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the idea of racial equality remains “a loose expression for improvement.
the value gap (the belief that white people are valued more than others) and racial habits (the things we do, without thinking, that sustain the value gap) undergird racial inequality, and how white and black fears block the way to racial justice in this country.
Our democratic principles do not exist in a space apart from our national commitment to white supremacy. They have always been bound tightly together, sharing bone and tissue.
African Americans lost 31 percent of their wealth between 2007 and 2010. White Americans lost 11 percent. By 2009, 35 percent of African American households had zero or negative net worth. According to the Pew Research Center, by 2011, black families had lost 53 percent of their wealth.
Opportunity deserts are those communities, both urban and rural, that lack the resources and public institutions that give those who live there a chance to reach beyond their current lives.
They see it as an issue of individual behavior and bad choices. People who live in opportunity deserts, Americans think, have done something to deserve to be there.
our claims to democracy have always been shadowed by the belief that some people—white people—are valued more than others.
He was not a straight-A student; his life didn’t seem promising—so he alone was culpable in his death. He was disposable.
On a broader level, white supremacy involves the way a society organizes itself, and what and whom it chooses to value.
Even the first immigration and naturalization act, in 1790, allowed only “white persons” to attain citizenship, and that racial understanding of citizenship persisted until 1954.
As patriots of the revolution put it, “With the Revolution, God has shown that THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA are his vineyard—the principal seat of [His] glorious kingdom.” In this view, America is an exceptional place, a chosen nation charged to redeem the world.
Everything about my childhood let me know that I had to work twice as hard for opportunity and that I shouldn’t expect the world to be fair, because the world isn’t fair to black people. Here the American Idea wasn’t neat and tidy.
Americans often speak of freedom while giving little care to the great legacy of unfreedom at the heart of the American project. We continue to keep separate the American Idea and white supremacy.
Instead, it shows how we see poverty today. If financial success is primarily understood in terms of individual initiative and ambition, then poverty must be its exact opposite.
African Americans who are struggling to find a job or keep a roof over their heads are often seen, especially by those on the right, as lazy or gaming the system (they buy steaks with food stamps!). If they are unsuccessful or poor, it is a reflection of bad character and bad choices, not a shortage of opportunities.
“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”
Americans consistently mask how they feel about racial matters. We habitually avoid the messiness of race issues. Most white Americans, for example, don’t want to be seen as holding racist beliefs. Even though racial attitudes among whites have become progressively better, those attitudes don’t necessarily square with their views about policies that seek to remedy racial inequality. In fact, 73 percent of whites believe blacks should not receive any kind of special favor to overcome inequality.
racial empathy gap.
The first black president can’t call attention to the racial habits that get in the way of genuine democracy, but his election can lead some to believe the illusion that we’re post-racial.
