Race unconsciousness and the white male

Abstract

D uring the past twenty years, a combination of cultural, social, and political factors produced a powerful taboo deflecting attention from affirmative action's effects upon young, working and middle-class white males. This massive "race unconsciousness" effectively devictimized them. Protests and grievances voiced by white males were ignored or jeered by influential individuals and institutions. Ironically, in a society dominated by a white-male power structure, few powerful white males concerned themselves with the fate of younger, workingand middle-class white males under affirmative action. Exploring the structural matrix and the ideological roots of this institutional inattention is the aim of this analysis. Race-unconsciousness toward white males has crippled the formulation, implementation and assessment of race-conscious programs. Whether or not journalists, social scientists, and policy makers acknowledge the white males' responses to affirmative action, the sociological and political consequences are significant. Intellectual self-censorship and devictimization of any class of human beings are ominous developments in societies committed to individual rights, democratic processes and the free exchange of ideas. How censorship develops among the highly-educated classes of a post-industrial society merits investigation.