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This chapter argues that taking racialized solidarity into account in theories of multiculturalism requires that existing normative justifications of minority group rights be reframed in order to make whiteness visible. This entails focusing arguments for such rights on the need to reverse past and continuing disadvantages suffered by subordinated groups as a result of either cultural difference and/or racial hierarchy, thereby reintegrating the two branches of the multiculturalism literature. This would bring questions of collective injustice to the forefront of debates about minority group rights, which are one of the few instances where the content of the political community's public memory is challenged and the differences between the ethical-political perspectives of dominant and subordinated groups are confronted. Through such processes of contestation the ethical-political perspectives of dominant groups might be transformed, thereby leading to the development of greater political will to achieve racial justice.

This book is about how white people can move from passivity to action in response to racism in America. This chapter argues that further progress in racial justice depends on many more white Americans coming to an understanding of racism and developing a commitment to take positive action. Most whites do not want to keep people of color down; they do not work intentionally to do so. Rather, they remain passive or apathetic in the face of continued racial inequality in the United States. The discussion stresses the difficult circumstances of poor African Americans. Racism has historically been so intertwined with economic exploitation that it has never made sense to dichotomize the two.

How can white Americans come to care enough about racism that they move from passivity to action for racial justice? This book looked for clues to answer that question by examining the lives and self-understanding of white people who have made that move and became committed activists for racial justice. This chapter brings the pieces together to develop a more integrated explanation, highlighting the broader implications of the findings of this project for advancing racial justice in the United States. It also notes how Barack Obama gave white Americans a chance to support a better future for themselves, for people of color, and for the entire country. The chapter explains how whites can come to support racial justice not just because they should do so, but also because they fully embrace the cause as their own.

This introductory chapter presents the main arguments of the book: that the disparate ethical-historical perspectives developed by dominant and subordinated racialized groups have enormous consequences for how remedies to racialized oppression are adjudicated in the public sphere, and that as a result theorists of multiculturalism must begin to grapple with the obstacle the racialized politics of solidarity poses to the long-term project of achieving racial justice. It explains the concept of racialized solidarity and shows its pervasive presence in most diverse democracies, despite assumptions to the contrary. Key terms are defined and an overview of the objectives and structure of the book is provided.

For the scholars who disagree with the solutions put forward in the previous chapter, it is whites who must dismantle the racialized society. But since the majority group benefits from the racialized society, why would it be willing to work against its own racial advantage? From a utilitarian premise, no real reason exists for individuals in the majority group to want change the racial status quo. Another persistent problem for those advocating majority-group obligations is that past racial discrimination was quite blatant and easy to see. Advocates of racial solutions that emphasize majority-group obligations appeal to racial justice as a holistic approach for racial healing and thus a necessary component in solving the problems of racial alienation. This chapter explores racial justice and its importance in eliminating racism in the United States. It also discusses the concept of white responsibility, antiracism, the deconstruction of whiteness, reparations, critical race theory, multiculturalism, Marxism, and Cornel West's book entitled Race Matters (2001).

This chapter argues that seminal experiences tend to be abrupt events which change white people's racial perspective. Such an experience does not itself lead to commitment, but rather the meaning that white people attribute to this experience matters, and that is a deeply moral issue. People appear to be led toward racial justice activism when they see a contradiction between their community's deeply held values and the reality of racism. According to activists, they experience a moral shock and develop a moral impulse through direct experience, not primarily through reading. The chapter also suggests that colleges are key places for the early development of racial justice commitment. Young white people meet professors and students who can help them interpret seminal experiences and deepen a racial justice perspective.

This chapter explores in detail the kinds of visions that white activists construct. These activists are not primarily visionaries. Rather, they work in the present to create their future visions. In other words, they work to create a just society as they build multiracial communities, collaborate with people of color, engage with other whites, and work to establish racially just institutional policies and practices. If they started with a moral impulse to act for others, through their activism they come to see racial justice as essential to their own humanity and to the well-being of all Americans. The discussion suggests that, compared to other forms of social justice, racial justice activism perhaps has an even stronger moral edge for white Americans.

Today's activists have not given up on the goal of multiracial community, but they have learned from the experiences of the 1960s to make a more conscious effort to address the inevitable tensions that underlie multiracial work. Nevertheless, the “weight of history and institutions” remains. This chapter discusses how activists attempt to address these challenges and negotiate these dilemmas, looking at lessons learned in building multiracial collaborations capable of working toward racial justice. Activists find that whites can ignore racial differences, working out of color-blind assumptions, and stress becoming aware of and addressing racial differences openly within multiracial collaborations. However, whites can also make the opposite error of essentializing race. They can become so overly self-aware of racial differences that they fail to deal with people of color as fellow human beings and lose their own sense of themselves.

The central aims of the book—to show that racialized solidarity poses a significant obstacle to racial justice, and to consider how theories of multiculturalism might incorporate the promotion of political solidarity (both between disadvantaged groups, and between subordinated groups and dominant groups) into their conceptual apparatus—are discussed. The principal contributions of the book are noted, including (a) developing the concept of racialized solidarity, (b) bringing together African American political philosophy, theories of multiculturalism, and the literature on solidarity in political theory in order to develop a distinctive approach to the problem of racial justice, and (c) bringing Latin American experiences with multiculturalism to the forefront of debates about minority group rights in political theory.

