Post on 18-Mar-2023
The Post-Racial Ideology in Contemporary America: An Examination of the National Dialogue Surrounding State of Florida v. George Zimmerman and Abigail Fisher v. University of Texas Julius Moye3651029Prof. Georg SchildRassismus und Sklaverei in der USA
"We have a black president. We have a black attorney
general. We have a black Supreme Court justice. One of the
most revered athletes in the nation is a black golfer. In
fact, Americans worship and adore black athletes, movie
stars, and musicians. Yet Tavis Smiley has the gall to say
on national television America shows contempt for black men.
And this race baitor has his own nationally televised
program to spout such nonsense on almost a nightly basis.
What people such as him should realize is that it is they
that are keeping racism alive in this nation, and that
Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream will never come to fruition
as long as they continue to fan the fires of racial
discontent. They should all be ashamed of themselves." (1)
These are the words of Noel Sheppard, a writer for a
conservative media outlet called NewsBusters, commenting on
an interview with Tavis Smiley on ABC concerning the George
Zimmerman case (2). While a relatively marginal figure and
while some may dismiss this as simply banter from "the
right", these words seem exemplary of the ideological
foundation of the post-racial attitude that permeates
America, regardless of one's political orientation. In the
national American dialogue, what has been deemed as progress
by people of color in this country apparently translates to
the end of racism. This paper will attempt to briefly
dissect this post-racial attitude that has comprised a
prevalent shift in dominant American ideology concerning
race in recent years. To do such, it will examine two of the
most highlighted court cases in the public spotlight
regarding the issue of race from the last several years:
State of Florida v. George Zimmerman and Abigail Fisher v. University of Texas.
A Brief Dissection of the Post-Racial Ideology
There have, especially in recent times, been several
manifestations of what can be called the “post-X” ideology;
with X being the variable for any qualifier be it race,
gender, etc. The 1950's rang with the claims of "the end of
ideology", exemplified by Daniel Bell in his famous book of
the same name. It was meant that all of the underlying
principles of the social system were in their final state,
that "sensible" individuals realized that political ideology
had been exhausted and that all that was needed were
technological adjustments to the extant system (3). Once the
Cold War ended, Francis Fukuyama and others posited the “end
of history”, meaning that the neoliberal system of
capitalist commerce was the finality of our global social
order. As Slavoj Zizek points out in examining the role of
this ideology in regards to the dialogue around our
contemporary economic systems: “Words are disappearing. We
are Fukuyamaists” (4). A similar phenomenon can be seen
occurring in the discourse of race relations in the United
States today and with formidable clout.
Currently, one of the dominant narratives among Americans
has become the “post-racial society”. In a similar vein to
Daniel Bell’s work and the Fukuyamaist tradition, it has
become common in the national dialogue to hear that the
current social system is functioning properly in regard to
race and the most effective way to deal with the race
problem is deal with racism “wherever it may rear its ugly
head” (5) or even not to discuss it. As Mr. Sheppard put it
in the quote above, to discuss race is to “fan the fires of
racial discontent” or to be a “race baitor”, a term that has
become popular particularly among the white national
community in recent years.
What has then been put forth in the national ideology
is the notion that the country on the whole has “moved
beyond race and that race no longer structures our thinking
or our actions” (6). Many trace this to the success of
certain African-American individuals in sports, media and
politics and the election of Barrack Obama in 2008, perhaps
one of the largest milestones in the supposed corroboration
of post-racialism in recent years. The notice of these
individual accomplishments coupled with the observation that
many aspects of what have traditionally been deemed as
belonging to another culture or group have become more
central to the general American cultural landscape, such as
the major takeoff in record sales of Hip-Hop music amongst
white listeners or the fact that salsa has replaced ketchup
as the best-selling condiment in the United States.
As nice as this idea does sound, it contains
fundamental flaws both epistemologically as well as when
factual and historical elements are brought into the
equation. As Laura Hargarten phrased it, “while the concept
is overall optimistic, that race no longer matters in
society, it is naïve and ignorant” (7). What has been in
actuality an increase in multiculturalism as well as nominal
tokens of progress both in terms of civil rights and social
programs overall has been falsely identified as an end to
the hierarchical racial order that has persisted in the
country’s history, but somehow or another, no longer
persists today. Political philosopher Slavoj Zizek adroitly
dissects this ideological shift in a 2007 lecture at Boston
University:
What I am against is the perception, which is
today more or less automatic, of racism as a
problem of tolerance…For Martin Luther King, one
doesn't fight racism with tolerance, but with
what? Emancipatory political struggle, even armed
struggle. So, why are so many problems today
perceived as problems of intolerance rather than
problems of inequality, exploitation, injustice
and so on? You see my point, that's for me the
problem. Racism is a problem… In this innocent
shift of perspective, there is ideology. Why? I
claim the reason is the liberal, multiculturalist
basic ideological operation; the, let's call it,
'culturalization of politics'. Political
differences- differences conditioned by political
inequality or economic exploitation- are
naturalized, neutralized into cultural
differences. That is, into different ways of life
which are something given, something that cannot
be overcome, so they can only be tolerated. The
cost of this culturalization is the retreat, the
failure of direct political solutions such as
welfare state or various socialist projects.
Tolerance is their post-political Ersatz. (8)
Hence, what has emerged in America is the general
belief that “racism” is an overt act rather than a
structural or systemic operation. For example, calling
someone an offensive racial slur would be deemed as racism.
Yet the fact that while black preschoolers only comprise 16%
of the overall student population, they represent 48% of
those suspended or expelled (9) or that prosecutors are
almost twice as likely to file mandatory minimum sentencing,
ceteris paribus, for blacks than whites (10), these
systematic operations of the social system seem to not
qualify for the application of the “R-word”. Perhaps Omali
Yeshitela, chairman of the U.S. division of the African
People’s Socialist Party, describes this phenomenon best in
saying that, “they teach us about racism and loving
everybody but they don’t tell us that the racism they’re
talking about is simply the ideological underpinning of a
social system based on slavery and colonialism” (11). What
we see in this “post-political Ersatz” is the abstraction of
the notion of a social action (racism) from the environment
in which it operates (the historical and contemporary
societal landscape).
“White Privilege” and the Post-Racial Ideology
To effectively dissect and dismantle this ideological
trend (only a brief attempt will be made here for space’s
sake), one must understand the cultural epistemology of
white America from where it emerged and a stoic observation
of history must be undertaken. To begin with an
investigation into the epistemological foundation upon which
this notion rests, it would be instructive to look towards
the work of Barbara J. Flagg. In her landmark article, Was
Blind But Now I See, published in 1993, Flagg laid the
foundation for a field that later developed into what was
called “Critical White Studies”. The pith of her article was
what she called the “transparency phenomenon”, the
phenomenon in which whites seldom tend to view themselves in
racialized terms (12). In another article by Flagg published
in 2013 reflecting on her past work, she poses a question to
the reader which succinctly lays out this phenomenon’s
socio-cultural manifestation:
For example, if I asked you, a white reader, to
select three adjectives that describe you, would
you be likely to include the word “white”? Do you
think about race as a factor in the way other
whites treat you? Do you think about whiteness as
affecting the way other whites are treated? It’s
likely that you discussed race in connection with
the nomination of Clarence Thomas. But how many of
you had conversations about how race might have
affected the character and personality of Justice
Breyer, or pondered whether his whiteness might
predispose him to a racially skewed perspective on
legal issues? (13).
