Eighth Edition

American Politics and Ihe

Alrican American
 American Politics
and the African
American Quest for
Universal Freedom
This dynamic and comprehensive text from nationally renowned scholars
continues to demonstrate the profound influence African Americans have had—
and continue to have—on American politics. Through the use of two interrelated
themes—the idea of universal freedom and the concept of minority-majority
coalitions—the text demonstrates how the presence of Africans in the United
States affected the founding of the Republic and its political institutions and
processes. The authors show that through the quest for their own freedom in
the United States, African Americans have universalized and expanded the
freedoms of all Americans.
New to the Eighth Edition
e A new co-author, Sherri L. Wallace, is renowned for her teaching, scholar-
ship, and participation in APSA’s American government textbook assessment
for coverage of race, ethnicity, and gender. She is the perfect addition in an
election year that includes female presidential candidates as well as
candidates of color and issues focusing on racial tension and inequality.
e Offers a new Instructor’s Guide with Lecture PowerPoints for the first time.
e Provides the first overall assessment of the Obama administration in relation
to domestic and foreign policy and racial politics in particular.
e Updated through the 2016 elections, connecting the Obama years with the
new administration. Looks at candidates Hillary Clinton and Ben Carson
in particular in relation to the themes of the book.
e Adds a new chapter on State Politics and Elections.
e Includes new sections on intersectionality dealing with issues of race, gender
“and sexuality; LGBT issues as another manifestation of the struggle for
universal freedom; a discussion of the “Black Lives Matter” movement; and
a new section focusing on the changing character of black ethnicity as a
result of increased immigration from Africa and the Caribbean. |
¢ Discusses the way in which race contributed to the polarization ofAmerican
politics; the connections to the Tea Party; and the Obama Presidency and
the 2016 presidential campaign as the most polarized since the advent of
polling.
Hanes Walton, Jr. (1941-2013), Professor of Political Science, University of
Michigan, was an architect of the modern study of African American politics.
Over four decades of prodigious research (including 25 books) and conceptual
refinement he helped to make the subfield of black politics an important area
of study in political science. His last book was The African American Electorate:
A Statistical Portrait.

Robert C. Smith, Professor of Political Science Emeritus, San Francisco State

University, is the author of multiple books and articles and of the Encyclopedia
of African American Politics. His most recent books are Conservatism and
Racism, and Why in America They are the Same; John F. Kennedy, Barack
Obama, and the Politics of Ethnic Incorporation and Avoidance; and
Polarization and the Presidency: From FDR to Barack Obama.

Sherri L. Wallace is Professor of Political Science at the University of Louisville.

She has received numerous awards for excellence in teaching and instructional
design and serves in a variety of teaching and learning capacities with APSA
task forces, curriculum assessments, and textbook evaluations.
 Eighth Edition

American Politics
and the African
American Quest for
Universal Freedom

Hanes Walton, Jr.

Late of University of Michigan

Robert C. Smith
San Francisco State University

Sherri L. Wallace
University of Louisville

Routedge-
lor
& Fra!
NEW YORK AND LONDON
Eighth edition published 2017
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 Taylor & Francis
The right of Hanes Walton, Jr., Robert C. Smith, and Sherri L. Wallace to
be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance
with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Longman, 2000
Seventh edition published by Pearson Education, Inc., 2015
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Walton, Hanes, 1941-2013, author. | Smith, Robert C. (Robert
Charles), 1947— author. | Wallace, Sherri L., author.
Title: American politics and the African American quest for universal freedom /
Hanes Walton, Jr., late of University of Michigan; Robert C. Smith, San
Francisco State University; Sherri L. Wallace, University of Louisville.
Description: Eighth edition. |New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. | “First
edition published by Longman, 2000; seventh edition published by Pearson
Education, Inc., 2015.”
Identifiers: LCCN 2016040053! ISBN 9781138658134 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781138658141 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781315620992 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: African Americans—Politics and government. | United
States—Politics and government. | United States—Race relations.
Classification: LCC E185.615 .W317 2017 | DDC 323.1196/073—dc23
LC record available at https://Iccn.loc.gow/2016040053

ISBN: 978-1-138-65813-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-65814-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-62099-2 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon and Univers

by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY
 DEDICATION Sm

We are grateful to our families for their endurance and support.

To Alice, Brandon, and Brent
To Scottie, Blanch, Jessica, Scottus-Charles,
Karysa, and Grayson
To the Forte and Wallace Family

“Do not call the forest that shelters you a jungle.”

—Ghanaian Proverb
 See
teTiered. eo . ‘
eee
ou i

- re Ay F;
8

as
’ ; - a
me ~~
2 a
e
‘ ; ;
.
=4.
= j
7
~ oF 7

aa

=<.

= = ~
—
>
aS
‘ —
=

p :
=

= = - 6
: ~:

2=
4 1 me “oe :
rad
= ts
7 =
— :
Pie = ;
1} E a g
; Ss
 BRIEF CONTENTS &
PART | FOUNDATIONS = 1
1 Universal Freedom Declared, Universal Freedom Denied:
Racism, Slavery, and the Ideology of White Supremacy in
the Founding of the Republic 3

2 Federalism and the Limits of Universal Freedom 27

PART || POLITICAL BEHAVIORISM 55

3 Political Culture and Socialization 57

4 Public Opinion 74

i) African Americans and the Media 93

PART II! COALITIONS, MOVEMENTS, INTEREST GROUPS,

PARTIES, AND ELECTIONS 107
6 Social Movements and a Theory of African American
Coalition Politics 109

] Interest Groups 149

§ Political Parties 169

g Voting Behavior and Elections 194

PART IV INSTITUTIONS = 221

10 The Congress and the African American Quest for
Universal Freedom 223

|1 The Presidency, Bureaucracy, and the African American

Quest for Universal Freedom 247
Vili Brief Contents

12 The Supreme Court and the African American Quest for

Universal Freedom 296

13 State and Local Politics and the African American Quest

for Universal Freedom 326

PART V PUBLIC POLICY 349

14 Domestic Policy and the African American Quest for Social
and Economic Justice 351

15 The African American Quest for Universal Freedom and

U.S. Foreign Policy 372
7) CONTENTS Sm
Preface xix

PART | FOUNDATIONS = 1
1 Universal Freedom Declared, Universal Freedom
Denied: Racism, Slavery, and the Ideology of White
Supremacy in the Founding of the Republic 3
Freedom: A Typological Analysis 4
Freedom, Power, and Politics 6
Thomas Jefferson and the Writing of the Declaration 7
Racism and White Supremacy Defined 8
@ Box 1.1 Like Humpty Dumpty Told Alice, “When I Use a Word
It Means What I Say It Means” 9
@ Box 1.2 Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia and the Idea of the
Inferiority of the African People 11
Philosophy, Politics, and Interest in Constitution Formation 12
African Americans in the Constitution 13
The Three-Fifths Clause, the Slave Power, and the Degradation of
the American Democracy 13
m Box 1.3 Slavery and the Electoral College 18
Constitutional Principles and Design 19
@ Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom:
James Forten (1766-1842) 21
Summary 22
Critical Thinking Questions 23
Selected Bibliography 23
Notes 23

2 Federalism and the Limits of Universal Freedom 27

Federalism: Origins and Operations in the United States 29
Box 2.1 The “Absurd” Career of Jim Crow 30
Who Is Sovereign: The People or the States? An Old Debate Renewed 31
Federalism: Advantages and Disadvantages 32
ix
x Contents

@ Box 2.2 Federalism, Felonies, and the Right to Vote 33

Reconstruction, the New Deal, and the Civil Rights Movement:
The Triumph of National-Centered Power 35
Reconstruction 36
The New Deal 36
The Civil Rights Revolution and the Great Society 37
The Fourteenth Amendment: The American Charter of Universal
Freedom 38
The Fourteenth Amendment: Origins and Development 38
The Supreme Court and the Fourteenth Amendment, 1865-1925:
Universal Freedom Denied 39
The Supreme Court and the Fourteenth Amendment, 1925-2015:
The Universalization of Freedom 41
The Rehnquist and Roberts Courts, and the Revival cf State-Centered
Federalism 43
@ Box 2.3 Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg and Martin Luther King Jr.
at Lincoln Memorial: Two Speeches in the Quest for
Universal Freedom 44
@ Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom:
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) 48
Summary 49
Critical Thinking Questions 50
Selected Bibliography 50
Notes 51

PART !! POLITICAL BEHAVIORISM = 55

3 Political Culture and Socialization 57
Political Culture 57
Elements of Black Culture 58
Political Socialization 60
Events as Agents of Socialization 62
i Box 3.1 African American Music As An Agent of Political
Socialization 63
African American Political Socialization: The Church and Informal
Institutions 64
Informal Institutions in the Processes of Political Socialization 65
Collective Memory: The Transmission Belt of African American
Political Socialization 65
@ Box 3.2 The African American Church 66
mi Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom:
Harry Belafonte (1927—) 68
 Contents Xi

Summary 69
Critical Thinking Questions 69
Selected Bibliography 70
Notes 71

Public Opinion 74
White Public Opinion on Race and Racism 74
The Impact of Barack Obama on Symbolic Racism 76
African American Public Opinion: Alienation 77
African American Ideology: Liberalism 79
African American Ideology: Conservatism 80
African American Ideology: Black Nationalism 82
African American Ideology: Feminism and Intersectionality 83
African American Opinion: Monolithic and Diverse 85
m@ Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom:
Ronald W. Walters (1938-2011) 86
Summary 87
Critical Thinking Questions 87
Selected Bibliography 88
Notes 88

African Americans and the Media 93

The African American Media and African Americans in the
Mass Media 93
The African American Media 93
m Box 5.1 Media Conglomerates and the African American Media 95
African Americans and Digital Media 96
African Americans in the Mass Media 96
Mass Media Coverage of African Americans 98
Box 5.2 Political Scientists on Television 99
African American Celebrity Impact on Politics 100
The Transformation of the Black Press in the Post-Civil
Rights Era 101
@ Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom:
Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) 102
Summary 103
Critical Thinking Questions 103
Selected Bibliography 103
Notes 104
xii Contents

PART Ill COALITIONS, MOVEMENTS, INTEREST GROUPS,

PARTIES, AND ELECTIONS 107
6 Social Movements and a Theory of African American
Coalition Politics 109
A Theory of African American Coalition Politics 110
The First Rights-Based Movement: The Abolitionist Coalition 113
Abolitionism and Feminism 115
Booker T. Washington’s Coalition for Limited Freedom 117
Material-Based Coalitions: From Populism to Communism 118
Populism 118
The Progressives 119
The Labor Movement 119
Socialists and Communists 120
A “Rainbow” Coalition? 121
African Americans, Immigration, and the Prospects for a New Majority
Coalition 122
Black Ethnicity and Immigration: The Impact on Race and Group
Consciousness 123
The Second Rights-Based Coalition: The Civil Rights Movement 125
The NAACP Coalition 125
@ Box 6.1 We Face a Condition, Not a Theory: W. E. B. Du Bois
and the Changing African American Quest for Universal
Freedom 126
The Strategy of the NAACP, 1910-1954: Persuasion, Lobbying, and
Litigation 128
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Strategy of
Protest, 1955-1965 129
The Black Power Movement and the Transformation from Movement
to Interest Group Politics 130
The Origins of the Black Power Movement 130
The Dual Impact of Black Power: Radicalism and Reform 131
@ Box 6.2 The Black Panther Party 132
Black Power and Race Group Solidarity 134
Black Power, Black Groups, and System Incorporation 134
New Movements in African American Politics: Values and Beliefs
in the Post-Civil Rights Era 135
The “#BlackLivesMatter” Movement 136
m@ Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom:
John Brown (1800-1859) 139
Summary 140
Critical Thinking Questions 141
 Contents Xili

Selected Bibliography 141

Notes 142

Interest Groups 149

Black Groups, the “Black Agenda,” and the Problem of Resource
Constraint 150
@ Box 7.1 The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies 152
m@ Box 7.2 The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights 154
African American Women and the Quest for Universal Freedom 156
The State of Black Nationalist Movements 158
m@ Box 7.3 The African American Reparation Movement 160
@ Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom:
Maria W. Stewart (1803-1879) 164
Summary 165
Critical Thinking Questions 165
Selected Bibliography 166
Notes 166

Political Parties 169

African Americans and the American No-Party System 169
African Americans and the American One-Party System: 1868-1936 170
@ Box 8.1 Beyond the Two-Party System? 171
African Americans, Limited Party Competition, and the Balance of
Power, 1936-1964 172
The Collapse of the New Deal Coalition and the Return of the
One-Party System 172
The Democratization of the Democratic Party and the Role of
African Americans 174
@ Box 8.2 “No Two Seats” 175
Race and Polarization of American Politics 177
The Election of the First African American President 178
The Jesse Jackson Campaigns: Implications for the Obama Campaign 179
The 2008 Primaries and Caucuses 180
Race and Gender: The Challenge to Identities and Loyalties 182
The 2008 and 2012 General Elections 183
m@ Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom:
Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005) 187
Summary 189
Critical Thinking Questions 189
Selected Bibliography 189
Notes 191
xiv Contents

g Voting Behavior and Elections 194

The Historical and Systemic Dimensions of African American
Voting Behavior 194 .
African American Voting Behavior: Empirical Renderings 196
The Election of 2016 197
The Presidential Candidates and Identity Politics 197
The Republican Party and the Nomination of Donald J. Trump 201
The Democratic Party and the Nomination of Hillary Rodham Clinton 205
The Election of Donald J. Trump 208
Race and the 2016 Election 209
Barack Obama's Winning Rainbow Coalition: The Challenge for
Hillary Clinton 210
The Congressional Elections 213
w@ Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom:
John Mercer Langston (1829-1897) 214
Summary 215
Critical Thinking Questions 215
Selected Bibliography 216
Notes 216

PART IV INSTITUTIONS §=221

10 The Congress and the African American Quest for
Universal Freedom 223
The Representation of African Americans in Congress 224
Congressional Elections and African Americans 227
Reapportionment and Redistricting 227
Black Congressional Districts, Campaigns, and Elections 228
The Color of Representation: Does Race Matter? 229
African American Power in the House 230
The Congressional Black Caucus: Increasing Size, Declining Solidarity 230
African Americans in the Congressional Power Structure 231
Party Leadership 231
Committees and Committee Leadership 232
m Box 10.1 The Diversifying Black Representative: A Look at
Congresswoman Mia Love of Utah 234
Congressional Responsiveness to the African American Quest for
Universal Rights and Freedom 235
Rights-Based Issues: From Arguing about Slavery to the Civil Rights
Actiof 1991: °235
 Contents XV

