Antiracist movements that crack open institutions trigger an immediate formalist backlash.

Evidence

The shifts from broad, globally interconnected antiracist social movements in each instance mapped above to local and much narrower antiracialist commitments represent a turn to formalism in the face of impending material shifts of potentially immense proportion. Antiracist social mobilizations in each historical case fueled gathering momentum to open up institutional access and invigorate competition, to transform voting patterns and relations of power, to undo the easy and complacent stabilities of neighborhoods and cultural sedimentation. Privileges came unfixed, profitabilities were imperiled, property desanctified, powers challenged. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 127

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s core thesis about racial neoliberalism and to Bourdieu-style accounts of how formal rights mask structural inequality.