Post-Racialism

Rather than treat post-racialism as a political trend or social fact, this Article argues that post-racialism in its current iteration is a twenty-first century ideology that reflects a belief that due to racial progress the state need not engage in race-based decision-making or adopt race-based remedies, and that civil society should eschew race as a central organizing principle of social action. Post-racial logic calls instead for a “retreat from race.” This retreat takes at least three forms: material, as the retreat from state-imposed remedies; sociocultural, as the retreat from white liberal/progressive deference to Black normativity on the meaning of racial equality and justice; and political, as the retreat from collective political entities organized along racial lines and agendas as a legitimate protest or reform vehicle. In this Article, I analyze postracialism as an ideology that both converges and departs from its predecessor “colorblindness,” identify four key features of the revamped ideology (racial progress or transcendence, race neutral universalism, moral equivalence, and political distancing), and map three of postracialism’s contemporary articulations in the legal, political and intellectual contexts. I conclude by offering some suggestions for how critical race and progressive scholars might approach their work to resist the new racial hegemony of postracial ideology.