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“Breaking Bad” in Black and White: What Ideological Deviance Can Tell Us about the Construction of “Authentic” Racial Identities

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Polity

Abstract

This article contributes to the study of racial-group politics by examining how Black and White Americans create authentic racial identities through the regulation of ideological adherence to color-consciousness and color-blindness, respectively. The article first theorizes about the relationship between racial ideology and racial authenticity. We then illustrate our hypotheses through an analysis of responses of Black and White racial group members to Black conservatives and White racial justice activists, whose viewpoints and agendas are read as contradictory to the broad goals of the majority of their racial counterparts. We explore, through an examination of empirical instances of chastisement, exclusion, and public de-authentication of individuals who deviate from the dominant ideology of their racial group, some of the ways Black and White Americans attempt to control in-group political behavior and to enforce indigenous standards for group-based public representation.

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Notes

  1. For example, E. Patrick Johnson, Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); Devon W. Carbado and Mitu Gulati, Acting White?: Rethinking Race in Post-Racial America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

  2. Kenneth W. Warren, “‘As White as Anybody’: Race and the Politics of Counting as Black,” New Literary History 31: “Is There Life after Identity Politics?” (2000): 709–726; Randall Kennedy, Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal (New York: Pantheon, 2008).

  3. Rogers M. Smith, Desmond S. King, and Philip A. Klinkner, “Challenging History: Barack Obama & American Racial Politics,” Daedalus 140 (2011): 121–35.

  4. Cathy J. Cohen, “Contested Membership: Black Gay Identities and the Politics of AIDS,” in Queer Theory/Sociology, ed. Steven Seidman (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), 362–94, at 363.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Ibid., 363.

  7. Ibid., 365.

  8. We recognize that authenticity is a flexible concept. There is no hard and fast line that defines who is authentic. Moreover, the boundaries of authenticity can and do change due to a variety of circumstances. For more on changing notions of authentic identities, see Randall Kennedy, “The Fallacy of Toure’s Post-Blackness Theory,” The Root, August 11, 2011.

  9. Michael C. Dawson, Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), 4.

  10. Terence Ball and Richard Dagger, Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal, 8th edn. (London: Pearson, 2011).

  11. J. Skelly Wright, “Color-Blind Theories and Color-Conscious Remedies,” The University of Chicago Law Review 47 (Winter 1980): 213–45, at 221.

  12. Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Color-Blind Dreams and Racial Nightmares: Reconfiguring Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era,” in Birth of a Nation’hood: Gaze, Script and Spectacle in the O.J. Simpson Trial, ed. Toni Morrison and Claudia Brodsky LaCour (New York: Pantheon Books, 1997): 97–168, at 103.

  13. For example, James R. Kluegel and Eliot R. Smith, Beliefs About Inequality: Americans’ Views of What Is and What Ought to Be (Hawthorne, NY: Aldine De Gruyter, 1986); Donald R. Kinder and Lynn M. Sanders, Divided By Color: Racial Politics and Democratic Ideals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Donald R. Kinder and Nicholas Winter, “Exploring the Racial Divide: Blacks, Whites, and Opinion on National Policy,” American Journal of Political Science 45 (April 2001): 439–56; Vincent L. Hutchings, “Change or More of the Same?: Evaluating Racial Attitudes in the Obama Era,” Public Opinion Quarterly 73 (2009): 917–42.

  14. Michael C. Dawson, “Racial Tragedies, Political Hope, and the Tasks of American Political Science,” Perspectives on Politics 10 (September 2012): 669–73; David C. Wilson, David W. Moore, Patrick F. McKay, and Derek R. Avery, “Affirmative Action Programs for Women and Minorities: Expressed Support Affected by Question Order,” The Public Opinion Quarterly 72 (Fall 2008): 514–22; Linda Lopez and Adrian D. Pantoja, “Beyond Black and White: General Support for Race-Conscious Policies among African Americans, Latinos, Asian American and Whites,” Political Research Quarterly 57 (December 2004): 633–42.

  15. Tehama Lopez Bunyasi, “Color-Cognizance and Color-Blindness in White America: Perceptions of Whiteness and their Potential to Predict Racial Policy Attitudes at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century,” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity (forthcoming, Spring 2015); Steven A. Tuch and Michael Hughes, “Whites’ Racial Policy Attitudes in the Twenty-First Century: The Continuing Significance of Racial Resentment,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 634 (March 2011): 134–52.

  16. Cathy J. Cohen, The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), 11.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Tali Mendelberg, The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).

  19. Kimberly Jade Norwood, “The Virulence of Blackthink and How Its Threat of Ostracism Shackles Those Deemed Not Black Enough,” Kentucky Law Journal 93 (2004–2005): 143–98, at 147.

  20. Jacquelyn L. Bridgeman, “Defining Ourselves for Ourselves,” Seton Hall Law Review 35 (2005): 1261–80, at 1266.

  21. John Blake, “Running Afoul of the Soul Patrol.” Chicago Tribune, 6 April 1992.

  22. Tim Wise, Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections from an Angry White Male (Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2008), 4.

