摘要：Theshifting vocabularies of racial identity and signification in North America have become increasingly complex with the rise of popular post-racial discourse. Intimately linked with a move toward neo-liberal ideology and policy, the concept of the post-racial state relies on rhetorical strategies of privatization and personal responsibility. Since the 1980s, the framing of popular political and social discourse has shifted, severely, from a discussion of the collective rights and responsibilities of civil society to a more overtly privatized conversation wherein vocabularies of personal responsibility, wealth and economic stability eclipse the importance of identities rooted in communities or cultures. As a result of these shifting vocabularies, notions of criminality, poverty and social precariousness have also been demarcated as the space of individuals.Rather than recognizing such challenges as socio-political, the move away from civil responsibility has resulted in the privatization of blame. Despite the very real practices of racial inequality in contemporary North America the language of popular discourse has become “post-racial” insofar as it has dislocated race from understandings of community and culture.
