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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The White Moderate: Why Racial Equality Demands Radicalism

The White Moderate: Why Racial Equality Demands Radicalism

Maher, Chauncey

Hardcover

PhilosophyBlack American Studies

ISBN10: 1041138377
ISBN13: 9781041138372
Publisher: Routledge
Published: Aug 11 2026
Pages: 168
Weight: 0.90
Height: 0.44 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

White moderates have been a hidden obstacle to black-white equality in the United States for over two centuries. This book offers the first philosophical critique of their role in impeding racial progress and perpetuating black-white inequality.

Taking his cue from Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail, the author defines white moderates as those who embrace the need for progress while opposing immediate action due to fears of social disorder. By acting on these commitments, they have contributed to the persistence of both moral and material inequality. The goal of this book is to diagnose and critique the white moderates' philosophical position. It argues that white moderates have crafted unreasonable compromises in response to legitimate calls for reform. In doing so, they support social closure: practices of hoarding and exploitation that sustain black-white inequality. The book then turns to the moderates' own case for incrementalism, reconstructing it as a four-premise argument: radical change provokes catastrophic violence, is otherwise unpredictable, cannot secure durable consensus, whereas incremental gains justify their short-term costs. The books alleges this case is mistaken on both historical and moral grounds. It rests on an unduly narrow conception of radicalism; a more accurate conception reveals that truth-telling, institution-building, and norm-contestation have all won lasting progress. Moderates reason from a false baseline that ignores the ongoing violence of an unjust status quo; they treat delay as neutral when it actively entrenches closure; they overstate the durability of their own brittle compromises; and they wrongly require individuals to forfeit their lifetime to a deferred collective good. Thus, amid deep-seated social closure, moderation is ineffective and not morally compelling. In these respects, white moderates are a significant impediment to equality.

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