{"id":312,"date":"2026-07-27T09:39:05","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T09:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usabusinesschronicle.com\/?p=312"},"modified":"2026-07-27T09:39:05","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T09:39:05","slug":"bryan-stevenson-ignorance-makes-you-vulnerable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usabusinesschronicle.com\/?p=312","title":{"rendered":"Bryan Stevenson: \u201cIgnorance Makes You Vulnerable\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Winston Churchill offered a famous moral instruction: \u201cCourage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because it is the quality which guarantees all others.\u201d It is plausible to argue that the lack of justice, the diminishment of ethics in politics, and the decline of civic virtue are also consequences of the failure of America\u2019s leading institutions and, too often, leading figures to conduct themselves with courage.<\/p>\n

Read more Why Autocracy Doesn\u2019t Pay<\/a><\/p>\n

When I spoke on the phone with Bryan Stevenson, the attorney and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative who has emerged as the leading advocate for criminal justice reform and has, perhaps more than anyone, injected the spirit of the civil rights movement into contemporary political culture, earlier this month, he repeatedly used the word \u201ccourage.\u201d The 66-year-old Harvard Law School graduate also demonstrated courage himself when, with little money, he took on the cases of death row inmates, fighting to free them from a cruel and sclerotic criminal justice system in Alabama, even in the face of threats against his own life. He documents those critical cases in his beautiful memoir, Just Mercy<\/em>, which was adapted into a film starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx.<\/p>\n

When I inquired about his emphasis on courage, he said, \u201cIt is an important word, because when you have power, one of the risks\u2014one of the vulnerabilities of the powerful\u2014is the belief that you don\u2019t have to do hard things. Their power insulates them from having to do anything challenging. The truth is that even when you have power, you have to be courageous. You have to be willing to look at yourself and correct and address things that need to be corrected and addressed. Every business leader, every artist, and every scientist who has changed the world had the courage to reevaluate what they were doing at some point and acknowledge that what they were doing was wrong and that a better way forward was possible.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He added that \u201cin America, we have not always shown courage in the way that we talk about our history. Historians have not been as courageous as they need to be in telling the story of America. In educational institutions, very few people\u2014and certainly almost no one in my generation\u2014received any education that helped them understand the horrors of slavery, the brutality and violence of lynching, and the degradation of Jim Crow and segregation. So, now we are vulnerable to misjudging these periods, and we are even vulnerable to replicating the problems of those eras.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aristotle called courage the \u201cgolden mean,\u201d finding the balance between cowardice and \u201creckless confidence.\u201d The triumphalist presentation of the United States as a comic-book superhero story, set against the myth of exceptionality, remains prevalent in national political debate, in public schools, and in much of pop culture. Donald Trump\u2019s administration has assaulted the National Museum of African American History and Culture and other organizations that provide a balanced and nuanced narration of Black history, immigrant history, women\u2019s history, and LGBTQ+ history, demonstrating \u201creckless confidence\u201d in its attempt to eliminate any consideration of the darker parts of America\u2019s past. As my colleague, Anne Kim of the Washington Monthly<\/em> reported, the 250th<\/sup> \u201cGreat American Fair\u201d in Washington, D.C. reduced the country to \u201cTrump\u2019s favored constituencies: billionaires, Christians, and whites.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stevenson tells a different American story. Crucial to his presentation is the Equal Justice Initiative\u2019s \u201cLegacy Sites\u201d project. The Legacy Sites, a museum, memorial, and sculpture park in Montgomery, Alabama, according to EJI, \u201cinvite visitors to reckon with our history of racial injustice in places where that history was lived.\u201d On formerly Indigenous land, the sites mark the forced displacement of Native Americans, the enslavement of Black people, and the revolutionary power of the civil rights movement. With the \u201cCommunity Remembrance Project,\u201d EJI also works with municipal governments and local organizations across the country to construct small monuments and markers at the sites of lynchings and racial terror violence that ended thousands of lives, caused a massive exodus of Black people to Northern cities, and defiled the rhetorical promises of democracy.<\/p>\n

I asked Stevenson why he believes the Legacy Sites and the Remembrance Project are critical. \u201cWe have not done a very good job in acknowledging our history and the harms of our history. It is dangerous not to have the courage to evaluate the times when we made bad choices,\u201d he said. \u201cWe believe in transitional justice. When a nation, community, or society violates others, we believe there needs to be a process of truth, reckoning, and repair. The State Department has a budget to help other countries around the world engage in transitional justice. We\u2019ve seen this play out in South Africa after the collapse of apartheid. They committed to commemorating and educating people about the harms of apartheid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stevenson cites Germany as an important example. \u201cIt was a nation that was the villain of the 20th<\/sup> Century, using the politics of fear and anger to oppress and try to eliminate a whole race of people. They\u2019ve dared to acknowledge history and create a landscape that permanently reckons with it,\u201d he explains. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean that they are immune to bigotry, fascism, and the other problems that are implicit in the era of Nazism, but it does mean that they are better prepared to move forward. They\u2019ve become a trusted ally.\u201d<\/p>\n

