Defining racism as resisting mixed relationships hides racist motives behind pursuing them.

Evidence

Cordial racism trades on race without naming it as such. For where no race, no racial harm. So no racism. Evaporation alchemizes the structural into the individual, the pernicious into the cordial, the public behind the veil of ignorant privacy, racisms into the virtues of mestizaje/mesticagem. Into mixture. Mergence is emergence from the chilling fog of race – into denial, the left behind, the new untouchable, the shadow of the shadow. We no longer need to do anything about this, for there is nothing to do. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1798 (#complicates, via linked claim)

A final possible source of inner conflict is not the new racisms, but vestiges of the old racism that remain psychological hot buttons for White Americans because they conflict with the American Creed. Many Whites might accept subtle racist messages because they do not perceive them as inconsistent with the norm of racial equality. But, as Allport suggested, the best retort to bigotry may be an appeal to the Creed. If the underlying racism in subtly racist messages was revealed, they might be repudiated for violating it. The 1988 Republican presidential campaign exploited a horrific crime of sexual violence against a white woman by Willie Horton, a black convict, to attack the Democrats for being “soft on crime.” Though ostensibly a message about crime, the message had a strongly racial subtext. When Jesse Jackson pointed this out, some Whites turned against the Republican campaign (Mendelberg, 2001). Egalitarians also successfully appealed to Whites’ consensual opposition to old-fashioned racism after David Duke’s membership in the KKK was publicized during his statewide campaigns in Louisiana in the 1990s, and in 2000, after Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott’s public nostalgia for Strom Thurmond’s 1948 segregationist campaign was revealed. Interestingly enough, Duke’s and Lott’s fellow Republicans seemed the most nervous, as if being associated with old-fashioned racism is the political kiss of death today. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2190 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Racist desire aims to eliminate the Other’s desire, not to assimilate it — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1391; Convincing people racism is over ensures that racism persists — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 1142; Superficial diversity strategies conceal rather than resolve persistent representational racism (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Cordial racism works by erasing race as a category and denying harm #complicates (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1798
• Exposing subtle racism as violating egalitarian norms can trigger repudiation #complicates (0.71) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2190