Americas New Racial Battle Lines: Protect versus Repair (Chicago Studies in American Politics)

figure 2.2. Core Members of Today's Protect and Repair Racial Policy Alliances table 5.1 Trump Administration Protect Policies Affirmative Action Justice Department initiated investigations of affirmative action policies at Harvard, Yale, and other universities (Savage 2017); sided with litigants challenging Harvard's affirmative action program (Alexander 2018). The Supreme Court ruled against affirmative action in 2023 (Gersen 2023). Departments of Education and Justice issued joint letter to universities rescinding seven Obama affirmative action guidelines for advocating "policy preferences and positions beyond the requirements of the Constitution" (Green, Apuzzo, and Benner 2018). Administration challenged constitutionality of HBCU Capital Investment Fund & reduced support for low-income students, even while extending overall funding for HBCUs (Camera 2019). Civil Rights Enforcement Justice Department prioritized religious freedom over other civil rights (Sessions 2018). Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ended the rule requiring companies to report employee pay by sex, race, and ethnicity to identify discriminatory pay patterns (Mann 2017). Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity lost enforcement powers against discrimination in lending, reduced lenders' reporting requirements (Berry 2018; McCaskill 2020). Funding cut for investigations of white nationalist groups; FBI investigations of white nationalists reduced despite increases in white supremacist crimes (Beinart 2018; Einbinder 2019). Education Department delayed Individuals with Disabilities Education Act rule limiting disproportionate treatment of minority students with disabilities (Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services 2018). Veterans Affairs diversity officer told not to condemn white nationalists (Rein 2018). Justice Department held 1964 Civil Rights Act does not protect against workplace discrimination against transgender persons (Supreme Court disagreed) (Moreau 2018). Justice Department sought to restrict enforcement of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to intentional discrimination, not racially disparate impacts in housing, employment, education, health care, and other programs (Benner and Green 2021). A sobering portrait of the United States's divided racial politics. For nearly two decades, Rogers M. Smith and Desmond King have charted the shifting racial policy alliances that have shaped American politics across different eras. In America's New Racial Battle Lines , they show that US racial policy debates are undergoing fundamental change. Disputes over colorblind versus race-conscious policies have given way to new lines of conflict. Today's conservatives promise to protect traditionalist, predominantly white, Christian Americans against what they call the "radical" Left. Meanwhile, today's progressives seek not just to integrate American institutions but to more fully transform and "repair" pervasive systemic racism. Drawing on interviews with activists, surveys, social network analyses, and comprehensive reviews of federal, state, and local policies and advocacy groups, Smith and King map the memberships and goals of two rival racial policy alliances and delineate the contrasting stories each side tells. They also show that these increasingly polarized racial policy alliances are substantially funded on both the Left and Right. Placing today's conflicts in theoretical and historical perspectives, Smith and King analyze where these intensifying clashes may take the nation in the years ahead. They highlight the great potential for mounting violence, as well as the remaining possibilities for finding common ground. "What is happening to the politics of race in America? In America's New Racial Battle Lines: Protect versus Repair, Rogers Smith and Desmond King argue that the nation has entered a new, more severely polarized era of racial policy disputes, displacing older debates over color-blind versus race-targeted measures. Drawing on primary sources, interviews, and studies of federal, state, and local initiatives linked to global developments, the authors map the memberships and the goals of two rival racial policy alliances, comprised of grassroots activists, NGOs, government agencies, and wealthy funders on both sides. Today's conservatives promise to "protect" traditionalist Americans against assaults from what they see as a radical American Left. Today's progressives seek to "repair" all American institutions and practices that embody systemic racism. Though these sides have some common ground, they advance sharply opposed visions of America that threaten to make profound racial policy conflicts, sometimes erupting into violence, all too pervasive in the nation's present and future"-- Contents List of Figures and Tables Part 1. America’s Racial Battles: An Overview Chapter 1. America’s New Racial Battle Lines Chapter 2. Racial Orders as Institutional Orders: Race, Class, and Intersectionality Part 2. The Protect Alliance Chapter 3. The Rise of the Protect Policy Alliance: New Actors, New Money, Resurgent Causes Chapter 4. The Conservatives’ Story: Who and What to Protect Chapter 5. The Protect Alliance at Work: Policies and Reforms Part 3. The Repair Alliance Chapter 6. The Rise of the New Repair Groups Chapter 7. The Repair Story and Transformative Visions Chapter 8. Today’s Repair Alliance: Current Initiatives across Policy Regimes Part 4. The Rough Roads Ahead Chapter 9. Lessons for and from Theories of Racial Politics Chapter 10. Views from the Battleground: Paths and Prospects for America’s New Racial Politics Acknowledgments Appendix A. Research Strategies and Methodologies Appendix B. Organizations in the Protect Alliance Appendix C. Organizations in the Repair Alliance Notes References Index