Government action shapes racial habits through the quality of daily interactions

Evidence

But Goldwater failed to realize that governmental indifference can harden hearts, and government action can create conditions that soften them. People’s attitudes aren’t static or untouchable. They are molded by the quality of interactions with others, and one of the great powers of government involves shaping those interactions—not determining them in any concrete sense, but defining the parameters within which people come to know each other and live together. … Change emerged from the ways those laws, with grassroots pressure, created new patterns of interactions, and ultimately new habits. Neither Obama’s election to the presidency nor my appointment as a Princeton professor would have happened were it not for these new patterns and habits. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 509

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s stated need to define ‘racial habits’ precisely — Glaude here grounds racial habits in interaction-molding law, distinct from individual prejudice.