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When former Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick stood before the Morehouse College Class of 2015 to deliver his commencement address, he joined a host of notable black men, who, in recent years have ascended to the heights of American public service and have too charged black men and boys to be exceptional. Nothing is particularly novel about the charge. Barack Obama unveiled “My Brother’s Keeper”, aimed at young boys of color, days after his commencement address at Morehouse College in 2013. His aim: to create more black male exceptions.
If anything can be said about the logic of exceptionalism, it is that its pitfalls can hardly be discerned from what it can produce and what it succeeds in celebrating. The pitfalls of exceptionalism are in who and what it betrays and in who and what it fails to acknowledge.
If the President, and many liberal politicians including Gov. Deval Patrick, have their way, the exceptions will continue to assume the centrality of social and political analyses and the outsiders will continue to be silenced — not in obvious ways but in a more insidious fashion which can be seen most glaringly in the absence of policy. The absence of a “My Sister’s Keeper.” The fact of no commitment to LGBT issues beyond marriage equality — which services and centers white gay experiences. The celebration of particular notions of civil rights.
