Heather McGhee’s formulation in The Sum of Us[1] (SOU) is the most compelling I’ve seen for how Americans might transform the We the People of our nation’s Declaration from fantasy to reality, an inclusive reality, one wherein the nation’s several races enjoy equity of opportunity and are equally welcome, one wherein its We is truthful, not a code for We Whites. Put differently, within SOU, which I view as an overarching principle for constructing legislative policy at every governmental level as well as one for guiding activist organizations, such as unions, is the implication that white supremacy, though an embodiment of racism, will not successfully be overcome by speaking only in racial language. McGhee persuades me. Our common economic and social interests, those identifiable and expressible in racially neutral terms, must be the fulcrum for a national effort toward progress, toward confronting inequity, racial and otherwise.

Adopting such a view does not demote suggestions for social reform of Ibram X. Kendi[2] and others that are principally expressible in racial language. To highlight, for example, two, now already famous, of Kendi’s: a focus on results over intentions or attitudes in policies implemented in the name of racial equity; and a binary distinction within the definition of racism itself (anti-racist OR racist). Each may prove not only useful but essential within an array of stratagems for supplementing a SOU foundation. Nor does such a view set aside the value of a national program of racially based financial restitution. The reasoning behind awarding primacy to SOU is this: a variable within selfhood itself, who-one-is-by comparison-to…[3] for historical reasons in America promotes racist presumption that is for many, if not most, persons too deeply embedded for dislodgement or reformation by means of argument; such presumption, and a self’s reliance on it, must wash away within a river of self-assurance come together from other streams. Without explicitly antiracist policies as strategic complements, though, SOU by itself is a principle at risk for supremacist corruption.

The language of antiracism and its politics could use reformation. A habit of referring to racist acts and policies in moral terms that characterize those who commit and support them, is, I think, worn out. It has been one woefully inefficient for bringing about racial equity—if American history may be taken in evidence. Who one is, including who one is morally, is not defined by the moral quality of one’s acts. Who one is and What one does are categorically distinct, however tempting, and universally so, the impulse to conflate them. A relationship must hold between a cruel or otherwise injurious action and the intention of its agent before the agent for the action may be judged to be cruel as a person, by comparison with being a person having done a cruel thing. I may vouch for this much about my own mind on the matter. I’m done with labeling anyone good or bad. People do good things. People do bad things. The reasons they do either are just that, reasons. And those I’ll leave, insofar as I myself owe anything by way of explanation, for another day. In the meantime, the sooner we Americans call actions (or inactions), not persons, racist or antiracist, the better. Perhaps giving up a bad habit, flinging pejorative labels onto persons, will help us no end in understanding why we do bad, cruel things—racist things not least among them—and thereby design useful—yes, judged by results—curtailments for them.

But, hey, Isn’t “white supremacy” a useful phrase? Doesn’t a white American’s reflection on his own dose of a white-supremacist presumption prove useful to his self-correction? Does the phrase not refer to an attitude rather than an action? Is it not an aspect of who one is, rather than an aspect of what one has done? If so, isn’t what I’ve just said contradicted? I believe the answer to each of these questions, except for the last, is yes. Excusing myself from contradiction I lay out as follows. Yes, the who/what distinction is fruitful. But it is not the last that may and should be said in many an instance. Here I’d point out that who is not a static, fixed “thing.” It is inescapably enigmatic[4], and it’s life-long a work in progress. If who one is becomes stuck, it’s ill, disordered. It is also subject to abrupt transformation under the stress of circumstance, as Philip Zimbardo has so forcefully made clear.[5] Environment of the social kind, and especially the educational opportunities it provides, is a powerful force in its development. We are not self-created; we emerge from genes, families, communities, micro-cultures, cultures, and circumstance. I am not the author of myself; I grow into authorship (if I’m lucky). If white supremacy has become a feature of my identity, it may or may not be a feature I have recognized, become aware of. And if I’ve become aware of it, I may or may not see it as (a feature of) me versus a “fact” about the world—again, depending on my moral fortune, my draw from a kind of moral lottery, so to speak. So, slouching toward 80 (next May), to paraphrase Yeats, Didion, and a host of others, I’m done with blaming people for who they are, in the same way I’m done with blaming them for what they do: there are reasons in each case. Consider serial killers and see if you don’t agree.[6]

Our moral charge is not to blame but to mend. If you’re capable, mend yourself of a presumptive endorsement of white supremacy, and keep at it. Where you’re able, take every anti-racist action open to you that you can squeeze into your circumstance. Do that in the interest of correcting the opportunities that attract racist cruelty. Keep your eye on the ball: it’s the formation and reformation of social policy, politics, in short, that will do most to correct racial inequity and injustice and, if you’re white, the most to address your racist ancestral sins.[7]

How am I myself performing, according to the canon, Favor Mending over Blaming, that I prescribe? Well, I mess up all the time, at least daily. I’m a work in progress. I’ll try again: I’m working at progress, and I’d better hurry.

[1] One World, New York, 2021.

[2] How To Be An Antiracist. One World, New York, 2019.

[3] I.e., the dominant/submissive behavioral program that humans share with other primates.

[4] See the book Tom Davis and I wrote together: Story by Story: Who I Am, What I Suffer, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, 2019.

[5] The Lucifer Effect, Random House, New York, 2008.

[6] Adshead, Gwen and Eileen Horne. The Devil You Know. Scribner, New York, 2021.

[7] Just as examples of writings pertinent to the phrase ancestral sin in a racial context, see: Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power, One World, New York, 2017; Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Begin Again, Crown, New York, 2020.