When the dominant narrative is a white one, a one in
which race is transparent in terms of self-reflection, a
skewed perception of the reality of race relations is an
inevitable consequence. A certain rift is able to develop in
the national American perception in which the normativity
becomes centered on what has historically been considered as
“white”, while others operate in such a reality, but with
certain distinguishing features that “can only be
tolerated”. Going back to the Sheppard quote above, he
posits that Tavis Smiley has a skewed view of the racial
reality in the United States by pointing out the “contempt
[that America has] for black men”, but fails to realize the
way in which his own racial identity may skew his
perceptions. To paraphrase Tim Wise, not only does such an
attitude not address the realities which people of color
face in the country but it also adds insult to injury by
calling people of color who do bring up such issues insane
or unsound by dismissing their claims of that reality out of
hand (14).
For example, scholars have pointed out certain details
in American culture that are demonstrative of this effect.
“From ‘flesh-colored’ bandages or crayons and ‘nude’ hosiery
that depict fair skin to standardized testing, individual
members are judged against characteristics held by the
privileged” (15). Furthermore, in regards to the vernacular
concerning scholarship “Black literature” or “Latino
history” is compared simply to “literature” or “history”.
In other words, in American culture and semantics, race is a
fundamental quality to the description of other non-whites
as well as the epistemological foundation of one’s
existential understanding of the self; unless you happen to
be white.
However, to look into the individual epistemology of
this phenomenon is not enough to fully understand its roots.
Eric Arnesen worries that those in the field of Critical
White Studies would put forth a prescription for change in
which “envisioning the withering away of whiteness [as an
oppressive and normative social structure] requires nothing
more than imagination” (16). Arnesen is certainly correct to
put forth the worry that the aforementioned depoliticized
Ersatz could undermine the very prescription for the problems
that scholars in the field are hoping to alleviate. What
emerged, then, in the field was the term “white privilege”
which, as we will see, underlies the transparency
phenomenon. Hence, “[b]oth material conditions and socio-
cultural factors contribute to the resilience of white
privilege” (17). Peggy McIntosh describes white privilege as
“an invisible knapsack of special provisions, assurances,
tools, maps, guides, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes,
compass, emergency gear and blank checks” (18). With a
knapsack that is unknowingly so full, it is easy to see how
the national dialogue, mainly originating from white
America, could develop into post-racialism. Very rarely do
many whites in America think of themselves in racialized
terms and thus are not so quick to see its importance in the
social system. One does not think so deeply into what is
reflective of the flesh-colored bandage if it matches the
flesh.
The State of Florida v. George Zimmerman
Hence, maintaining this understanding of such a cultural
lens we can more accurately describe two of the biggest,
most widely discussed race-related court cases in America in
the past decade; one of which being The State of Florida v. George
Zimmerman. To attempt to dissect the specifics of the case
itself do not do much for the purpose of American
reflection, for that is strictly a legal and individualistic
matter. What is of importance however, are the conversations
that are its consequence. The information one can garner
about national ideologies from the dialogue surrounding
court case outcomes is immense and the trial of George
Zimmerman in July 2013 provided one of the most highly
discussed legal cases regarding the issue of race since the
trial of O.J. Simpson. As Doug Linder said regarding the
Simpson case, “no one can deny the pull it had on the
American public” (19) and the same is certainly true for the
2013 trial.
On February 26, 2012 Trayvon Martin, a 17-year old black
teenager, was walking back to his family’s house from a
local convenience store. During his walk back, he was
spotted by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer
in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman then phoned the non-emergency
police response line at 7:09 P.M. of that evening and
describes Trayvon to the dispatcher. Zimmerman says, “we’ve
had some break-ins in my neighborhood and there’s a real
suspicious guy” and stated that he seemed like “he was on
drugs” (20). Trayvon then runs away from the scene, some say
because he was up to no good while others claim that it was
out of fear of his pursuer. Later evidence released on March
20, 2012 by Benjamin Crump however suggests the latter. An
affidavit from Martin’s girlfriend states that he said, “I
think this dude is following me,” in a phone call between
the two during this incident. She replies, “Baby be careful.
Just run home” (21). Zimmerman then proceeds to follow
Martin while still on the line with the dispatcher. The
dispatcher asks if Zimmerman is following the teen and when
he responds in the affirmative the dispatcher tells him, “We
don’t need you to do that” (22). The two later confront and
at sometime between 7:16 P.M. and 7:17 P.M. the infamous
altercation between Martin and Zimmerman occurred. At 7:17
Officer Ricardo Ayala of the Sanford Police Department
arrives on the scene, by which time Trayvon Martin was
already dead. A month and a half after the incident, it was
announced by Special Prosecutor Angela Corey that Zimmerman
was being charged with second-degree murder. The trial
launched on June 10th of the following year and ultimately
the jury rendered a not guilty verdict on all counts on July
13, 2013 after two days of deliberation.
The factual discrepancies of that evening are still
debatable and will never reach the public light for that
night has long passed. What is basking in that light however
is the national discussion surrounding the case and that can
easily be observed in order to tell something about the
post-racial ideology in America. As Jeffery Toobin wrote in
an opinion piece in the The New Yorker, “The conclusions [of
the case] almost tell more about the observers than the
underlying facts” (23).
It is neither the purpose of this section to attempt to
assess the evidence brought before the court during the
trial nor the legal soundness of the ruling. What is
important to assess though, is the fact that the murder of
Trayvon Martin and the trial of George Zimmerman brought the
topic of race to the forefront of American discussion in a
way that had not been done for years. The main wedge between
the two sides of this national debate over the case was the
justness of Zimmerman’s acquittal and the role that race
played in both the killing and the trial. To speak to the
former, the justness and legitimacy of the ruling, such an
assessment is a legal matter and gets muddled with Florida
Statute 776.013 which makes legal the use of deadly force if
“a person is presumed to have held a reasonable fear of
imminent peril of death or great bodily harm to himself or
herself or another” (24). This is known in non-legal terms
as the controversial “Stand Your Ground Law”. Whether or not
the Stand Your Ground Law is just or simply legally logical
is another issue all together. Additionally, due to
Zimmerman’s (still questioned) testimony, the court waived
the Stand Your Ground hearings later in the trial and made
it a matter of classic self-defense. But it is evident that
with its existence at the time of the trial, it enabled
Zimmerman to walk and that is that for the individual case.
Yet as we can see, the trial and the wake it left amongst
the American public speak volumes to the state of racial
ideology in the country.
During the period in which the death of Trayvon Martin
and his murderer’s trial and eventual acquittal was the
countrywide scuttlebutt, a spectrum of opinion appeared.
While these opinions may not necessarily be correlated with
political leanings, the vocabulary that has been used to
define them is the same used to describe political ideology.
On one side were those who were appalled by the entire
spectacle and thought that the role of race in the entirety
of the incident was grand and undeniable, a pole that is
generally labeled as “the left wing”. A quote from Tavis
Smiley during a discussion televised on ABC News the day
after the acquittal epitomizes this general sentiment:
[W]e never seem to accept the fact that race in
this country is real, that color will get you
killed. And every time we have one of these cases,
and I believe in looking at a case-by-case
situation, but here's the problem, in the
aggregate, every time you have this issue,
somebody can always explain away why this person
got off, why this person was not found guilty, and
what we have is a bunch of dead black men. (25)
The other side of the spectrum was comprised of what was
called the “rightwing” or the “Zimmerman camp” which
generally was rooting for the ruling of innocence on
Zimmerman’s behalf and was behind the court’s decision when
it was finally made. This side was characterized mostly by
its alleging to the innocence of Zimmerman but also by the
blaming and demonization of Trayvon Martin after his death.