The Renewal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act 236

Restoring Civil Rights 237
@ Box 10.2 Two Massachusetts Senators and the African American
Quest for Universal Freedom 238
Material-Based Rights: From 40 Acres and a Mule to the
Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act 239
The Humphrey-Hawkins Act 240
mi Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom:
John Lewis (1940-) 241
Summary 242
Critical Thinking Questions 243
Selected Bibliography 243
Notes 244

1 The Presidency, Bureaucracy, and the African

American Quest for Universal Freedom 247
Abraham Lincoln: The Paradigmatic President 248
@ Box 11.1 Executive Power, Executive Orders, and Race 249
Lincoln, Emancipation, and Colonialization 250
@ Box 11.2 The First Thirteenth Amendment 251
The Racial Attitudes and Policies of American Presidents from
George Washington to Barack Obama _ 253
The Presidency and the African American Quest for Universal
Freedom: From the Revolutionary Era to the Post-Civil
Rights Era 253
The Revolutionary Era 257
The Antebellum Era 257
The Reconstruction Era 257
The Post-Reconstruction Era 258
The Civil Rights Era 259
The Post—Civil Rights Era 261
mw Box 11.3 African Americans and Presidential Policy Making:
A History of the Role African Americans Played in
Affirmative Action Policy Making 262
The Obama Administration 267
Box 11.4 The “Otherized,” Polarized Obama Presidency 272
Presidential Power and the Federal Bureaucracy 275
The Nature of the Federal Bureaucracy 275
Bureaucracies with Race Missions: A Brief History 277
gm Box 11.5 The Bureaucracy at Work: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
and the FBI 278
Running the Bureaucracy: African American Political Appointees 279
XVi Contents

Staffing the Bureaucracy: African American Civil Servants 283

m Box 11.6 The Bureaucracy and Your Race 286
Civil Rights Enforcement in the Obama Administration 286
@ Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom:
Arthur Fletcher (1924-2005) 287
Summary 288
Critical Thinking Questions 289
Selected Bibliography 289
Notes 291

12 The Supreme Court and the African American

Quest for Universal Freedom 296
Judicial Appointments and African Americans 297
How Should the Constitution Be Interpreted? Judicial Restraint versus
Judicial Activism and the Implications for Universal Freedom 299
The Supreme Court and African Americans: Rights- and Material-
Based Cases 302
@ Box 12.1 Litigation and Social Change: The Legacy of Brown 303
Box 12.2 To Be Young, White, and Male: The Supreme Court Record
on Equal Employment Opportunity 305
Rights-Based Cases 306
School Desegregation 307
Voting Rights and Racial Representation 309
Gutting the Voting Rights Act: The Case of Shelby County Alabama v.
Holder 311
Material-Based Cases: Affirmative Action 313
Education 314
Employment 317
Government Contracts 318
m@ Box 12.3 Material-Based Rights: The Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act of 2010 (aka “Obamacare”) 319
Civil Rights without Remedies: Institutional Racism v. Individual
Racism 319
mi Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom:
Earl Warren (1891-1974) 320
Summary 322
Critical Thinking Questions 322
Selected Bibliography 322
Notes 323
 Contents XVii

13 State and Local Politics and the African American

Quest for Universal Freedom 326
Reconstruction: The Brief Era of Universal Freedom in State
Politics 326
Constitutionalism and Federalism in the States 327
Black Political Representation and Policy Responsiveness in
State Legislatures 329
Descriptive Representation in State Legislatures 330
@ Box 13.1 Descriptive and Substantive Representation: Does Race
and Gender Matter? 330
Substantive Representation in State Legislatures 334
African American Representation in Statewide Offices: Challenges and
Opportunities 335
State Courts: Who Judges? 338
The Republican Dominance of State Politics in the Obama Era 339
Local Representation: “Black Regime” Cities and “Black-Belt”
Counties 340
@ Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom: Unita Blackwell
(1933-) 342
Summary 343
Critical Thinking Questions 343
Selected Bibliography 344
Notes 345

PARTV PUBLIC POLICY 349

14 Domestic Policy and the African American Quest
for Social and Economic Justice 351
Black Unemployment and Underemployment in Historical and
Systemic Context 353
Understanding Unemployment and Underemployment in Post-
Industrial America 354
@ Box 14.1 Race, Racism, and African American Unemployment and
Underemployment 355
Economic Well-Being in the African American Community:
Material-Based Challenges 356
African Americans and Unemployment 357
African Americans and Concentrated Poverty: Economic and
Environmental Effects 358
@ Box 14.2 African American Health, Mortality, and Voting Power 360
XVili Contents

African Americans and the Criminal Justice System 361

African Americans and Education 362
African Americans and Median Net Worth 363.
African Americans and Affluence 364
@ Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom:
Johnnie Tillmon (1926-1995) 365
Summary 366
Critical Thinking Questions 367
Selected Bibliography 367
Notes 368

15 The African American Quest for Universal Freedom

and U.S. Foreign Policy 372
African Americans as Foreign Policy Implementers/Managers:
The Search for “Black Nationality” 373
African Americans as Foreign Policy Dissenters 376
Trans Africa: African Americans as Foreign Policy Lobbyists 380
African Americans and Citizen Diplomacy: Historical Background
and Context 381
African American Citizen Diplomats 382
The Foreign Policy of the First African American President 384
@ Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom:
Ralph Bunche (1904-1971) 386
Summary 387
Critical Thinking Questions 387
Selected Bibliography 388
Notes 389

Appendix Parts of the Constitution Relating to the Presence of

Africans in America 392

Credits 395

Index 397
a PREFACE
Overview of the Text
The eighth edition of this long-standing text arrives at a momentous point in
the nation’s race relations: The end of the first African American presidency and
the beginning of what seems to be a pitched battle between African American
citizens and the police. The policing problem in America is, of course, nothing
new. What is new is the persistence and prevalence of police involved shootings
attracting not just media and popular attention, but spawning new movements
against it, notably Black Lives Matter, featured prominently in the revised
edition of the text.
This book examines the institutions and processes of American government
and politics from the perspective of the African American presence and influence.
We want to show how the presence of Africans in the United States affected
the founding of the Republic and its political institutions and processes from
the colonial era to the present. Blacks, for example, took no part in the drafting
of the Declaration of Independence or the design of the Constitution; however,
their presence exerted a profound influence on the shaping of both these seminal
documents. So it has been throughout American history.
The structure follows standard works in political science on American
government and politics. It is unique, however, in two respects:
First, it is organized around two interrelated themes pursued throughout
much of the textbook: the idea of universal freedom and the concept of
minority-majority coalitions. We argue, in their quest for their own freedom in
the United States, blacks have sought to universalize the idea of freedom. In
their attack on slavery and racial subordination, African Americans and their
leaders have embraced doctrines of universal freedom and equality. In doing
so, they have had an important influence on the shaping of democratic,
constitutional government and on expanding or universalizing the idea of
freedom not only for themselves but also for all Americans.
Blacks have not acted alone. Indeed, given their status as a subordinate racial
minority they could not act alone. Rather, in their quest for freedom blacks
have sought to forge coalitions with whites via minority-majority coalitions (or,
more precisely, minority-inspired majority coalitions). Historically, however,
because of the nation’s ambivalence about race, these coalitions tend to be
unstable and temporary; requiring that they be constantly rebuilt in what is an
ongoing quest.
xix
xx Preface

The second distinctive aspect of this study is that it is historically informed.

In each chapter, we trace developments over a period of time. Relevant historical
background is critical to understanding the evolution of race and the American
democracy. Such material also brings contemporary events into a sharper focus.
Our principal rationale for writing this book is that we saw a void in the
available literature. More importantly, we believe that race is the most important
cleavage in American life, with enormous impact on the nation’s society, culture,
and politics. Indeed, as we show throughout this book, race has always been
the enduring fault line in American society and politics—thus the need for a
volume that treats this important topic with the seriousness it deserves. We seek
to accomplish this in a study that has historical sweep and depth and is
comprehensive in its coverage; a book that is readable and interesting to
undergraduate students while maintaining the highest intellectual standards. We
believe the study of the rich, varied, and critical presence of African Americans
in all areas of the political system demands nothing less.
The intellectual tradition of this text emerges out of the African American
Politics subfield. The scholars who are the founders and innovators in the study
of Black Politics created this scholarly subfield out of nothing. Principally,
working in Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), without major
financial support or grants and with large numbers of classes and students, these
scholars decades ago launched in small steps and limited ways a new area of
academic study. They published in obscure and poorly diffused journals and
little-known presses, which resulted, in many instances, in their work being
overlooked and undervalued due to racism’s manifestations in academia;
allowing much valuable work to remain unseen. Not only was the result of their
research made invisible, but these scholars themselves became invisible in the
profession. Of this unseen tradition it has been written:

The second research tradition in America’s life is the unheralded, the unsung,
unrecorded but not unnoticed one. Scholars belonging to this tradition
literally make something out of nothing and typically produce scholarship at
the less recognized institutions of higher learning. These are the places, to use
Professor Aaron Wildavsky’s apt phrase, where the schools “habitually run
out of stamps” and where other sources of support are nonexistent. ... [Yet]
here ... scholars ... nevertheless scaled the heights, and produced stellar
scholarship.!

They persisted and persevered. It is out of this tradition that the National
Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS) was founded in 1969 by some
of these scholars who created their own academic journal, the National Political
Science Review (NPSR). And while their work is scattered and sometimes
difficult to locate, it formed the basis for a new vision and perspective in political
science. Beginning in 1885, the discipline of political science emerged during an
 Preface Xxi

era of concern about race relations and developed its study of race politics from
this perspective.
The race relations perspective became the major consensus in the discipline
on the study of race until the 1960s. In essence, this framework on the study
of African American politics focused on the concern of whites about stability
and social peace rather than the concerns of blacks about freedom and social
justice.”
Challenging the dominant consensus in the mid- to late 1960s, black political
scientists offered a different, more empowering perspective on political reality,
which became known as the African American Politics (or Black Politics) view
or perspective.’ Instead of focusing on how the African American quest for
freedom might distress whites and disrupt stability and social peace, this new
perspective focused on how an oppressed group might achieve power so as to
provide solutions to long-standing social and economic problems. This
perspective deals with freedom and power rather than stability and social peace
as articulated by Mack Jones’s “Dominant-Subordinate Group” theoretical
framework (see Chapter 1 for full explanation). Our approach is part of this
intellectual tradition.
The purveyors of this tradition include Professor Robert Brisbane and Tobe
Johnson of Morehouse College, the ever-erudite Samuel DuBois Cook at Atlanta
University, Professors Emmett Dorsey, Bernard Fall, Harold Gosnell, Ronald
Walters, Robert Martin, Vincent Browne, Nathaniel Tillman, Brian Weinstein,
Morris Levitt, and Charles Harris at Howard University, and Jewel Prestage at
Southern and Prairie View A&M University. Their insightful ideas, cogent
theories, and brilliant teaching made this book possible. When we, the original
authors—the late Hanes Walton, Jr. (1941-2013) and Robert C. Smith—sat
down at the Holiday Inn in Jackson, Mississippi, in March 1991 (at the annual
meeting of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists), to develop the
book theme and lay out its goals and structure, we were standing on the
shoulders of these pioneering political scientists. They built the intellectual
foundation. We hope this work makes them proud. We hope it will do the same
for our children.
Finally, a note on the terms used. We use the terms black (lowercase—the
typical standard use) and African American interchangeably, having no
preference for either and viewing each as a legitimate and accurate name for
persons of African descent in the United States.* We recognize given that there
are significant populations of people of African descent that have recently
immigrated, often described as “pan-ethnicity,” to the United States from a
myriad of countries across the African diaspora for which such terms can be
contentious; however, our use aligns with our historical focus. For instructors,
it might be a good idea to discuss the history of the different uses of or provide
links to materials that trace the use of the terms used to describe African
Xxii Preface

Americans and the terms African Americans use to describe themselves as active
political agents in their struggle for freedom and acts of “self-determination.”

New to This Edition

This new eighth edition includes two core additions. The first is an assessment
of the 2016 presidential and congressional elections in relationship to the themes
of the text. We pay particular attention to the gender-race interactions in the
Hillary Clinton defeat, and explore the extent to which she was unable to
maintain the Obama “rainbow coalition” in the general election. We also look
at the candidacy of Ben Carson for the Republican nomination, comparing him
to previous black Republican candidates.
While we focus on the 2016 election in Chapters 8 and 9, given the
significance historically of the election of the first black president, we have
retained for purposes of history the fundamentals of Obama’s campaigns and
elections in 2008 and 2012.
The second core addition in this new edition is an overall, general assessment
of the record of the first African American president in domestic and foreign
policies generally, and with respect to race specifically.
All chapters have been updated with new content and the latest data
available, specifically:

e Revisions to Chapter 3 “Political Culture and Socialization.” The chapter has

been completely rewritten with more discussion on “Elements on Black Culture”
and updated material on the political significance of African American music
and the African American Church.
e Revisions to Chapter 4 “Public Opinion.” The chapter discussion on the
“Impact of Barack Obama on Symbolic Racism” has been expanded. The
various strands of African American ideology now include discussion on
conservatism, and feminism and intersectionality.
e New addition in Chapter 5 “African Americans and the Media.” The
chapter includes a new section on the African American celebrity impact
on politics.
e New addition to Chapter 6 “Social Movements and a Theory of African
American Coalition Politics.” The chapter includes a full discussion of the
political significance of the increasing ethnic diversity of the black community
as a result of immigration from Africa and the Caribbean. Also, it provides
extensive coverage of “Black Lives Matter,” including an intersectionality
analysis of the movement.
¢ Revisions to Chapter 7 “Interest Groups.” This chapter now includes full
discussion on African American women interest group activities from an
intersectional approach. The discussion on the “State of Black Nationalist
Movements” has been revised substantially.
 Preface XXili

Revisions to Chapter 8 “Political Parties.” This chapter has been rewritten

to refine the discussion on the role of race in the polarization of American
politics, a full overview of the election of the first African American
president, the significance of the Jesse Jackson campaigns on Barack
Obama’s first campaign including the 2008 primaries and caucuses, full
overview of the 2008 and 2012 general elections, and more inclusion of
race and gender challenges to identities and loyalties when it comes to
supporting and voting for presidential candidates.
New addition to Chapter 9 “Voting Behavior and Elections.” This chapter
includes full coverage of the 2016 presidential and congressional elections,
focusing on the role of race in the Clinton—Sanders contest; an interpretation
of the Trump “phenomenon” as a manifestation of white nationalism; an
analysis of the limitations of the Obama “rainbow” coalition; and the
results of the congressional elections with respect to partisan control of
Congress and the size of the black congressional delegation.
Revisions to Chapter 10 on “Congress.” In this chapter, the section on
substantive representation has been expanded for a more detailed discussion.
Combined discussion in Chapter 11 on the “Presidency” and the
“Bureaucracy.” This chapter combines previous separate chapters on the
presidency and bureaucracy. It also includes a full assessment of the race
policies of President Obama, reclassifying him from “race neutral” to “anti-
racist.” The bureaucracy focus has been reduced and revised as a reflection
of presidential power.
Revisions to Chapter 12 on the “Supreme Court.” This chapter includes
new material on the Voting Rights Act and the latest Supreme Court case
testing institutional racism.
New chapter, Chapter 13, on “State and Local Politics.” This chapter
includes a historical overview of state and local governments during the
brief era of universal freedom during Reconstruction; a discussion of
constitutionalism and federalism in the states and the significance of the
period of devolution; the descriptive and substantive representation of
blacks in state legislatures and executive offices, highlighting intersectionality
and black women in state politics; the impact of Republican control of state
governments on rights- and material-based freedoms; and ends with
challenges for black majority-rule in “black regime” cities and “black-belt”
counties with concentrated, racialized poverty.
Revision to Chapter 14 on “Domestic Policy.” This chapter has been
substantially revised, focusing on the race-class intersection and measures
of economic well-being in the African American community to examine
income inequality and levels of unemployment, underemployment, poverty,
incarceration, education, median net worth, affluence resulting in the
black/white wealth gap.
XXiv Preface

Features of This Innovative Text

e Structured to accord with American Government texts and courses, featuring
content in all major subfields specifically relevant to African American
politics.
e Each chapter opens with an updated Learning Objective keyed to chapter
content.
e ach chapter concludes with a Chapter Summary and Critical Thinking
Questions.
e Selected Bibliographies for each chapter include new suggested readings for
students. |
e An Appendix at the end of the text excerpts the U.S. Constitution specifically
in relation to African American people and politics.
e Boxes throughout the text focus on “Faces and Voices in the Struggle for
Universal Freedom” as well as key issues and actors like the African
American Church, Black Political Scientists in the Media, and the Joint
Center for Political and Economic Studies.
e Figures, tables, and photos have been updated (where possible) through the
2016 elections throughout.
e A new Instructor’s Guide with Lecture PowerPoints for professors offers
links to a wide variety of additional resources. This is available at www.
routledge.com/9781138658141.

