In the end, Christian realism was not only a source of Niebuhr’s radicalism but also of his conservatism. This is especially true of the struggles of the oppressed in the black community for racial justice; for even during his most radical period (1930s), when lynching resurged with a vengeance, he was, at most, a moderate on racial justice. Rather than challenging racial prejudice, he believed it must “slowly erode.” Although he did not believe that African Americans could achieve proximate justice without the help of liberal whites, he did not choose to be among those to support actively and
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