by JOHN STOEHR
I think we need to think about the meaning of freedom, and how the meaning is so often colored by the right-flank of history.
I think we need to think about it, because the fact that we don’t is why all of us, including liberals, spend so much time talking about “positive” versus “negative” freedom, as if an “active” or “passive” government were really on the minds of ordinary citizens.
It’s also why we all of us, including liberals, spend so much time talking about freedom as if it’s doing whatever I want to whomever I want and whether doing whatever I want to whomever I want is good or bad.
I think we don’t think about the meaning of freedom for a couple of reasons. One, those who have inhabited the right-flank of the history of the United States have tended to be white elites with the most money to spend and the most time to spend the most money on influencing how the rest of us think, about freedom, but much more.
The other reason is more subtle. Most people in America are white. I think whiteness has a kind of pacifying effect on many of us such that problems appear to be problems when and usually only when someone somewhere, usually non-white, brings white people’s attention to it. In ways large and small, these forces conspire to create conditions in which freedom is conceived so narrowly as to be virtually invisible.
This is bad for nonwhite people. Their suffering ends up constituting the “freedom” white people feel. But it’s also bad for white people. I think many of us don’t feel free, because we have not used the feeling of being free to pursue more sophisticated feelings of freedom. We haven’t pursued those feelings because white elites would rather we didn’t. (Thinking is dangerous to the political order.) We haven’t pursued those feelings, because whiteness pacifies many of us.
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