Presidential discourse reduces racism to lingering individual heart-states divorced from institutions.

Evidence

Born again racism, then, is a racism acknowledged, where acknowledged at all, as individualized faith, of the socially dislocated heart, rather than as institutionalized inequality. “I understand that racism still lingers in America,” declared President George W. Bush, addressing the NAACP for the first time six years into his presidency. “It’s a lot easier to change a law than to change a human heart.” — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 131

Categorization

• XREF: Bush’s NAACP framing parallels the reader’s threatened-privilege mechanism: acknowledging bias only at the individual level while denying structural pattern. — connects to: Clinton’s reconciliation rhetoric flattens racism into symmetric stereotyping that erases power — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still…, 316; Conviviality theory loses critical force when divorced from state racism and hierarchy. — Luke de Noronha, The conviviality of the overpoliced,…, 5; Prejudice theory flattened racism into individual attitudes, erasing structural dimensions — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1318 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Prejudice theory flattened racism into individual attitudes, erasing structural dimensions #corroborates (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1318
• Clinton’s reconciliation rhetoric flattens racism into symmetric stereotyping that erases power #corroborates (0.82) — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 316
• American racism shifted from constitutionalized segregation to privatized preference-driven apartness #exemplifies (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 365
• Conviviality theory loses critical force when divorced from state racism and hierarchy. #corroborates (0.78) — Luke de Noronha, The conviviality of the overpoliced,…, 5
• States are racial by population-structuring but racist only when that structuring excludes #expands (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1675