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Abstract: All political societies rely on the idea of hope. Hope is the basic idea that though the
future is uncertain, one holds on the possibility that things will eventually improve. Christopher
Lebron argues that under many circumstances, hope is a rational and reasonable attitude for
people to embrace. Yet, the persistence of racism and injustice in America make hope an especially
burdened attitude for black Americans, and that, yet, blacks cannot afford to give up on hope.

Bio: Chris Lebron is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. He specializes
in political philosophy, social theory, the philosophy of race, and democratic ethics. His first
book, The Color of Our Shame: Race and Justice In Our Time (OUP 2013) won the American Political
Science Association Foundations of Political Theory First Book Prize. His second book The Making
of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of An Idea (OUP 2017) offers a brief intellectual history of the
black lives matter social movement. Chris has also been an active public intellectual, writing
numerous times for The New York Times’s philosophy column, The Stone, Boston Review, The
Nation and most recently, The Atlantic. His next major book project is an ambitious overlapping
intellectual history of the work and times of James Baldwin, Malcolm X and Audre Lorde.