Table Of ContentThe Color of Our Shame
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Th e Color of Our Shame
Race and Justice in Our Time
Christopher J. Lebron
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1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lebron, Christopher J.
Th e color of our shame : race and justice in our time / Christopher J. Lebron.
pages cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–993634–2 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. African Americans—Social conditions—
21st century. 2. African Americans—Politics and government—21st century. 3. Racism—Political aspects—
United States. 4. Equality—United States. 5. United States—Race relations. I. Title.
E185.615.L39 2013
305.896(cid:99)073—dc23
2012047295
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings of
institutions, that appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticize them and attack them
in such a manner that political violence [that] has always exercised itself obscurely through
them will be unmasked, so that one may fi ght against them.
— Michel Foucault (debate with Noam Chomsky)
Human nature being what we know it to be, there were, inevitably, examples of selfi sh fancies,
feigned distractions, treacherous appeals to an all-too-easy sentimentality, deceptively seductive
maneuverings, but there were also cases of admirable selfl essness, of the kind that still allow us
to believe that if we persevere in these and other such gestures worthy of abnegation we will, in
the end, more than fulfi ll our small part in the monumental project of creation.
— Jose Saramago , Seeing
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Contents
Preface ix
Introduction 1
1. Shame and Method 1 6
2. Th e Problem of Social Value 4 3
3. Marshall’s Lament 72
4. Th e Souls of American Folk: C rash , an American Tale 97
5. Racial Justice in Our Time 1 22
Epilogue: Th e Agony of a Racial Democracy 1 55
Notes 167
Acknowledgments 189
Index 193
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Preface
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Now would be a good time for us to become acquainted, for you are about to join me
on a philosophical journey I began in 2005. I had entered the ranks of MIT’s graduate
program in Political Science the year before, aft er graduating from Baruch College, a part
of the City University of New York—a low-cost, public university system. And all was
not well. With all due respect to Baruch, a fi ne institution, MIT represented a signifi cant
departure and is in a rarefi ed league comprised of an elite community, from faculty all the
way down to fi rst-year undergraduates. From a strictly intellectual point of view, it felt a
bit like stepping into an empty elevator shaft . Growing up where and how I did (lower
class SES in the Lower East Side of Manhattan), I was ill-prepared for the intellectual and
academic life demanded by MIT. But it is not strictly this part of the experience to which
I am referring. Although I will return to the nature of the intellectual departure, the more
immediately aff ecting departure was sociological.
When I entered MIT’s program, my intention was to pursue applying John Rawls’s
work to the international arena because I had been fascinated for some time with the
distinction between murder within a polity and the sanction to kill others in war so long
as they were others, thus enemies. It is fair to say that this project refl ected a personal
fascination and I thought Rawls would be a good walking partner in exploring it.
But, personally, other matters became not merely interesting but urgent.
M IT has a dorm that is known as Chocolate City. Know why it’s called that? Well,
because of the relatively few brown folks who attend and have historically attended, that’s
where they tend to live. I would not have believed this story when I fi rst heard it (I mean,
it’s the twenty-fi rst century, right?) if it wasn’t for the fact that one of my fi rst interesting
experiences on campus was that random brown folks were sure to greet me as if to say,
“Hey, you’re here too!” Th is was strange for me as I grew up in New York City where the
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