Defunding progressive commitments substitutes for demographic restriction in the culture wars

Evidence

Under this mandate of radical privatization, funded institutions, programs, and activities accordingly become dramatically less diverse both in their programming, scope, and commitments and notably in their employment patterns. (Barack Obama’s fundraising success in the 2008 Presidential campaign has exactly challenged this logic.) Hence the fundamentalist conservative outrage expressed by the likes of Abigail Thernstrom, Ward Connerly, Linda Chavez, and the Center for Individual Rights regarding the Supreme Court’s upholding in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) of law schools’ limited affirmative action programs for the sake of maintaining a diverse student body. Neoconservative critics committed to a “race-free” America (note, not racist free) have blasted the diversity commitments of the Court’s majority as “murdering the Fourteenth Amendment” (calling for equal treatment before the law) and as “tortured” (Ward Connerly), as “diversity drivel” (Michael Greve), and discriminatory (Linda Chavez), indeed, even “racist” (Abigail Thernstrom). If it is no longer possible to restrict demographic diversity, the culture wars can be won by defunding progressive cultural commitments, by shrinking the cultural horizons of heterogeneity. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 407

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the neoconservative ‘race-free America’ stance as a commitment to colorblindness (not anti-racism) that opposes affirmative action as a threat to the Fourteenth Amendment.
• QUESTION: Obama’s 2008 fundraising is cited parenthetically as challenging the ‘largest contributors are white men’ claim - wonder whether this held up across subsequent cycles or was an aberration.