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Strategic and Tactical Constraints: U.S Racial Discourse and the NAACP

Sun, August 17, 12:30 to 1:30pm, TBA

Abstract

Forty years after the peak of the U.S. African-American civil rights movement, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), has managed to survive in spite of shifting racial discourses that would render it obsolete and unnecessary. The emergence of a post-racial discourse in the 1970s was supported by a US government embrace of federalism as a mechanism to avoid enforcement of civil rights legislation. Thus, even while black political opportunities and inclusion expanded, the widespread denial that race serves as a powerful barrier to black incorporation, constrained the tactics and altered the strategies pursued by the NAACP. Employing NAACP archival data and secondary sources that document public opinion, this study takes a relational approach to examine the ways in which cultural and political changes impacted the capacity of the NAACP to serve as an advocate for African-Americans.

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