File: powell final for Darby 2009] Created on: 3/15/2009 12:55:00 PM Last Printed: 4/3/2009 10:11:00 AM POST-RACIALISM OR TARGETED UNIVERSALISM 793 breakers. This has more promise for racial fairness, but also turns out to be wanting.33 Consider something issues such as fair housing, school integration, or reform of the criminal justice system. Why should these efforts be controversial and divisive? George Lipsitz suggests that what is being challenged is not a material zero-sum policy, but instead what he calls the “possessive investment in whiteness.”34 The need to keep the racial ‘other’ out of schools and neighborhoods and controlled by the criminal justice apparatus can only make sense if race does matter. What the overused resentment argument conceals is how concern for white resentment is employed to protect white prerogative and privilege.35 But why would whites vote for Obama and still insist that schools, neighborhoods, and other opportunities continue to be racialized? Are they racist or not? I will return to this question below. There is also an empirical problem with the false universal approach as well. The empirical issue is not one of design or administration but outcome. What is it that we are trying to achieve in our universal efforts? There is no single answer to this question. Some are trying to achieve racial blindness; others are trying to achieve racial justice or fairness.36 While the two goals could work in tandem, in practice they are often in conflict.37 Dona and Charles Hamilton look at many efforts to use universal programs.38 They conclude that to the extent we are concerned with racial justice, for a number of reasons, virtually all of them fail to promote this outcome.39 Ira Katznelson looked at some of the most popular universal programs coming out of the New Deal and World War II and concluded that these programs by and large benefited whites disproportionately.40 While the programs may have still benefited non-whites, they often exacerbated the disparities between whites and non-whites. In many instances, universalism will not work to address the needs of marginalized racial and ethnic groups. 33. There is much to suggest that racial resentment is not so neat. BROWN ET AL., supra note 14, at 55-56 (arguing that white opposition to affirmative action is based mostly on the fear of losing white privileges); see also Lawrence, supra note 6, at 323. 34. GEORGE LIPSITZ, THE POSSESSIVE INVESTMENT IN WHITENESS: HOW WHITE PEOPLE PROFIT FROM IDENTITY POLITICS (Temple Univ. Press 1998). 35. Id. at 229-31; see also IAN HANLEY LOPEZ, WHITE BY LAW: THE LEGAL CONSTRUCTION OF RACE 131 (N.Y. Univ. Press, 10th anniversary ed. 2006). 36. DAVID R. ROEDIGER, HOW RACE SURVIVED U.S. HISTORY (2008). 37. Id. 38. DONA COOPER HAMILTON & CHARLES V. HAMILTON, THE DUAL AGENDA (1997). 39. Id. at 236. The Hamiltons suggests that targeted universal programs were indeed pushed by civil rights groups, but that racial resentment was so high that even these programs could not garner support. Id. at 241. There is some work today dealing with symbolic racism that suggest white are more willing to support some targeted universal programs. This might represent a meaningful shift in attitudes. 40. KATZNELSON, supra note 22, at x.