Lack of agency

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

William Allen describes the time of his youth in Florida as marked by genuine racism. But somehow he did not see himself as helpless or in need of rescue. Calling it a sense of agency, he knew he could still act as an agent, could build something for himself despite the environment.

"People [his black community] were not so overcome with the spirit of oppression that they lacked agency." But that's how he sees our current time. It's the spirit of the 1619 Project, that America is and always has been defined by unredeemable racism.

Some see racism as built into the essence of America. But not Professor Allen. On the contrary, he sees the antidote to racism as built right into the essence of America: 

"[W]hat looks like a tension in the United States might just as well be thought of as the explosion of a seed planted earlier. And that seed planted earlier was planted in the Declaration of Independence . . that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator . . ." 

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