Rethinking Racism and Racial Justice Today: How Race Liberalism Shaped the 1954-1968 Civil Rights Legislation and Policies And the Rise of Contesting Discourse of Critical Race Theories

Abstract

With its significant contribution to sociology, political science, and critical race theory, this doctoral research addresses two sets of questions by unfolding two contrasting discourses about race and racism, as it took place in the USA. What defines the dominant interpretation of race-related injustice in the USA? What are the shortcomings of the hegemonic view of social justice in the 1954-1968 Civil Rights Era to remedy injustice entangled with racial discrimination? Drawing on those two questions, the dissertation seeks to grasp two understandings of injustice in the color line and its historical and critical repercussions in public spheres. The first view, the so-called race liberalism, consolidates as the hegemonic standpoint along segments of the Civil Rights movement and subsequent legislation in the 1954-1968 civil rights era. It furnishes numerous channels and actors, such as government institutions, educational systems, and media platforms, with the ideological contours of the interpretation of the causes of the problem of the color line and the institutional problem-solving to injustices and inequalities. In short, race liberal view shapes the blueprint for laws and social engineering responsive to the demands of the Civil Rights Movement segments in the United States. Race Liberalism mesmerizes policy-making with political implications on the normative compass and policy-making strategies put into practice in the 1954-1968 Civil Rights Era to remedy race-related injustice. Contrasting to that belief, a philosophical trait present in radical black visions spells out racism interwoven with capitalist exploitation whose economic injustices insistently harm racial and ethical groups. The opposing discourse of black radical visions from social movements and political activism carried out by the Black Panthers up to organic intellectuals of the Critical Race Theory views racism as a far more complicated matter amalgamated with other inequalities in the existing social stratification. The radical view challenges disentailing racism from complex structures at the bottom of a web of existing institutions, the economy, and social and cultural practices. The radical vision of revolutionary sectors in social movements and academia sets up to critically reevaluate consolidated patterns in the US American understanding of the legitimate democratic organization and fair economic structures and prompt emancipatory thinking and social changes for racial and ethnic minorities. This doctoral research seeks to develop a 'descriptive overview' that provides a comprehensive and detailed account of two discursive matrixes about racism and a 'normative conceptualization' that offers a theoretical framework for understanding and critiquing these discourses. These critical theories of race and racism prompt social critique and paradigmatically point towards a blueprint to tackle racism and interrelated injustices. Initially, it outlines a social and historical analysis of how pervasive injustices and inequalities harm Blacks and Browns. Furthermore, this dissertation aims to underline the normative force of counter-discourse critical race theories, pinpointing a few elements in the making of countervailing public spheres. In this spirit, it stresses how the powerful spirit of critique of racial hierarchy has endured the hegemonic ideology of race liberalism in distinct channels within civil society and political activism and electrifyingly reanimates political debate today. This doctoral study draws on the unfolding of these two contrasting discourses and their implications for understanding and envisioning problem-solving for the problem of the color line: Race liberalism and radical black visions or critique of racial hierarchy. The dissertation proceeds in three parts. Each, in its turn, draws on how these two discursive matrixes – race liberalism and critique of racial hierarchy –, despite their 'heterogenous inflections' which refer to the various interpretations and applications of these discourses, have shaped distinct views of the permanence of inequality allocated in racial and ethical groups and the perceptions of foundational institutions in coping with the crucial matter of injustices tied with race in the US. The first part (Chapters 1-2) concentrates on the conceptual presuppositions and political implications underlying the hegemonic view and the critique of how racial differentiation has been crucial in configuring the existing social stratification and hierarchy in the racial line. The conceptual distinctions are essential for the discursive landscape in civil-rights policy-making and radical visions of the quest for equal citizenship and black liberation. The second part (Chapters 3-4) outlines race-sensitive affirmative programs as a problem-solving ideal and equity-enhancing policy in higher education. It revises the normative presuppositions and the moral and legal disputes underlying race-based college admissions to shed light on how the hegemonic view illustrated in the Bakke landmark decision (1978) and reiterated by many liberals (Chap. 4) has favored market-led interests to the detriment of members of racialized and ethnic minorities. Finally, the third part (chapters 5-7) spells out critical race theories in challenging the dominant race liberal view and pinpointing the normative force of countervailing public spheres in two directions: (i) by raising awareness of the intricacies of racism in institutional, structural and systemic levels and by urging public spheres to rethink the problem of the color line today; (ii) concurrently, as elaborated by radical visions in organic practices of intellectual activities and social movements, by reassessing resources far beyond legal entitlements to reach feasible social mobility and empowerment in redesigning alternatives to cope with the pervasive problem of inequality in the color line. These findings hold the potential to inspire transformative change in our understanding and approach to racial inequality. Critical Race scholarship elaborates a rich conceptual framework to examine the range of intersecting forces and dynamics reproducing race-related disadvantages that operate through entrenched values and political economy within the liberal system. More significantly, for this doctorate's normative purpose and appreciation of the political effects of the unfolding of counteracting discourse, the last chapters stress how the social critique of critical race theories gives vigor to diverse public spheres in ongoing attempts to contest the current status quo in matters about race and beyond. With its rigorous and comprehensive approach, this research calls attention to how critical race theories have been organically tied with political engagement to encourage discursive practices about the hegemonic explanation of racial matters and race-based policies in the US and abroad.