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In The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin argues that the American dream is far from being a reality in part because there is much Americans do not wish to know about themselves. Given the current political climate in the United States, this idea seems just as timely as it did in the 1960s. Baldwin’s politics and thinking about race and religion are informed by an optimistic belief in the human capacity to love and change for the better, in contrast with Ta-Nehisi Coates, the heir apparent to Baldwin’s legacy. Considering current events, it seems particularly useful to turn back to The Fire Next Time. Not only does Baldwin provide a foundation for understanding racism in the United States, but more importantly, he provides some much-needed hope and guidance for the future. Baldwin discusses democracy as an act that must be realized, in part by coming to a greater understanding of race and religion as performative acts that have political consequences for all Americans. In this article, I examine the influence of pragmatism on Baldwin’s understanding of race and religion. By encouraging readers to acknowledge race and religion as political constructs, Baldwin highlights the inseparability of theory and practice that is a hallmark of both pragmatism and the realization of a democratic society. Furthermore, I argue that Baldwin’s politics provide a more useful framework than Coates’s for this particular historical moment because of Baldwin’s emphasis on change and evolving democracy.
The idea of toleration as the appropriate response to difference has been central to liberal thought since Locke. Although the subject has been widely and variously explored, there has been reluctance to acknowledge the new meaning that current debates offer on toleration. This book starts from a clear recognition of the new terms of the debate, reflecting the capacity of seeing the other's viewpoint, and the limited extent to which toleration can be granted. Theoretical statements on toleration posit at the same time its necessity in democratic societies, and its impossibility as a coherent ideal. There are several possible objections to, and ways of developing the ideal of, reasonable tolerance as advocated by John Rawls and by some other supporters of political liberalism. The first part of the book explores some of them. In some real-life conflicts, it is unclear on whom the burden of reasonableness may fall. This part discusses the reasonableness of pluralism, and general concept and various more specific conceptions of toleration. The forces of progressive politics have been divided into two camps: redistribution and recognition. The second part of the book is an attempt to explore the internal coherence of such a transformation when applied to different contexts. It argues that openness to others in discourse, and their treatment as free and equal, is part of a kind of reflexive toleration that pertains to public communication in the deliberative context. Social ethos, religious discrimination and education are discussed in connection with tolerance.
the wearing of distinctive religious clothing by pupils in schools an assertion of the fact that all citizens are equal and that there are no special distinctions or social credit points, or is it an interference with the right of every citizen to dress as she pleases? The uncertainty of the answer, and the absence of a single, authoritative, imposed, and universal orthodoxy, is what makes for the constant uncertainty of a democratic society, but is also the mark of its necessary freedom and vitality. It is also a mark of this freedom that not only can there be
MCKIN 1/10/2003 10:15 AM Page 1 Introduction: reasonable tolerance Catriona McKinnon and Dario Castiglione Theory and practice are often at odds. Yet there is something particularly strange in the way in which the received theory and the presumed practice of toleration in contemporary societies seem to go their separate ways. Theoretical statements on toleration posit at the same time its necessity in democratic societies, and its impossibility as a coherent ideal.1 In her introduction to a comprehensive collection on tolerance and intolerance in modern life
of Wihtol de Wenden and Éric Fassin, is that the register of the normative debate about immigration is often out of step with the empirical ‘realities’ on the ground. The first part of this chapter will focus on what I will hereafter refer to as the ‘ideological’ or ‘normative’ debate, which is essentially centred on the question of cultural difference in democratic societies. The second part will discuss the contours of the academic debates which are concerned with collective mobilisation among immigrant populations and their descendants. The third section will
regulation. Laws in most modern multi-cultural and democratic societies are of necessity based on compromise. Harris would classify some of those compromises as ‘fudge’. We need to be acutely aware when we are ‘fudging’ the issue, even when ‘fudge’ is inevitable. Out with outrage, sentiment and superstition: embryos, babies and non-persons! Harris’s rejection of sentimental morality, his disgust with the ‘yuk factor’ is well documented.8 In Clones, Genes and Immortality,9 for example, he takes issue with Mary Warnock. He says in relation to the Warnock Committee’s report
meetings, and trials behind closed doors, for example – and that once this process has started it becomes increasingly difficult to stop. It is vital, therefore, to lay down in advance the rights and freedoms that must be respected in a democratic society and to create institutions to see that they are observed. If any Member State should then start on the path which leads to dictatorship, the alarm can be sounded and
. Two models of exemplarity In much of Cavell’s writing on film he seeks to show us that the protagonists of the films he terms “remarriage comedies” live a form of perfectionism that he upholds as desirable for contemporary democratic society: moral perfectionism. However, there appear to be two ways in which we can interpret exemplarity in Cavell
institutions for arguably another necessity in democratic society: an equality of opportunity. Few other venues in small towns, after all, were as focused on imparting the knowhow that turned an “equality of conditions”—Tocqueville’skey attribute of democracy—into human equality in fact. Thomas Pikettyfor one argued that “over a long period of time, the main force in favor of greater equality has been the
Educate Together network. Is it possible for denominational or religious schools to be truly inclusive and to ‘have regard to the principles and requirements of a democratic society and have respect and promote respect for the diversity of values, beliefs, traditions, languages and ways of life in society’, as the 1998 Education Act expects them to?20 The same Act may in fact be said to undermine this very expectation by allowing religious institutions to impose particular sets of values and beliefs in state-funded schools and the already mentioned legal exemptions to