Neoconservatism rejected group rights by defending opportunity over outcome equality

Evidence

From the neoconservative standpoint —rooted in the ethnicity paradigm — group rights were anathematized as anti-democratic. To demand equality as an outcome of civil rights policies, or to frame measures of egalitarian reforms in terms of the policies’ results, called into question the opportunity-based premises of the “American dream,” what W.E.B. Du Bois in 1935 had called “the American assumption.” By the 1970s, opposition to radical demands for equality of “outcomes” rather than “opportunities” had become a centerpiece of the neoconservative perspective. — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 193

Categorization

• XREF: Ties the ethnicity paradigm to outcome-versus-opportunity framing, connecting to CRT claims in the vault.
• QUESTION: Du Bois’s 1935 ‘American assumption’ reference is worth chasing down in its original context.