DENIAL, DEFLECTION, AND DISTRACTION: NEUTRALIZING CHARGES OF RACISM BY THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT * Malaena J. Taylor and Mary Bernstein † This article integrates theory on contentious movements and racism to develop what we call the “stigma neutralization model,” which explains how activists challenge stigmatizing identities in order to build a positive collective identity. Using original ethnographic research, we ex- amine the response of a local Tea Party group to charges of racism. If a social movement is seen as racist, their political efficacy may be damaged. By analyzing backstage identity work, we illustrate that the strategies involved in distancing both activists and the movement from charges of racism reflect broader cultural understandings of the U.S. as being a post-racial or “colorblind” society. Our stigma neutralization model illustrates how activists deny, deflect, and distract from charges that activists are racist, thus maintaining and reproducing racist ideology, while reconstituting both individual and movement identities as unspoiled and racially tolerant. We discuss the implications of our findings for antiminority majority social movements more generally. Oliver (2017) argues that, with the exception of white nationalist movements that explicitly endorse racism and a racist agenda, “White movements in the U.S. have often been theorized in ways that are blind to their whiteness” (395). “That majority movements not ‘about’ ethnicity may take on an antiminority agenda is empirically well established. Why this happens is less clear” (404). Following Oliver, this article seeks to understand how what she calls “group position majority issue movements,” which espouse an agenda that would exacerbate racial inequality, resist charges that they are racist in order to maintain an unspoiled collective identity as well as a sense of themselves as good people. Social movement theory provides many tools to understand how social movements engage in the identity work needed to form a sense of a “collective we” in order to mobilize recruits and foster social change (Reger, Myers, and Einwohner 2008; Stryker, Owens, and White 2000). Failing to theorize how race and racism shape social movements not organized ostensibly around a racial identity limits the ability of social movement theory to explain the persistence of “majority movements” that take on an antiminority agenda when they are not explicitly racist. In this article, we draw on a case study of Tea Party activists to theorize how these movements maintain a sense of their moral goodness and a positive collective identity when faced with charges of racism, and develop what we call a stigma neutralization model. While identity is clearly central to social movements that are based on an ostensible social identity for which they seek rights and recognition, such as gender, race, or sexual orientation, other movements must still engage in identity work in order to mobilize, maintain recruits, and foster social change (Bernstein 2005; Reger et al. 2008; Stryker et al. 2000). This article examines Tea Party members’ responses to charges of racism as they enter into what Bernstein calls an “identity contest,” where the movement and its opponents struggle to put forward their definition of the Tea Party’s collective identity (2008). Because overt racism is frowned upon in con- temporary American society, if a movement is seen as racist their political concerns are under- mined or ignored and recruitment may be damaged (Blee 2002; Schroer 2008; Stryker et al. 2000). * Equal authorship. Direct correspondence to Malaena J. Taylor and Mary Bernstein, Department of Sociology, University of Conneticut, Harry G. Manchester Hall, 344 Mansfield Rd., UConn Unit 1068, Storrs, CT 06269. Emails: malaena.taylor@uconn.edu or mary.bernstein@uconn.edu. † We would like to thank Ruth Braunstein, Noel Cazenave, Michael Rosino, and Daisy Reyes for comments on earlier versions, as well as the members of UConn’s Politics of Social Change workshop for their incisive comments. © 2019 Mobilization: An International Quarterly 24(2):137-156 DOI 10.17813/1086-671X-24-2-137