Dominants adopt individualism as a new defense when group-based hierarchy is challenged

Evidence

Under paternalism, the group basis of social life is exalted by dominants as they exhort subordinates to abide by and honor its precepts. But when that comes under challenge from subordinates, dominants move to deny the group basis of social life and the legitimacy of group-based demands. Individualism is elevated to a lofty moral principle. This renders subordinates’ new demand for equality of outcomes morally unacceptable because of its brazen disrespect for the rights of individuals (e.g., “reverse discrimination”), and political debate is rechanneled into less threatening questions about the degree to which equality of opportunity is available to all individuals (e.g., the conservative call for a “color-blind” society). The new defense of the status quo manipulates the idealistic goal of equal treatment espoused by Allport, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others in the 1950s. The idea of equality of opportunity only has meaning in a world in which inequality of outcomes is a given, and ironically, the latter renders the former unattainable because of the handicaps it dispenses unequally to the various competitors (Schaar, 1967). — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 674

Categorization

• QUESTION: The catch-22 claim that equality of opportunity requires inequality of outcomes as its precondition is striking — worth chasing the Schaar 1967 source for the full argument.
• SEED: The ‘color-blind society’ as the new paternalism is a strong essay angle: how ideals from the civil rights era were weaponized into defenses of the status quo.
• DEEPTHINKING: The irony that egalitarian ideals (equal treatment, opportunity) get co-opted to defend hierarchy when they’re redeployed as procedural rather than substantive goals is a dense, paradigm-shifting insight.
• ADDENDUM: The reverse-discrimination/‘color-blind’ co-optation of civil-rights language connects to historical moral-panic framing of dress/labor norms as natural rather than political.
• XREF: connects to: Unchecked individualism destroys individuality rather than protecting it — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 169; Individualism intensifies the moral idealization of wealth as society fragments; Desegregation created a double bind by trading communal bonds for competitive individualism — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1187 (+6 more)