Writers and orators from Frederick Douglass to Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama were up-front in their criticisms of America’s shortcomings. But they also insisted that the country’s founding principles could, if only they were fully put into practice, guide America toward a better future. The rejection of this hard-won optimism is a key theme of the identity synthesis. For a new generation of scholars, any apparent progress is liable to prove either illusory or short-lived. Racism, as Derrick Bell has repeatedly insisted, is a permanent condition that might shape-shift but has, so far,
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