Colorblindness, a Life: Race, Film and the Articulation of an Ideology by Justin Daniel Gomer a Dissertation Submitted in Parti

Colorblindness, A Life: Race, Film and the Articulation of an Ideology By Justin Daniel Gomer A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in African American Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Leigh Raiford, Chair Professor Ula Y. Taylor Professor Darieck Scott Professor Scott Saul Spring 2014 © 2014 by Justin Daniel Gomer All Rights Reserved Abstract Colorblindness, A Life: Race, Film, and the Articulation of an Ideology by Justin Daniel Gomer Doctor of Philosophy in African American Studies University of California, Berkeley Professor Leigh Raiford, Chair My dissertation, entitled, “Colorblindness, A Life: Race, Film, and the Articulation of an Ideology,” offers a political and cultural biography of the racial ideology of colorblindness from its emergence as a coherent racial ideology in the years after the civil rights movement to its dominant influence in social policy in the 1990s. Most importantly, the project reveals the manner in which colorblindness became the racial project of neoliberalism. This elaboration of colorblindness as an ideology and cultural form is best understood through an examination of film during the period of my study. Beginning in the second-half of the 1970s, Hollywood developed its own set of filmic aesthetics, narratives, and tropes that advocated colorblindness. Moreover, Hollywood was not only central to the articulation of the ideology, it also depended upon colorblindness in the New Hollywood era. In the post-civil rights era, then, colorblindness, neoliberalism, and film are constitutive of and inextricable from one another. The project illustrates three key themes. First, colorblindness is the racial project of neoliberalism. The 1970s were characterized by an anti-government ethos that extended across racial and political lines that neoconservatives used in the 1970s to attack issues like affirmative action and busing as part of a movement intent on dismantling of the welfare state. Out of these struggles emerged a neoliberal notion of “individual” colorblind freedom that neoconservatives, beginning in the mid-seventies, successfully sold as the antidote to the “reverse discrimination” of government mandated “group” rights. The growing popularity of neoliberal economics in the seventies was not merely the result of the seeming failures of Keynesianism to cure stagflation. Instead, the mounting opposition to the “overreach” of the federal government in busing and affirmative action was fundamental in building the appeal of a return to uncompromising laissez faire economics. Secondly, colorblindness, although post-racial in theory, has served as a tool for whites to realign and reconstitute white supremacy within a post-civil rights political correctness. Beginning in the late seventies, white Republicans and moderate Democrats alike used colorblindness to eliminate race-conscious programs intended to promote racial equality. These efforts have only exacerbated racial inequality. Lastly, my dissertation asserts that film served as a key battleground for the culture wars out of which the ideology of colorblindness formed. Yet just as colorblindness needed film to form its cultural cohesion, film needed colorblindness to reinvent itself in the desperate economic times of the post-Classical era. Beginning in the 1970s, movies capitalized upon the volatile racial, 1 social, and economic struggles in the decades after the civil rights movement that shaped colorblindness and have continued to appeal to colorblind sentiments for profit. By the end of the 1980s, Hollywood was increasingly turning to historical dramas that imagined colorblind white heroes at the center of black freedom struggles—emancipation and the civil rights movement, specifically. And by the 1990s, entirely new colorblind film genres, most notably in what I term the “Teacher Film,” had emerged. 2 For Mom, Dad, Bryant, and Kelly who taught me joy and Adrienne, Belle, and Leo who completed it i Table of Contents Acknowledgements iii Introduction 1 Chapter 1 “The Law is Crazy!”: Antistatism and the Origins of 14 Colorblindness in the Early 1970s Chapter 2 “Keep Away From Me, Mr. Welfare Man”: Claudine, 35 Welfare, and the Racial State Chapter 3 The Oscar and the Oval Office: Rocky and Ronald 50 Reagan’s First Term, 1976-1984 Chapter 4 “Contorted in Anger”: Blue Collar and the Colorblind 74 Hand of the Free Market Chapter 5 The Long Walk to Colorblindness: Hollywood and 92 Reagan Imagine America’s Colorblind Past Chapter 6 “Lord, how dare we celebrate?”: Colorblind Hegemony 120 and Genre in the 1990s. Conclusion 148 Bibliography 153 ii Acknowledgements Mine was a dissertation not supported by