Closing the value gap requires shifting views of government, black people, and national priorities

Evidence

A revolution of value would seek to uproot those ways of seeing and living that allow Americans to support racial equality and yet live in ways that suggest they believe otherwise. It is a revolution to close, once and for all, the value gap—to finally rid the country of niggers. It involves three basic components: (1) a change in how we view government; (2) a change in how we view black people; and (3) a change in how we view what ultimately matters to us as Americans. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 504

Categorization

• DEFINE: Reader explicitly needs to define the value gap precisely; this passage gives its operative definition — the premise that white lives are more valued — and its three-part dismantling.
• SEED: Angle: ‘ridding the country of niggers’ as a forgotten definition of racial justice work — how describing the value gap’s end in blunt language exposes what polite antiracism papers over.