Colorblind formalism rescued racism when movements threatened its material order.

Evidence

No sooner had these shifts been successfully signaled, if not fully effected, than the force(s) of racial order reached for the formalism of the law. In the face of instabilities and insecurities, state recourse in each instance quickly reduced to an insistence upon formal equality. There are of course some not insignificant differences between the instances I cite. Nevertheless, at the level of generalization, Reconstruction, “We shall overcome,” and “a new South Africa” all gave way in a blur to a statemandated nonracialism, the drive for some sort of substantive equality to a nominal categorical blindness under but neither before nor beyond the law. Formalism “saved” racism in each case by abandoning (or at least threatening to abandon) race. Call this born again racism. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 128

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘born again racism’ — racism saved by nominal colorblindness.
• SEED: Angle: the pattern by which US Reconstruction, the civil rights movement, and post-apartheid South Africa each collapsed into ‘born again racism’ — a comparative piece on how formal equality serves as restructuring, not dissolution, of racial order.
• XREF: connects to: Formal colorblindness preserves racial inequality in privatized, unnamed form. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 129; Antibusing forces framed their cause as upholding Brown’s color-blind principle rather than as resistance. — Matthew D. Lassiter, The Suburban Origins of “Color-Blind”…, 99; Colorblind antiracialism gains force only after partial antiracist gains begin succeeding — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 123 (+3 more)