File: powell final for Darby 804 Created on: 3/15/2009 12:55:00 PM Last Printed: 4/3/2009 10:11:00 AM DENVER UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 86.Obama funding to existing road proposals across states.89 This broad and regressive use of the infrastructure stimulus funds may produce jobs in the short term, but it is just a replication of existing models of public investment which have produced inequitable and unsustainable growth. What are truly needed are strategic investments which produce economic and institutional development at a broad scale while strategically transforming communities and cities. The manifold crisis we now face as produced a rare opportunity to transform our present institutional and regulatory arrangements. The policies we promulgate will set the course of development for generations to come just as the post New Deal and post WW-II arrangements laid the groundwork for generations that followed them. This window of opportunity will remain open only for so long. In this moment, we can work towards building a more equitable future, or repeat the mistakes of the past. If we fail at this, we will be trying to correct our missteps for years to come. Targeting within universalism is also the approach supported by President Obama in his book The Audacity of Hope. He writes: “We should support programs to eliminate existing health disparities between minorities and whites . . . , but a plan for universal health-care coverage would do more to eliminate health disparities between whites and minorities than any race-specific programs we might design.”90 Although President Obama expresses support for race-targeted polices designed to “eliminate” certain disparities, he prefers universal policies which are race-sensitive in pursuit of the same end as “good politics” that is less likely to arouse the flames of racial resentment. There will still be an issue of possible racial resentment, even with targeted universal programs. Racial resentment does not simply represent racist attitudes; it also represents both ambivalence and confusion. A more sophisticated understanding of implicit bias and how the mind works will be important in learning how to effectively communicate in a way that makes our sense of fairness and connectedness salient. The fact that this kind of communication is even possible suggests that we have made progress. But it should not be overstated. Ambivalence on matters of race is a deep part of United States history. Thomas Jefferson hated slavery and worried about what it was doing to the country and the psyche of whites.91 He had a long-term, intimate relationship with a slave and yet was one of the major architects of the ideology of racial inferior- 89. Most of the infrastructure funds may go to routine fixes. See Alec MacGillis & Michael Shear, Stimulus Package to First Pay for Routine Repairs, WASH. POST, Dec. 14, 2008, at A01, available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/13/AR2008121301819 _pf.html. 90. OBAMA, AUDACITY OF HOPE, supra note 16, at 247. 91. WINTHROP JORDAN, THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN (1974).