Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s

The racial reaction to the post-WWII civil rights movement manifested in several ways. It was not organized under one banner but instead included a number of approaches and projects, some of which failed. One such reaction was through using the power of the state, specifically the FBI’s COINTELPRO (Counter-Intelligence Program). Another was a loose coalition of political movements, the new right, which “was an attempt to create an authoritarian, right-wing populism—a populism fuelled by resentment” (191).

The new right developed in the 1970s and was comprised of groups such as the Heritage Foundation and the Conservative Caucus, featuring such leaders as the evangelical preacher Jerry Falwell. Like the leaders of the civil rights movement, the new right rearticulated their language through “code words” (192), co-opting terms from the civil rights movement itself. These code words invoked racial ideas without challenging “popular democratic or egalitarian ideals such as justice and equal opportunity” (192).

For example, the authors describe how the new right described school integration measures not in terms of racial segregation but as the state usurping control from the family and the community, using terms like “community” that had been used by the civil rights movement. The rise of the new right culminated in Richard Nixon’s presidential administration. Nixon’s political analyst pushed for a Southern strategy that would seek to recruit white voters alienated from the Democratic Party by civil rights.

The rise of the new right also coincided with the US economy stalling, the political collapse of the “New Deal coalition” (194), and the decline of the civil rights movement. The new right especially targeted the welfare state created by the Great Society of President Johnson’s administration, accusing them of creating a class of administrators, journalists, and academics who gave benefits to minorities while neglecting the white working class. New right figures like the politician William Wallace had policies and messages “aimed squarely at white working-class voters who were threatened both by economic crisis and by the social upheavals of black liberation, feminism, the student and antiwar movements, and other manifestations of the ‘counterculture’” (196). Under Nixon, the resentments of the new right also incorporated feminism and the growing gay rights movement.

Another reactionary movement was that of the neoconservatives, who were generally former moderate Democrats and were white people from the Northern United States. They rejected the new right’s code words but supported reviving ethnicity theory and opposed group rights, instead supporting an “equality […] of ‘opportunities’” (199). This led them to support free-market policies and oppose state interventions like affirmative action. In the neoconservative view, discrimination was only an individual problem, not a systemic one, once obvious systems of oppression like racial segregation were dealt with.

The authors argue that the project of the “containment” of civil rights was achieved by the mid-1970s, “setting the stage for the protracted crisis of racial meaning that has preoccupied the country ever since” (201). After the election of Nixon in 1968, new right and neoconservative ideas became part of the political mainstream, appearing in the form of opposition to affirmative action, fair housing, and other government policies, which were accused of being “reverse racism” (203).

Even after the end of the Nixon administration, the right wing also adopted the language of social rights with terms like “traditional values” and “community control” (204). These shifts would pave the way for another stage in what the authors consider the current trajectory, the rise of neoliberalism.

The authors describe neoliberalism as an ideology that values individualism and the free market and is hostile to the welfare state. Promoters of neoliberalism tapped into white supremacy to support their agenda. A 1971 memo by corporate lawyer Lewis F. Powell, “Attack on the American Free Enterprise System,” urged corporations to become more aggressively involved in politics. They backed less government control over business and argued that unions and workers had too much power. As they gained influence in the wake of a recession that began in 1975 and with the election of Ronald Reagan, neoliberal policies led to the end of workers’ wages being tied to productivity, “permanently higher unemployment” (214), and wage stagnation.

With President Reagan, the authors describe race under his administration as the “politics of resentment” (214), which was tied to neoliberalism. Under Reagan, neoliberalism expressed itself in two ways. In one, there was a “national movement” against taxation, the “tax revolt” (215), justified by the belief that tax money from white citizens was going to minorities living off welfare. This belief formed another key element of neoliberalism, “producerism” (215), which held that there is an economically unproductive class and one that is economically productive and pays taxes. In the stereotypical view, the former are minorities, and the latter are white people. Neoliberalism also encouraged greater state coercion. Incarceration, especially of brown and Black men, began to rise in the 1980s at the same time as prisons began to be increasingly privatized.

Finally, neoliberalism accompanied the “‘colorblind’ racial ideology” (217). This ideology developed as the right wing of the United States rejected blatant racist forces such as the Ku Klux Klan, relying instead on codewords like “get tough on crime” (218). The right also accused political programs like affirmative action of being “reverse racism.” On top of that, racism came to be seen as something that could occur with anyone, without reference to the particular historical oppression certain minorities had suffered. The authors argue that it was a deliberate strategy to “consolidate and expand the new right’s mass base among whites without appealing to racist tropes as the ‘code words’ approach had done” (219). This paved the way for colorblind racial ideology, which asserts that people should aspire toward no longer paying attention to race.

For the authors, neoliberalism’s economic impacts and colorblind racial ideology are linked. They write,

Containment [of civil rights] meant more than restricting the reach of demands for greater racial equality and vastly expanded democracy; it also meant resisting the redistributive logic of the Great Society, which was an early effort to extend the New Deal to the lower strata of U.S. society, and especially to people of color (220).

The authors argue that Reagan combined racial politics with neoliberalism. However, the same trajectory continued under the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton. The authors describe Clinton as furthering neoliberalism and limiting the influence of the Black movement over the Democratic Party, both of which led to Clinton limiting welfare with 1995’s Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. In some ways, Clinton did improve federal aid for the poor. However, he also supported the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which the authors argue allowed corporations to take over and devastate the traditional agricultural systems in northern Mexico. The following George W. Bush administration failed to privatize Social Security, arguably the centerpiece of the US welfare state.

In other ways, Bush’s administration expanded privatization of health care and education. Most notoriously, the Bush administration bungled the response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, leading to gentrification and a permanent decline in the Black population. The economic crash of 2008, which the authors argue was brought about by the policies of Clinton and Bush, led to “the largest regressive racial redistribution of resources to have occurred in U.S. history” (227). The crash was driven by the subprime mortgage crisis, which involved racial discrimination against Black homeowners, but it also caused a global economic crisis that affected many people regardless of race.

As the first Black president, Barack Obama both used colorblind ideology and occasionally criticized it. Nor, the authors assert, did Obama deal with racial bias in incarceration or do much for workers’ rights. Instead, Obama followed Clinton’s brand of neoliberalism. Obama also, in some ways, continued Bush’s aggressive foreign policy—namely, in the use of drone warfare. The authors suggest that Obama tried to be centrist. For example, he deported more immigrants than any previous presidential administration, but he also supported immigration reform.

Obama’s administration also saw the emergence of the Tea Party, a right-wing movement motivated by both the 2008 economic crash, which was blamed on government excess, and the election of a Black man as president: “The core constituency of the Tea Party consists of older, middle-class whites who fear the demographic change around them and the loss of rights, privileges, and resources that such change forebodes” (235). The racial attitudes of the Tea Party are also intertwined with their opposition to the welfare state. They view minorities as the “undeserving poor” who receive too much government aid (236). These political shifts have also been driven by demographic change, which will eventually mean that no racial group, including white people, will be the majority in the United States anymore.