For example, Geraldo Rivera of the Fox News Channel stated
that, “I think the hoodie is as much to blame responsible
for Trayvon Martin’s death as George Zimmerman was” (26).
Additionally, many in the “conservative blogosphere” and
news outlets were digging through Martin’s Tweets and past
history to raise doubts about his character. Michelle
Goldberg examines this campaign by noticing “the
similarities between the way people talk about Martin and
the way they talk about rape victims, whose clothes and
histories are often subject to scrutiny no matter how cut-
and-dried the case seems.” (27)
Indeed, it is wise to be prudent when traversing such
analytical terrain and in making value judgments of the
poles due to high media attention given to both black
criminality as well as white-on-black violence which have
been skewing ideas of race relations in America for years.
In fact, these inflated, media-driven viewpoints often lay
the foundation for the formation of polarizing views.
However, what was perhaps the most interesting aspect of the
public opinion was the particular way in which neither
Trayvon Martin nor George Zimmerman was put to the fore, but
also the greater and ambiguous entity of race itself. During
the year and a half that these events were unfolding, the
post-racial ideology that sat more or less unshaken in
mainstream discourse was now being dissected on a national
level. A correspondent for Al Arabiya News wrote, “[T]he
recent acquittal of a white man for the shooting and killing
of an African-American teenager in Florida has rekindled
long simmering debates about racial inequality and gun
violence in the United States…At the root of the case, for
many, is the argument of racial discrimination” (28).
The idea that race is still a significant factor in the
lives of Americans was under great scrutiny during this
period. For many, the Zimmerman-Martin incident was
confirmation of long held conceptions of a society plagued
with racism. Many were speaking against the individual
racism epitomized by the alleged racial profiling conducted
by George Zimmerman. Others, such as the Interim Dean of the
Howard University School of Law, spoke against structural
racism: “The ‘not guilty’ verdict reinforces the belief that
there is no justice in a justice system when it permits the
killer of an unarmed African-American male teenager to go
free” (29). But what was revealed about the post-racial
ideology that permeates America was the most fascinating. Of
course, the national discourse covered many different topics
from gun control to racial profiling to institutional
racism. Hence, a simplification must be made for analytical
purposes. Yet there were certain aspects of the discourse,
generally emanating from white America, as the data will
show, that embodied the idea of post-racialism that this
paper seeks to tackle.
There certainly were those who were adamantly against
what they perceived as either the prevalence of cultural
racism the United States, structural racism in America’s
institutions, or both. From the “I Am Trayvon Martin”
campaigns to the massive demonstrations in Atlanta,
Washington D.C., New York and other places, a backlash
against the post-racial ideology was certainly taking shape.
In fact, hundreds of protestors closed down Interstate I-10
chanting “Justice for Trayvon” and demonstrating against the
broad and ambiguous creature that is American racism.
Clearly, and whether consciously or not, the “anti-post-
racial” ideology that was bubbling under the discursive
crust of mainstream American dialogue had broken through to
the surface. However, the general idea of race as an
antiquated notion- a factor that has little to do with one’s
life trajectory in America-was and still is, in Gramscian
terms, the “discursive hegemon” in American national
dialogue.
This can be seen in both a quantitative and qualitative
analysis. Shortly after the verdict of the Zimmerman trial
was concluded, the Pew Research Center for the People and
the Press conducted a national survey between July 17 and
July 21 in order to gather public opinion on the matter.
Their data was reflective of the imbuing of the post-racial
attitude in the American discourse. In relation to the case
itself, the Pew Research Center found that nearly as many
Americans were satisfied with the Zimmerman verdict (39%) as
were dissatisfied (42%), with 19% offering no opinion (30).
However, when broken down among racial lines, the
discrepancies between white and black America become more
apparent. Nearly half of whites (49%) claimed to be
satisfied with the verdict while 30% were dissatisfied.
Similar to the data of the total number of surveyed white
Americans one-in-five (21%) offered no opinion. However,
when the data from Black America is analyzed, a distinct
difference can be seen. Only 5% of African-Americans claimed
to be satisfied with the outcome of the trial while the vast
majority (86%) was dissatisfied (with 9% offering no
opinion) (31).
As previously mentioned, the murder of Trayvon Martin
and the Zimmerman acquittal thereafter were reflective of a
menagerie of grievances in America, especially among black
Americans. The issue of whether or not this individual case
and the national discourse surrounding it were grounded on
the concept of race as well as the long battle for white
America to acknowledge the existence and pervasiveness of
racism in the 21st Century were hot topics in the discourse
and the quantitative data from Pew reflects this. In regards
to this national racial dialogue Pew asked, “In this case,
the issue of race is getting more attention than it
deserves” or, “This case, raises important issues about race
that need to be discussed” (32). Again, a distinct rift in
opinion was demonstrated between white and black America
that seems to stem from the ubiquity of the post-racial
ideology laid out above. In the totality of the American
population, 52% said the issue of race is getting more
attention than it deserves, 36% said it raises important
issues that need to be discussed and 12% abstained from the
question. Yet, as with the previous question of satisfaction
with the verdict, the rift was most distinct when the data
from white and black America are compared. More than twice
as many whites (60%) said the issue of race is getting more
attention than it deserves than those who believed it
brought up issues in need of discussion (28%), with a 12%
abstention. In Black America, however, the numbers show a
strikingly different outcome. Only 13% of blacks said the
issue of race is getting more attention than it deserves
while 78% said that it raised important questions of race
that need to be discussed. There was an 8% abstention rate
among black polltakers (33). As this case was the stage upon
which the national racial discourse danced during the start
of the decade, the prominent distinctions surrounding the
notions of race between white and black America also made
themselves apparent in the qualitative data.
The denial that race has a place in national dialogue,
let alone in the portrayal of the contemporary American
society, was a major backlash to the grievances being voiced
by people of color as and after these events were unfolding.
Countless commentators in the news media, on the Internet
and amongst the citizenry were unable to grapple with the
racialized underpinnings of the case and of society as a
whole. It seemed to be an impossible endeavor for many in
white America to wrap their heads around the notion of a
“non-post-racial” America. For example, Fox News contributor
Tamara Holder said on Sean Hannity’s program that, “the
blacks are also making this more of a racial issue than it
should be” (34). Ms. Holder was certainly not alone in this
line of thinking. Randy Alcorn wrote a similar article
concerning the “fallacious” notion that America has a
problem with race in Noozhawk, a Santa Barbara news outlet,
a week after the trial ended:
The vast majority of nonblack Americans are not
racist, especially the younger generation, as
Obama mentioned, for whom race is virtually a
nonfactor. Tens of millions of white voters twice
elected Obama- a black man- president. More
important, racial integration throughout society
is now more the norm than the exception. And
mixed-race marriages only turn the disapproving
heads of the nation’s most primitive cultural
Neanderthals. (35)
As can be seen, Barbara J. Flagg’s notion of the
“transparency effect” in White America came to the fore as
this debate went on. The fact that much of White America had
never needed to view themselves in racialized terms lead to
an inability for many to accept the grievances people of
color were voicing and even deny such grievances outright:
People who believe the Progressive storyline that
America is a racist society believe it because
they want to believe it, even though racist
attitudes, now reserved to the lower classes and
uneducated, no longer have any power or influence
in American society. (36)
Not only does this fail to get at the heart of what
racism is, but it substitutes the real issue- that of
institutionalized racism and a hierarchical and oppressive
social structure- with diatribes about whether or not this
or that individual had race-based “intent”. This type of
reasoning- one in which the notion of race is irrelevant
unless explicitly brought up- harkens back to the ruling of
the historic court case of Plessy v. Ferguson. The court claimed
that, “we consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's
argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced
separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a
badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of
anything found in the act, but solely because the colored
race chooses to put that construction upon it” (37).