Acknowledgments
In early editions, Margaret Mitchell Ilugbo typed several of the draft chapters
for Hanes Walton, and Greta Blake designed the tables and figures. We
appreciate their years of fine work.
Robert Smith’s wife, Scottie, has been indispensable in the preparation of
each edition. Her discerning and untiring work is deeply appreciated.
On the eighth edition, Sherri Wallace received assistance from her colieague,
Kristopher Grady, and research assistant, Maria Delane. In addition to the
colleagues selected by the publishers, we are pleased to acknowledge the
colleagues who had an active role in criticism and preparation of this work,
over all editions. Our thanks to:
Walton Brown-Foster, Central Connecticut State University; Nancy Burns,
University of Michigan; Michael L. Clemons, Old Dominion University; Samuel
_ Craig, Wayne County Community College; Donald Culverson, Governors State
University; Marilyn A. Davis, Spelman College; Yomi Durotoye, Wake Forest
University; Sekou Franklin, Middle Tennessee State University; Jose Angel
Gutierrez, University of Texas—Arlington; Charles Henry, University of
California, Berkeley; Theophilus Herrington, Texas Southern University; Jerome
R. Hunt, University of the District of Columbia; Mack Jones, Clark—Atlanta
 Preface XXV

University; Mary Lou Kendrigan, East Lansing Community College; Maurice

Magnam, Texas Southern University; Jeanette Mendez, University of Houston;
Francois N. Muyumba, Indiana State University; Marion Orr, Brown University;
Ravi K. Perry, Virginia Commonwealth University; Tasha Philpot, University
of Michigan; Wilbur C. Rich, Wellesley College; Diarra Osei Robertson, Bowie
State University; J. Clay Smith, Howard University Law School; Karin L.
Stanford, California State University—Northridge; and Sharon D. Wright-Austin,
University of Florida. In addition, we are very grateful to anonymous reviewers
for their insightful and valuable comments. We incorporated nearly all the helpful
suggestions.

About the Authors

Hanes Walton, Jr., a pioneering scholar of political science and professor at the
University of Michigan, is a graduate of Morehouse College. He earned his
master’s degree in political science from Atlanta University and was the first
person to earn the doctorate in political science from Howard University. He
served on numerous editorial boards of academic journals, was a consultant to
the National Academy of Sciences, the Educational Testing Service, and the
National Endowment for the Humanities. He was a Ford, Rockefeller, and
Guggenheim Fellow and held memberships in several honor societies, including
Pi Sigma Alpha, Alpha Kappa Mu, and Phi Beta Kappa. He also worked on
Capitol Hill in the office of Congressman Mervyn Dymally (D, CA). He was
the recipient of the 1993 Howard University Distinguished Ph.D. Alumni Award.
Shortly after the revisions for the seventh edition, Dr. Walton died, on January
7, 2013. He was the architect of this text, and its two interrelated themes—the
idea of universal freedom and the concept of minority-majority coalitions—are
the product of his fertile mind. Hanes was also an architect of the modern study
of African American politics. Over four decades of prodigious research (including
25 books) and conceptual refinement, he helped to make the subfield of African
American politics a major area of study in political science. His death leaves a
large void in the field, and in our personal and intellectual life, but his friendship
and intellectual legacy are abiding sources of comfort and inspiration.’ In 2013,
the American Political Science Association established the Hanes Walton, Jr.
Award to recognize a political scientist whose lifetime of scholarship “made a
significant contribution to our understanding of racial and ethnic politics and
illuminates the conditions under which diversity and intergroup tolerance thrive
in democratic societies.”
Robert C. Smith is professor of political science at San Francisco State
University. An honors graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, he holds
a master’s degree from UCLA and a doctorate from Howard University. He is
the author or coauthor of dozens of articles and 12 books, most recently
Conservatism and Racism and Why in America They Are the Same, John F.
XXVi Preface

Kennedy and Barack Obama: The Politics of Ethnic Incorporation and

Avoidance and Polarization and the Presidency: From FDR to Barack Obama.
He was associate editor of the National Political Science Review, and is general
editor of the State University of New York (SUNY) Press African American
Studies series. He has taught African American politics and American
government for more than 40 years. In 1998, he was the recipient of the 1998
Howard University Distinguished Ph.D. Alumni Award. His Encyclopedia of
African American Politics was published in 2003.
Sherri L. Wallace is professor of political science at the University of
Louisville. By participating in the American Political Science Association’s Ralph
Bunche Summer Institute in 1988, she discovered her love for the discipline.
She earned her master’s and doctorate degrees from Cornell University, where
she also received a President’s Council for Cornell Women Fellowship for her
dissertation research. She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles on
college textbook diversity, women of color in academe, and community economic
development. She teaches African American politics, American politics, public
policy, state politics, and urban politics. She is the recipient of 2014 Anna Julia
Cooper Teacher of the Year Award from the National Conference of Black
Political Scientists. She actively engages in service in the discipline serving as an
officer or member of standing (executive) committees, organized sections, and
program and award committees for the National Conference of Black Political
Scientists, American Political Science Association, Midwest Political Science
Association, Southern Political Science Association, Southwestern Political
Science Association, and Western Political Science Association.

Notes
1 Hanes Walton, Jr., “The Preeminent African American Legal Scholar: J. Clay Smith,”
National Political Science Review 6 (1997): 289.
2 Hanes Walton, Jr., Cheryl Miller, and Joseph P. McCormick, “Race and Political
Science: The Dual Traditions of Race Relations Politics and African American
Politics,” in J. Dryzek, et al., eds., Political Science and Its History: Research Programs
and Political Traditions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994): 145-74;
and Hanes Walton, Jr., and Joseph P. McCormick, “The Study of African American
Politics as Social Danger: Clues from the Disciplinary Journals,” National Political
Science Review 6 (1997): 229-44.
3 For an intellectually critical collection of essays by African American political scientists
on race and the study of politics in the United States, see Wilbur Rich, ed., African
American Perspectives on Political Science (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
2007), and for a useful collection of papers by an influential political scientist whose
writings contributed to the development of the scientific study of black politics see
Mack H. Jones, Knowledge, Power and Black Politics: Collected Essays (Albany:
SUNY Press, 2010).
4 For discussion of the various controversies about names in African American history—
that is, what persons of African origins in the United States should call themselves—see
W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Name Negro,” The Crisis 35 (March 1928): 96-101; Lerone
 Preface XXVIi

Bennett, “What’s in a Name?” Ebony, 23 (November 1967): 46-48, 50-52, 54; Ben
L. Martin, “From Negro to Black to African-American: The Power of Names and
Naming,” Political Science Quarterly 106 (1991): 83-107; Robert C. Smith,
“Remaining Old Realities,” San Francisco Review of Books 25 (Summer 1990):
16-19; Ruth Grant and Marion Orr, “Language, Race and Politics: From ‘Black’ to
‘African American,’” Politics & Society 24 (1996): 137-52; James F. Davis, “Who
is Black? One Nation’s Definition,” from Who is Black? (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania
State Press, 1991); “The Journey from ‘Colored’ to ‘Minorities’ to ‘People of Color,’ ”
CodeSwitch, National Public Radio (March 31, 2014) (Accessed at: www.npr.org/
blogs/codeswitch/2014/03/30/295931070/the-journey-from-colored-to-minorities-
to-people-of-color); Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture: Foundations of Nationalist
Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987): chap. 4, “Identity and Ideology:
The Names Controversy”; Erika V. Hall et al. “A Rose by Any Other Name? The
Consequences of Subtyping ‘African-Americans’ from ‘Blacks,’” Journal of Experi-
mental Social Psychology 56 (2015): 183-90; Jennifer Schuessler, “Use of
‘African-American’ Dates to Nation’s Early Days,” The New York Times, April 20
(Accessed at http://nyti.ms/1GOzmc0), on Lawrence O’Donnell Show (Accessed at
www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/the-origin-of-the-term-african-american-4318
44419894) or HULU (www.hulu.com/watch/781555).
On Hanes’s career and intellectual legacy, see Marion Orr, Pearl Ford Dove, Tyson
King-Meadows, Joseph McCormick, and Robert C. Smith, “Hanes Walton, Jr.,” PS:
Political Science & Politics 44 (July 2013): 674-75; and “Hanes Walton, Jr.” in
Robert C. Smith, Encyclopedia of African American Politics (New York: Facts on
File, 2003).
di
 PART |
Foundations
Me CHAPTER |
Universal Freedom
Declared, Universal
Freedom Denied
Racism, Slavery, and the Ideology of White
Supremacy in the Founding of the Republic

LEARNING OBJECTIVE
Explain the idea of universal freedom and describe how it was
compromised in the Constitution by racism and the ideology of white
supremacy.

So, what is this thing called freedom? In 1865, General Oliver O. Howard,
commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau, asked an audience of newly freed slaves,
“But what did freedom mean? It is necessary to define it for it is apt to be
misunderstood.”! William Riker writes, “The word ‘freedom’ must be defined.
And volumes have been written on this subject without conspicuous success on
reaching agreement.”* Orlando Patterson begins his book Freedom in the
Making of Western Culture with the observation that “Freedom, like love and
beauty, is one of those values better experienced than defined.” Finally, John
Hope Franklin, in From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans,
writes,

It must never be overlooked that the concept of freedom that emerged in the
modern world bordered on licentiousness and created a situation that
4 PARTI > Foundations

approached anarchy. As W. E. B. Du Bois has pointed out, it was the

freedom to destroy freedom, the freedom of some to exploit the rights of
others. It was, indeed, a concept of freedom with little or no social
responsibility. If, then, a man was determined to be free, who was there to
tell him that he was not entitled to enslave others.*

The idea of freedom is therefore a contested idea, with many often conflicting
and contradictory meanings. Since the idea of freedom—universal freedom—is
central to this book, in this first chapter we must attempt to define it because,
as General Howard said, it is apt to be misunderstood.
In the last several decades, an important body of scholarship has emerged
on how the idea and practice of freedom began in Europe and the United States.
These historical and philosophical studies suggest that the idea of freedom—
paradoxically—is inextricably linked to the idea and institution of slavery.° With
respect to Europe, “it now can be said with some confidence,” according to
Patterson, “that the idea and value of freedom was the direct product of the
institution of slavery. Where there has been no slavery there has never been any
trace of freedom even as a minor value.”® And in the United States, “without
the institution of slavery America in all likelihood would have had no democratic
tradition and would not have come to enshrine freedom at the very top of the
pantheon of values.”” In other words, the very idea of freedom in the Western
world has its origins in the struggles of the slave to become free.®
While there is much of value in Patterson’s studies, we are not persuaded
by his argument that freedom in its origins is a uniquely Western value. On the
contrary, we believe freedom is a fundamental driving force of the human
condition. And while slavery was undoubtedly important in the genesis of the
idea of freedom in the Western world, it is also likely that the idea in the West
stems from other sources such as the desire of people to be free of harsh rule,
treatment, or prohibitions that fall short of slavery (freedom of religion, for
example).

Freedom: A Typological Analysis

The word freedom is difficult to define. Indeed, a number of writers on the subject
have concluded that the effort to construct an objective or universal definition
may be futile. Increasingly, therefore, students of the subject have sought not
to define the term in one all-encompassing definition but rather, given the rich,
varied, and conflicting meanings of the word, have sought instead to develop
typologies of freedom that are broad and varied enough to cover the diverse
shades of meaning held by scholars as well as ordinary women and men.
Table 1.1 displays three typologies of freedom. These typologies are drawn
from the most recent scholarship on the subject. Again, these writers do not
attempt to develop one universal definition of the term but see freedom as having
 CHAPTER 1 > Universal Freedom Declared, Denied 5

TABLE 1.1

Orlando Patterson Eric Foner Richard King

Personal Natural Rights? Liberal

Sovereignal® Civil Rights Autonomy
Civic Political Rights Participatory
Social Rights Collective Deliverance
@ Foner uses the term rights rather than freedoms.
®In his article Patterson uses the term organic instead of sovereignal to refer to this type of
freedom.

