Enlightenment liberalism is losing ground in the debate about how to deal with racism

Enlightenment liberalism is losing ground in the debate about how to deal with racism

Jul 9th 2020

LIBERALISM“”the Enlightenment philosophy, not the American left“”starts with the assertion that all human beings have equal moral worth. From that stem equal rights for all. Libertarians see those principles as paramount. For left-leaning liberals, equal moral worth also brings an entitlement to the resources necessary for an individual to flourish.

Yet when it comes to race many liberals have failed to live up to their own values. "We hold these truths to be self-evident,“ wrote Thomas Jefferson in America's Declaration of Independence in 1776, "that all men are created equal.“ More than a decade later the Founding Fathers would write into the country's constitution that a slave was in fact to be considered three-fifths of a person. In Europe many liberals opposed slavery but supported despotic imperial rule overseas. "Perhaps liberal theory and liberal history are ships passing in the night,“ speculated Uday Singh Mehta of the City University of New York in 1999.

What lies behind this failure? That question is especially important today. Norms are shifting fast. The global protests that sprang up after the killing of George Floyd denounced racism throughout society. Companies, often pressed by their own employees, are in a panic about their lack of