THE POINT OF REFORM...:

Surrounded by damaging assumptions and behavior, one is thus urged to "do the work" and be a force for positive change--to plant oneself firmly on the right side of history. And yet, for all intents and purposes, the work cannot be completed. The fight--not against tangible demons such as school segregation or stop-and-frisk or employment discrimination but for an ever more ineffable kind of social justice--acquires the eschatological complexity of the climate-change crisis in its most philosophical and even theological dimensions. It is for this reason that Ta-Nehisi Coates so memorably--and unexpectedly--concluded his memoir Between the World and Me on the dour note that white supremacy, and therefore all racial inequality, could only genuinely be dismantled by full-scale ecological destruction.

This apocalyptic framing thwarts debate and precludes taking satisfaction in hard-won social and institutional progress. The urgency of the ozone threat, and the sometimes overblown rhetoric it prompted, inspired action, not paralysis. We are a long way, rhetorically, from anything resembling King's dream or even Obama's hopeful audacity, visions whose power came from their acknowledgment, however cautious, of the possibility of progress. That optimism runs deep in the American grain--or at least it used to. The sociologist Talcott Parsons described what he called worldly instrumental activism--typified by a practical, rational urge to "master the situation"--as the hallmark of American politics, contrasting it with more utopian worldviews. As Noah Rothman argued in Commentary after the Derek Chauvin verdict, such an ethos is antithetical to pessimism. The playing field is understood to be level enough to leave one's sense of agency intact, and the exercise of this agency, far from being exhausting, is viewed as a source of empowerment. Black Lives Matter rallies really have led to greater scrutiny of police practices; exposés of discriminatory housing policy have brought awareness to the baleful legacy of redlining. Yet, Rothman continued,

that ethos is a problem from the perspective of a particular sort of activist for whom invocations of "systemic racism" have become a catechism. The understanding that the system is malleable and reformable and that its conventions can and do produce just outcomes forces you to engage with it. By contrast, the belief that the system is irredeemably flawed demands little of you but fatalism, hopelessness, and resignation.

With a certain critical outlook, then, it has become all but impossible to take "yes" for an answer--to allow for the possibility that the ozone hole can be closed. "We can choose to be sated by more cops in jail, by the cathartic promise of trials and convictions and the suggestion that this system can self-regulate," Cheney-Rice argued. "Or we can insist that bargaining for mere survival is not enough." His reaction was typical. Immediately after Chauvin was convicted, Ibram X. Kendi, arguably the most prominent voice on race in America, appeared on CBS. "Is justice convicting a police officer, or is justice convicting America?" he intoned. "The problem is structural. The problem is historic. . . . Justice has convicted America. Now we must put in the time transforming this nation." And yet the conviction of Derek Chauvin is a measure of justice. Not total justice; that does not exist. His individual punishment does not guarantee that abuses and gross violations of human dignity will never occur again. But it does signal that when they do occur, the system can hold the guilty party to account. It means that the system is not destined to be indifferent to or complicit in the justification of murder. The United States is not a perfect nation, but it has been powerfully altered since the days of Emmett Till, Rodney King, and even Eric Garner. Have we reached the summit? Not even close, and yet we would be deluded not to glance back from time to time to marvel at the plunging landscape.

Too many of us refuse to do that. It is not only that we are stuck, fixated on all that has yet to be perfected. It is that there is a certain intellectual and moral prestige in wallowing in our dissatisfaction: one may be depleted and set upon from all angles, but at least one is not corrupt or stupid. In this view, the system does not and cannot pretend to function, even--perhaps especially--when it is slowly, unceremoniously working. The real shame is that there is no space for the current and quotidian in such a dynamic, only the delayed and utopian. There is no patience for the undramatic, efficient, spiraling ascent of progress. "A minority that has agreed to believe that its life has been transformed for the better . . . is always anxious that it may have been tricked," Leon Wieseltier observed. "It is easier to believe that the world does not change than to believe that the world changes slowly. But this is a false lucidity." Not everything that adversely affects me is the product of my racial identity. Not everything that positively affects me is the result of my heteronormative masculine privilege. "A normal existence," he continued, "is an existence with many causes." What is powerful enough to deliver us from the incessant torment of being socially conscious is the daily business of living. The groceries have to be purchased and the floor has to be vacuumed. Imagine how exhausting it would be if the world really did require a total remaking in one stroke.

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