Deracialization failed to protect black interests as white anxieties reasserted the value gap.

Evidence

But the strategy didn’t work, even as African Americans appeared to make political gains. Broader constituencies eventually elected black politicians (for example, Douglass Wilder in Virginia, Carol Moseley Braun in Illinois, David Dinkins in New York City, and Deval Patrick in Massachusetts), but the value gap and racial habits persisted, distorting the political process. Large numbers of white working-class Democrats bolted to Ronald Reagan in 1980. Bill Clinton sought to assure those Reagan Democrats that he was not beholden to the traditional Democratic base as his strategy of triangulation pulled the party more to the center-right of the ideological spectrum. At the very moment the strategy of deracialization took hold among a certain group of black liberals, white anxieties and fears bolstered the value gap with the culture wars, mass incarceration, anti-welfare politics, and the Contract with America. Even “deracialized” elected officials had a hard time navigating the political and cultural climate. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 459

Categorization

• XREF: Pays off the book’s central value-gap and racial-habits framework; connects to the ‘blank-out ballot’ proposal evaluated later in the chapter.