Calls for racial reconciliation obscure structural racial injustice.

Evidence

Remaking American democracy is going to require a revolution of value to transform our habits. This isn’t a call, as President Obama made during the press conference after the George Zimmerman trial, “to widen the circle of compassion and understanding in our communities.” Something more expansive has to happen. It has to occur at many levels: in government, in communities, among individuals. Besides, calls to “widen circles of compassion and understanding” only reinforce the belief that durable racial inequality is, at its root, a problem of racial reconciliation: that if we could all just get along, our racial problems would disappear. This is one dimension of the illusion that protects American innocence. “Getting along” does not measure up to a more fundamental concern about racial justice or get at how we are all complicit in racial injustice. The illusion hides the rot. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 503

Categorization

• XREF: Glaude’s critique of Obama’s ‘widen the circle of compassion’ framing parallels his broader identification of reconciliation discourse as protecting American innocence — connects to Ta-Nehisi Coates and the post-Ferguson literature on empathy’s limits. — connects to: Apology-focused racial reckoning can sidestep demands for reparative action — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 166