Citizens in Conversation

"Don't talk to strangers." These four simple words contain one of the first pieces of worldly wisdom American parents teach their children. The words may help protect children from physical danger, Danielle Allen writes in her book of the same name, but the political message they convey ill serves education for democratic citizenship. The capacity to "talk to strangers," to hold a dialogue, to reason, and to deliberate with one's fellow citizens in a context of civic trust, Allen tells us, lies at the heart of democracy. And she makes this argument in an extraordinary philosophical text that is itself a conversation among different intellectual traditions and different approaches to race in America—traditions and approaches that rarely engage with each other. Allen is distinctive among contemporary political philosophers in her focus on the actual practice of the democratic politics she advocates.