Ideological rearticulation was more effective than repression at containing the radical black movement.

Evidence

But the racial reaction also learned how to use strategies of rearticulation to defuse the radical democratic and egalitarian thrust of the movement. 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. … 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: Concretely demonstrates Omi and Winant’s rearticulation concept through the sequence of post-civil rights ideological tropes.
• XREF: Cumulative ‘latent functions’ plus the code-word-to-colorblindness sequence connects to the frame theory of how shifting vocabularies repackage contested meaning.
• STORYSTEM: The idea that each new ideological frame was consciously layered onto the previous as a containment strategy invites a narrative tracking one actor’s career through all three stages - from civil rights lawyer to colorblindness advocate.