Formal legal equality alone cannot produce fair outcomes after generations of structural disadvantage.

Evidence

“You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains[,] and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.” It was quite possibly the most antiracist avowal ever uttered from the lips of a US president. And Johnson was just getting started. “We seek not just freedom but opportunity,” he said. “We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 986

Categorization

• XREF: This is the theoretical core of substantive vs formal equality — connects to the reader’s goal of distinguishing antiracist (equality of result) from assimilationist (equality of opportunity) positions. Johnson at Howard explicitly rejects the ‘equal starting line’ framing. — connects to: Formal legal equality leaves substantive social inequality untouched — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 959; Formal legal equality cannot deliver justice without social equality — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 958; Extreme wealth inequality makes common legislation impossible in a democracy — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 363 (+1 more)
• SEED: Johnson’s Howard speech is a rich anchor for an essay on how American presidents have occasionally voiced antiracist substance-versus-form arguments — and why such language disappeared.