Postracial discourse recurs at each peak of racial progress

Evidence

While many associate the declaration of a postracial society with the 2008 election of Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States, the first pronouncement of a postracial society can be traced to shortly after the Civil War. Eighteen years after slavery was abolished in 1865, the Supreme Court, having made great strides to remedy racial inequality, was ready to declare the United States a postracial society and therefore requiring no further legal measures to combat racial discrimination. Postracial discourses have reappeared at landmark moments of racial contest, for example, at the end of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, after the multicultural movement in the 1990s, and after Obama’s election. Each time it has gained more and more momentum and cultural credibility. Such discourses consist of a set of beliefs that converge to posit that the United States has made such notable racial progress that racial discrimination has become rare and therefore governments should no longer consider race in their decision making. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 88

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s general knowledge of colorblind racism critiques and Obama-era postracialism debates.
• SEED: An article angle: the repeated historical pattern of declaring racism over precisely when legal progress peaks, and what that pattern predicts next.