Colorblind antiracialism gains force only after partial antiracist gains begin succeeding

Evidence

Antiracialism, it turns out, takes hold – becomes insistent, one might say begins to make itself heard – once the antiracist struggles have achieved their initial but incomplete goals. Antiracialism marks the moment that a society is accepted into (or even as a momentary moral leader of) the world. It marks, in a word, the moment of globalization’s relative (and repeated) triumph. To be of the world, in the world, a worldly society, racism nominally has been rejected. Now the category of race must be erased. But we are being asked to give up on race before and without addressing the legacy, the roots, the scars of racisms’ histories, the weights of race. We are being asked to give up on the word, the concept, the category, at most the categorizing. But not, pointedly not, the conditions for which those terms stand. In the beginning was the deed; in the end, to undo the deed, the word should not be uttered. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 123

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: This distinguishes dismantling the race category from dismantling the conditions racisms stand for — the exact contact-vs-institution gap the reader is pursuing, framed as an analytic distinction worth holding onto.
• XREF: connects to: Colorblind ideology works only because it partly reflects real post-civil-rights gains — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 245; Successful anti-racist movements trigger renewed, subtler forms of racial exclusion, not elimination — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1915; Colorblindness ideology rearticulated civil rights gains into a new racism — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 192 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Antiracist victories across three eras were each defused by formal legal colorblindness #expands (0.88) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 127
• Colorblind ideology works only because it partly reflects real post-civil-rights gains #corroborates (0.85) — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 245
• Antiracist reforms repackaged white supremacy as color blindness #corroborates (0.85) — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 91
• Color blindness functions to re-anonymize racial rule after anti-racist exposure #expands (0.82) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1728
• Antiracialism is whiteness by another name disarming antiracist struggle #corroborates (0.82) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 126
• Colorblindness ideology rearticulated civil rights gains into a new racism #expands (0.80) — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 192
• Successful anti-racist movements trigger renewed, subtler forms of racial exclusion, not elimination #complicates (0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1915
• Colorblind formalism rescued racism when movements threatened its material order. #corroborates (0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 128
• White resistance persisted via color-blind punitive policies replacing overt racial terrorism #complicates (0.72) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 851