The MacArthur Fellow sees an unfortunate contrast. \u201cWhen I look at the U.S., I don\u2019t see many places that have dealt honestly with the legacy of slavery. Before we built our sites, I didn\u2019t see hardly anything that acknowledged the horrible decades of racial terrorism and violence that caused millions of Black people to leave their homes and flee their land.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of that,\u201d he says, \u201cwe\u2019ve been quick to undermine the protections and compromise on the progress that we made during the civil rights era. I felt that we needed to begin an era of truth and justice, truth and restoration, truth and reconciliation. If we don\u2019t commit to rejecting the misuse of the law to oppress and disenfranchise, we\u2019ll be vulnerable to people who want to minimize the democratic participation of some groups.\u201d<\/p>\n

Witnessing the steady onslaught of catastrophe over the past decade, with one supposed nadir after another\u2014the forced separation of children from their parents, the attempted insurrection of January 6, the murder of protestors on the streets of Minneapolis\u2014many Americans have despaired over how such a recent and sharp decline in morality is possible. Perhaps, the cause of the degradation of American society is the consistent refusal to listen to the voices of those most familiar with its potential for terror and violence; the voices of the dead. It is not in the literal sense, but rather an ongoing failure to honor the dead, particularly the dead whose lives ended due to the enshrinement of hatred within public policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is vital that we know the story of those who came before us, even when that story is painful,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve documented thousands of lynchings around this country: people who were lynched because they didn\u2019t call a white person \u2018sir,\u2019 people lynched because they refused to move off a sidewalk, people lynched because they refused to take off their uniform after fighting in World War I or World War II. When we understand that, we can appreciate the character, power, and resilience of so many of those who did die under tragic circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of his own upbringing in Southern Delaware, Stevenson entangles the personal and the political: \u201cGrowing up in a racially segregated community that was only integrated when I got to the second grade, the intuition was not to talk about how, where youlive, not everybody has running water. They use outhouses. You don\u2019t want to advertise that because you think you\u2019ll be judged harshly. You don\u2019t talk about how no one in my community has a high school degree. You worry that it will diminish you.\u201d<\/p>\n

He adds: \u201cNow, I feel the opposite. I feel that I am stronger, more powerful, and more capable because my enslaved great-grandparents had a hope of freedom so powerful that they refused to allow slavery to persuade them that their lives had no meaning or purpose. My great-grandfather learned to read when it was against the law for an enslaved person to read. So, yes, when we honor those who have died, we become better stewards and custodians of human rights, life, and dignity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Abdul El-Sayed\u2019s Slippery Argument About Israel\u2019s Right to Exist<\/a><\/p>\n

Charles Darwin wrote that man bears the \u201cindelible stamp of his lowly origin.\u201d The American story is one of evolution, but by refusing to confront the country\u2019s lowly origin, the governing institutions and dominant culture enabled racism, paranoia, and exclusion to adapt to its environment. As it appeared to weaken, it was mutating. The hateful populism that now determines many electoral outcomes and trajectories of discourse is yet another stamp of a lowly origin. We are living with a failure to honor the dead, and too often refusing to consider what they have to teach the living.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we are not prepared to be truthful about the dark parts of our history, we will repeat them,\u201d Stevenson warned. \u201cWe\u2019ll think it isn\u2019t that big of a deal to think that some races of people are better than others, to think that some immigrant groups or religious groups are so despicable that we can limit their participation in society,\u201d he said. The stakes, as Stevenson makes clear, could not be higher: \u201cIt is always possible to slide into the conditions that made it possible for a Holocaust in Europe, a genocide in Rwanda, and for mass incarceration in America that included putting young children in adult prisons, and for codified racial hierarchy that took the lives of so many Americans in the 20th<\/sup> Century.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rather than a campaign of guilt or shame, as conservatives often protest when leaders like Stevenson implore society to study history, his is actually a program akin to preventative medicine. (Although given the MAHA disdain for vaccines, this metaphor may be lost on some.) Stevenson explained, \u201cIgnorance makes you vulnerable. It is just like if you are lactose intolerant, but you don\u2019t know what that means, and you keep drinking milk; you are going to be sick all the time. With knowledge, you know how to change your behavior, so you are no longer dealing with pain and discomfort.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the sources of discomfort for many American citizens, especially Blacks and Latinos, is mass incarceration. The same ethos that turned the power of the state against Black life is now at work in immigration policy. Thousands of undocumented immigrants and even legal residents are in detention centers facing abusive and filthy conditions. According to one human rights report, 52 inmates died in ICE custody during the first 500 days of the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

