On Freedom

by Timothy Snyder

The American idea that we must choose between entrepreneurship and social justice is racist. It works in politics insofar as white (and other non-Black) people think of themselves as entrepreneurs, and of Black people (or immigrants, or other groups) as slackers. The image of work-shy or inherently criminal Blacks dates back to the period before the Civil War, when enslaved people of African origin were performing the hard labor, and their main “crime” was their attempt to escape. This lingering racist specter displaces the reality that the welfare state served the American Dream. Seduced by a sense of ethnic honor, whites (and other non-Blacks) looked away as the world’s largest prison system grew up around them, replacing a welfare state that, in many cases, had helped them or their families. Socrates thought that disabling others prevents us from enabling ourselves. As Toni Morrison has argued, punishing a minority educates a majority. My lifetime has been the mass incarceration period of U.S. history, and this half century has left a mark on the minds of Americans. The imprisonment of Blacks communicated that being white was superior and safer. White Americans have accordingly grown up with a racialized notion of freedom as negative: as not going to prison. That absence of oppression, though a poor sort of privilege, is nonetheless awkward to acknowledge. And so the very subject of law and order immediately triggers angry emotion. It becomes hard to talk about freedom ...