This phenomenon of the transparency effect, or “white
privilege”, manifesting itself in the denial of
institutionalized racism can be seen throughout history. The
Plessy v. Ferguson court ruling provides a good example, for
nearly everybody today would say that the Louisiana law of
1890 prohibiting racial intermingling on train cars as well
as similar practices during the Jim Crow era were indeed
cases of institutionalized racism. Yet at the time, as the
previous quote from the 1896 court ruling shows, it was not
thought of as such by American institutional bodies nor by
many within white America. To see this trend continue
throughout history gives a good image of why the denials of
racial discrimination, institutionalized racism, etc. today
are not grounded in reality. Instead, they are grounded on
the cultural epistemology of white America which itself is
grounded on the transparency effect and white privilege.
Another example from the early 1960’s is illustrative of
this point, for few today deny the prevalence of racism
during that part of the century, with assassinations of
black activists, racial segregation and other grievous
indicators of racial hierarchy and institutionalized
oppression. A Gallup Poll from 1962 asked, “In general, do
you think that black children have as good a chance as white
children in your community to get a good education, or don’t
you think they have as good a chance?” Among white
respondents 85% claimed yes, while only 7% said no (there
was a 10% abstention rate). In fact, when Gallup conducted
the survey again in 2013, the number of white respondents
who answered yes dropped by five percentage points (38).
Just as the fish is unaware of the water through which
it swims, many in White America are unaware of the
ramifications of institutionalized racism since they do not
have to deal with it often, if at all. Yet, the backlash
from a large amount of people in white America that was seen
when such issues were brought to the forefront in the
national American dialogue with the case of Trayvon Martin
and George Zimmerman shows something else as well. What it
demonstrated was the fear, conscious or otherwise, emanating
from parts of white America to come to terms with a history
of racism, imperialism and oppression and its contemporary
ramifications. The following three observations from Noam
Chomsky, Charles Lawrence and Tim Wise will bear out this
cultural element of American society. Dr. Noam Chomsky, in
this quote responding to the question of whether racism is
something learnt or something inherently endowed, lays out a
reasonable premise for why this counter-narrative to the
racism prevalent in America was in such force:
It's not so much that racism is in our genes. What
is in our genes is the need for protecting our
self-image. It's probably in our nature to find a
way to recast anything that we do in some way that
makes it possible for us to live with it. It's the
same in the broader social sphere, where there are
institutions functioning, and systems of
oppression and domination. The people who are in
control, who are harming others -- those people
will construct justifications for themselves. They
may do it in sophisticated ways or non-
sophisticated ways, but they're going to do it.
That much is in human nature. One of the
consequences of that can turn out to be racism. It
can turn out to be other things too. (39)
Charles Lawrence offers a similar perspective borrowing
form Freudian theory. He attempts to assert how it is that
this post-racial ideology functions in a psychoanalytic
fashion and thus works towards describing the discursive
phenomena surrounding the nationwide conversation of this
case:
Freudian theory states that the human mind defends
itself against the discomfort of guilt by denying
or refusing to recognize those ideas, wishes and
beliefs that conflict with what the individual has
learned is good and right. While our historical
experience has made racism an integral part of our
culture, our society has more recently embraced an
ideal that rejects racism as immoral. When an
individual experiences conflict between racist
ideas and the societal ethic that condemns those
ideas, the mind excludes his racism from
consciousness. (40).
Finally, racial activist Tim Wise has spent a large
portion of his life as a white man in America attempting to
speak to white America, as well as others, in an effort to
dispel some of these racial illusions. Mr. Wise had an
interesting piece of commentary to say concerning the
Zimmerman case on a radio talk show that inadvertently
worked off of Lawrence’s thesis and really got to the core
of this phenomenon:
[Y]ou have an entire country of people who
themselves have internalized these fears of young
black men. If they admit that that fear in the
case of George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin was
unjustified, then they have to look at their own
fears…So if they have to acknowledge that there
might have been something untoward about
Zimmerman’s suspicions of Martin, they would have
to look inward at themselves. And we are not very
good as a society at looking at our own mess, so
we project it onto others. We either project it
onto Martin and say he was the problem or we
project it onto Zimmerman and safely isolate the
problem of racism in him so we don’t have to deal
with our own stuff. We all do it and it needs to
stop. (41).
After exploring the workings of the post-racial
ideology through examining this national-headlining
discourse, we have laid the foundation for an observatory
platform to view how it has played out in America in recent
years. What was a consequence of the post-racial attitude
was the notion of an “even playing field”; a society in
which both people of color and White America have the same
opportunities in economic and sociocultural aspects. This
brought us yet another heated debate in the same summer as
Zimmerman’s acquittal and this time the discussion centered
on affirmative action. While the discourse surrounding the
Zimmerman case dealt more with the epistemological
underpinnings of post-racism, a case brought before the
Supreme Court by Abigail Fisher showed clearly its
behavioral manifestations.
Abigail Fisher v. University of Texas
At around the same time as the Zimmerman hearing, the
national dialogue surrounding another race-related court
case took an interesting, albeit formidable, twist. The idea
of a post-racial America has led many to believe that such a
society functions at more or less the same level for all
groups within it. It has led to the idea that no matter if
one is black or white, red or yellow, they have just about
the same chances of getting a job or getting into a certain
school, so long as they work hard for it. However, this
notion has brought about a sort of fear evident in the
Fisher case and its encompassing rhetoric. The idea of
racism against minorities not being an issue in America
anymore, something our country has “gotten past”, led to a
phenomenon that some have called “white anxiety”. Without
what Derrick Bell Jr. descriptively called “faces at the
bottom of the well” in his book of the same title (42), many
in White America have become worried that the visible
progress of people of color in the country is inevitably
forcing them downwards in terms of opportunities, status and
the like.
Ross Douthat explained such sentiments in a New York
Times opinion piece in 2010: “This [the prospect of
affirmative action and “preference” of minorities for jobs,
schools, etc.] breeds paranoia among elites and non-elites
alike. Among the white working class…alienation from the
American meritocracy fuels the kind of racially tinged
conspiracy theories that [Glenn] Beck and others have
exploited.” (43). An area where this paranoia of the
perceived alienation from the traditional meritocratic
values has been vociferated is in the realm of higher
education. The litigation that Abigail Fisher was able to
bring in front of the Supreme Court in 2012 is an
enlightening example of this mindset due to its occupation
in the national spotlight, thus enabling us to examine the
national discourse surrounding it as well as also
demonstrating its factual and epistemological fallacies.
In 2008 Abigail Fisher, a young, white recent high
school graduate, was distraught when she was denied
admission to her dream school, the University of Texas at
Austin (otherwise known as UT). In the same year, Fisher
asked the Court to declare UT’s policy of race-conscious
admissions as unaligned with the 2003 Supreme Court ruling
of Grutter v. Bollinger, a case concerning the University of
Michigan Law School which stated that race had an
appropriate but limited role in the admissions policies of
public universities. The United States District Court heard
her case in 2009 and upheld the constitutionality of UT’s
admissions policies. The case was then appealed to the Fifth
Circuit for review. However, as with the US District Court,
the Fifth Circuit backed the University of Texas. Finally on
February 21, 2012 the Supreme Court decided to review the
case and it was then that the discourse of affirmative
action, and more generally race-consciousness, symbolized by
the Fisher case was sparked on a national level.
