File: powell final for Darby 788 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 tive that not only supports the racial status quo, but also easily blames marginal groups for it.13 Colorblind conservatives purport not to be concerned with racial conditions, but only with purity of mind with respect to intent. They see the evil to be guarded against as the noticing of race—the psychological state, not the condition of racial groups and the distribution of opportunity itself.14 For example, Justice Thomas is not only indifferent to racial arrangement, practices or conditions, he believes that there is a real harm suffered when we see race, whether our intentions are benevolent or malign.15 This is not the position of the liberals that supported President Obama. The phrase “post-racialism” has been adopted to describe their race blindness.16 Like their conservative cousins, they also believe that racialization is primarily a psychological event17 and that good Americans are beyond race. Race does not matter—much.18 Unlike colorblind conservatives, they are willing, under some conditions, to be race sensitive. But they also agree that a frontal attack on racial conditions is divisive. In the wake of President Obama’s victory, the question of where we are with regards to race has surfaced again and again. The answer that 13. See ABIGAIL THERNSTROM & STEPHAN THERNSTROM, NO EXCUSES: CLOSING THE RACIAL GAP IN LEARNING 76-78 (Simon & Schuster 2003). 14. MICHAEL K. BROWN ET AL., WHITEWASHING RACE: THE MYTH OF A COLOR-BLIND SOCIETY 7-8 (Univ. of California Press 2003). Conservatives are likely to explain existing racial arrangements as caused by a culture of poverty of non-whites. But their use of the term is often used to justify making culture essential, and all but immutable. 15. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306, 353 (2003) (Thomas, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (“The Constitution abhors classifications based on race, not only because those classifications can harm favored races or are based on illegitimate motives, but also because every time the government places citizens on racial registers and makes race relevant to the provision of burdens or benefits, it demeans us all.”). In Parents Involved, Thomas and the plurality assert that only harms caused by intentional state action can be remedied using race, with a very limited set of exceptions. Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2755–59. Justice Kennedy, while also expressing concern about racial classification, did not join them in this view. Id. at 2791 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment). 16. President Obama specifically rejects the claim that we are in a post-racial world, citing the continued racial disparities as proof that we are not in a post-racial world: [w]hen I hear commentators interpreting my speech to mean that we have arrived at a “postracial politics” or that we already live in a color-blind society, I have to offer a word of caution. To say that we are one people is not to suggest that race no longer matters—that the fight for equality has been won, or that the problems that minorities face in this country today are largely selfinflicted . . . as much as I insist that things have gotten better, I am mindful of this truth as well: Better isn't good enough. BARACK OBAMA, AUDACITY OF HOPE 232-33 (Crown 2006). Yet, there is and will likely be stubborn persistence that we are indeed in a post-racial world evidenced, most poignantly by President Obama’s success. See Debra Dickerson, Class Is the New Black, MOTHER JONES, Jan./Feb. 2009, http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2009/01/class-is-the-new-black.html; Joel Kotkin, The End of Upward Mobility, NEWSWEEK, Jan. 26, 2009, http://www.newsweek.com/id/180041. 17. GLENN C. LOURY, THE ANATOMY OF RACIAL INEQUALITY 142 (Harvard Univ. Press 2002). 18. This was the chant that Obama supporters made after he won the South Carolina primary, and it was not challenged by the campaign. Ginger Thompson, Seeking Unity, Obama Feels Pull of TIMES, Feb. 12, 2008, at A1, available at Racial Divide, N.Y. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/us/politics/12obama.html?emc=eta1.