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The Political Economy of Colorblindness: Neoliberalism and the Reproduction of Racial Inequality in the United States

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The Political Economy of Colorblindness: Neoliberalism and the Reproduction of Racial Inequality in the United States THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF COLORBLINDNESS: NEOLIBERALISM AND THE REPRODUCTION OF RACIAL INEQUALITY IN THE UNITED STATES A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at George Mason University By Phillip A. Hutchison Master of Arts University of California, Los Angeles, 2002 Director: Paul Smith, Professor Cultural Studies Fall Semester 2010 George Mason University Fairfax, VA Copyright: 2010 Phillip A. Hutchison All Rights Reserved ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ............................................................................................................................. iv Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1 Literature Review............................................................................................................. 30 Chapter 1 .......................................................................................................................... 69 Chapter 2 .......................................................................................................................... 94 Chapter 3 ........................................................................................................................ 138 Chapter 4 ........................................................................................................................ 169 Chapter 5 ........................................................................................................................ 213 Chapter 6 ........................................................................................................................ 253 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 289 Endnotes ........................................................................................................................ 306 Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 342 iii ABSTRACT THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF COLORBLINDNESS: NEOLIBERALISM AND THE REPRODUCTION OF RACIAL INEQUALITY IN THE UNITED STATES Phillip A. Hutchison, Ph.D. George Mason University, 2010 Dissertation Director: Paul Smith This dissertation traces the complex and contentious career of “colorblindness” from its inception to its present-day function as an ideal reproducer of racial inequality. The study closely analyzes the discursive instability inherent within colorblindness, and it begins by demonstrating that this concept originated as a radical weapon designed to upend racial antipathy and inequity at its core. Albion Tourgee, a white antiracist lawyer, first coined “color-blind justice” in the course of his judicial career. As counsel for Homer Plessy in the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson, Tourgee applied his colorblind metaphor as he challenged the constitutionality of Jim Crow segregation. I contend that in his famous dissent, Justice John Marshall Harlan appropriated this metaphor from Tourgee, arguing that colorblindness would function to keep whites the master race “for all time.” I then discuss how, during the civil rights movement, white conservatives recovered Harlan's interpretation of colorblindness as they sought to maintain white privilege in the context of Jim Crow segregation’s demise. The bulk and remainder of the dissertation then scrutinizes this Harlan-inflected colorblindness of the post-civil rights era. I posit that contemporary race-neutrality is best named “neoliberal colorblindness”; this term signals the mutually reinforcing relationship between neoliberalism and colorblindness, asserting that race-neutrality effectively perpetuates racial inequality as it operates in a neoliberal climate stressing privatization and penality—both of which receive extended examination in this dissertation. The study concludes by returning to colorblindness’s interpretational malleability and considers how we might resurrect Tourgee's notion of color-blind justice in light of Harlan’s appropriation of him. Doing so requires that we take close stock of the myriad obstacles standing in the way—obstacles tempered by the hegemony of neoliberalism. INTRODUCTION Dual Entries This dissertation represents an extended cogitation upon the ideology of colorblindness, its complex history, and its contemporary manifestations. I am interested in investigating the relationship between colorblind discourse and racial inequality in our current neoliberal conjuncture. This study contributes to the literature through its presentation of heretofore unmined approaches and insights regarding colorblindness and the influence it wields upon today’s racial order. To frame my thoughts for the introduction to follow, I offer and analyze two vignettes that illustrate colorblindness in action—the first fiction, the other fact. While this pair scarcely exhausts the manifold expressions of colorblindness, both examples typify its form and reach in our post-civil rights moment. The Chappelle’s Show sketch “The Monsters in: ‘The System Is Not Designed for Us’,” part of the aborted third season of the show, chronicles the (mis)adventures of a trio of black men who live in contemporary New York. These men also happen to be monsters: Frankenstein (played by Charlie Murphy), the Wolfman (Dave Chappelle), and the Mummy (Donnell Rawlings.) The sketch briefly highlights each of them as they transact in their world, confronting societal prejudice on multiple levels. The Mummy’s experiences provide a succinct menu of the complex issues Chappelle addresses in this sketch. 1 The Mummy’s scene depicts him traveling from home to his probation officer, located several miles away. Being a mummy, he walks slowly, and he quickly realizes that only a taxi ride will prevent him from arriving tardily yet again. The first cab he hails passes him, picking up a young white man instead. The Mummy stands in front of the next cab to force the driver (a male who appears to be of South Asian descent) to stop. Their interaction is worth detailing here: CAB DRIVER: No Brooklyn! [the audience roars with laughter] THE MUMMY: I’m not going to Brooklyn! [laughter continues unabated] CAB DRIVER: I’m off-duty! THE MUMMY: You’re not off-duty! Your sign is on! Come on! CAB DRIVER: [hesitates for a split-second] No mummies! I…I don’t trust mummies. THE MUMMY: You know, this ain’t got shit to do with me being a mummy—just be real with it, son….Yo, just be real with it….1 The cab driver maneuvers his way around the Mummy, splashing him with muddy water as he passes by (turning his white gauze black.) The Mummy ultimately arrives several hours late to his meeting with the probation officer. This brief outtake from “The Monsters” sketch points us to multiple lessons. Race is written all over the Mummy’s interactions—the tortured relationship between young black men and the taxi service in New York is notorious. Yet the second taxi driver performed rhetorical cartwheels to circumvent any intimation that race had permeated his thinking and conditioned his actions. “The Monsters” teaches us that despite professed colorblindness, racial thinking lurks just underneath the surface (indeed, the Mummy’s final comment was his vain attempt to exteriorize the racial content of the driver’s demeanor); our post-civil rights “politically correct” society provides us profound incentives to deny the racial inflections of our thoughts and actions (to say nothing of its illegality in the context of cab drivers and their fares.) His final plea 2 “I don’t trust mummies” directly points us to an answer as to why Chappelle depicted the three black men as monsters: they function as metaphors for all the excuses Americans find to displace their racially influenced thoughts and deeds. While a flimsy pretext, such colorblind maneuvers have proven effective; as we shall see, however, this scene from “The Monsters” showcases but an infinitesimal slice of the myriad uses of colorblindness in thought and action. The sketch effectively details the influences and effects of colorblindness within interpersonal interactions. But subtitling the sketch “The System Is Not Designed for Us” points up that of which Chappelle is well aware: that “colorblindness” transcends the interpersonal. My second of these dual entries shifts to a real-life instance of colorblindness in the institutional realm. The 1987 Supreme Court case McCleskey v. Kemp featured an appeal to have Warren McCleskey’s death penalty sentence downgraded to life in prison. McCleskey, a black man from Georgia, had been convicted of killing a white man. McCleskey’s defense team used the well-known Baldus Study in their arguments. The Baldus Study was a detailed analysis of death penalty cases in Georgia from 1973-1978. Among other findings, David Baldus and his team found that, after controlling for myriad variables, killers of white men were 4.3 times more likely to receive the death penalty than killers of black men. McCleskey’s defense team contended that such patterns represented racial bias in the court system. The court rejected this argument, claiming that a defense of racial bias would only be admissible if McCleskey could supply evidence that he had been personally 3 discriminated against somewhere in the chain from his arrest to his death penalty conviction. (Importantly, they did not challenge the conclusions of the Baldus Study.) Since McCleskey was unable
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