Sources: Orlando Patterson, Freedom in the Making of Western Culture (New York: Basic
Books, 1991): 3-5; Orlando Patterson, “The Unholy Trinity: Freedom, Slavery and the
American Constitution,” Social Research 54 (Autumn 1987): 556-59; Eric Foner,
Reconstruction: America’s Untinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York: Harper & Row,
1988): 231; Richard King, Civil Rights and the Idea of Freedom (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1992): 26-28.

multiple shades of meaning. Patterson identifies three types of freedom. Personal

freedom is defined as giving a person the sense that, on the one hand, he or she
is not coerced or restrained by another person in doing something desired, and,
on the other hand, that one can do as one pleases within the limits of that other
person’s desire to do the same. Sovereignal or organic freedom is simply the
power to act as one pleases, without regard for others, or simply the ability to
impose one’s will on another. Civic freedom is defined as the capacity of adult
members of a community to participate in its life and governance.?
Eric Foner discusses four notions of freedom—he prefers the term rights—
that were part of the political vocabulary of the nation’s leaders on the eve of
the Civil War. Natural rights, those rights or freedoms inherent in one’s
humanity, are what Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence referred to as
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Civil rights can be defined as equality
of treatment under law, which is seen as essential to the protection of natural
rights. Political rights involve the right to vote and participate fully in governing
the community. Social rights involve the right to freely choose personal and
business associates.'°
King identifies “four meanings of freedom within American/western thought
that link up with the language of freedom and the goals of the civil rights
movement.”!! Liberal freedom is the absence of arbitrary legal or institutional
restrictions on the individual, including the idea that all citizens are to be treated
equally. Freedom as autonomy involves an internalized individual state of
autonomy, self-determination, pride, and self-respect. Participatory freedom
involves the right of the individual to participate fully in the political process.
6 PARTI > Foundations

Collective deliverance is understood as the liberation of a group from external

control—from captivity, slavery, or oppression.'*
Clearly, there is considerable overlap among the types of freedom addressed
by Patterson, Foner, and King, especially in the realm of politics or the right of
citizens to equal treatment under law and the right to vote and participate in
the governance of the community. However, two of the types identified have
special relevance to the African American experience and to this book’s theme
of universal freedom. First, throughout their history in the United States, African
Americans have consistently rejected the idea of organic or sovereignal freedom,
the notion that one person or group should have the freedom to impose their
will on another without regard to the rights of others. This is the freedom of
might makes right, of the strong to oppress the weak, of the powerful to
dominate the powerless, and of the slave master to enslave. From its beginning,
African American political thought and behavior has been centrally concerned
with the abolition of this type of freedom, and in doing so African Americans
developed the idea of universal freedom—a freedom that encompasses natural
rights, civil rights, and social rights. In rejecting the Patterson notion of
sovereignal freedom, blacks in the United States fully embraced King’s idea
of freedom as collective deliverance. As part of a captive, oppressed, enslaved
people, one could expect nothing less. However, in fighting for their own
liberation, for their freedom, blacks have had to fight for universal freedom, for
the freedom of all people. As Aptheker puts it, “The Negro people have fought
like tigers for their freedom, and in doing so have enhanced the freedom struggles
of all people.”

Freedom, Power, and Politics

All the typologies of freedom listed in Table 1.1 are related in one way or another
to power or the lack of power, and power is central to politics and political science.
As Lasswell and Kaplan write in their classic study Power and Society, “The
concept of power is perhaps the most fundamental in the whole of political science:
The political process is the shaping, distribution and exercise of power.”!4The
definition of power, like freedom, however, also has an ambiguous, elusive
quality.'° At a minimum, scholars agree that A has power over B to the extent
that A can affect B’s behavior or get B to do something B otherwise would not
do. Max Weber, one of the founders of modern sociology and political science,
writes, “In general, we understand by ‘power’ the chance of a man or a number
of men to realize their own will in a communal action against the resistance of
others who are participating in the action.”!°Political scientists generally analyze
power in terms of (1) its bases, (2) its exercise, and (3) the skill of its exercise in
particular circumstances, situations, or contexts. With respect to African
American politics, Mack Jones postulates that whites occupy a “superordinate”
or dominant position in relationship to blacks.!” That is, historically whites have
 CHAPTER 1 > Universal Freedom Declared, Denied 7

had a near monopoly on the critical or “hard” power bases (wealth, size, status,
technology, and violence) and used it to subordinate blacks and maintain control
over them. Blacks, on the other hand, have attempted to acquire power, often
the “soft” power bases of morality, religion, and appeals to democratic principles,
to alter their subordinate status in a quest for universal freedom. In this sense
black politics, Jones writes, “is essentially a power struggle between blacks and
whites” characterized by an asymmetrical power relationship between the
groups.'* However, in order to fully understand black politics and distinguish it
from other group conflicts in the United States, Jones contends that it is necessary
to specify that the subordination of blacks is justified on the basis of the ideology
of white supremacy.!? We discuss the ideology of white supremacy later in this
chapter, but in sum in analyzing African American politics as a quest for
universal freedom we need to think in terms of blacks seeking to alter their
subordinate status vis-a-vis whites and the asymmetrical power between the groups
in the context of the ideology of white supremacy.

Thomas Jefferson and the Writing of the Declaration

After voting to declare independence, the Continental Congress appointed a
committee to draft a document setting forth the reasons for the revolution. The
committee was composed of Robert Livingston, Roger Sherman, Benjamin
Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. The other members turned the
task of drafting to Adams and Jefferson, and according to Adams, Jefferson was
asked to actually write the document because his writings were characterized
by a “peculiar felicitousness of expression.””° The Declaration, however, is not
the creation of one man. Rather, “eighty-six substantive revisions were made
in Jefferson’s draft, most of them by members of the Continental Congress who
also excised about one fourth of the original text.”*! Jefferson was said to be
extremely displeased by the changes in his draft and for the remaining 50 years
of his life was angry, arguing that the Congress had “mangled” his manuscript.”
The majority of the substantive changes or deletions in Jefferson’s draft—
including the most famous—focused on the long list of charges against King
George III. Most historians say that the charges against the King as listed in the
Declaration are exaggerated, and in any event they are misplaced, since many
of the actions complained of were decisions of the Parliament rather than the
King. The King, however, made a more convenient target than the anonymous,
amorphous Parliament.
The most famous of the changes deleted from Jefferson’s draft was the
condemnation of the King for engaging in the African slave trade. Jefferson had
written the following:

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating the most
sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never
offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another
8 PARTI > Foundations

hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This

piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the
Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market when
MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for
suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable
commerce; and this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of
distinguished die, he is now exciting these very people to rise among us, and
to purchase that liberty of which he deprived them, by murdering the people
upon whom he also obtruded them, thus paying off former crimes committed
against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to
commit against the lives of others.”

This passage, which was to be the climax of the charges against the King, was
obviously an exaggeration and an especially disingenuous one; the colonists
themselves (including Jefferson) had enthusiastically engaged in slave trading
and, as was made clear to Jefferson, had no intention of abandoning it after
independence. Jefferson recalls that “the clause too, reprobating the enslaving
of the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in compliance to South Carolina
and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves and
who still wished to continue it.”7+ Not only was there opposition to the passage
from the southern slave owners, but more tellingly, as Jefferson went on to say,
“our northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under these censures;
for tho’ their people have few slaves themselves yet they have been pretty
considerable carriers of them.”* In other words, virtually all the leading white
men in America, Northerner and Southerner, slave owner and non-slave owner,
had economic interests in the perpetuation of slavery. A good part of the new
nation’s wealth and prosperity was based on the plantation economy. To be
consistent, one might have thought that the Continental Congress would also
have deleted the phrase on the equality of men and their inherent right to liberty.
They did not, apparently seeing no inconsistency since the words did not mean
what they said (see Box 1.1).
The magnificent words of the Declaration of Independence declaring freedom
and equality as universal rights of all “men” were, however, fatally flawed,
compromised in that the men who wrote them denied freedom to almost one-
fourth of the men in America. To understand how the idea of universal freedom
was fundamentally compromised, one needs to see Thomas Jefferson as the
paradigmatic figure: author of the Declaration, preeminent intellectual—
acquaintance through correspondence of eminent African American intellectual
Benjamin Banneker—and also a racist, a white supremacist, and a slave owner.26

Racism and White Supremacy Defined

We have described Jefferson—one of the great men of American history and
one of the most enlightened men of his day—as a racist and white supremacist;
 CHAPTER 1 > Universal Freedom Declared, Denied 9

BOX 1.1 cans ONSET

Like Humpty Dumpty Told Alice, “When |Usea

Word It Means What | Say It Means”
Before the ink was dry on Jefferson’s rise to a “new birth of freedom” that had
Declaration, there was controversy about been conceived by Jefferson “four score
what was meant by the words “all men and seven years ago” when he wrote the
are created equal.” Rufus Choate, Declaration.° Conservative scholars have
speaking in 1776 for Southerners long attacked Lincoln's “radical”
embarrassed by Jefferson's words, said redefinition of the meaning of the
Jefferson did not mean what he said. Declaration. Wilmore Kendal, writing a
Rather, the word men referred only to century after Gettysburg, argued that the
nobles and Englishmen who were no word men in the Declaration referred to
better than ordinary American freemen. “If property holders or to the nations of the
he meant more,” Choate said, it was world but not men as such, writing
because Jefferson was “unduly influenced blatantly that “the Declaration of
by the French school of thought.” Independence does not commit us to
(Jefferson was frequently accused of equality as a national goal.”° As Daniel
being influenced by Jean Jacques Boorstin, the former librarian of Congress
Rousseau’s writings, a charge that he and author of the celebrated The
denied.) On the eve of the Civil War, Chief Americans: The Democratic Experience
Justice Roger B. Taney, in his opinion in (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), writes,
the Dred Scott (1857) case, said that on “We have repeated that ‘all men are
the surface the words “all men are created equal’ without daring to discover
created equal” applied to blacks. Yet he what it meant and without realizing that
concluded, “It is too clear for dispute that probably to none of the men who spoke it
the enslaved African race were not did it mean what we would like it to
intended to be included, and formed no mean.Ӣ
part of the people who framed and
adopted the Declaration.” Similarly, during ? Quoted in Carl Becker, The Declaration of
his famous debates with Abraham Lincoln, Independence: A Study in the History of an Idea
(New York: Vintage Books, 1922, 1970): 27.
Stephen Douglas argued that the phrase
> Garry Wills, Lincoin at Gettysburg: The Words
simply meant that Americans were not That Remade America (New York: Touchstone,
inferior to Englishmen as citizens. It was 1992).
Lincoln's genius at Gettysburg in his © Wilmore Kendal, Basic Symbols of the
famous address to fundamentally American Political Tradition (Baton Rouge:
repudiate Choate, Taney, and Douglas in Louisiana State University Press, 1970), as cited
what Garry Wills calls an “audacious” and in M. E. Bradford, “How to Read the Declaration
“clever assault.” Lincoln accomplished this of Independence: Reconsidering the Kendal
Thesis,” /ntercollegiate Review (Fall 1992): 47.
by claiming that the Civil War had given
9 |bid., p. 46.

Nig AC AS IRN oes MCR MRT SE

therefore, we should define these terms since they are key distinguishing features
of the African American experience in the United States.”” They are also central
to the analysis presented throughout this book. Racism and the ideology of white
supremacy are fundamental to an understanding of certain crucial features in
the development of the American democracy as well as the different treatment
of black and white Americans.
Racism as a scientific concept is not an easy one for the social scientist. It
is difficult to define with precision and objectivity; also, the word is often used
10 PARTI > Foundations

indiscriminately and in an inflammatory way. We start by distinguishing between

racism and the set of ideas used in the United States to justify it. The latter we
refer to as the ideology of white supremacy or black inferiority. In the United
States, racism was and to some extent still is justified on the basis of the
institutionalized belief that Africans are inherently inferior people. We refer to
an individual who holds such beliefs as a white supremacist.
By racism we mean, following the definition of Carmichael and Hamilton
in Black Power, “the predication of decisions and policies on considerations of
race for the purpose of subordinating a racial group and maintaining control
over it.”28 The definition says nothing about why this is done, about racism’s
purposes or rationales; thus it does not imply anything about superiority or
inferiority of the groups involved. It does not say, as many definitions and
concepts of racism do, that racism involves the belief in the superiority, inherent
or otherwise, of a particular group and that on this basis policies are implemented
to subordinate and control the group. Rather, the definition simply indicates
that whenever one observes policies that have the intent or effect of subordinating
a racial group, the phenomenon is properly identified as racism, whatever, if
any, the justificatory ideology may be.
Carmichael and Hamilton’s definition is particularly useful to political
scientists because it focuses on power as an integral aspect of the phenomenon.
For racism to exist, one racial group (or individual) must have the relative power—
the capacity to impose its will in terms of policies—over another relatively less
powerful group or individual. Without this relative power relationship, racism
is a mere sentiment: Although group A may wish to subordinate group B, if it
lacks the effective power to do so, the desire remains simply a wish.
Carmichael and Hamilton also write that racism may take two forms:
individual and institutional.’? Individual racism occurs when one person takes
into consideration the race of another to subordinate, control, or otherwise
discriminate against an individual; institutional racism exists when the normal
and accepted patterns and practices of a society’s institutions have the effect or
consequence of subordinating or discriminating against an individual or group
on the basis of race.°°
It is in this sense that we refer to Thomas Jefferson as a white supremacist
and a racist. He believed that blacks were inherently inferior to whites, stating
in his Notes on Virginia that they were “inferior by nature, not condition” (see
Box 1.2). He was also a racist, individually and institutionally, in that he took
the race of individual blacks into consideration so as to discriminate against
them, and he supported, although ambivalently, the institution of slavery that
subordinated blacks as a group.
Just in case readers may infer that white supremacy is a phenomenon of
the nation’s distant past, one need look only as far back as February 2016 to
former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke’s endorsement of Republican
presidential candidate Donald Trump, Trump’s subsequent appointment of
 CHAPTER 1 > Universal Freedom Declared, Denied 11

Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia and the Idea

of the Inferiority of the African People
In the Declaration of Independence, no attribute which can take side with us in
Jefferson engaged in a kind of moral such a contest.'4
reasoning to reach his conclusions as to Since slavery was an evil, but a
the self-evident equality of men. In his necessary one given the need for labor in
Notes on Virginia, written several years the plantation economy, Jefferson
later, he engaged in a more scientific proposed a revision in Virginia law that
approach to the analysis of the problem of would gradually free the slaves; train
racial inequality.2 In doing so, Jefferson the them; provide tools, seeds, and animals;
slaveholder made an eloquent and then transport them to a new land as
condemnation of slavery, proposing his a “free and independent people” while
view of a just and equitable way to end simultaneously sending ships “to other
slavery in the United States while parts of the world for an equal number of
simultaneously offering what he took to be white inhabitants” to replace them.®
scientific proof of the inferiority of the Jefferson anticipated that the inevitable
African people. Understanding Jefferson's question would be why not simply free
views on race is therefore critical to an the slaves and integrate them into Virginia
appreciation of how racism fundamentally society, thereby saving the money
compromised the idea of universal involved in colonialization of the slaves and
freedom at the very creation of the the transportation of the whites. His
American Republic.® response was first that “deep rooted
In 1780 Francois Barbe-Marbois, the prejudices entertained by whites, ten
secretary of the French delegation in thousand recollections by the blacks of
Philadelphia, sent a letter to each of the injuries they have sustained, the real
state governors requesting that they distinctions which nature has made and
answer questions on particular customs many other circumstances” made
and conditions in their states. Jefferson impossible the integration of the black and
delayed his response until after he left the white populations on the basis of freedom
governor's office. Although Jefferson and equality.’ Indeed, Jefferson believed
offered a general assessment of that if the races were not separated,
conditions in the state, his Notes are best “convulsions” would occur, probably
known for what he said about slavery, the ending in the “extermination of one or the
African people, and Virginia society. other race."9
While defending the institution of Jefferson was not satisfied to base his
slavery Jefferson nevertheless saw it as argument for racial separation on these
evil and unjust, writing, “There must essentially practical arguments. Rather, he
doubtless be an unhappy influence on the wanted to be “scientific,” to base his
manners of our people produced by the conclusions on the “facts,” on his
existence of slavery among us. The whole “empirical observations.” Thus, in the
commerce between master and slave is Notes he advocated what was one of the
perpetual exercise of the most boisterous =” first of many “scientific proofs” of black
passions, the most unremitting despotism inferiority as justification for black
on the one part, and degrading submission subordination. First, he argued that blacks
on the other.”° In a famous passage that compared to whites were less beautiful,
would be echoed by Abraham Lincoln had a “strong and disagreeable odor,” and
during the Civil War, Jefferson suggested were more “ardent after their female.”
that God would surely punish America: Ultimately, however, for Jefferson the
“Indeed, | tremble for my country when | basis of black inferiority was his
reflect that God is just; that his justice “suspicion” that blacks were “inferior in
cannot sleep forever. ... The almighty has faculties of reason and imagination.”"
 12 PARTI > Foundations

Noting that the differences he observed

between blacks and whites might be
explained by the different conditions under
-
which they lived, Jefferson rejected this
explanation, concluding it was not their
“condition” but their “nature” that
produced the difference.'

