Ideological rearticulation outperformed repression in defusing the civil rights movement.

Evidence

Rearticulation proved far more effective than repression in containing the radical thrust of the black movement, and of its allied movements as well. A clear sequence of ideological tropes deepened and extended “post-civil rights” era rearticulations of racism: first code words, then reverse racism, and finally colorblindness. At each stage of its development, the racial reaction carried out what we might call cumulative “latent functions” (Merton 1968). Code words channeled white shame, fear, and rage; reverse racism deracialized discrimination, effectively absolving whites; and colorblindness reasserted American nationalism and the “unity” of “the American people” across the supposedly disappearing boundaries of race. — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 240

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘rearticulation’ as a political tactic and traces its three-stage sequence of code words, reverse racism, and colorblindness.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that discursive rearticulation — not state violence — was the more effective containment mechanism reverses the standard repression-centered account of how movements are defeated.
• XREF: connects to: Post-civil-rights African American mobilization declined as shared enemy attribution diluted to self-blame. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 4430