Racism persists in raceless form by shifting from denial to security-based justification

Evidence

Born again racism reappears whenever called upon to do the dirty work of racist politics but purged of its categorical stiffness. Indeed, shed of its stiff categoricality, raceless racism operates in denial, anywhere and anytime. The concern over police profiling, for instance, has quickly shifted from denying its prevalence, if not its possibility, to affirming that there is nothing wrong with profiling for the sake of security and anti-terrorist vigilance. The concern over victims of state violence has shifted from claims of protecting the innocent to dismissive rationalizations of collateral damage (read: they are really not like us, or shouldn’t have been there – where “there” just happens to be their home or neighborhood). — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 138

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the argument about moral panics and the norm-shifting of discourse in the reader’s media/communication reading. — connects to: Racialization operates through ostensibly colorblind security practices, not overt racism — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 576; Claims that race has died actually deny continuing racism — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 147