Race, Justice, and American Liberalism

US liberalism blocks the radical structural and institutional changes necessary to bring about justice more equally enjoyed by all. This book challenges liberal diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) approaches, which emphasize the importance of listening, learning, sitting in discomfort, dialoguing, and collaborative problem-solving with others. Arguing this approach doesn’t and can’t work in the conditions of US liberalism, Jennifer Kling and Leland Harper suggest that humanists, scholars, activists, and community members must radically reimagine what political power is and how it ought to function to bring about the best future possible in a globalized, growing, technologized, and burning world. Race, Justice, and American Liberalism brings together a number of philosophical and political—theoretical and practical—domains of discourse. By creating such a collage of ongoing conversations and debates that ordinarily function in isolation from one another, Kling and Harper work to substantially change the dominant liberal narrative surrounding DEIJ, US politics, and futurity. They offer a theoretical framework that is complete enough and nuanced enough to operate well at both a highly abstract level of discourse (the scholarship) and on the ground in the day-to-day (the activism). Their work thus advances political philosophical thought by setting out the groundwork for a new program of political philosophical research and activism.