By the 1990s black candidates had to deny race to win white support.

Evidence

By the 1990s, as the political scientist Fredrick Harris notes, deracialization had become a strategy for race-neutral black candidates seeking white support, who avoided racial issues like the plague. Candidates had to distance themselves from or denounce black activists deemed too radical by white voters. Any hint of the racial politics of old, like the electoral politics of Black Power, had to be discarded. To gain any power in the first place, politicians had to pretend race wasn’t a factor at all. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 461

Categorization

• DEFINE: Concretizes the meaning of deracialization as practiced: avoidance of racial issues, denunciation of ‘radical’ activists, and racial pretense.