Freedom rhetoric can be recast to demand freedom to oppress

Evidence

George Wallace did not disappoint, showing off his new public ideology. “It is very appropriate that from this cradle of the Confederacy, this very heart of the great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us time and again down through history,” he said. He was sounding one of the two timeworn American freedom drums: not the one calling for freedom from oppression, but the one demanding freedom to oppress. “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth,” he intoned, ” … I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 948

Categorization

• DEFINE: Kendi’s distinction between two ‘freedom drums’ — freedom from oppression vs. freedom to oppress — is a useful frame for parsing how egalitarian-sounding language carries segregationist content.
• CANDY: The phrase ‘segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever’ and its framing as ‘freedom to oppress’ is a compact, quotable observation.
• XREF: connects to: Emancipatory projects can force one to oppress others whose goals one endorses — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 501