  23. Norwood, “The Virulence of Blackthink,” 143.

  24. John Fund, “In Tim Scott’s Wake,” National Review Online, 14 January 2013, www.nationalreview.com/articles/337581/tim-scott-s-wake-john-fund?pg=1, accessed on November 15, 2013.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Black Youth Project, “Ben Jealous Calls Out Sen. Tim Scott on His Horrible Record on Civil Rights,” Black Youth Project, 7 January 2013, www.blackyouthproject.com/2013/01/ben-jealous-calls-out-sen-tim-scott-and-his-horrible-record-on-civil-rights, accessed on November 15, 2013.

  27. Adolph Reed, Jr., “The Puzzle of Black Republicans,” New York Times, 18 December 2012.

  28. Robert C. Smith and Hanes Walton, Jr., “U-Turn: Martin Kilson and Black Conservatism,” Transition 62 (1993): 209–16, at 209.

  29. Ibid.

  30. Ibid., 211.

  31. Ibid.

  32. Cornel West, “Unmasking the Black Conservatives,” Christian Century, 16–23 July 1986, www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1046, accessed on November 15, 2013.

  33. Ibid.

  34. Kennedy, Sellout, 4–5.

  35. West, “Unmasking the Black Conservatives.”

  36. Kennedy, Sellout, 3.

  37. Reed, “The Puzzle of Black Republicans.”

  38. Kenneth Simon, “Letter to the Editor,” The New York Times, December 27, 2012.

  39. See, for example, Adolph Reed, Jr., “Nothing Left: The Long, Slow Surrender of American Liberals,” Harper’s Magazine (March 2014).

  40. Simon, “Letter,” The New York Times, December 2012.

  41. Dawson, Black Visions, 11.

  42. Ibid., 13.

  43. Kennedy, Sellout, 94.

  44. Ibid.

  45. Kennedy, “Toure,” Root (August 2011). For more examples of a similar sentiment, see Michael Ondaatje, Black Conservative Intellectuals in Modern America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), introduction.

  46. Benjamin Todd Jealous, “NAACP Chief: A GOP Path to Black Votes,” CNN, April 24, 2013; Benjamin Todd Jealous, Silas Lee, and Matt A. Barreto, “NAACP Battleground Poll: 2012 African American Election Eve Poll,” NAACP, www.naacp.3cdn.net/193d69817d2aeeffc0_xnm6bc42h.pdf, accessed on August 15, 2014.

  47. Leah Wright Rigueur, The Loneliness of the Black Conservative: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015).

  48. See Donald R. Kinder and Corrine M. McConnaughy, “Military Triumph, Racial Transcendence, and Colin Powell,” The Public Opinion Quarterly 70 (Summer 2006): 139–65, at 143.

  49. See ABC News, “Transcript of Colin Powell’s Speech,” July 31, 2000, www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=123273&page=1&singlePage=true, accessed on December 24, 2014.

  50. See Clarence Page, “We Reserve the Right to be Complicated,” Chicago Tribune, November 3, 2002.

  51. See Jason Howerton, “Colin Powell Reveals Why He Voted for Obama Twice in Contentious Interview with Bill O’Reilly,” The Blaze, January 29, 2013, www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/01/29/colin-powell-reveals-why-he-voted-for-obama-twice-in-contentious-interview-with-bill-oreilly/, accessed on December 24, 2014.

  52. See “Face the Nation transcripts August 25, 2013: Powell, Lewis, McCaul, and Reed,” www.cbsnews.com/news/face-the-nation-transcripts-august-25-2013-powell-lewis-mccaul-and-reed/, accessed on December 24, 2014.

  53. See Robert P. Jones, “Self-Segregation: Why It’s So Hard for Whites to Understand Ferguson,” The Atlantic, August 21, 2014, www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/self-segregation-why-its-hard-for-whites-to-understand-ferguson/378928/, accessed on August 22, 2014.

  54. Amanda E. Lewis, Race in the Schoolyard: Negotiating the Color Line in Classrooms and Communities (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 800–801.

  55. Lester K. Spence, “The Neoliberal Turn in Black Politics,” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society 14 (2013): 139–59.

  56. Jennifer L. Hochschild, Vesla M. Weaver, and Traci R. Burch, Creating a New Racial Order: How Immigration, Multiracialism, Genomics, and the Young Can Remake Race in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 125. For more on the individualist attitudes of Black Millenials, see Candis Watts Smith, “Shifting from Structural to Individual Attributions of Black Disadvantage: Age, Period, and Cohort Effects on Black Explanations of Racial Disparities,” Journal of Black Studies 45 (2014): 432–52.

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The authors would like to thank the National Conference of Black Political Scientists for providing the opportunity to present an earlier version of this manuscript as a work in progress. We would also like to thank DeLysa Burnier for her helpful comments, and the thoughtful reviewers and editors at Polity for their constructive feedback.

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Lopez Bunyasi, T., Wright Rigueur, L. “Breaking Bad” in Black and White: What Ideological Deviance Can Tell Us about the Construction of “Authentic” Racial Identities. Polity 47, 175–198 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2015.5

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