This chapter notes that white activists fall between their social identity with other whites and their political stance with communities of color. In other words, they share a history and culture with mainstream white Americans, but they have made a political break with its dominant ideology and values. Yet the power of racial identification maintains some distance between them and communities of color. Activists seem to accept a degree of tension today while working toward building a new community based upon shared values in the moral and political project of racial justice. A few activists become loners in a sense, people who do not care so much about belonging. However, the vast majority seek a place in which to belong in activist communities. In the end, multiracial political solidarity needs to rest upon progress in creating multiracial social solidarity.

This chapter examines the effects on white activists of relationships with people of color. People of color develop their understanding of racism in part from their own experience and that of their family members, neighbors, and friends. The discussion shows that white people can also develop an ethic of care. Relationships with people of color are a key link in the development of an understanding of racism and a commitment that makes the political issue of racial justice personal. The first part of the chapter examines the various ways that relationships increase white people's understanding of racism. The second part discusses how activists create close bonds with people of color and come to care about racism.

This chapter discusses how there were four national statistical races as of the twentieth century: European White, African Black, American Indian Red, and Asian Yellow. They were put to policy work in restricting immigration in the 1920s and for racial segregation more generally until the civil rights challenge dramatically arrived in the 1960s. The chapter traces how a policy instrument used to politically, economically, and socially exclude since the nation's founding made a 180-degree turn and was used to include the racial groups historically sent to the back of the bus—both literally and figuratively. It is a story of how proactive policies of racial justice were shaped with racial statistics never intended for the policy uses to which they were put.

This chapter discusses how evangelical progressives viewed racism as an institutionalized injustice that needed remedial public programs and policies. It considers inequalities faced by the African American people which led to the early activism of the evangelical movement. Indignation at minorities' consistent lack of socioeconomic resources became a recurrent theme in Sojourners, The Other Side, and the publications of Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA), and leaders condemned fiscal policies that exacerbated their already disproportionate poverty. In the 1970s, progressive evangelicals participated in the growing international opposition to separation in South Africa. Evangelical leaders hoped that their movement towards racism would revolutionize how the white evangelicals interpreted racial issues.

Following the guilty verdict in the trial of the Wilmington Ten, a broad based movement developed in North Carolina, the larger United States, and the world to overturn the convictions on appeal and set them free. The movement to free the Wilmington Ten in all its phases developed along multiple independent but intersecting paths. How interested parties along these paths, like the United Church of Christ, the Commission for Racial Justice, the National Alliance against Racist and Political Repression organized themselves and cooperated and competed tells us much about the African American political landscape in the 1970s. From community-, school-, and church-based associations to political parties built on leftist and nationalist lines to the quickening of a stratum of black elected officials, the manners in which the campaigns to free the Wilmington Ten unfolded reveal the ways power was accrued and spent and lost. This chapter discloses the efforts of many organizations in the movement to bring the Wilmington Ten before an international audience to pressure the United States government to free the Ten. The chapter also discusses the Wilmington Ten’s continuing legal appeal, which continued to bring to light evidence of prosecutorial and government misconduct.

This chapter argues that mainstream institutions of higher education in the United States have a distinctive moral responsibility to promote corrective racial justice for Black Americans. It traces this moral responsibility to the fact that these institutions have historically been complacent actors in the perpetuation of racial injustice. According to the author, current corrective policies like affirmative action fail to allow institutions to satisfy their responsibility towards Black Americans. These policies fail, first, because their basis in the value of diversity is morally inadequate, and second, because they do not do enough to remedy Black socioeconomic disadvantage insofar as they fail to increase the number of qualified Black students seeking entry to these institutions. The author calls for additional measures to secure corrective justice. He proposes one such measure: Mainstream institutions of higher education sponsoring “academy schools” directed at serving underprivileged Black students at the primary and secondary levels.

The second wave of black child-saving initiatives was a duality of structure and agency rooted within and shaping a changing racial terrain. This chapter emphasizes the evolution of a distinct sense of self and society among black women and men after World War I, especially in the urban North. This played a role in the changing outlook and organization of black child-saving initiatives. A new self-concept and social consciousness blended gender, race, and class identities to shape more assertive, professional, and eclectic icons of the modern race man and woman. These identities intermixed notions such as the modern woman, the New Negro, and the race expert. This catalyzed, divided, and, eventually, isolated black civic leaders and organizations. This chapter also focuses on the resources mobilized during the second wave. Vanguard efforts had relied almost exclusively on the social networks and resources of black clubwomen's associations. The more robust organizational and resource base of the growing civil rights establishment supported the new leadership of black professional race experts.

The politics of purity is to be understood as informing both the ontology of race itself and the practice of racial oppression (racism), emphasizing the way in which these two moments are constitutively interrelated and interdependent. If this project is motivated by a desire to confront and address the problem of racial oppression, then it is necessary at this point to offer an account of anti-racist praxis — of liberation and racial justice. The politics of purity constrains our thinking about anti-racism and liberation in several ways. For example, the politics of purity demands that racial categories be exclusive and distinct, and that individuals belong to one and only one such category. In addition, the positivistic foundation underlying the politics of purity construes racism as the ongoing practice of the purification of reason and thus humanity. This chapter offers an account of the creolizing subject and the creolization of philosophy.