Soon after graduating from Louisiana State University,
Ms. Fisher became the figurehead of a campaign against
affirmative action in universities, ironically called by
some “race-based discrimination”. In fact, this campaign and
Fisher’s case were spearheaded by a conservative activist
named Edward Blum, who came into contact with Fisher by the
fact that he was an old friend of her father. Blum, a former
stockbroker, had actually spent 20 years and millions of
dollars in an effort to push back against the legality of
race-consciousness in “cases at the intersection of race,
public policy and law” (44). Blum had even ensured that
wealthy members of DonorsTrust, a conservative charitable
donor-advised fund, would cover Fisher’s legal expenses.
While Edward Blum, the brains and funds behind the case, may
have been seeking for an abolishment of affirmative action,
Fisher and her lawyers made it clear that they were not
seeking to overturn the aforementioned ruling of Grutter v.
Bollinger. However, they were hoping to drastically limit the
way in which race plays a role in college admissions.
Abigail Fisher herself stated that, “I’m hoping that they’ll
completely take race out of the issue in terms of admissions
and that everyone will be able to get into any school that
they want no matter what race they are but solely based on
their merit and if they work hard for it” (45).
Fisher and her lawyers were instead pushing for the
sole use of Texas House Bill 588 in university admissions
stating that it as well as a “race-blind holistic review of
each application [would] achieve adequate diversity” on
college campuses (46). Known more commonly as Texas’ “Top
Ten Percent Rule”, Bill 588 is a law that guarantees Texas
students who graduated in the top ten percent of their class
automatic admission to all state-funded universities. During
the period between February and October, when the Supreme
Court decided to hear the Fisher case and when the case was
scheduled for deliberation, Amicus briefs were filed by many
groups such as Teach For America, the Asian American Legal
Foundation and the Black Student Alliance at the University
of Texas. Even though the explicit goal of Fisher and her
attorney’s was not to overturn Grutter, the fear that such
could become a possibility was mounting among affirmative
action advocates and other minority voices. These fears
became even more concrete on October 10, 2012 when the
Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case. For example,
Justices Scalia and Roberts made critiques at the legal
foundation of the Grutter ruling. They asked many questions
about the definition of a “critical mass”, which the 2003
case established as the central measure of diversity (47).
Perhaps most outspoken against the consideration of race was
Justice Clarence Thomas who stood adamantly against the use
of race in higher education admissions stating that it
violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and even
equated the arguments for affirmative action with the
“positive good” argued by slaveholders several centuries ago
(48).
Finally, after hearing arguments from both sides, the
Supreme Court in a 7-1 decision remanded the case back to
the lower courts for further proceedings in June of 2013.
Speaking for the majority, Justice Kennedy stated that the
Fifth Circuit did not adequately address the question of
“strict scrutiny”, meaning that a university’s use of
affirmative action is constitutional only if “narrowly
tailored.” The court gave it’s final statement saying that,
“In determining whether summary judgment in the University’s
favor was appropriate, the Fifth Circuit must assess whether
the University has offered sufficient evidence to prove that
its admissions program is narrowly tailored to obtain the
educational benefits of diversity” (49). What may happen in
the lower courts for the University of Texas is anybody’s
guess. Amy Howe writing for the Supreme Court of the United
States blog wrote, “Given the Top Ten Percent Plan’s success
in achieving a diverse student body, the school could face
an uphill battle in convincing the lower court that
it needs to be able to consider race to fill the remaining
slots.” (50). Yet what many are worried about is that the
entire topic of affirmative action could boomerang back up
to the Supreme Court with more far-reaching ramifications
than this 2013 deliberation.
While the case itself ended rather anticlimactically
and only covered an instance in one university, the national
dialogue surrounding affirmative action- an issue that has
always been hotly debated- perhaps reached its climax in
millennial America during this case. While the issue of
affirmative action is certainly a vast topic, the focus for
this particular analysis is on the epistemological
underpinnings of a part of the aforementioned post-racial
ideology that were brought to light due to the Fisher case.
The Fisher case demonstrates, perhaps even more so than the
Zimmerman trial, the trajectory along which the post-racial
attitude in America is traveling. It seems as if the post-
racial idea has come full circle in some areas of White
America’s contemporary social philosophy with what has been
given various titles such as “white anxiety” (51) or “white
whine” (52).
These terms are multifaceted as we will see, but what
they summarize is the occurrence of many in White America to
perceive gains amongst non-whites as detrimental to
themselves or detracting from their own opportunities. These
gains can range from demographic shifts and population
growth to affirmative action programs. However, what has
become a result amongst many has been this previously
described white racial anxiety in which whites have begun to
view themselves as “minorities” that are being discriminated
against. Just as these cultural changes have been pointed to
in affirming that America is a post-racial nation (as
described in the previous sections), these same observations
have become fuel for the fire of white anxiety. In the words
of a La Salle University sociologist, Charles Gallagher, “We
went from being a privileged group to all of a sudden
becoming whites, the new victims…You have this perception
out there that whites are no longer in control or the
majority. Whites are the new minority group” (53).
This trend can be seen in countless situations and its
ubiquity seems to be increasing. For example, the push
against affirmative action or race-based aid programs has
had white activists waving signs such as “diversity is no
excuse for racism.” In early 2013, the Public Religion
Research Institute conducted a controlled survey experiment
to evaluate racially fueled anxieties in White America. They
asked several questions concerning the topic of race one of
which was phrased, “Today, discrimination against whites has
become as big of a problem as discrimination against blacks
and other minorities.” They found that 47% of all Americans
agreed with this statement. When breaking down the data
along the lines of political and religious affiliation, they
found that 71% of white Republicans, 51% of white
Independents, 37% of white Democrats and 61% of those who
identify with the Tea Party agreed with this statement.
Furthermore, they found that 57% of white evangelicals
concurred with this claim as well. (54).
What was also of interest to the pollsters was the
distinction between direct and indirect responses in
analyzing this anxiety. One big problem in poll taking is
the reluctance for people to choose answers that could
potentially put them in a bad light even if they would
choose those options otherwise. This has been called the
Bradley effect, based on the discrepancy between voter
opinion polls and election outcomes in the 1982 Los Angeles
governor’s race in which many voters claimed they would vote
for Tom Bradley, an African-American, even though they
selected a white candidate on election day. (55). This is
fueled by the “social desirability bias” which is the
tendency of respondents in polls to answer questions in a
way that will be favorably viewed by others. As Robert P.
Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, points
out in an article in the Atlantic covering this very study,
“[A]s a nation, we have moved beyond the point where
blatantly racist statements are publicly acceptable…This
positive social norm may make the public less willing to
speak openly and candidly about race, a problem social
scientists call ‘social desirability bias’.” (56).
