Power concedes to antiracist change only via self-interest or costly disruption

Evidence

To undermine racial discrimination, Americans must focus their efforts on those who have the power to undermine racial discrimination. Protesting against anyone or anything else is as much of a waste of time as trying to educate or persuade powerful people. History has shown that those Americans who have had the power to undermine racial discrimination have rarely done so. They have done so, however, when they realized on their own that eliminating some form of racial discrimination was in their self-interest, much as President Abraham Lincoln chose to end slavery to save the Union. They have also conceded to antiracist change as a better alternative than the disruptive, disordered, politically harmful, and/or unprofitable conditions that antiracist protesters created. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1257

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘the white moderate’ critique and the broader coercion-over-persuasion theory of social change; comparable to the reader’s prior material on power conceding nothing without demand. — connects to: Reform succeeded only where conscience aligned with self-interest — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3200
• SEED: Angle: an essay on the two historical routes to racial reform — self-interested volition (Lincoln’s Union-saving) vs. forced concession via disruption — and why persuasion is the least historically effective of all three.