Black Excellence

Danielle Wiggins's 'Black Excellence' examines how Black liberal leaders in Atlanta responded to post–civil rights era urban crises by emphasizing self-discipline, policing, and private-sector solutions.

The book situates these approaches within a longer Black liberal tradition that combined interventionist demands on the state with efforts to reform Black behavior.

Wiggins shows how notions of 'Black excellence' and its foil, 'Black pathology,' informed policies on crime, family, and economic development.

She argues these disciplinary strategies often neglected structural inequality and helped lay intellectual and political groundwork for the New Democrats and neoliberal turns in the Democratic Party.

The work weaves political, social, and urban history to reveal the limits of reform strategies centered on individual and community discipline rather than institutional change.