuyama authored the 1992 book, The End of History and
the Last Man. In it he reinterpreted Hegel’s concept of universal history, arguing that the fall of global
communism and its revelations represent an “end of history” insofar as there are no more viable
competitors to free-market capitalism and liberal democracy. FRANCIS FUKUYAMA, THE END OF
HISTORY AND THE LAST MAN (1992). Post-racialism represents a similar “end of history” type of
ideology in that it represents itself as the evolutionary ideal for a society that has transcended the pursuit
of racial subordination and remedy by the state.
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A. POST-RACIALISM’S WORK AND TARGET AUDIENCE
Rather than speak of post-racialism as merely a political trend or phenomenon
or social fact, I argue that post-racialism in its current iteration is a twenty-firstcentury ideology that reflects a belief that due to the significant racial progress that
has been made, the state need not engage in race-based decision-making or adopt
race-based remedies, and that civil society should eschew race as a central
organizing principle of social action. 9 According to post-racial logic, the move is
to effectuate a “retreat from race.” 10 This retreat from race takes at least three
forms: material, as the retreat from state-imposed remedies; sociocultural, as the
retreat from white liberal/progressive deference to Black normativity on the
meaning of racial equality and justice; and political, as the retreat from collective
political entities organized along racial lines and agendas as a legitimate protest or
reform vehicle.
Sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant describe a “racial project” as
one that organizes the distribution of resources by the state according to racialized
categories. 11 As a material racial project, the discourse of post-racialism and its
accompanying ideology provides a common-sense rhetoric and reasoning to fuel
the state’s retreat from racial remedies. Race-based affirmative action, race-based
admissions or districting in school-desegregation plans, and minority voting
districts, as a few prominent examples, all come under scrutiny in a post-racial
world.
In addition to the material retreat from race, post-racialism also levels the
discursive playing field, allowing whites to oppose civil-rights remedies and
advocate for race-neutral policies because society has transcended the racial
moment, or civil-rights era. Under post-racialism, race does not matter, and should
not be taken into account or even noticed. Thus, one who points out racial
inequities risks being characterized as an obsessed-with-race racist who is unfairly
9. While this analysis and definition of post-racialism is based on the current articulation of
post-racialism, it is certainly possible that future articulations may have more progressive content and
potential. In order for a new articulation to emerge, I maintain that some acknowledgment of what we
are “post” must be embedded within the understanding of the term, “post-racialism.” Compare, for
example, political scientist Luke Charles Harris’ conceptualization of the term, “post-apartheid”
America, with the “post” marking the normative turn away from apartheid in the 1954 Brown v. Board
of Education decision. The descriptive turn away from apartheid, as he notes, is a work-in-progress.
Luke Charles Harris, Notes of a Child of Apartheid (2008) (unpublished book proposal on file with
author); see also CHRISTOPHER J. METZLER, THE CONSTRUCTION AND REARTICULATION OF RACE IN A
“POST-RACIAL AMERICA” (2008) (identifying “post-racial” as a “moniker that represents an articulated
vision of race steeped in rigid ideology, constrained by denial of historical realities and undermined by
a need to move forward without acknowledging racism, exclusion and oppression as continuing
violations that impact all Americans, including whites”).
10. I borrow this term from sociologist Dana Takagi’s book on affirmative action and Asian
admissions. DANA Y. TAKAGI, THE RETREAT FROM RACE: ASIAN-AMERICAN ADMISSIONS AND RACIAL
POLITICS (1993).
11. MICHAEL OMI & HOWARD WINANT, RACIAL FORMATION IN THE UNITED STATES: FROM THE
1960S TO THE 1990S, at 71 (2d ed. 1994) (footnote and emphasis omitted).
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and divisively “playing the race card”—one who occupies the same moral category
as someone who consciously perpetrates racial inequities. 12
Although sociocultural in form, the discursive retreat from race is connected
to the other material and political forms of retreat by leveling the moral playing
field between whites and groups of color. Centuries of racial apartheid and neoapartheid are eclipsed by a symbolic “big event” signifying transcendent racial
progress. 13 To mark this “progress,” liberal to radical whites who were formerly
sympathetic to the plight of the racialized understrata and deferential (at least
superficially) to the understrata’s normative definition of equality and
discrimination, are now freed by “progress” to no longer subjugate the way that
they see and live race. On this playing field, whites may pursue their group selfinterest and participate in defining equality on their terms in the name of “unity.”
12. The term originates in its popular form in a New Yorker article that suggested that any
reference to race or racism by the O.J. Simpson defense team would amount to playing the …
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