Race’s rendered irrelevance stigmatizes antiracist invocation as the real racism

Evidence

On one hand, there has been an increasing reluctance to acknowledge its traces, the legacy of its structural conditions, its continuing significance. William Julius Wilson’s The Declining Significance of Race signaled an emerging emphasis, more insidious by far than Wilson was intending, of what since has become a widespread – and I am suggesting globalizing – social trend. As race is rendered irrelevant socially, racism conceptually becomes stigmatized so that only the obviously bigoted – extreme individuals – get to qualify. On the other hand, racism is redirected to malign those who invoke race, implicitly or explicitly, but now to undo the historical legacies of racisms, even modestly to redress its effects. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1863

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the contact/institution gap: everyday interracial socializing coexists with unaddressed institutional discrimination because naming structural effects is itself stigmatized. Also parallels the broader threatened-privilege and deflective-mobilization literature. — connects to: White victimhood narratives frame antiracism as the actual racism — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 449; Antiracialism is whiteness by another name disarming antiracist struggle — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 126; Equating antiracists with segregationists is a racist assimilationist political maneuver — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 1125 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• White victimhood narratives frame antiracism as the actual racism #corroborates (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 449
• Antiracialism is whiteness by another name disarming antiracist struggle #corroborates (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 126
• Equating antiracists with segregationists is a racist assimilationist political maneuver #exemplifies (0.85) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1125