Black moral superiority claims distort a true black politics.

Evidence

Black people cannot be accorded special moral status because we’re black. There is nothing about who we are that makes us any more capable of love and compassion, or of hatred and violence. Our stories lift up the values and virtues of “the least of these,” but in our practice we often fall short. We are human beings like everyone else—just with a particular history of dealing with the deadly insecurities of white folk. The ugliness and evil that human beings are capable of can as easily be found among and between us. Insisting on the fullness of our humanity in light of all our complex differences involves, ironically enough, convincing black people of that fact too. It makes up part of the terrain of a revitalized black politics: we have to change our view of ourselves. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 638

Categorization

• XREF: Contradicts romanticized framed narratives of black virtuous suffering; parallels earlier chapters’ critiques of ‘representative blackness.’