Skip to main content.
Bard HAC
Bard HAC
  • About sub-menuAbout
    Hannah Arendt

    “There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.”

    Join HAC
    • About the HAC
      • Our Staff
      • About Hannah Arendt
      • Our Location
  • Programs sub-menuPrograms
    Hannah Arendt
    • Our Programs
    • Courage to Be
    • Campus Plurality Forum
    • Race and Revolution
    • Virtual Reading Group
    • Citizens' Assemblies Summer Workshop
    • Affiliated Programs
    • Hannah Arendt Humanities Network
    • Democracy Through Sortition
    • Meanings of October 27th
  • Academics sub-menuAcademics
    Hannah Arendt

    “Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.”

    • Academics at HAC
    • Undergraduate Courses
    • Practice of Courage Courses
  • Fellows sub-menuFellows
    HAC Fellows

    “Action without a name, a 'who' attached to it, is meaningless.”

    • Fellows
    • Student Fellowships
  • Conferences sub-menuConferences
    Hannah Arendt
    Conference 2021
      
    Watch the Recording

    Fall Conference 2021
    “Revitalizing Democracy”

    Thursday, Thursday, October 14 – Friday, October 15
    • Conferences
    • Past Conferences
    • Registration
    • Our Location
  • Publications sub-menuPublications
    Hannah Arendt
    Subscribe to Amor Mundi

    “I've begun so late, really only in recent years, to truly love the world ... Out of gratitude, I want to call my book on political theories Amor Mundi.”

    • Publications
    • Amor Mundi
    • HA Journal
    • Further Reading
    • Video Gallery
    • From Our Members
    • Podcasts
  • Events sub-menuEvents
    Hannah Arendt

    “It is, in fact, far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think.”

    —Hannah Arendt
    • HAC Events
    • Upcoming
    • Archive
    • Citizens' Assemblies Summer Workshop
  • Join sub-menu Join HAC
    Hannah Arendt

    “Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians.”

    • Join HAC
    • Become a Member
    • Subscribe
    • Virtual Reading Group
    • Join HAC
               
  • Search

Amor Mundi

Amor Mundi Home

 

Against Bad Ideas

08-06-2021

Glenn Loury writes the inaugural essay in the newly launched Journal of Free Black Thought:

I am no longer a Christian, but this passage in the New Testament continues to speak to me. As I interpret it now, the Apostle Paul is saying that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, not against people. Rather, it’s against bad ideas. Bad ideas are the “principalities and powers” that reside in the heads—the “high places”—of flesh-and-blood people. These bad ideas need to be combated and overcome by good ideas. It’s my pleasure to contribute this inaugural essay to the Journal of Free Black Thought, which is dedicated to the principle that in a liberal democracy, viewpoint diversity and the airing of ideas—all ideas, even ideas that we’re told aren’t properly “black”—are essential components in the struggle of good ideas against bad. 
Racial essentialism is one of these bad ideas, and it’s one that JFBT, in its rejection of the politics of authenticity, in its radical acceptance of the heterodoxy of melanated people, exists to combat. If we can't find some way of countering the underlying problematic ideological commitment to race as an essentialist category, we’re in trouble. Martin Luther King had the right idea with colorblindness, yet today it’s regarded as a microaggression to say one doesn't see color. Of course, it's impossible literally not to see color, but despite pressure from cultural elites, we needn’t give it the overarching significance we now do. In fact, if we’re going to make our experiment in democracy work, we mustn’t give it such significance.

Footer Contact
Contact HAC
Bard College
PO Box 5000
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504
845-758-7878
[email protected]
Join the HAC
Become a Member
Subscribe to Amor Mundi
Join the Virtual Reading Group
Follow Us
Image for Twitter
Image for Facebook
Image for YouTube
Image for Instagram