The value gap rigs democratic outcomes toward racial inequality regardless of policy form

Evidence

But the value gap isn’t about the distance between our ideals and practices or whether the United States should be seen as the “Redeemer Nation.” It is about the beliefs that inform and shape the principles we claim as uniquely our own—the soil within which all of this stuff grows. If you believe that white people matter more than black people, then the principles of freedom, liberty, and equality—democracy itself—will be distorted and disfigured. If the American Idea shapes our democracy, and that idea is in turn informed by the value gap, then it hardly matters what form our laws and politics take. They may create a framework for equality, but the value gap will always rig the outcomes. We can do the work. In fact, we’ve done some of the work, and it has cost a great deal to do so. But the value gap at the heart of the American Idea ensures that no matter the form of our system, it will always produce the same results: racial inequality. We can even elect a black president and that inequality would not fundamentally change. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 85

Categorization

• DEFINE: Crisp definition of the value gap as belief-structure (‘soil’), not ideal-practice distance — the book’s central concept the reader must nail down.
• XREF: The ‘rig the outcomes regardless of form’ claim connects to the racecraft literature and to arguments that formal legal equality coexists with substantive inequality (e.g., Desmond & Emirbayer).