We Must Make Ourselves Equal
City Journal | Glenn Loury
An edited version of a speech Loury delivered at the 18th annual Bradley Prizes ceremony on May 17, 2022 upon which he blames demagogues and ideologues for peddling false narratives, insists that the American Dream applies to black Americans (and that those who say it doesn’t are telling a patronizing lie), pleads with black people to take up the burdens of freedom, and that equality ”is something we must wrest with our bare hands from a cruel and indifferent world by means of our own effort, inspired by the example of our enslaved and newly freed ancestors. We must make ourselves equal.”
“I have become convinced that the alienation that afflicts so many prosperous black Americans is the result of false narratives told by demagogues and ideologues about how ‘white supremacy’ threatens them, or how we have, in effect, reverted to the era of Jim Crow.”
“…[They say] that the American Dream does not apply to us black people. To say that it doesn’t apply is to tell a lie to our children about their country—a crippling lie which, when taken as gospel, robs our people of agency and a sense of control over our fate. It’s also a patronizing lie that betrays profound doubt about our ability to face up to the responsibilities and to bear the burdens of our freedom. For that is the existential challenge we black Americans now face in the twenty-first century: not to throw off the shackles of our supposed oppression but to take up the burdens of our freedom…”
“Freedom is one thing; equality, quite another. The former is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the latter. As such, it is both futile and dangerous for us black Americans to rely on others to shoulder our communal responsibilities. If we want to walk with dignity—to enjoy truly equal standing within this diverse, prosperous, and dynamic society—then we must accept the fact that ‘white America’ can never give us what we seek in response to our protests and remonstrations.”
“Equality… is something we must wrest with our bare hands from a cruel and indifferent world by means of our own effort, inspired by the example of our enslaved and newly freed ancestors. We must make ourselves equal.”
Related: The Case for Black Patriotism (Glenn Loury, Manhattan Institute, 2021)
