Drawing on the accounts of white men and women, we examine the role that discourse plays in the formation and reinforcement of ideals that perpetuate social disadvantaging. In addition, using discourse analysis we examine the redefinition of race-targeting policies from being a social remedy into being a current social problem. We collected interview and questionnaire data from a sample of 310 students and faculty at a predominantly white university, regarding their attitude toward race- and income-targeted social policies in the United States. We find that the majority of respondents who oppose race-targeting policies (1) frame racial discrimination as a problem of the past; (2) define race-targeting as a subversion of meritocracy; and therefore, (3) devalue programs that seek to provide differential opportunity to those groups that have been structurally disadvantaged in American society. We conclude that the “American stratification ethos” can be employed for disadvantaging purposes.
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