Epilogue (as Prologue):

Toward a Black Radical Liberalism

F

inally, some closing words. In keeping with my subtitle— The Critique
of Racial Liberalism— this book has been largely critical, focusing on
what I see as the problems of a racialized liberalism but not offering much
in the way of a positive alternative. That— large— task will have to await
another time and another book. But I  did want to add this epilogue as at
least a brief indicator of the line of argument I will be taking in my attempt
to produce a self- consciously anti- racist liberalism.^1 So I end here with an
outline of what I am calling “black radical liberalism.”
Two key clarifications are necessary. To begin with, just as feminist
liberalism is not supposed to be a liberalism only for women but rather a
liberalism that all good liberals, including males, should embrace, so black
radical liberalism should be welcomed and endorsed by white liberals also.^2
Black radical liberalism is not intended to be a particularistic and exclu-
sionary political ideology just for blacks, but rather one that fully adheres
to the standard liberal ideals— if more often betrayed than realized— of
universalism and egalitarianism. It seeks to correct the (anti- universalist,
anti- egalitarian) distortions in mainstream white liberalism, whether de
jure or de facto, introduced by the complicity of that iteration of liberalism
with white supremacy, both nationally and globally. As such, it should be
accepted (though not uncritically, of course) by conscientious white liber-
als who are presumably also committed to such a correction, purging, and
reconstruction of liberal theory.
The second point is that— given the different varieties of racism to
which other ethnoracial groups have historically been subject— the orien-
tation of my discussion by the African American experience should not be
taken as implying that I am putting forward a revisionist black liberalism as
coextensive with anti- racist liberalisms in general. Recent work in critical