university fellowships or extramural grants; I was repeatedly denied those resources. Instead, this was a project completed with the incredibly generous support of so many wonderful people. My dissertation chair Leigh Raiford is a better advisor than any graduate student deserves. Equal parts genius and kind, she always saw a better scholar in me than I actually am. Whatever academic merit this project holds is mostly because of her mentoring. The other three members of my committee—Ula Taylor, Darieck Scott, and Scott Saul—helped round out what amounted to the academic equivalent of the ‘92 Dream Team. As I began this project I knew they were all brilliant; what I did not know was how thoroughly they would commit themselves to my dissertation and my intellectual development. Although he is not a member of my committee in a bureaucratic sense, Michael Cohen was as important to this project as anyone. He spent countless hours helping me conceptualize each chapter and offered insightful feedback at each stage of the dissertation. Moreover, his race and film course was the genesis of this project and I have always thought of my dissertation as an attempt to write something he might assign in that course. While the aforementioned group of professors made up the core of my academic education, many other faculty members in the department in the African American Studies Department, including Percy Hintzen, Brandi Wilkins Catanese, Charles Henry, and Hardy Frye generously helped me along the way. The African American Studies Department at UC-Berkeley is a special place I had the privilege of calling home for nearly a decade. The heart and soul of that department is Lindsey Herbert. Her title of Undergraduate/Graduate Advisor does not begin to cover the numerous hats she wears. She saved me numerous times, as she does ever other student in our department. Kathleen Moran, the Associate Director of UC-Berkeley’s American Studies Program, kept a roof over my family’s head and dinner on our table for most of my seven graduate school years. I had the opportunity to work with her during my first summer in graduate school and she gave me work every semester thereafter. She also found odd jobs for me whenever I needed a little extra money. Maybe more importantly, she, along with Michael Cohen and Christine Palmer, taught me how to teach. I also had the pleasure of attending graduate school with some of the most brilliant emerging scholars in the academy. I benefitted greatly from their company both inside and outside of graduate seminars and I am lucky to call many of them friends. My close friend Christopher Petrella provided a daily sounding board for dissertation difficulties during this last year. Our daily workouts provided a much-needed respite from dissertating this last year. Ron Williams II, Shaun Ossei-Owusu, Petra Rivera-Rideau, Ryan Rideau, Jasmine Johnson, Ianna Owen, Jasminder Kaur, Mario Nisbett, Ameer Loggins, Reggie Royston, Michael McGee, and Zach Manditch-Prottas, offered their knowledge and friendship and made this process more enriching and more fun. In high school, my US History teacher, Jerome Facione, first introduced me to thinking critically about race. In many ways his class was the genesis of my career in academia. A remarkable circle of friends surrounds me outside of the academy. My dear friends Kyle Michel, Shelley Michel, Michelle Dickson, and Tim Dickson have given me so much joy over these years. They are the best friends I could ask for. And finally, my family… iii My mother and father worked too hard in jobs they didn’t like their entire lives so I wouldn’t have to. They afforded me the privilege, opportunity, love, and encouragement to pursue a career that offered more than a paycheck. My brother Bryant and my sister Kelly amaze with how effortlessly they make success appear. Together, my parents and siblings continue to inspire me. My two immaculate children, Belle and Leo, were born during graduate school. They have made obsolete what I thought were the boundaries of joy and happiness. Raising them has given my life more purpose and love than I ever imagined. I hope when they are older they understand that this was ultimately for them. Lastly, and most importantly, my wife Adrienne deserves to have her name on the author page of this dissertation alongside my own. We did this together, just as we have everything else over the past twelve years. She read, edited, and encouraged this project all the while sacrificing her own career ambitions to take on the lion’s share of parenting our two children. She is an amazing partner and an even better mother. None of this happens without her. iv Introduction “The starting-point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really

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