Therefore, the Public Religion Research Institute
decided to set up their survey to get around this
statistical snafu by using direct and indirect methods of
questioning. They first conducted phone interviews in which
they asked respondents to state if they either agree or
disagree with the statement, “The idea of an America where
most people are not white bothers me.” Among whites there
was only a 13% agreement rate and only slight variation
among subgroups (democrats, age brackets, etc.). Next they
employed what is called a list experiment- a process in
which respondents are asked how many items on a list bother
them without stating which specific items did- with two
demographically identical groups. The first was a control
group with a list of three questions in which previous one
concerning a non-white majority in America was absent. The
second group was the treatment group in which the same three
questions, plus the question concerning a demographically
shifted America. As the research institute stated, “Because
the control and treatment groups were demographically
identical, any variation in the average number of statements
chosen between the groups is solely attributable to
respondents in the treatment group picking the treatment
statement.” (57). Finally, the institute was able to
estimate the proportion of respondents choosing the
treatment statement for any one subgroup (although not for
an individual) by subtracting the mean number of statements
chosen by the treatment group by the mean number of
statements chosen by the control group. This proportion was
called the indirect response.
What the researchers found when they compared the data
from the phone surveys with the data from the list
experiment was reflective not only of a manifestation of
this white anxiety, but also laid bare part of the reality
beneath the post-racial attitude fervently adopted in white
America in recent times. The institute found that while only
13% of all whites responded in the affirmative to the
treatment statement during the phone survey, 31% responded
in the affirmative in after participating in the list
experiment. The following are the statistics of the direct
versus indirect response to the treatment statement in
various subgroups: Southerner (16%/50%); Non-Southerner
(13%/25%); Democrat (11%/33%); Republican (18%/30%); Age 50+
(17%/32%); Age 18-49 (10%/29%); Born-again Protestant
(15%/50%); Not Born-again Christian (14%/23%). (58). This
reflects what Ta-Nehisi Coates described as a more “elegant
racism” that “disguises itself in the national vocabulary”
(59) as well as the unspoken yet seemingly pervasive white
anxiety being examined here.
The phenomenon of white racial anxiety has been covered
rather extensively by scholars interested in the field of
race studies in an effort to understand its causal factors
as well as better map the racial and social topography of
contemporary American society. A large body of work has been
produced on the subject within academia. Most of the work
from the last several decades has revolved around “the
power-threat hypothesis”, which posits that white racial
animosity and anxiety increases in correlation to an
increase in non-white populations in an environment. (60).
In perhaps one of the most comprehensive analyses of the
subject, Marylee Taylor used national cross-sectional data
over a span of 20 years to demonstrate a consistent
correlation between an increase in prejudice and opposition
to race-targeted policies such as affirmative action as the
black percentage of the population in metropolitan areas
increases (61). However in a more multifaceted study out of
Princeton, J. Eric Oliver and Tali Mendelberg point to some
of the pitfalls of this singular-variable approach. As they
said, “these studies conceptualize racial threat solely in
terms of racial environments” and argue that “in the
segregated United States, contextual effects are more
complicated than this, involving both race and socio-
economic status” (62). Pointing out that nearly three-
quarters of whites in the U.S. live in highly segregated
communities in which black residents comprise less than five
percent of the population, they argue that other variables
are necessary to describe this phenomenon.
As their study was released in 2000, recent
developments in the American socio-economic landscape make
this point even more clear. The economic downturn that hit
the country during 2007 and 2008 caused far-reaching strife
across America. Michael Ortiz wrote an article in Truthout
reflecting on this immutable variable in the rise of racial
anxiety:
So, when some people observe growing multicultural
populations in their communities and hear about
demographic projections that indicate a major
shift in the years to come and see a black man
currently residing in the White House, combined
with the fact that the economic recession has
particularly affected working class whites, it
should come as no surprise that white racial
anxiety is growing more intense by the day as
white folks are finally becoming forced to view
their existence as a racial one. (63)
This sort of situation in which middle and working class
white Americans were seeing themselves in social and
economic situations previously only occupied for people of
color and poor whites- groups that have never had much of a
voice in the national discourse- was a shot to the solar
plexus of the white American ideology that was previously
founded on Peggy McIntosh’s “invisible knapsack.” Tim Wise,
speaking on this breakdown in the white American ideology
said, “For the first time since the Great Depression, white
Americans have been confronted with a level of economic
insecurity that we’re not used to. It’s not so new for black
and brown folks, but for white folks this is something new.”
(64).
Now that an examination of this racial anxiety has been
carried out, in the following paragraphs we will briefly
examine how these racial anxieties bore themselves out in
the Fisher case and in the national discourse sparked by
these Supreme Court deliberations. The Abigail Fisher case
along with the arguments put forth by her legal team have
been described as the epitome of modern white anxiety by
many who are critical of her stance. Fisher and those
supporting her cause claimed that the use of race as a
factor in university admissions acts as discrimination
against and acts towards the detriment of potential white
students. However, this viewpoint that people of color are
pushing out the opportunities for whites is founded on white
privilege, fueled by white anxiety and is factually
incorrect.
A quick glance at Fisher’s specific situation will turn
her arguments on her head and make this point clear. In
early August of 2012, the University of Texas filed a brief
for respondents, which is quite illuminating in undermining
the fallacy that Fisher was denied access to the school of
her dreams due to race. The brief stated Fisher wouldn’t
even have been accepted if she had a perfect personal
achievement index (PAI). As the brief stated, “The summary
judgment record is uncontradicted that- due to the stiff
competition in 2008 and petitioner’s relatively low AI
score- petitioner would not have been admitted to the Fall
2008 freshman class even if she had received a perfect PAI
score of 6” (65). It is interesting to note that the
measures Fisher and her attorneys were pushing for, the sole
use of the Top Ten Percent Rule, would not have helped
Fisher’s chances in the admissions process in any case. The
brief continued to break down the racial statistics during
its admissions process, which also shows the erroneousness
of the affirmation that considerations of race kept Fisher
out of UT:
Petitioner also was denied admission to the
summer program, which offered provisional
admission to some applicants who were denied
admission to the fall class, subject to completing
certain academic requirements over the summer.
Although one African-American and four Hispanic
applicants with lower combined AI/PAI scores than
petitioner’s were offered admission to the summer
program, so were 42 Caucasian applicants with
combined AI/PAI scores identical to or lower than
petitioner’s. In addition, 168 African-American
and Hispanic applicants in this pool who had
combined AI/PAI scores identical to or higher than
petitioner’s were denied admission to the summer
program. (66)
Not only does this case give a good and well-discussed
example of the underlying fallacies of this anxiety, but it
also portrays a sense of entitlement buttressed by the
legacy of American white privilege. Tim Wise, in a radio
interview with Ginnie Love on Emancipation Radio, gave his
opinion on this rather one-sided matter saying, “Poor
Abigail Fisher can blame black and brown folks for taking
something, which a) they didn’t take and b) she was not
entitled to.” He continues to address a principal lynchpin
in the structure of white racial anxiety by claiming that
white people are afraid, consciously or not, of “having to
compete on truly equal terms.” (67).
With the Fisher case acting as a prime case study, the
national discourse surrounding the topic of affirmative
action is grounded on this white racial anxiety as well as
factual inaccuracies that continue to feed the former.
Certainly, this anxiety in the case of Fisher is not an
isolated incident. For example, racial activists have
pointed out how today some white students in California
complain that they were unable to attend their university of
choice due to affirmative action even though California
Proposition 209 prohibited the use of race, sex or ethnicity
in consideration by state governmental institutions in 1996
(68). The founding of many institutions trying to tackle the
supposed “underrepresentation” or “disfavor” of white
students is yet another manifestation of this ideology’s
rise in recent years. Edward Blum, the man behind the
Abigail Fisher case, is also the director of the Project on
Fair Representation. According to their website, the
foundations mission is “to facilitate pro bono legal
representation to political subdivisions and individuals
that wish to challenge government distinctions and
preferences made on the basis of race and ethnicity” (69).
