The Case for Unabashed Black Patriotism
A Thanksgiving message from Glenn Loury
Thanksgiving 2024
THE CASE FOR UNABASHED BLACK PATRIOTISM
A Thanksgiving message
I am a black American intellectual in an age of persistent racial inequality. I am compelled to speak unspeakable truths concerning race in America. I wish to make the case for unabashed black patriotism—for the forthright embrace of American nationalism by black people.
Racial inequality is real. American politics obsesses to an unhealthy extent about racial identity. Downplaying racial behavioral disparities is a bluff. Socially mediated behavioral issues lie at the root of today's racial inequality problem. Admitting this is a painful necessity.
We need to put the police killings of black Americans into perspective. For every black person killed by the police, more than twenty-five others meet their ends because of homicides committed by other blacks. Framing these events primarily as racial poses a terrible threat.
An ideology dominated by “white guilt” and “white privilege” cannot exist except to give birth to a “white pride” backlash. The correct idea is to transcend racial particularism and stress the universality of our humanity and the commonality of our interests as Americans.
The narrative we blacks settle upon is crucial. Will we regard the U.S. as racist, genocidal, and illegitimate? Or will we see our nation as the greatest force for human liberty on the planet? Emancipation and incorporation of African-descended people were monumental achievements.
If we blacks want to be truly equal, we must realize that white people cannot give us equality. We must seize equal status, inspired by our enslaved and freed ancestors. What will we do with our freedom, our enormous inheritance of birthright citizenship in this great republic?
All of us Americans have so much to be thankful for. Let us reflect upon our blessings, and embrace our love of country, this Thanksgiving.
Glenn C. Loury is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University. As an academic economist, Professor Loury has published mainly in the areas of applied microeconomic theory, game theory, industrial organization, natural resource economics, and the economics of race and inequality. As a prominent social critic and public intellectual, writing mainly on the themes of racial inequality and social policy, Professor Loury has published over 200 essays and reviews in journals of public affairs in the U.S. and abroad. His books include One by One, From the Inside Out: Essays and Reviews on Race and Responsibility in America (The Free Press, 1995); The Anatomy of Racial Inequality (Harvard University Press, 2002, reissued in 2021 with a new preface); Ethnicity, Social Mobility and Public Policy: Comparing the US and the UK (ed., with Tariq Modood and Steven M. Teles, Cambridge University Press, 2005); and Race, Incarceration and American Values (M.I.T. Press, 2008). His latest book is his memoir, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative (W. W. Norton & Company, 2024). Glenn’s first essay for the Journal of Free Black Thought was our inaugural essay.
As for me and my family, we have always been patriotic with generations of service members in the military and civilian ranks. I would restate your phrase as this: The narrative we settle upon is crucial. Will we regard the U.S. as racist, genocidal AND as the greatest force for human liberty on the planet? Emancipation and incorporation of African-descended people ARE monumental achievements in progress along with all others who claim the title of American. We are both - and to turn a blind eye to one is to diminish the power of the other. Holding the two two thoughts together is what gives me the most hope and appreciation for our country.
Dr. Loury, your comments are very appropriate and valid, up to certain degrees. You seem to believe, according to your words, that America can only be seen as either a genocidal, destructive, and racist earthly hell or as the greatest hope for liberty on earth. Dr. Loury, wouldn't it be more reasonable, and more historically valid, to understand America as an enterprise that works according to how she lives up to her high ideals. All Americans should understand that, to paraphrase Langston Hughes, America will not be America when she falls short of her ideals, let alone actively contradicts her ideals as has been the historical experience of her children of color. Langston Hughes, I believe, expressed a very valid and patriotic notion as to the mode of patriotism which would serve America well: "O let America be America again-The land that never been yet-and yet must be."