2 This distinction between Jefferson's moral

reasoning in the Declaration and his scientific
approach in the Notes is the central theme of
Jean Yarbrough, “Race and the Moral
Foundation of the American Republic: Another
Look at the Declaration and the Notes on
Virginia," Journal of Politics 58 (February 1991):
90-105. Yarbrough argues that “the self-evident
truths of the Declaration rest on a kind of moral
reasoning which is morally superior to and
incompatible with the so called scientific
approach Jefferson adopts in the Notes” (p. 90).
5 A comprehensive treatment of Jefferson's
views on race is in Winthrop Jordan, White over Thomas Jefferson is the embodiment of
Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro,
the contradiction in the American
1550-1812 (Baltimore, MA: Penguin Books,
democracy between its declaration of
1969): chap. 12, “Thomas Jefferson: Self and
Society.” universal freedom and equality and its
© Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of practice of slavery.
Virginia, edited by William Peden (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1954): Source: The White House Historical Association
162-63.
9 Ibid. together on the basis of freedom and equality.
© Ibid., pp. 138-39. Tocqueville thought that whites would either
f lbid., p. 138. This was also the view of subjugate the blacks or exterminate them.
Abraham Lincoln (see chap. 14). In Democracy See Democracy in America, vol. 1, edited by
in America (New York: Knopf, 1945)—probably Phillips Bradley (New York: Vintage Books,
the single most important and influential book 1945): chap. 18.
ever written on the subject—Alexis de 9 Notes on the State of Virginia, pp. 138-39.
Tocqueville also reached the same pessimistic " Ibid.
conclusion that blacks and whites could not live ' Ibid.

alt-right Breitbart News head Steve Bannon as campaign CEO, or former Nixon
advisor Pat Buchanan’s declaration upon the 2012 election results that “White
America died last night. Obama’s reelection killed it.” Buchanan went on to
say in clear white supremacist language that it was “obvious” that whites were
superior to non-whites: “Anything worth doing on this earth was done first by
white people.”>!

Philosophy, Politics, and Interest in

Constitution Formation
The framers of the Constitution were influenced in their work by their readings
in philosophy and history. But the framers were also practical politicians and
 CHAPTER 1 > Universal Freedom Declared, Denied 13

men of affairs, and, as in all politics, they were men with distinct interests. In
what is generally a sympathetic portrayal of the framers, historian William
Freehling writes, “If the Founding Fathers unquestionably dreamed of universal
freedom, their ideological posture was weighed down equally with conceptions
of priorities, profits, and prejudices that would long make the dream utopian.”
The first or principal priority of the framers was the formation and preservation
of the union of the United States. This priority was thought indispensable to
the priority of profit—that is, to the economic and commercial success of the
nation. And as Freehling notes, their concern with profits grew out of their
preoccupation with property, and slaves as property were crucial; thus, “it made
the slaves’ right to freedom no more ‘natural’ than the master’s right to
property.”%? It was this crucial nexus between profits, property, and slavery that
led the men at Philadelphia to turn the idea of universal freedom into a utopian
dream.

African Americans in the Constitution

As far as we can tell from the records of the federal convention, slavery was
not the subject of much debate at that gathering. Certainly its morality was
never at issue, although there were several passionate opponents of slavery
present, including the venerable Benjamin Franklin, president of the Pennsylvania
Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. But neither Franklin nor any
other delegate proposed abolition at Philadelphia, knowing that to do so would
destroy any possibility of union. Hence, slavery was simply just another of the
issues (such as how the small and large states were to be represented in the
Congress) that had to be compromised to accomplish the objective of forming
the union.
Slavery is dealt with explicitly in four places in the Constitution, although
the words slave and slavery are never used. It was James Madison, generally
considered the “Father of the Constitution,” who insisted that all explicit
references to slavery be excluded.* It is worth noting, as Joe R. Feagin does,
that while the Constitution’s racist provisions relating to slavery have been
overridden by amendments, they have not been deleted. This is because, as Feagin
writes, “At no point has a new Constitutional Convention been held to replace
this document with one created by representatives of all the people, including
the great majority of the population not represented at the 1787 Convention.”°°

The Three-Fifths Clause, the Slave Power, and the

Degradation of the American Democracy
Before the Sixteenth Amendment was adopted (permitting Congress to tax
income directly), Congress could impose and collect taxes only on the basis of
a state’s population. The larger a state’s population, the greater its tax burden.
For this reason, the southern states insisted that the slaves not be counted,
14 PARTI > Foundations

as, like horses and cows, they were property. However, for purposes of
representation in the House (where each state is allocated seats on the basis of
the size of its population), the South wished to count the slaves as persons,
although they, of course, could not vote. This would enhance the South’s power
not only in the House but also in choosing the president, since the number of
votes a state may cast for president in the electoral college is equal to the total
of its representation in the House and Senate. The northern states, on the other
hand, wished to count the slaves for purposes of taxation but not representation.
Hence, the great compromise—the Three-Fifths Clause. In Article I, Section 2,
paragraph 3:

Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several

states that may be included within this union, according to their respective
numbers which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free
persons, including those bound to service for a Term of years and excluding
Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons.

In attempting to justify or explain this compromise, Madison (in The

Federalist Papers No. 54) disingenuously puts his words in the mouth of a
fictional Southerner:

The Federal Constitution, therefore, decides with great propriety on the case
of our slaves, when it views them in the mixed character of persons and
property. ... Let the slaves be considered, as it is in truth a peculiar one. Let
the compromising expedient of the Constitution be mutually adopted which
regards them as inhabitants, but as debased by servitude below the equal
level of free inhabitants; which regards the slave as divested as of two fifths
of the man.*°

But as Professor Donald Robinson so astutely observes,

It bears repeating ... that Madison’s formula did not make blacks three-
fifths of a human being. It was much worse than that. It gave slave owners a
bonus in representation for their human property, while doing nothing for
the status of blacks as nonpersons under the law.3”

For the first time in this textbook we are able to precisely and comprehen-
sively document the extent of this bonus over time with the specific number and
percentage of House seats provided by the Three-Fifths Clause to the slave-
holding states. In Figure 1.1 and Figure 1.2, we see the number and percentage
of additional House seats gained by southern and border states as a consequence
of the clause. In the first congressional election in 1788, five states (Georgia,
Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia) gained 14 seats or a
bonus of 48 percent, allowing them to reach near parity in the number of House
OS
nel
 CHAPTER 1 > Universal Freedom Declared, Denied 15

25

2
3 20

g Mean = 18
S5 15
Ss
<
s 10
o
2
Es
z

0
1788 1790 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860

FIGURE 1.1
The Number of Additional Seats Given by the Three-Fifths Clause to the Slave
States in the House of Representatives
Sources: The population estimates used by the 1787 Constitutional Convention to apportion the first
House of Representatives were taken from Merrill Jensen and Robert Becker, eds., The
Documentary History of the First Federal Elections 1788-1790 (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1976): xxiv. The apportionment ratio and seats for each decade from 1790 to 1860 were
taken from Department of Commerce, Congressional District Data Book 93rd Congress (Washington,
DC: Government Printing Office, 1973): Appendix A, 548. Data on the African American slave and
free population for 1790-1915 were taken from Department of Commerce, Negro Population
1790-1915 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918): 57. Data on the African American
and white populations in each state from 1790 to 1860 were taken from Department of Commerce,
Negroes in the United States 1920-1932 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1935):
10-11. Calculations for each seat or fraction of a seat for each decade were done by the authors.

seats (47-53) with the eight larger northern states. This bonus in numbers
increased until 1830 and in percentages until 1860, when the numbers began
to decline somewhat. Over the nine censuses and reapportionments of House
seats from 1778 until 1860 (the Clause was abolished during the 1860s as a
result of the Civil War), the mean or average bonus percentage of seats was 25.
Similarly, Figure 1.3 shows the percentage of additional electoral votes going
to the slave states as a result of the Three-Fifths Clause, ranging from a low of
8 percent in 1792 to a high of 19 percent in most presidential elections between
1788 and 1860 (the mean over these 19 elections was a 17 percent bonus). This
helped the southern states to elect four of the first five presidents.
This is the essence of the slave power and how it degraded the American
democracy even among white men. It gave, for example, a white man in Virginia
who owned a hundred slaves the equivalent of 60 votes compared to a
Pennsylvania white man who owned no slaves having 1 vote.
The slave power was so pervasive and corrupting that Timothy Pickering,
George Washington, and John Adams’s secretary of state coined the terms
te
16 PARTI > Foundations

50

40

30

20

10
Seats
Additional
of
Percentage
0 -
1788 1790 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860

FIGURE 1.2
The Percentage of Additional Seats Given by the Three-Fifths Clause to the Slave
States in the House of Representatives
Sources: The population estimates used by the 1787 Constitutional Convention to apportion the first
House of Representatives were taken from Merrill Jensen and Robert Becker, eds., The
Documentary History of the First Federal Elections 1788-1790 (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1976): xxiv. The apportionment ratio and seats for each decade from 1790 to 1860 were
taken from Department of Commerce, Congressional! District Data Book: 93rd Congress
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1973): Appendix A, 548. Data on the African
American slave and free population for 1790-1915 were taken from Department of Commerce,
Negro Population 1790-1915 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918): 57. Data on the
African American and white populations in each state from 1790 to 1860 were taken from
Department of Commerce, Negroes in the United States 1920-1932 (Washington, DC: Government
Printing Office, 1935): 10-11. Calculations for each seat or fraction of a seat for each decade were
done by the authors.

“Negro President” and “Negro Congressmen” to refer to those presidents and

members of Congress elected on the basis of the three-fifths bonus.*® Not only
did this slave power elect “Negro Presidents” and “Negro Congressmen,” but
it also resulted in “Negros” serving as speakers of the House and chairs of the
Ways and Means Committee (79 and 92 percent of the time, respectively, until
1824), then and now the most powerful House committee.°?
The Three-Fifths Clause was effectively repealed with the adoption of the
Thirteenth Amendment. Ironically, however, this resulted in an increase in the
power of southern racists and white supremacists. This is because the
emancipated slaves were now counted as whole persons, but from the 1870s to
the 1970s, most of these whole black persons were denied the right to vote. The
authors of the Fourteenth Amendment had anticipated that the former slave
owners would attempt to deny the vote to blacks. Therefore, they included in
it a provision (Section 2) providing that those states that deprived blacks
(actually black men) of the right to vote would be deprived of the proportionate
 CHAPTER 1 > Universal Freedom Declared, Denied 17

20

Mean = 17

Percentage
Electoral
of
Votes

0
1788 1792 1796 1800 1804 1808 1812 1816 1820 1824 1828 1832 1836 1840 1844 1848 1852 1856 1860

FIGURE 1.3
The Percentage of Additional Electoral Votes Given by the Three-Fifths Clause to the
Slave States in Presidential Elections
Sources: The total number of additional House of Representatives seats for each state in the slave
bloc was taken from the analyses derived to develop the summary for Figure 1.1 and treated as
additional electoral votes for that state. The total number of electoral votes for each state that were
advantaged by the Three-Fifths Clause was taken from Congressional Quarterly’s Guide to U.S.
Elections, 4th ed., vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 2001): 817-36. Calculations
were prepared by the authors.

number of seats in the House. But this provision was never enforced.*° So, in
effect the slave power of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries became the
segregation power of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Whether slave
power or segregation, however, it continued to degrade the democracy and deny
African Americans universal freedom (see Box 1.3).
The other clauses dealing explicitly with slavery include Article I, Section
9, paragraph 1, prohibiting Congress from stopping the slave trade before 1808
and limiting any tax on imported slaves to $10; Article V, prohibiting any
amendment to the Constitution that would alter the 1808 date or rate of
taxation on imported slaves; and Article IV, Section 2, paragraph 2, requiring
the northern states to return slaves who escaped to freedom back to their
bondage in the South. As far as we know, none of these provisions caused much
controversy at the convention, although the fugitive slave clause in Article IV
initially would have required that escaped slaves be “delivered up as criminals”;
this, however, was modified to relieve states of the obligation.*!
The framers, while committed to freedom, had a limited, non-universal
vision of it. Freedom was for some—the some who were white men with
property, including property in other men, women, and children. Professor
Robinson cautions us, “One wants to be fair to the framers, and above all to
avoid blaming them as individuals for the sins of the culture, in which we all
share. We must be careful not to imply that they should have done better unless
18 PARTI > Foundations

