earticle

영어

The purpose of this paper is to critically analyze the ways that civil rights reforms have shape racial politics. This is argument challenges conventional views that uncritically accept the era of Civil Rights as one defined as racial progress. Using ethnographic and historical material from Fayetteville, North Carolina –the home of Fort Bragg –this article analyzes the ways in which federal and local governments have dismantled Jim Crow segregation. Rather than representing an unqualified success, these reforms have been shaped by economic interests that have often undermined black political institutions and incorporated them into the dominant regime. Most significantly, the rise of Civil Rights has occurred along with the emergence of neoliberal economic policies and the federal government’s decreasing role in social provision. In many ways, racial reforms have accompanied many negative changes in the lives of ordinary African Americans. This article analyzes the ways that implementing racial reforms in Fayetteville has helped legitimize the very neoliberal economic policies that have negatively affected most African Americans. Moreover, the article analyzes the conflicts and struggle that divide African Americans leaving many to believe that the era of civil Rights is an age of political decline.