Kadish Workshop in Law, Philosophy, and Political Theory: Keidrick Roy, Harvard University

Can Black Liberalism Save US?: The Case for Prudential Politics

Abstract 

This paper challenges important critiques of liberalism raised by Eddie Glaude, Fredrick C. Harris, and Michael Dawson. Drawing on a rich and under-theorized archive of African American liberal thought, I distinguish mainstream black liberalism—as a framework for constructive social transformation—from neoliberalism on the political right and cultural libertinism on the political left. In clarifying these differences, I reveal the positive project of black liberalism—which I primarily conceptualize through fresh readings of Barack Obama’s political philosophy vis-à-vis the early black American liberal tradition—to be the most productive model for achieving substantive political gains in our perilous moment of narrow-minded nationalisms, incipient fascism, and reactionary illiberal ideologies. In resisting the charge that black liberalism circumscribes the imaginative possibilities of radical political transformation, I show how its philosophical project fruitfully leverages the methods of prudential politics, targeted universalism, and mutual respectability to establish viable (if provisional) reforms to the existing order that complement rather than impede the forward-looking objectives of black liberalism’s sharpest critics.

About Keidrick Roy, Harvard University:

Keidrick Roy is a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and author of American Dark Age: Racial Feudalism and the Rise of Black Liberalism (Princeton Univeristy Press, 2024). He works at the intersection of American history, literature, and political thought from the Revolutionary era to the present. Keidrick’s interdisciplinary scholarship appears in Modern Intellectual History, New Literary History, English Literary History, and American Political Thought. In July, he will be an Assistant Professor of Government at Dartmouth College.

About the workshop:

A workshop for presenting and discussing work in progress in moral, political, and legal theory. The central aim is to provide an opportunity for students to engage with philosophers, political theorists, and legal scholars working on normative questions. Another aim is to bring together people from different disciplines who have strong normative interests or who speak to issues of potential interest to philosophers and political theorists.

The theme for Spring 2025 is “Critics of Liberalism,” and we will host scholars working in Philosophy, Law, History, and Political Science. Our underlying concern will be the normative critiques of substantive liberal ideas from both the left and right, as well as staunch defenders of liberalism.

This semester the workshop is co-taught by Joshua Cohen and Desmond Jagmohan.