BOX 1.3
Slavery and the Electoral College

The electoral college is the mechanism because it would have violated the
used to elect the president of the United principle of an independent federal
States. In the American democracy, a government. The last—and most obvious
person is elected president not on the and most democratic—method was
basis of winning a majority of the votes of election by the people. This alternative was
the people but rather on the basis of rejected because some of the framers said
winning a majority of votes in the electoral the people would not be educated or
college. The electoral college is actually 51 informed enough to make a good choice.
electoral colleges representing the states However, election by the people would
and the District of Columbia. Each state is also have disadvantaged the slaveholding
granted as many electoral college votes as southern states. James Madison, who at
it has members of Congress, which means first favored election by the people,
that each state and the District of Columbia changed his mind in favor of the electoral
has at least three electors (based on two college because he said election by the
senators and a minimum of one member people would disadvantage the South since
of the House). In all states except Maine their slaves could not vote. The electoral
and Nebraska, the electoral college votes college compromise did not disadvantage
are based on the principle of winner takes the southern states; it gave them a bonus
all. The candidate who wins most of the by allowing them to count their slaves in
votes of the people (even if this is less determining electoral votes on the basis of
than a majority in a mu!ticandidate race) the Three-Fifths Clause used to allocate
receives all the state’s electoral votes. seats in the House of Representatives. In
Thus, a hypothetical candidate running in its earliest years of operation, the electoral
California who receives 39 percent of the college did work to the advantage of the
vote in a four-person race would receive South, as four of the first five presidents
100 percent of the state’s 55 electoral elected in the first 30 years were slave
votes. This system of choosing the owners from Virginia.
president means that a loser can become The electoral college also represented
the winner. That is—as in the 2000 other compromises that undermined
election of George W. Bush and the 2016 democratic principles. While it gave the
election of Donald Trump—a person can states with the largest population the
lose a majority of the votes of the people larger share of electoral votes, it gave the
but nevertheless become president by smaller states a two-seat bonus based on
winning a majority of the electoral votes. their senators. It left the manner of
This undemocratic system of choosing the choosing the electors up to the states
president is rooted partly in slavery and except that they were prohibited from
was part of several compromises the holding any federal office (including being
framers of the Constitution made to members of Congress) and from meeting
accommodate the interests of together as a group (the electors meet
slaveholders, which undermined the separately on the same day in each state’s
interests of blacks and compromised the capital). The electors may be chosen in
principle of democracy. any manner a state’s legislature
The framers of the Constitution determines—by the legislature itself, by
confronted three alternatives in considering appointment of the governor, or by the
how the president might be elected. The voters. (It was not until the 1840s that all
first was election by the Congress. This states allowed the people to choose the
alternative was rejected because it violates electors in direct elections.) Once
the principle of the separation of powers. selected, the electors are free to vote for
The second alternative was election by the anyone they wish (as long as the person
legislatures of the states. It was rejected meets the constitutional qualifications of
 CHAPTER 1 > Universal Freedom Declared, Denied 19

age, native-born citizenship, and Gore won the election by a margin of a

residency), even if the person did not run half million votes but lost the electoral
in the first place. The states are also free college by a one-vote margin to George
to determine the allocation of the electoral W. Bush. As three ironies of history, the
votes—whether winner-take-all on a elections of 1876, 1888, and 2000 all
statewide basis or proportionally. involved allegations of suppression of the
Five times the electoral college has black vote in Florida and other southern
resulted in a loser becoming the winner, states.
including in 2016 when Hillary Clinton Although the electoral college is partly
won more than 2.5 million votes than rooted in slavery, it is unclear whether its
Donald Trump. In 1828, Andrew Jackson abolition in favor of choice by direct vote
won most of the votes of the people and of the people would advantage or
most (but not a majority) of the electoral disadvantage African Americans in
college votes in a four-man race but lost presidential elections. Although the small
the presidency to John Q. Adams. In states where few blacks live have a bonus
1876, Samuel J. Tilden won the popular in the electoral college, it is the large
vote majority but in the so-called states of the Northeast and Midwest that
“Compromise of 1877” Rutherford B. decide presidential elections. African
Hayes won by a one-vote margin in the Americans are disproportionately
electoral college. In 1888, Grover represented in these states. Therefore, in
Cleveland narrowly won the popular vote, close elections, African Americans can
but Benjamin Harrison won the electoral sometimes constitute the balance of
college by a large margin. In 2000, Albert power in determining the winner.
[ear za eS ERS EF eta 3s ver

we are prepared to show how better provisions might have been achieved
politically.” Fair enough. But Robinson continues, “At the same time, we must
be lucid in recognizing the terrible mistakes made at the founding. In the end
the framers failed on their own terms.”*? Or as Thurgood Marshall, the first
African American justice of the Supreme Court, said in a speech in 1987 marking
the 200th anniversary of the Constitution,

nor do I find the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice exhibited by the
framers particularly profound. To the contrary, the government they devised
was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and
momentous social transformations to attain the system of constitutional
government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights,
we hold as fundamental today. When contemporary Americans cite “The
Constitution,” they invoke a concept that is vastly different from what the
framers began to construct two centuries ago.*?

Constitutional Principles and Design

In designing the Constitution, the framers were guided by two overarching and
interrelated principles. First, the primary object of government was the protection
of private property, and second, the power of government had to be limited to
avoid tyranny. These two principles are interrelated because a government of
unlimited powers could itself become a threat to private property, thereby
20 PARTI > Foundations

undermining one of its core purposes. These two principles gave rise to what
are the two most important contributions of the framers to the art and practice
of government: the idea of the separation of powers of the government into
distinct parts or branches and federalism.
In The Federalist Papers No. 10, James Madison, a man of little property
himself, wrote, “The diversities in the faculties of men from which the rights of
property originates is not less an insuperable obstacle to uniformity of interests.
The protection of these faculties is the first object of government” (emphasis
added).44 How does government carry out its first object in a democratic society?
The problem confronting the framers, stated simply, was this: In a democratic,
capitalist society where only a minority has property but a majority has the
right to vote, it is likely the majority will use its voting rights to threaten the
property rights of the minority. To avoid this danger while preserving what
Madison called the “spirit and form” of democracy was the principal objective
of the framers in designing the Constitution.
How is this objective attained? The principal means is through the separation
of powers. Again, we quote Madison. Writing in The Federalist Papers No. 47
he argued, “No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value or stamped
with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty than that ... the
accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands
. may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”* It was not,
however, the mere separation of powers of the government into four distinct
parts (including the two parts of the Congress); in addition, the Constitution
allowed the people—the voters—to elect directly only one of the four parts: the
House of Representatives, arguably the least powerful of the four.
The second major principle of constitutional design was federalism, a system
of government in which powers are shared between a national (federal)
government and the governments of the several states. The last of the Bill of
Rights, the Tenth Amendment, establishes this federal system by delegating some
powers to the federal government, prohibiting both the states and the federal
government from exercising certain powers, and reserving all others to the states.
The major powers of the federal government were limited to regulating commerce
and the currency, conducting diplomacy, and waging war. Everything else done
by the government was to be done by the states.
As Robinson writes, when this system of government was being devised,
“tensions about slavery were prominent among the forces that maintained the
resolve to develop the country without strong direction from Washington.”46
In limiting the power of the federal government in Washington, the framers
simultaneously limited the possibility of universal freedom. Again, to quote from
Robinson’s Slavery in the Structure of American Politics:

Therefore, in the United States a political system “exquisitely” sensitive to

elements of which it was composed and whose structure, both formal and
 CHAPTER 1 > Universal Freedom Declared, Denied 21

informal, was geared to frustrate and facilitate public action at the national
level could not be expected to produce action to end slavery, particularly
when the group with the most immediate interest in overthrowing slavery
was itself completely unrepresented.”

African Americans, however, given their status first as slaves and

subsequently as a poor, oppressed minority, have always found the status quo
unacceptable. They favored—and favor today—rapid, indeed radical, change in
the status quo. They have also favored action by the federal government rather
than by the states. Historically, African Americans and their allies have made
an important contribution to universalizing freedom through their support for
a powerful federal government. The power of the federal government has
increased markedly during three periods in American history: the Reconstruction
Era in the 1860s, the New Deal Era in the 1930s, and the civil rights—Great
Society Era of the 1960s. In two of these periods, the black quest for freedom
was central to the expansion of federal power (see Chapter 2 for more detailed
discussion of these three periods of expanding federal power). As we show in
the chapter on public opinion, Chapter 4, African Americans remain the most
distinctively and persistently liberal of all the various groups of the American
population, strongly supporting an activist, interventionist federal government.

Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom

JAMES FORTEN (1766-1842)
James Forten contributed to universal freedom by working to make the principles
of equality expressed by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence real for
all persons. Forten was part of the founding generation of Americans. Born in
Philadelphia to a family of free black persons, as a boy he fought in the American
Revolution, and by the time of his death in 1842, he was among the wealthiest
men in the United States. A master sailmaker, Forten employed an integrated
workforce and used his wealth to organize and finance the abolitionist
movement. In 1813, he published A Series of Letters by a Man of Color. In this
pamphlet, Forten argued that freedom was universal. Anticipating Frederick
Douglass’s famous 1852 “Fourth of July Address” and Martin Luther King,
Jr.’s famous 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, Forten wrote,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that God creates all men equal, is one
of the most prominent features in the Declaration of Independence, and in
the glorious fabric of collected wisdom, our noble Constitution. This idea
embraces the Indian and the European, the savage and the saint, the Peruvian
22 PARTI > Foundations

James Forten.
Source: "Black Patriots During the
Revolution,” Varsity Tutors. Retrieved October
4, 2016 from
https:/www.google.com/search?q=jame-+fort
en&source=Inms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=O0ahU
KEwi3plabysHPAhXq7YMKHRfyDGsQ_AUICC
gB&biw=1280&bih=900#tbm=isch&q=jame+f
orten% 2C+black+and+white
% 2C+image&img
re=W9KJUBUuOnsFW9M %3A

and the Laplander, the white man and the African, and whatever measures
are adopted subversive of this inestimable privilege, are in direct violation of
the letter and spirit of our Constitution, and become subject to the
animadversion of all.

Forten defied the odds, and his life, work, and writings demonstrated that
African Americans were equal to the white men of his generation who founded
the Republic.®
@ Julie Winch, A Gentleman of Color: The Life of James Forten (New York: Oxford University Press,
2002).

SUMMA@ry eee eee

Freedom is a major value in Western and American culture. Yet freedom as a
value in the West and in the United States has its origins partly in the struggles
of slaves for freedom. While espousing the value of freedom, many Western
philosophers and many of the founders of the American republic embraced
racism and the ideology of white supremacy, which gave them the freedom to
deprive others of their freedom. Thus, in writing the social contract—the
Constitution—that established the United States, African Americans were left
out, thereby setting in motion the centuries-long African American freedom
struggle. Power—the central concept in politics and political science—is
intimately related to freedom. Whites with power used it to fashion a notion of
their freedom that allowed them to destroy freedom for Africans and African
 CHAPTER 1 > Universal Freedom Declared, Denied 23

Americans. African Americans, on the other hand, with relatively little power,
developed the idea of universal freedom as part of their ongoing struggles to
reclaim their own freedom.
The American Constitution is a remarkable document, widely admired
around the world as one of freedom’s great charters. However, from the outset
it was a terribly flawed document that compromised the Declaration of
Independence’s promise of universal freedom and equality. From Thomas
Jefferson’s Declaration to the writing of the Constitution at Philadelphia, the
founders of America compromised the idea of universal freedom in pursuit of
a union based on property, profits, slavery, and the ideology of white supremacy.
As a result, they created a government of limited powers, one that would act
cautiously and slowly. The African American freedom struggle, however, has
always required a government that could act decisively—whether to abolish
slavery and segregation or to secure social and economic justice. The Constitution
itself therefore is one of the factors that has limited and continues to limit their
quest for universal freedom.

Critical Thinking Questions

1. James Baldwin, a notable black author, wrote, “Words like ‘freedom,’

‘justice,’ and ‘democracy’ are not common concepts; on the contrary, they
are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous
and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people
that these words imply.” Given this context, what do words like freedom,
justice, and democracy mean to you?
2. Given the types of freedom defined in this chapter, which are most relevant
to the African American experience and universal freedom?
3. Define “power” and discuss the relationship between freedom and power.
4. Trace the social construction of race and white supremacy in relation to
the development of democracy in the United States.
5. How has the Constitution limited and continues to limit the African
American quest for universal freedom?

Selected Bibliography DD
Beard, Charles. An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution. New York: Free Press,
1913, 1965. The classic, controversial book suggesting that the framers of the
Constitution wrote an undemocratic document in order to protect their economic
interests.
Becker, Carl. The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of an Idea. New
York: Vintage Books, 1922, 1970. The classic study of the writing of the Declaration.
Brown, Robert. Charles Beard and the Constitution: A Critical Analysis of an Economic
Interpretation of the Constitution. New York: Norton, 1965. A comprehensive
critique of Beard’s controversial book.
24 PARTI > Foundations

Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1966. An early, groundbreaking study of the interrelationship
between slavery and the emergence of freedom as a value in the Western world.
Farrand, Max. The Framing of the Constitution of the United States. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1913. A short, readable account of the writing of the
Constitution by the scholar who prepared the four-volume documentary record of
the proceedings of the Philadelphia convention.
Fehrenbacher, Don, and Ward McAfree. The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the
United States Government’s Relations to Slavery. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001. The most recent and the most detailed study of the subject.
Freehling, William. “The Founding Fathers and Slavery.” American Historical Review
77 (1972): 81-93. A generally sympathetic account of how slavery influenced the
framers’ work on the Constitution.
Harding, Vincent. There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America. New
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981. A lyrical, poetic, inspiring narrative.
Jordan, Winthrop. White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812.
Baltimore, MA: Penguin, 1968. A monumental study tracing the origin and
development of white attitudes toward Africans and African Americans from the
sixteenth century through the early history of the United States.
Patterson, Orlando. Freedom in the Making of Western Culture. New York: Basic Books,
1991. The most recent study of how freedom in the West emerges out of the experience
of slavery.
Robinson, Donald. Slavery in the Structure of American Politics. New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1971. The best book on the role slavery played in the debates and
compromises that shaped the writing of the Constitution.
The Federalist Papers. Introduction by Clinton Rossiter. New York: New American
Library, 1961. The authoritative interpretation of the Constitution written during the
debate on ratification by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. It is
also a classic in American political thought.