In a similar vein, Colby Bohnannon, an Iraq War veteran set
up the Former Majority Association for Equality after he
claimed to have trouble finding scholarship monies when
applying to university. As laid out in his organization’s
mission statement:
The mission is simple: to fill in the gap in the
scholarships offered to prospective students.
There are scholarships offered for almost any
demographic imaginable. In a country that
proclaims equality for all, we provide monetary
aid to those that have found the scholarship
application process difficult because they do not
fit into certain categories or any ethnic
group. Our goal: To financially assist talented
young Americans seeking higher education who lack
opportunities in similar organizations that are
based upon race or gender. (70)
While there is nothing inherently wrong with these
actions, the ideology that underpins them is dangerous,
based on fallacies and is a form of scapegoating that
ignores the actual issues within the American university
system. In the words of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the
lone dissenter to in sending the Fisher case back to the
Fifth Circuit and thus keeping alive the potential for
affirmative action to be dismantled, “Only an ostrich could
regard the supposedly neutral alternatives [proposed by
Fisher’s lawyers] as race unconscious” and this also speaks
to the rationale behind the movements of Blum, Bohnannon and
others. Justice Ginsburg continues in her four page dissent,
“I have several times explained why government actors,
including state universities, need not be blind to the
lingering effects of ‘an overtly discriminatory past’ and
the legacy of ‘centuries of law-sanctioned inequality’”
(71).
In early 2013, the New York Times released a report
addressing the rise of the importance of referrals in non-
entry level hiring positions. (72) They stated that many
firms were beginning to approach the 50 percent mark in
hiring based on employee referrals. With this being the
case, it sets up a systemic roadblock for those attempting
to enter the workforce in such institutions and many worry
that this has negative ramifications for minorities
attempting to enter a previously white- and male-dominated
workspace. When taking into account America’s “overtly
discriminatory past” and the fact that most whites, who
occupy the majority of these positions, tend to associate
with others similar to themselves, it becomes clear how such
a system may easily unintentionally tilt the scales in favor
of certain groups when diversity is not actively addressed
simply based on the internal logic of the system itself.
Furthermore, “[p]eople tend to recommend people much like
themselves, economists say, a phenomenon known as
assortative matching. Mr. Topa’s study for the Federal
Reserve Bank of New York found that 63.5 percent of
employees recommended candidates of the same sex, while 71.5
percent favored the same race or ethnicity.” (73). Similar
systemic operations hold true in the realm of higher
education in the sense that the functioning of the system
causes unintended disparities due to historical
prerequisites that work to the benefit of whites and the
detriment of people of color.
Only a few examples are necessary to illustrate this
point, yet the documentation of this “legacy of law-
sanctioned discrimination” is immense and easily
researchable. As Tim Wise puts it in an essay addressing the
phenomena of perceived white victimhood in the university
system, “the claim that whites are being disadvantaged by
minority scholarships, even in theory, ignores the many ways
in which the nation’s educational system provides unfair
advantages to whites from beginning to end.” (74). For
example, schools with higher concentrations of students of
color are eleven to fifteen times more likely than schools
with a white majority to have high concentrations of student
poverty (75). White students are also twice as likely as
African-American and Latino students to be taught by the
most highly qualified teachers in terms of prior preparation
and subject certification and half as likely as their
colored counterparts to have the least qualified pedagogues
(76). Michael K. Brown pointed out that teacher
qualification is one of the most important factors in school
achievement and anyone who has gone through the pre-
university educational system can corroborate that claim
with their own experience (77).
While the list of educational disparities goes on, from
unequal offerings of AP and honors classes to vastly
disparate school funding, the historical sinews of a
racially discriminate America show how the outcome of a
university acceptance system that didn’t take these facts
into account would begin to become less and less easy to
enter for those who were not privileged by this history.
These dissimilarities between the experiences of secondary
education of white and black America show how the societal
discrepancies between potential white and black applicants
would greatly affect the outcome of an America void of such
programs. As is the case with most systems, the theory and
the practice vary greatly. “Special efforts to provide
access and opportunity to such persons should be made, not
because they are black, per se, or Latino, or whatever, but
because to be a person of color has meant something in this
country, and continues to mean something, in terms of one’s
access to full and equal opportunity.” (78)
Moreover, these anxiety-driven political moves-
embodied in the Fisher case and Bohnannon’s foundation- do
not even address the reality of the contemporary situation
of the university system in America. To begin, Colby
Bohnannon’s disdain for the scholarship aspect of the
umbrella term “affirmative action” gives a prime example of
the illogicality of the fear that programs that specifically
target and aid nonwhites. For one, the General Accounting
Office indicated that less than 4% of scholarship money in
the U.S. is represented by awards that consider race as a
factor at all and only 0.25% of undergraduate scholarship
money is restricted for people of color alone. (79).
In other words, whites are fully capable of
competing for and receiving any of the other
monies — roughly 99.75 percent of all scholarship
funds out there for college. Although this GAO
study was conducted in the mid-’90s, there is
little reason to expect that the numbers have
changed since then. If anything, increasing
backlash to affirmative action and fear of
lawsuits brought by conservatives against such
efforts would likely have further limited such
awards as a percentage of national scholarships.
(80)
Furthermore, only 3.5% of college students receive any
scholarship based even partly on race (81). So while 96.5%
of students do not receive scholarship monies for their
race, fallacies such as those held by Bohnannon are gaining
more and more traction in the white American discourse. Not
to mention the thousands of scholarships restricted to all
kinds of individuals, from those who have families involved
in agribusiness to students who speak Klingon from the
television series Star Trek. Nonetheless, the issue focused on
by such white activists is not these opportunity
restrictions nor systemic economic issues, but the highly
hyperbolic effect that race-based policies have on them as a
group.
Whereas Bohnannon’s call for white-specific
scholarships is rather benign, just symptomatic of the white
anxiety being analyzed here, the issues brought up in the
Fisher case have much more far-reaching effects for students
of color in the system of higher education. Thomas J.
Espenshade and Chang Y. Chung of Princeton University
released in the June, 2005 issue of the Social Science
Quarterly analyzing the effects of how preferences for
different types of applicants in elite universities. They
found that the affirmations of so-called “reverse
discrimination” in the college application system posited by
figures such as Fisher and Blum are grossly inflated and
would in fact have disastrous effects in the racial
demographics of universities. This is of course despite
Edward Blum’s claim that, “While racial diversity on college
campuses is beneficial, it cannot be attained by racial
discrimination” (82). Their publication states:
White plaintiffs in Gratz v. Bollinger (2003) and
Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) [and in Fisher v.
