Abstract:

In April 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama, eight white clergymen called on black people to abandon their demonstrations and wait. From his jail cell, Martin Luther King wrote that he had almost reached the regrettable conclusion that such white moderates were a greater stumbling block to black freedom than the Klan. Even hedged, the charge is startling. Advising people to wait for freedom does not obviously do much to keep them unfree, and these clergymen endorsed the very equality the demonstrators sought. So, what did they do to black people of Birmingham? I argue that under conditions of entrenched racial inequality, saying 'wait' is an exercise of domination. White moderates certify calls for equality, lending them the imprimatur of legitimacy, while de-certifying the means of pursuing it as dangerous or premature. In doing so, they undermine a claim to equal standing while assuming the authority to decide when that standing is granted.

 
Bio:

Chauncey Maher is the Thomas Bowman Professor of Philosophy at Dickinson College. This year he published The White Moderate with Routledge. In years past, he published Plant Minds and The Pittsburgh School, also with Routledge.