Notes eSee eee

1 Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New
York: Harper & Row, 1988): 77.
2 William Riker, Federalism: Origins, Operation and Significance (Boston, MA: Little,
Brown, 1964): 140.
3 Orlando Patterson, Freedom in the Making of Western Culture (New York: Basic
Books, 1991): 1.
4 John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans (New
York: Knopf, 1980): 31.
5 See Patterson, Freedom in the Making of Western Culture and his “The Unholy
Trinity: Freedom, Slavery and the American Constitution,” Social Problems 54
(Autumn 1987): 543-77. See also Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American
Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: Norton, 1975); David Brion
Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1966), and his The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1975).
6 Patterson, “The Unholy Trinity,” pp. 559-60. Patterson, in Freedom in the Making
of Western Culture, contends that freedom is a uniquely Western value and that
“almost never outside the context of western culture and its influence, has it [non-
 CHAPTER 1 > Universal Freedom Declared, Denied 25

Western culture] included freedom. Indeed, non-Western peoples have thought so

little about freedom that most human languages did not even possess a word for the
concept until contact with the West” (p. x).
Patterson, “The Unholy Trinity,” p. 545.
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America
(New York: Square One Publishers, 2009): 57.
Patterson, Freedom in the Making of Western Culture, pp. 3-5.
Foner, Reconstruction, p. 231.
Richard King, Civil Rights and the Idea of Freedom (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1992): 26.
12 Ibid., pp. 26-28.
Herbert Aptheker, A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States,
vol. 1 (New York: Citadel Press, 1967): 1.
Harold Lasswell and Abraham Kaplan, Power and Society: A Framework for Political
Inquiry (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950): 26.
Robert Dahl, “The Concept of Power,” Behavioral Science 2 (July 1957): 201-15.
Max Weber, “Class, Status and Party,” in H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds.,
From Max Weber (New York: Oxford, 1958): 180.
Mack H. Jones, “A Frame of Reference for Black Politics” in Jones, Knowledge,
Power and Black Politics (Albany: SUNY Press, 2014): 5.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of an Idea
(New York: Vintage Books, 1922, 1970): 320.
Joseph Ellis, “Editing the Declaration,” Civilization (July/August 1995): 60. See
Becker’s The Declaration of Independence for a detailed analysis of the various
changes made in Jefferson’s original draft.
Ellis, “Editing the Declaration.”
Becker, The Declaration of Independence, pp. 212-13.
From The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, p. 324, as cited in Becker, The Declaration
of Independence, p. 25.
Ibid.
A comprehensive treatment of Jefferson’s views on race is in Winthrop Jordan, White
over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Baltimore, MA:
Penguin Books, 1969): chap. 12, “Thomas Jefferson: Self and Society.”
Jones, “A Frame of Reference for Black Politics,” pp. 3-15.
Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Black
Liberation (New York: Vintage Books, 1967): 3-4.
Pe] Ibid.
30 Jenny Williams, “Redefining Institutional Racism,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 8
(1985): 323-75; Louis Knowles and Kenneth Prewitt, Institutional Racism in America
(New York: Prentice Hall, 1969); Robert C. Smith, Racism in the Post-Civil Rights
Era: Now You See It, Now You Don’t (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995): 54-75.
31 Daily Currant, Buchanan: ‘White America’ Died Last Night, November 7, 2012.
www.dailycurrant.com/2012/11/07/buchanan-white-america-dead/.
32 William Freehling, “The Founding Fathers and Slavery,” American Historical Review
AAD] 2): 83.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
3 See Joe R. Feagin, Racist America: Roots, Current Realities and Future Reparations
(New York: Routledge, 2000): 16.
26 PARTI > Foundations

36 The Federalist Papers, Introduction by Clinton Rossiter (New York: New American
Library, 1961): 337.
BEE Donald Robinson, “The Constitutional Legacy of Slavery,” National Political Science
Review 4 (1994): 11.
38 For a provocative discussion of Thomas Jefferson as the first “Negro President,” see
Garry Wills, Negro President: Jefferson and Slave Power (Boston, MA: Houghton
Mifflin, 2003).
39 See Leonard Richards, Slave Power (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
2000): 42.
40 For discussion of the last effort to enforce Section 2 organized by the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), see Carmichael and Hamilton, Black
Power, chap. 4.
Robinson, “The Constitutional Legacy of Slavery,” p. 12.
Ibid.
Address by Justice Thurgood Marshall at the Annual Seminar of the San Francisco
Patent and Trademark Association, May 6, 1987. Reprinted as “Racial Justice and
the Constitution: A View from the Bench,” in J. H. Franklin and G. R. MacNeil,
eds., African Americans and the Living Constitution (Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1995): 315.
44 The Federalist Papers, p. 78. In a way, whether Madison or any of the other framers
were themselves men of property is irrelevant since, as Donald Robinson writes,
“Every one of them had made a pile of money, married a wealthy woman or
committed his professional life to the service of wealthy clients.” Donald Robinson,
To the Best of My Ability: The Presidency and the Constitution (New York: Norton,
1987): 65.
45 Ibid., p. 301.
46 Donald Robinson, Slavery in the Structure of American Politics (New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1971): 435.
47 Ibid. In his more recent book on the American political system, Robinson calls for
major modifications in the separation of powers so that the federal government may
act more coherently and rapidly. See his To the Best of My Ability, chap. 12.
mm CHAPTER 2 Sa
Federalism and the
Limits of Universal
Freedom

LEARNING OBJECTIVE
Explain the principles of federalism, and how they advantage and
disadvantage African Americans in their quest for freedom.

Robert Bork, nominated in 1987 by President Reagan for a seat on the Supreme
Court, argues that federalism is an important means to protect individual liberty
and freedom. Bork argues that indeed federalism is the Constitution’s most
important protector of an individual’s freedom and that it has been of special
value to African Americans in their quest for freedom. With respect to African
Americans, Bork writes,

\People who found state regulations oppressive could vote with their feet and
in massive numbers they did. Blacks engaged in the great migration at a time
when southern states blatantly discriminated. ... [O]f course this freedom to
escape came at a price. But if another state allows you the liberty you value,
you can move there and the choice is yours alone, not dependent on those
who made the Constitution.!

In his classic study Federalism: Origins, Operation and Significance, William

Riker rejects Bork’s arguments about the relationship between federalism and
freedom, stating flatly that “federalism may have more to do with destroying
freedom than encouraging it.” With respect to federalism and the African
American quest for freedom, Riker is equally harsh in his condemnation: “The
Did
28 PARTI > Foundations

main beneficiaries throughout American history have been southern whites, who
have been given the freedom to oppress Negroes, first as slaves and later as a
depressed caste.”? Thus, for Riker, “if in the United States one disapproves of
racism, one should disapprove of federalism.”*
For African Americans, at least until the 1960s civil rights revolution,
federalism has had an ambivalent, contradictory effect on their quest for
universal freedom. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 universalized freedom
throughout the United States with respect to race discrimination. Prior to the
1960s, however, federalism operated in an ambivalent way with respect to race,
since each state was free to make any laws it wished regarding the oppression
of blacks. So, for example, in 1640 Virginia was the first state to pass laws
legally enslaving blacks, but in the 1780s Massachusetts was the first state to
legally abolish slavery. In the Antebellum Era, antislavery abolitionists used the
power of northern state governments to undermine slavery in the South by
refusing to return escaped slaves as required by the Constitution and the Fugitive
Slave Act—thus, the idea of north to freedom, of following the North Star, and

100
Segregated states
== Rigid?
80 =@= Flexible?

60

40
Percentage

20

0
1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970

FIGURE 2.1
The Percentage of the African American Population in the Rigid (South) and Flexible
(Non-South) Segregated States: 1870-1970
* Rigid segregated states are the 11 states of the Old Confederacy.
> Flexible segregated states are the other states of the Union.
Sources: Adapted from U.S. Bureau of Census, Negro Population in the United States: 1790-1915
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918): 43-44, for the data from 1870 to 1910. US.
Bureau of Census, Negro Population in the United States: 1920-1932 (Washington, DC: Government
Printing Office, 1935): 9-11, for the data from 1920 to 1930. U.S. Bureau of Census, Census for
Population: 1950 Vol. Il: Characteristics of the Population: Part | United States Summary
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1951): Table 59, 1-1 06, for the 1950 data. U.S.
Bureau of Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington,
DC: Government Printing Office, 1975): 24-37, for data for 1940, 1960, and 1970. All calculations
were prepared by the authors.
 CHAPTER 2 > Federalism and Limits of Universal Freedom 29

of north to freedom’s “Promised Land.” In this sense, until the abolition of

slavery in the 1860s, federalism allowed some space, although limited, for
African American freedom in the United States.
Similarly, once a system of rigid segregation was imposed yn the South
beginning in the 1870s, blacks, as the Bork quote points out, begat-once again
to look to the North for freedom, to vote with their feet in the mass exodus
from the South. In Figure 2.1, data are displayed on the percentage of African
Americans living in the “rigidly segregated” southern states (see Box 2.1),
compared to the more “flexibly segregated” northern states. In 1870, 81 percent
of the African American population lived in the rigidly segregated South. Then,
starting as early as 1915, a slow, steady migration—commonly known as the
“Great Migration”—of African Americans began to the more flexibly segregated
North so that by 1970 only 55 percent of African Americans still lived in the
South.° The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the
Fair Housing Act of 1968 universalized freedom insofar as they made racial
discrimination illegal throughout the United States, North and South. Therefore,
one should probably qualify Riker’s blanket condemnation of federalism because
during the eras of slavery and segregation, it did provide some opportunity in
the North for the exercise of limited forms of freedom.

Federalism: Origins and Operations in the

United States
Federalism—the sharing of the powers of government between the national
(federal) government and the governments of the states—along with the
separation of powers, is one of the major contributions of the framers of the
Constitution to the art and practice of government. In Western political thought,
the sovereign power of the government (its supreme, absolute, unrestrained
authority over its citizens) could not be divided. Jean Bodin, the leading Western
philosopher on the idea of sovereignty, argued that sovereignty could not be
divided, that it was indivisible and must reside in a single person (a monarch)
or institution (parliament). The framers of the American Constitution rejected
Bodin’s idea of the indivisibility of the sovereign power of government on the
theory that since the people of the United States were sovereign, they, if they
wished, could divide sovereignty in order to create a well-ordered government
that would secure their liberties.
The idea that ultimate sovereignty or power of the government rests with
the people is the underlying philosophical principle of the American government
that shapes both federalism and the separation of powers. However, there is a
practical reason that the framers felt compelled to adopt the federal system:
Without federalism, it is unlikely that there could have been a union of all
the 13 states. Some of the framers favored a unitary rather than a federal
30 PARTI > Foundations

The “Absurd” Career of Jim Crow?

As most Americans are aware, with the prostitutes; in Oklahoma, blacks and
end of Reconstruction and the adoption of whites could not use the same public
the doctrine of “separate but equal” by telephone. In North Carolina, young
the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson, children could be arrested for interracial
the southern states required or permitted kissing. Finally, in Georgia and several
the separation of blacks and whites in other states, blacks were required to use
virtually all areas of life, public and private. separate polling places, separate
Schools, playgrounds, swimming pools, courthouse doors, separate record rooms,
beaches, parks, hotels, hospitals, libraries, separate record books, separate pens and
restaurants, cemeteries, water fountains, ink, and separate color-coded tax
toilets, and buses and streetcars were all receipts—white for white taxpayers and
segregated. Interracial sex, marriage, and pink for blacks.
love were also outlawed. Jim Crow's
strange career, however, in some places 2 €. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim
bordered on the absurd. Alabama Crow (New York: Oxford University Press,
1966). Woodward writes that the origin of the
prohibited blacks and whites from playing
term Jim Crow to refer to racial segregation is
checkers together; in some states,
“lost in obscurity”; however, it is probably
schoolchildren of different races could not related to minstrel songs done by whites in
use the same books; Louisiana established blackface.
separate districts for black and white

PE a\ TOR
COLORED
one?
}

Segregated Water Fountains.

Source: Elliot Erwitt/Magnum Photos

government. The Virginia delegation at Philadelphia proposed in its Virginia

Plan essentially a unitary government. The people as a whole would elect the
House, and the House in turn would elect the Senate, the president, and
the judiciary. Under the plan, the Congress would have unlimited powers to
“legislate in all cases to which the separate states are incompetent ... [and]
 CHAPTER 2 > Federalism and Limits of Universal Freedom 31

to negative all laws passed by the several states, contravening in the opinion of
the national legislature under the Articles of the union.”7 In other words, the
Congress was to have unlimited powers, including the power to “negative” or
veto acts of the state legislatures.
The Virginia Plan was rejected by the convention on several grounds.
However, a major reason was that the southern slaveholding states feared that
a unitary government with the power to “negative all laws passed by the states”
might interfere with their wish to maintain slavery. Thus, philosophical principles
aside, federalism was necessary in the United States for wholly practical reasons:
to establish the Union.’

Who Is Sovereign: The People or the States?

An Old Debate Renewed
It is generally accepted today that the whole people of the United States are
sovereign and that acting collectively created the U.S. government. This, however,
was not always the accepted view. Thomas Jefferson, for example, apparently
believed that the United States was created by the states rather than the people,
and consequently each state had the right to act independently of the federal
government by nullifying (vetoing) federal laws with which it disagreed.’ This
view was firmly rejected by Lincoln and in a sense was settled by the Civil War.
However, in a 1995 case, Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas in a dissenting
opinion (joined by the Chief Justice, Justice O’Connor, and Justice Scalia)
renewed this 200-year-old debate.
The case is U.S. Term Limits Inc. et al. v. Thornton et al., a case dealing
with whether a state (in this case Arkansas) could on its own authority impose
term limits on its members of Congress.'!° The Court, in a five-to-four decision,
said no, holding that only all the people of the United States by amending the
Constitution could limit the terms of members of Congress. In a long dissenting
opinion, Justice Thomas, again writing for himself and three of his colleagues,
argued that each state could limit congressional terms because “the ultimate
source of the Constitution’s authority is the consent of the people of each state,
not the consent of the undifferentiated people of the nation as a whole”
(emphasis added).!! Noting that the “United States” is consistently a plural noun
and that the original preamble to the Constitution reads “We the People of the
States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, etc.,” Justice Thomas concluded, “The
Constitution simply does not recognize any mechanism for action by the
undifferentiated people of the nation.”
In his opinion for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens rejected Thomas’s
analysis. He argued that the states under the Articles of Confederation retained
their sovereignty as independent states, but with the adoption of the Constitution,
“the framers envisioned a uniform national system, rejecting the notion that the
nation was a collection of states and instead creating a direct link between the
32 PARTI > Foundations

national government and the people” (emphasis added).'? In a separate

concurring opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “In my view, however, it
is well settled that the whole people of the United States asserted their political
identity and unity of purpose when they created the federal system.”"
This debate between Justice Thomas and his colleagues on whether the
people of the United States or the people of the various states established the
Constitution may seem like an arcane, theoretical, academic debate with no
practical consequences. It is not. Rather, it is a debate central to the thesis of
this book: whether the United States is a nation of uniform, universal rights
and freedom or whether it is one of freedom limited by states’ rights. It is also
part of an ongoing effort by conservatives on the Court and in the Congress
to radically reshape the federal system, by taking power from the federal
government and returning it to the states (see the section, “The Rehnquist Court
and Roberts Courts, and the Revival of State-Centered Federalism,” later in this
chapter, and Chapter 13).

