Safety, friendship, and dreams

In this Essay, I argue that the unfinished work of the Civil Rights Movement is observable through state failure to respect and protect three intertwined social entitlements—safety, friendship, and dreams—in many high-poverty African-American communities. One might envision these entitlements as part of a bundle of rights and privileges that constitute full membership in the American community.2 American government, at the national, state, and local levels, has routinely fallen short of its obligations to equitably safeguard these aspects of American life and has bungled most attempts to change course. The Essay also discusses the challenges of viscerally understanding the depths of these failures and the need for new conceptions of legal and social change to recognize and respond to them. To build these arguments, I weave together narratives based on interview research, sociological theory, and analysis of case law.