Neoliberalism and affirmative action

Abstract

This essay surveys the origins and development of race-conscious affirmative action in the United States. It tracks opposition to affirmative action and the ascendancy of neoliberal ideology in American law and policy. All important legal and policy changes concerning affirmative action have their roots in conflict over the meaning of constitutional equality. It is not surprising, therefore, that the neoliberal account of racial equality would be fought on those grounds as well. The curious aspect of this conflict is its oddly dehistoricized texture. Although the state is deeply implicated in the racial inequality we still observe today, the state is largely prohibited from taking that role into account in fashioning remedies if it departs from a stance of racial objectivity. Neoliberalism has succeeded because its proponents have been able to fix the current deeply racialized and deeply unequal reality as the neutral baseline. Action by the state to move from this baseline thus requires a robust justification that does not, itself, seem racially based.