politics. Most white Americans believed a firmly colorblind approach to policy and public life—where character rather than skin color counted—would be the surest path to ending racial division.7 If there was more racial tension in the 1990s, the solution was not more racially conscious policies (to reduce inequality), but fewer (to reduce racial consciousness). Americans, skeptical of government solutions in a neoliberal age, looked to churches and other civic institutions to promote racial progress. Much has been made of white evangelicals’ growing power in the Republican Party in these
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