Journal Article

Where Is The Love That You Promised?

McKnight, Utz Lars

2014

Overview

There is a difference between social equality that permits Blacks to interact with Whites, to say hello on the street or create intimate relationships, or not to defer as social inferiors in line at a restaurant or in the workplace, and political equality necessary to allow for civil rights, to contribute to the making of law, and to be an active participant in the democratic polity. The dead body of Michael Brown lying in the street, the attempt by the police department to justify the killing by suggesting that he was a robbery suspect, the hostility and armed aggression of the police in response to the subsequent protests, all of these events substantiate for African Americans the lack of political progress made in the society since the 1960s. Echoing unwittingly a political description of the importance that W. E. B. DuBois placed much earlier in the last century on the idea of race as two communities in conflict, indissoluble in liberal democratic politics, Hannah Arendt states the following in an interview: \"I hope I don't shock you if I tell you that I'm not at all sure that I'm a liberal. Copyright © 2014 Utz Lars McKnight and The Johns Hopkins University Press Utz Lars McKnight Utz McKnight is Chair of the Department of Gender and Race Studies and Associate Professor of Political Science at The University of Alabama.

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Subject: Arendt, Hannah / Brown, Michael / Wilson, Darren