Racial inequality is constitutive of Americanness, not an aberration from its ideals

Evidence

In the end, this book exposes the illusion of innocence at the heart of this nation by pointing out the concrete effects of persistent racial inequality. Most Americans see inequality—and the racial habits that give it life—as aberrations, ways we fail to live up to the idea of America. But we’re wrong. Inequality and racial habits are part of the American Idea. They are not just a symptom of bad, racist people who fail to live up to pristine ideals. We are, in the end, what we do. And this is the society we have all made. So much so that we can have a black man in the White House and nearly one million black men and women in the Big House. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 25

Categorization

• DEFINE: First definitional distinction: racial habits are framed as integral to the American Idea, not deviations from it — key to separating them from mere individual prejudice.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that our democratic principles and white supremacy ‘share bone and tissue’ is a paradigm-level reframing of American racial history.