The Center for Brooklyn History joined two leading scholars on race and democracy for this virtual conversation about racial politics, loss, and freedom. Juliet Hooker (Brown University) wrote Black Grief/White Grievance, contrasting a tradition of Black political mobilization spurred by violent death and subsequent public mourning, with a politics of white grievance that imagines the U.S. as a white country under siege. Contesting the expectation that Black citizens serve as political heroes whose civic suffering enables progress toward racial justice, Hooker argues that Black and white Americans must both learn to sit with loss for different reasons and to different ends. In her book Toni Morrison: Imagining Freedom, Lawrie Balfour (University of Virginia) presents Morrison as a political thinker whose work illuminates what freedom and unfreedom mean in a democratic society founded on both the defense of liberty and the right to enslave. She argues that Morrison’s writing presents fresh perspectives on freedom-seeking. Together Balfour and Hooker assessed the contours of racial politics in the U.S., bringing new and creative insights to this urgent topic.
Recorded December 18, 2023.