University of Texas several years after this study
was published] argued that they were unfairly
denied admission while some less quali ed fi
minority students were accepted. Our results show
that removing consideration of race would have a
minimal effect on white applicants to elite
universities. The number of accepted white
students would increase by 2.4 percent, and the
white acceptance rate would rise by just 0.5
percentage points—from 23.8 to 24.3 percent. Many
rejected white applicants may feel they would have
been accepted had it not been for af rmative fi
action, but such perceptions probably exaggerate
the reality (83)
While this study helps to dispel the irrational
contempt for the perceived disadvantageousness for whites
caused by affirmative action, it spends much of its ink
exploring the effects an undoing of affirmative action would
have on minorities in the collegiate world. One could infer
that such race-blind policies would have an injurious effect
on students of color simply based on the facts about
American secondary education with regard to race given
previously. Supporting this hypothesis, Espenshade and Chung
use data from the National Study of College Experience
(NSCE) and employ logistic regression analysis to create
simulations, which in turn allow them to analyze the impact
of a number of variables on the admissions process. They
found that when affirmative action was eliminated in their
simulation, the acceptance rate for African-Americans would
fall from 33.7% to a mere 12.2%, which is nearly a two-third
decrease. This means that the proportion of black students
in the admitted class would drop from 9% to 3.3%. Another
sharp decline was observed in this hypothetical situation
with regard to Hispanic students. The acceptance rate for
these students would be reduced by half, from 26.8% to
12.9%, meaning that their proportion in the accepted class
would be diminished from 7.9% to 3.8%. (84). They also noted
the accumulative consequences of these statistical shifts:
"If admitting such small numbers of qualified African-
American and Hispanic students reduced applications and the
yield from minority candidates in subsequent years, the
effect of eliminating affirmative action at elite
universities on the racial and ethnic composition of
enrolled students would be magnified beyond the results
presented here." (85)
Of course it could be argued that these statistics only
apply to elite colleges and that the effect in state
universities, such as the University of Texas where the
Abigail Fisher spotlight was focused, would not impact
minorities in such drastic ways and that race-blind policies
would not necessarily need to be implemented in elite
schools. Yet the scholars also studied the actual
repercussions of just such an implementation of race-blind
policies in regard to the University of California system.
The Board of Regents for the University of California voted
to eliminate affirmative action in the school system in
1995, with this policy taking effect in 1997 on a graduate
level and in 1998 on the undergraduate level. As they
phrased it:
The impacts are striking. Compared to the fall of
1996, the number of underrepresented minority
students admitted to the University of California-
Berkeley Boalt Hall Law School for the fall of
1997 dropped 66 percent from 162 to 55. African-
American applicants were particularly affected as
their admission numbers declined by 81 percent
from 75 to 14, but acceptances of Hispanics also
fell by 50 percent. None of the 14 admitted
African-American students chose to enroll. Of the
55 minority students admitted, only seven enrolled
in the fall of 1997, a falloff that had the effect
of reducing the underrepresented minority share in
the first year class to 5 percent in 1997 compared
with 26 percent in 1994. Similar impacts were felt
at law schools at UCLA and UC–Davis. (86)
The outcome of this colorblind protocol was also
witnessed at the undergraduate level. For example, UC
Berkeley experienced a drop in the number of
underrepresented minorities from 23% to 10% in the fall of
1998; just one year after the administrative decision was
passed. African-American admission experienced the biggest
decline, in which admission numbers fell by 66% in just the
span of a year in this university. Finally, Espenshade and
Chang cited yet another study which investigated potential
nationwide ramifications of such policies:
Using a nationwide sample from the National
Education Longitudinal Study, Long finds that
eliminating affirmative action at all colleges and
universities would reduce the underrepresented
minority share of students accepted from 16.1 to
15.5 percent across all four-year institutions and
from 10.6 to 7.8 percent at the highest quality 10
percent of schools (87 & 88)
Hence, it seems that the title of an April, 2014 article in
the American Prospect by Edmund Zagorin indeed rings some
truth: “Race-Blind Admissions Are Affirmative Action for
Whites.” (89). So between delving into the sociological
factors that have historically disadvantaged and continue to
disadvantage people of color in the educational system and
the statistical realities and hypotheticals, we have
effectively broken down the exaggerated reality presented by
people like Blum, Fisher and others.
With scarcity among seats in universities being a
persistent issue coupled with rising costs of tuition and an
increase of programs that have worked to aid racially
oppressed groups in the last half-century, it is only
natural that students in white America would have such
grievances. And this only accounts for grievances voiced
concerning the university system. So while the grievances
are in themselves justified, the rationale behind them and
the place where the blame is being projected are not. This
ideology of white victimization has been used in a way of
projecting grievances upon an “other” in order to either
rationalize situations or to actively scapegoat. This is a
wont occurrence in the U.S., such as with the issue of a
lack of American jobs, wherein brown folks from south of the
border are the ones most actively blamed in the mainstream
national discourse rather than other more fair-skinned
immigrants or, more importantly, the international
activities of the corporate sector. So while Rush Limbaugh
can equate Obama’s 2010 budget allocations to “forced
reparations” (90), regardless of the ridiculousness and
politicized nature of the statement, it does in fact speak
to the resentment of many in white America who feel the
system is failing them and do not know why. This environment
has thus enabled this white anxiety to proliferate and led
the Fisher case to have sparked a national debate of such a
magnitude.
Conclusion
As with any ideology, the post-racial ideology is one
that is vastly complex. Making statements about the way
people think is always a risky endeavor, for ideology is
inherently idiosyncratic seeing as it is comprised of the
working of many different and distinct individuals. However,
the discourse surrounding these two cases shined an
illuminating light on this amalgam of human behavior known
as the post-racial ideology. Despite the intricacies and
potential epistemological pitfalls that many in the social
sciences may befall in such cultural investigations, the
United States Judicial System provides a great platform of
analysis to undertake a vivisection of these ideologies. Its
necessary rigidity in terminology and legal ruling enable a
thorough examination of individual cases and the ideologies
(in these cases racially-centered ideologies) that led to
such judicial decisions. Moreover, it provides a stage in
which the national discourse- the important sociological
space where inquiries into countrywide ideologies can be
effectively carried out- can flourish due to the importance
such rulings have on the American people.
With the first case, State of Florida v. George Zimmerman, we
were able to see the discrepancies between the perceptions
of the state of affairs between whites and people of color
in the country. During the same summer, Fisher v. University of
Texas was finally decided in the wake of what is still an
ongoing debate about so-called “preferential treatment” of
minorities in job applications, university admissions and
other key sectors of American life. This in turn manifested
itself in the perpetuation of white anxiousness and the
widespread belief of “reverse-discrimination” or a perceived
turning of the proverbial tables between white and colored
America.
With America changing in such profound ways in recent
years- culturally, demographically, economically, etc.- it
has forced white Americans to increasingly view themselves
in racialized terms. With being presented with the reality
of what it means to be a person of color in America, such as
was the case with the Martin-Zimmerman issue, it is not
surprising that white America is reluctant to question the
notions of unconditional equality, meritocratic values and
‘Fukuyamaist’ progress that have been held so dear for so
long. With traditionally “black” or “Latino” cultural
elements entering the mainstream and the projections of an
increased slice of the American population pie looking as if
it will be occupied by non-white individuals, whites have
become increasingly forced to feel the concern of becoming
the dreaded “minority”. With economic recession causing many
whites to occupy a space of economic insecurity and
disenfranchisement previously occupied primarily by colored
faces, whites have more and more to view themselves in
racialized terms; a luxury previously afforded to them by
Flagg’s “transparency effect” and McIntosh’s “white
privilege”. Perhaps the dissection of the post-racial
ideology in white America conducted in the previous pages
can best be summarized with a quote from the film “The
Matrix” in which Neo asks Morpheus, “Why do my eyes hurt?”
after removing his glasses. Morpheus simply responds,
“Because you’ve never used them before.” (91)
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29. Ibid.30. "Big Racial Divide over Zimmerman Verdict." Pew Research Center
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73. Ibid.74. Wise, Tim. "A Bad Year for White Whine: College Scholarships
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