On April 24, 2024, the James Madison Program hosted Reihan Salam,
President of the Manhattan Institute, for a lecture titled, "After
Racialism." This event was the Annual Elizabeth M. Whelan Lecture.
Debates over race and racism — their importance to U.S. history, their
salience for present-day politics, and what steps the government should
take to address them — are central to our politics. While there is
widespread agreement that the state of race relations in America is a
matter of urgent concern, there is deep disagreement over the nature of
the problem. Is it the persistence of racial disparities in income,
wealth, and elite representation, regardless of whether they’re the
product of state-enforced racial discrimination or the uneven
distribution of social capital across families and informal networks at a
given point in time? Or is the problem the brightness of the boundaries
separating minority ethnic groups from the societal mainstream? Call
this the distinction between anti-racists and anti-racialists. Both want
racial progress, but they have drastically different understandings of
what racial progress would look like. As anti-racist ideology has grown
pervasive in elite liberal institutions, from universities to the media
to the leadership of the Democratic Party, critics have warned that an
obsessive focus on racial disparities and differences represents a
threat to integration and civic harmony. What would it take to move
American public life beyond racialism, and what new dilemmas and
cultural formations might emerge if racialism were to recede?
Reihan Salam is the fifth president of the Manhattan Institute, a
research and advocacy organization that advances opportunity, individual
liberty, and the rule of law in American cities. He was a 2010 Bernard
L. Schwarz Fellow at the New America Foundation and a 2015 Pritzker
Fellow at the University of Chicago. Mr. Salam is the author of Melting
Pot or Civil War? (Sentinel, 2018) and the co-author, with Ross Douthat,
of Grand New Party (Doubleday, 2008). He is a contributing writer at
The Atlantic, a contributing editor at National Affairs and National
Review, and a political commentator for CNN. A life member of the
Council on Foreign Relations, Mr. Salam serves on the Public Scholars
Advisory Committee at the Moynihan Center at The City College of New
York, the Advisory Council of The Public Interest Fellowship, and the
Advisory Board of Harvard Alumni for Free Speech.
Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any event does not constitute
departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program,
speakers or views presented.
