Sublime

John Rawls, however, was deeply suspicious of that idea. If a man is brilliant, he argued, why should he be praised for being so? He was merely fortunate for being born intelligent. If he has a strong work ethic, he just happened to win the lottery for hardworking traits. And if one boy was strong enough to survive a terrible disease and a weaker b

The most effective protests create an environment whereby changing the racist policy becomes in power’s self-interest, like desegregating businesses because the sit-ins are driving away customers, like increasing wages to restart production, like giving teachers raises to resume schooling, like passing a law to attract a well-organized force of don

The logic of apartheid is difficult to follow, for it seems from our vantage point a strange kind of illogic. Liberal multiculturalism takes for granted that the route to racial harmony is mutual understanding, and the route to understanding is contact, exposure, conversation. So our modern studies show that those who know actual black people, or g

In this case, however, the CMU authorities capitulated too quickly to the formulaic rage of affronted blacks, the ill-considered sentimentality of well-meaning whites, and their own crass, bureaucratic opportunism.

He is “a third rate Western lawyer,” the Herald gloated. “The conduct of the republican party in this nomination is a remarkable indication of a small intellect, growing smaller.” Rejecting Seward and Chase, “who are statesmen and able men,” the Herald continued, “they take up a fourth rate lecturer, who cannot speak good grammar,” and whose speech

the case that what we called Du Bois’s theory of racial cooperative economic development,7 combined with Hogan’s theory of Black self-help and the model of Mondragon Cooperative Corporation among the Basque people in northern Spain,

The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was the high point—and the end point—of the passage of such laws, however. In that very year, a series of rulings by the United States Supreme Court—very narrow rulings, in tune with the growing laissez-faire attitude of the time and in tune also with the popular feeling that perhaps the government had gone far enough i

There is no in-between safe space of “not racist.” The claim of “not racist” neutrality is a mask for racism.

White people have generally advocated for both assimilationist and segregationist