By Irami Osei-Frimpong (January 30, 2019) Heather Heyer died for going to a rally against White supremacists. She didn’t wake up that day to die. She woke up that day to go to a rally against White supremacy. But she paid the price. That’s simply what justice costs. Our unwillingness to pay that price is why we ended Reconstruction. I…
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By Irami Osei-Frimpong (December 18, 2018) Race IS a deformation of class. As gender IS a deformation of class. So if you keep class politics, but don’t go after race politics, you’ve ignored all of the ways in which class politics comes in as race politics. If you go after gender and don’t go after class, you’ll have created two…
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By Irami Osei-Frimpong (October 8, 2018) I’ve read that as a rough rule, political movements initially start out off as free speech movements. In campus life, it makes sense at first blush, especially when you’ve been to Berkeley. But I think it papers over the social question. We still haven’t figured out how political freedom works while you still depend…
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By Irami Osei-Frimpong (May 24, 2018) I study alienation and how freedom comes through well-ordered institutional structures, like marriage, employment, and politics. Our problem isn’t marriage, employment, or politics, the problem is that have a bad culture around institutions like marriage, employment or politics. We have bad marriages, bad jobs, and bad politics. There are such things as a good…
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By Irami Osei-Frimpong (April 2, 2018) The number of times I hear some version of, “You can’t expect white people to ever be fair” is astounding. I hear this from white and black people across the education divide. Honestly, the people who are the most smug about this as a truism are white women with lots and lots of degrees….
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By Irami Osei-Frimpong (March 19, 2018) I think that a whole lot of political problems come from an inability to share power with genuine people you may not necessarily like. This barrier is baked into our political culture, though I will say that there are marked differences between subordinate and dominant groups, for a variety of reasons. Well-ordered democracies concern…
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By Irami Osei-Frimpong (February 23, 2018) I’m serious when I say that institutions should be judged by their capacity to help people govern, both govern themselves and with others. I worry that charity institutions provide services without growing people’s capacity to govern. This breeds accountability problems, and more importantly, since these institutions emerge as a matter of charity, not justice,…
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By Irami Osei-Frimpong (February 13, 2018) The basic problem is that our rights were conceived with property owning white men in mind. These rights presupposed economic security and independence. Security and independence came in the form of property. And that’s why the Constitution is primarily concerned with securing property rights. Also the exercise of rights relies on the collegiate fraternity…
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By Irami Osei-Frimpong (February 5, 2018) You have to understand that when you have access to property and an independent, above subsistence income, your conception of rights is markedly different from someone without property and depends on a non-contract employer for an income. The Founders conceived of rights for people like themselves. In order to exercise any of the rights…
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By Irami Osei-Frimpong (January 28, 2018) I’ve been thinking about Ann Richards and Obama. Everyone loves Ann Richards. I think she was great. Or at least I think she was fine. She won Texas without teaching people how to govern, so it snapped right back. Obama is similarly blessed. There are no principled Obama Democrats. The Obama coalition is held…
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By Irami Osei-Frimpong (January 22, 2018) What if a subset of women composed the second biggest obstacle to gender justice in issues like affordable childcare, eldercare, fair wages and Union empowerment for women who work lower prestige jobs, etc. What if this subset of women blamed poor and working class women for being poor and working class as a way…
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