“Race and Prophecy”
George Shulman/New York University
APSA Annual Conference September 05
It seems impossible to think about the politics of race in the
United States without being compelled toward prophecy as a form of
political theory and practice. I mean this less as a statement of
historical fact, though it is, and more as an invitation to pursue the
idea that an elective affinity joins anti-racism, prophetic language,
and political contestation. Since liberalism is constituted by
disavowing its deep connection to racial domination, and since
liberalism’s cognate forms of democratic theory echo this willful
innocence, the avoidance of race has meant default on a democratic
project, and a conception of politics impoverished by fear of what
race is taken to signify -passion, irrationality, embodiment,
vulnerability, impurity, and mortality. In contrast, those who engage
racism are drawn to prophecy to revitalize politics. But why and how?
These claims about race, prophecy, and politics may seem absurd
on their face, if we witness prophecy in the zealous moral claims of
George Bush, whose theistic invocation of moral absolutes squeezes out
any space for politics. The dogmatic self-righteousness of the Bush
regime thus drives critics to reaffirm liberal constitutionalism and
its professed norms of tolerant pluralism and civil deliberation. But
at worst, these are the smiley face of white supremacy, and at best,
have proven inadequate to the task of overcoming it. Might we better
engage neo-liberal fundamentalism by criticizing false prophecy and
advancing a political counter-prophecy? I pursue this intuition
through passages in Toni Morrison essays that relate prophecy and
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