Black liberalism frames racism as a distortion of American principles that inclusion would repair.

Evidence

Black liberalism ostensibly separates liberal principles from white supremacy, holding that racism distorts the American Idea. The thought here is that if African Americans were woven into the fabric of American life, that inclusion would fundamentally transform America. We can trace this idea back to the early nineteenth century in the writings of Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists. We see the formulation at work in the NAACP and other civil rights organizations of the 1940s and 1950s. And we certainly see it used throughout the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Dr. King and other movement activists repeatedly pointed out the failure of the nation to live up to its principles when it came to black people. And they invoked the idea of common American values as the basis of their criticisms. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 416

Categorization

• DEFINE: Identifies the inclusion/distortion premise at the heart of black liberalism, which Glaude later argues is itself a trap.