The horrors of the Legacy Sites and Remembrance Project are echoed in contemporary mass incarceration and detention policies: \u201cThe language of criminality has been used to justify all kinds of horrific treatment. The supposed lower nature of Black and Brown people meant that they would do something menacing. As we made progress in tearing down the infrastructure of Jim Crow in the 1960s, that thinking persisted. So, in the 1970s, when we began giving in to the politics of fear and anger, we said that the people who are drug addicted are criminals who should be punished. Now, the people in power, if thinking about their own family members who were drug addicted, wouldn\u2019t say they were criminals who should be punished. Still, in reference to other people, Black, brown, poor people, it was too tempting, based on our history, not to use that refrain. So, we went from a prison population of 300,000 in 1972 to over two million people by the end of the 20th<\/sup> Century.\u201d<\/p>\n

Violent policy toward Black and Latino people turns on the idea that it is necessary as a public safety measure. But the presumption of dangerousness is dangerous. As Stevenson said, \u201cYou cannot disconnect our tolerance of putting hundreds of thousands of people in prison, and you cannot disconnect our tolerance of executing people in the United States, even though the data shows that for every eight people we\u2019ve executed, we\u2019ve identified one innocent person on death row\u2014a shocking rate of error\u2014and yet we continue to do it. That can only be explained by looking at our larger history where we tolerated Jim Crow segregation, we tolerated mob violence and lynching, we tolerated the enslavement of Blacks, and we tolerated the displacement of Native people from their land, homes, and traditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stevenson\u2019s horror at the American tolerance of the state premediating and planning the execution of its own citizens, something unique in the developed world, reminded me that, unlike most people, he knows how it feels to save the life of another human being. I asked if he could describe that feeling.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s incredibly affirming to prevail,\u201d Stevenson said. \u201cTo work with someone who is innocent and awaiting their execution, and to succeed in winning their freedom, is an unparalleled joy and fulfillment.\u201d Intriguingly, he adds: \u201cBut I find great joy and meaning in standing with people even when it doesn\u2019t work out. There is power in affirming the dignity and humanity of someone who is being unjustly mistreated. That power comes from harnessing the grace and mercy that comes when you can see someone\u2019s full humanity and beauty, and you can share that with the world. It is always better when it results in freedom, but it is worthwhile even when the victory is yet to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stevenson said that criminal justice reform is in \u201cworse shape\u201d than it was 10 years ago, mainly due to the Trump administration, but that it is still in \u201cbetter shape\u201d than it was 25 years ago. The Equal Justice Initiative is working with state and local governments in the absence of cooperation from Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

From a broader perspective on American culture, it struck me during our conversation how rare it is to hear a political leader speak like Stevenson, articulating a political orientation that, rather than encouraging rage and resentment or remaining anodyne and ineffectual, actually indicates potential for inspiration with words like \u201cgrace,\u201d \u201cmercy,\u201d and \u201cbeauty.\u201d I asked how he believes the U.S. can restore a benevolent vision to our society.<\/p>\n

Stevenson said that it is \u201cimportant to stay rooted to what we believe,\u201d describing the ethos as \u201cLove is always better than hate. We cannot give in to hate. Hatred is a poison. You can\u2019t ingest it without compromising your health and your ability to care for other people. Nonviolence is better than violence. You lose something when you hurt other people. It is important to believe in things we haven\u2019t seen. I am a product of my grandparents who lived as though one day they would be free. They did not live as if their lives were destined to end in enslavement. They lived with hope and love, and a kind of passion for life that is inconsistent with bondage. We need to live in a politics that is rooted in the question, \u2018What can be achieved?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

As Americans have grown exhausted, stumbling through a miasma of shame and hostility, Stevenson locates hope in the redemptive possibilities that he has witnessed through his work: \u201cFor my clients, I believe that each of us is more than the worst thing we\u2019ve ever done. But I believe that for my opponents, the people who don\u2019t like me, the people who make all kinds of ugly comments, even the people who threaten my life. I have to believe that they are more than that terrible thing they are saying and doing. And I want them to get to a place of peace so that they are not burdened with hatred. Our politics has become so polarized because too many of us genuinely want the other to suffer. That\u2019s not a healthy way to think about our political environment. Human rights and dignity do not have a political party. Our vision of a nation that is equal and just in its celebration of liberty must transcend what divides us.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is impossible to doubt the need for what Stevenson describes, but the question remains: Does America have the courage?<\/p>\n

Read more Facing Political Attack and Falling Enrollment, Colleges Take the Fight to \u2026 Each Other<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The criminal justice advocate and civil rights leader on his work, the war on American history, and grace for those consumed by hate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,18,19,2],"tags":[128],"class_list":["post-312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-law-and-justice","category-newsletter","category-politics","tag-tagged-american-history-bryan-stevenson-criminal-justice-reform-lynching-mass-incarceration-segregation-slavery-winston-churchill"],"yoast_head":"\nBryan Stevenson: \u201cIgnorance Makes You Vulnerable\u201d - USA Business Chronicle<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/usabusinesschronicle.com\/?p=312\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bryan Stevenson: \u201cIgnorance Makes You Vulnerable\u201d - 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