Connor Grubaugh
Tablet, Nov. 17, 2021
“… she insisted that American civil rights talk was dangerously incoherent, and warned that its contradictions—if unthinkingly enshrined in law and liberal opinion—could only be worked out on the corpse of the American republic, to the grave peril of American Jews.”
When it entered office, the Biden-Harris administration promised to “lower the temperature” of America’s divisive conflicts over race, identity, and recognition. While Biden’s campaign appealed to moderates, however, his policies and appointments so far show him embracing a progressive “anti-racist” agenda fundamentally at odds with his image as a liberal centrist: Equality is dead, long live “equity.” The stage is set for another round of clashes between the radicals and reformists, the race-conscious and colorblind, that have been a familiar feature of American racial discourse at least since the 1960s. If we wish to avoid replaying this predictable and irresoluble conflict (though it is by no means clear that we do), we should turn back to a philosopher whose insights penetrated to its source.