Federalism: Advantages and Disadvantages

Perhaps the most frequently stated advantage of the federal system is that it
allows the states to serve as “laboratories” for public policy innovation and
experimentation. In other words, each of the 50 states is free to “experiment”
with the best ways to deliver education, health, and welfare services and to
provide for the punishment of crime (see Box 2.2). Through the “diffusion of
innovation,” each state can learn from the successes and failures of the others
and change its policies according to what works best.!> Related to this, federalism
grants to citizens “choice,” the freedom to move from one state to another in
search of a better life.
Another advantage of federalism is that it provides opportunities for
minority groups in the country as a whole to be majorities (the Mormons in
Utah) or larger, more politically significant minorities (Jews in New York,
Latinos in California, or blacks in Louisiana) at the state and local levels. This
provision enhances the opportunities for minority groups to participate in
politics and to be elected to office, again a situation that would not be possible
in a unitary system. This is especially true in the United States with roughly
89,527 units of government including the national, states, counties, munici-
palities, towns, school districts, and special districts. This enormous diversity
of governments is particularly important for African Americans; although they
are a national minority, they can become a local majority and control the
governments in localities, including many of the nation’s larger and more
important cities.
There are clear advantages to a federal system, but there are clear
disadvantages as well, especially to blacks in their quest for universal rights and
freedoms. First, in its essence, federalism is an impediment to universal freedom
because it allows the different states to define rights and freedoms for their
 CHAPTER 2 > Federalism and Limits of Universal Freedom 33

Federalism, Felonies, and the Right to Vote

Under federalism, each state is free to set procedure is to deny the vote to a large
its own qualifications for voting, except number of its black citizens.
the vote may not be denied on account of In the 2004 election, 4,686,539
race, religion, gender, age (18), or the Americans were denied the right to vote
person's failure to pay a poll tax. But because they had been convicted of a
under what conditions might citizens lose crime. A study using data from the U.S.
and then regain the right to vote? As part Census’s Current Population Survey
of the voter registration efforts of the estimates the net effect of felony
1995 Million Man March, the National disenfranchisement laws on the probability
Coalition on Black Voter Participation of voting by blacks and whites. It found
surveyed each of the states in order to that overall voter turnout is lower in states
learn whether citizens lost their right to with the most restrictive felony
vote as a consequence of conviction for a disenfranchisement laws. In terms of
felony and if so, how they could have the blacks, specifically, the probability of
right restored. Thirty-five of the 50 states blacks in those states voting in the 1996
responded to the survey. Three states presidential election declined by 10
(Maine, Utah, and Vermont) with small percent and in 2000 by 7 percent.° The
black populations do not deprive convicted authors also looked specifically at Florida,
felons of the right to vote. Arkansas and the site of the closely contested
West Virginia have no clearly stated Bush-Gore 2000 presidential race. They
procedures for restoration, three states found that “in 1996 an estimated 204,600
require action by the governor, and most African American men were
of the rest require action of the state disenfranchised because of criminal
pardon and parole boards or local election convictions in the state. If
commissions. Mississippi (which at 37 disenfranchisement figures were similar
percent has the largest percentage black (or greater) in 2000 it is possible that the
population of any state) is different. Its election results might have been different
constitution states, “The legislature, may if Florida had a less restrictive criminal
by a two-thirds vote of both houses, of all disenfranchisement law.Ӣ In 2007,
members elected, restore the right of Florida's newly elected Republican
suffrage to any person disqualified by governor, Charlie Crist, persuaded the
reason of crime, but the reason therefore state’s Executive Clemency Board to
shall be spread upon the journal and the immediately restore voting rights to most
vote shall be by yeas and nays.” Thus, in felons who have served their sentences.
Mississippi it is more difficult for a citizen However, in 2011 the legislature in Florida
who has committed a crime to regain the reversed the governor and adopted
right to vote than it is to impeach the measures to permanently ban convicted
president of the United States. In felons from voting.
Mississippi, African Americans are more Congressman John Conyers, the senior
than three times as likely to be convicted African American member of Congress,
of felonies as whites. Thus, they are three introduced legislation in 2000 that would
times as likely to lose the right to vote, restore voting rights in federal elections to
and once lost, it is very difficult to regain. former prisoners nationwide (although
Perhaps these are mere coincidences, but their right to vote in state and local
it is striking that in Mississippi—the state elections would still be left to the states).
with the worst history of race oppression This legislation, however, has been
and the largest black population—citizens blocked in committee as critics contend It
find it more difficult than in any other of is unconstitutional because it extends the
the 35 responding states to regain their power of the federal government into an
voting rights once lost. It is striking area reserved to the states. However, in
because the effect of the Mississippi 2005 two states took actions to restore
 j
34 PARTI > Foundations

voting rights to felons. In lowa, Governor show a racially discriminatory intent or

Tom Vilsack issued an executive order purpose.
restoring voting rights to all felons who In addition to their impact on voting and
had completed their sentences, and in elections, felon disenfranchisement laws
Nebraska, the legislature overrode the may have direct public policy
governor's veto and voted to overturn its consequences. Comparing low and high
ban on felony voting and automatically disenfranchisement states, Professor
restore voting rights to felons after they Richard Brice found that
complete their sentences and a two-year disenfranchisement may have reduced
waiting period.® (In 2011 the lowa social expenditures by as much as 18
legislature reversed the governor's order.) percent, reducing by $1.8 billion services
In 2007, the Maryland General and programs that might otherwise have
Assembly adopted legislation that allowed gone to areas of concentrated poverty
all felons to vote immediately after they with large black populations.'
complete their sentences, including parole
or probation, and Rhode Island adopted an 2 Hanes Walton Jr. and Simone Green, “Voting
Rights and the Million Man March: The Problem
even more liberal law allowing felons on
of Restoration of Voting Rights for Ex-
parole or probation to vote. In 2016
Convicts/Felons,” African American Research
Maryland’s Democratic legislature Perspectives 3 (Winter 1997): 68-74. It is
overturned Republican Governor Larry estimated that 13 percent of black men
Hogan's veto of a bill allowing felons to compared to less than 2 percent of white men
vote as soon as they are released and in have lost the right to vote as a result of felony
Virginia, Democratic Governor Terry convictions, including 32 percent of the African
McAuliffe issued an executive order American men in Alabama, 31 percent in Florida,
allowing felons to vote. After the Virginia and 29 percent in Mississippi.
Supreme Court ruled the governor's > Aman McLeod, Ismail White, and Amelia
Gavin, “The Locked Ballot Box: The Impact of
executive order violated the state
State Criminal Disenfranchisement Laws on
constitution, McAuliffe decided to get African American Voting Behavior and
around the court’s decision by personally Implications for Reform,” Virginia Journal of
signing individual clemency grants to Social Policy and Law 11 (2003): 66-88.
ensure felon voting rights. © |bid., p. 79.
Kentucky's newly elected Republican 3 Ibid., p. 83. On the impact of felon
Governor Matt Bevin revoked the disenfranchisement on the 2000 election, as
executive order of his Democratic well as numerous U.S. Senate races see
predecessor, Steve Beshear, restoring Christopher Uggen and Jeff Manza “Democratic
Contraction: The Consequences of Felon
voting rights to felons. Meanwhile, in
Disenfranchisement,” American Sociological
Farrakhan v. Gregoire (2010) the full Ninth
Review 67 (2002): 477-803.
Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a three- © The most comprehensive study of the history,
judge panel decision overturning nature, and social and political implications of
Washington State’s felon denying ex-felons the right to vote is Elizabeth
disenfranchisement law. The full court Hull, The Disenfranchisement of Ex-Felons
ruled that while the state’s law had a (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press,
racially discriminatory effect or result, in 2006).
order to violate the Voting Rights Act or ‘See Sean McElwee, “How the Prison-Industrial
the Fifteenth Amendment, one had to Complex is Corrupting Elections,” Salon, May
26, 2015.

citizens. Historically, this power has allowed a minority. of southern whites to

limit the freedom of African Americans, even against the wishes of a majority
of the American people. Second, federalism, as a number of political scientists
have shown, tends to lead to irresponsible government.'® Woodrow Wilson,
political scientist and 28th president of the United States, eloquently stated the
 CHAPTER 2 > Federalism and Limits of Universal Freedom 35

case for the irresponsibility of divided power in his 1898 book Congressional
Government. Wilson observed that “the more power is divided the more
irresponsible it becomes. A mighty baron who can call half the country to arms
is watched with great jealousy, and, therefore restrained with more vigilant care
than is ever vouchsafed the feeble master of a single and solitary castle.”!7 In
other words, citizens are more likely to be aware of and exercise restraint on
or greater control of one powerful central government than they are of scores
of state and local governments. This situation is even more the case today than
when Wilson was writing in 1898, given the development of a national news
media (particularly television) that focuses its attention on events in Washington.
Average citizens living in Detroit or San Francisco are more likely to be aware
of what the president and the Congress are doing in Washington than they are
of what the governor and legislature are doing in Lansing and Sacramento.
E. E. Schattsneider has argued that widening or nationalizing the scope of
government decision making tends to enhance the power of minority groups.'8
That is, a minority such as African Americans is more likely to be able to
influence decision makers in Washington than in any of the 50 state capitals.
This is because decisions at the national level tend to be more visible, and
minority interest groups tend to be better organized in national than state
politics. For this reason, for example, African American leaders opposed
“Devolution,” the efforts of the Republican congressional majority in 1995 to
transfer responsibility for social welfare programs (welfare, Medicaid, food
stamps, etc.) to the states. Another reason African Americans oppose the transfer
of social programs to the states is that instead of one uniform, universal standard
for welfare or Medicaid, there would be 51. Again, this is part of the essence
of federalism. As Riker writes, “The grant of autonomy to local majorities to
create confused policies has resulted in a cost to the whole society that is
probably greater than the cost of uniformity.”!? To relate Riker’s point to the
theme of this book, uniformity in national policies, as opposed to multiple state
policies, is more likely to result in universal rights and freedoms.

Reconstruction, the New Deal, and the

‘Civil Rights Movement: The Triumph of
National-Centered Power
Throughout American history there has been debate and conflict between those
who favor national-centered power and those who favor state-centered power.
Generally, the American political tradition tends to favor state-centered power,
and advocates of national-centered power have tended to prevail only in times
of national crisis. Even then, the advocates of state-centered power reassert
themselves in calls for a return of power to the states. Frederick Douglass during
Reconstruction—the first triumph of national-centered power—observed that
36 PARTI > Foundations

“no political idea is more deeply rooted in the minds of the country [than] the
right of each state to control its own affairs.”*° Thus, it is not surprising that
after each period of expanding national power, there were subsequent calls for
a return of power to the states.

Reconstruction
National-centered power—greater authority and responsibility to the federal
government—has triumphed only during periods of crisis. The first such crisis,
the gravest in the nation’s history, was the Civil War and the effort to reconstruct
the South in its aftermath. As Reconstruction historian Eric Foner shows, an
activist federal government as an instrument of reform emerges in the
Reconstruction Era of the Civil War.?!
During this period, the power of the president—particularly his commander-
in-chief powers—expanded enormously under Lincoln. Then under President
Andrew Johnson, the powers of Congress also expanded as that body passed
several civil rights laws requiring the states to accord the newly freed slaves
universal freedom and equal rights. For a time during this period, the U.S. Army
was maintained in the southern states to enforce these rights. The federal
government also established its first social welfare agency—the Freedmen’s
Bureau—to provide assistance first to the newly freed slaves and subsequently
to poor whites displaced by the war. Finally, three amendments were added to
the Constitution: the Thirteenth abolishing slavery, the Fourteenth establishing
universal citizenship and equality and fairness under law for all persons, and
the Fifteenth guaranteeing voting rights to all men regardless of race. The
Fourteenth Amendment eventually was to become one of the most important
mechanisms for expanding the power of the federal government in relationship
to the states. (On the pro-universal freedom, progressive policies of state and
local governments during Reconstruction, see Chapter 13.)

The New Deal

National-centered power expanded for a second time during Franklin Roosevelt’s
New Deal.” In the midst of the Great Depression, the federal government
took on a wide array of responsibilities previously left to the states or market
forces, including universal access of the elderly to retirement income, welfare
for fatherless children, and government-supported public works jobs for
the unemployed. In addition to the beginnings of the modern welfare state, the
New Deal also expanded the power of the regulatory state with respect to
banking, agriculture, the stock market, and the relationship between workers
and their employers. The Supreme Court initially declared many of the New
Deal programs unconstitutional because the Court said they exceeded the federal
government’s Article 1, Section 8, powers. Eventually, however, under pressure
from the popular Roosevelt, the Court changed its mind and approved virtually
 CHAPTER 2 > Federalism and Limits of Universal Freedom 37

all aspects of the New Deal. Thus, for the first time in American history,
Congress established a series of universal programs designed to assure the
employment and social security of all its citizens.
During the New Deal, the federal government also established a series of
grants in aid to the states and localities—funds to assist them in carrying out
their responsibilities in such areas as public works, housing, and health. These
grants in aid were vastly expanded in the 1960s as part of Lyndon Johnson’s
Great Society (by the 1970s there were more than 600 such specific grants
covering everything from alcohol and drug abuse to youth training programs).
These grants usually come with strings attached; that is, they carry uniform or
universal conditions that states and localities must comply with.

The Civil Rights Revolution and the Great Society

The civil rights reforms of the 1960s ushered in the last great expansion of federal
power. In a sense, these reforms were a second reconstruction or a completion
of the first. As in the original Reconstruction, Congress passed three new civil
rights laws guaranteeing universal access to the ballot, public education,
employment, restaurants, hotels and other public places, and the sale and rental
of housing. Two new amendments were added to the Constitution granting the
right to vote for president to the largely black city of Washington, DC, and
abolishing the poll tax. The Supreme Court, then the president, and finally the
Congress began to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments for the
first time in 100 years. And on two occasions (Little Rock in 1957 and the
University of Mississippi in 1962), the U.S. Army, again for the first time in a
century, was deployed in the South to enforce African American civil rights.
Federal social welfare programs also expanded during this period as a part
of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and “war on poverty.” Universal access to
health care for the elderly and to nursing homes for the poor elderly was
guaranteed, as was health care for the poor. The Great Society also provided
federal support for elementary and secondary education and loans and grants
for college and postgraduate education. Again, these were universal programs,
providing support to persons no matter where they lived in the country.
Yet, as always in American history, there was reaction to this expanding
power of the federal government from those favoring state-centered power.
During Reconstruction, Foner writes, “A more powerful national state and a
growing sense that blacks were entitled to some measure of civil equality
produced their own countervailing tendencies as localism, laissez-faire and
racism, persistent forces in the nineteenth century American life, reasserted
themselves.”23 One hundred years later these same persistent, countervailing
tendencies emerged in reaction to the Great Society and civil rights reforms of
the 1960s. Beginning in 1968 with the election of Richard Nixon, again in 1980
with the election of Ronald Reagan, and again in 1994 with the election of
Republican congressional majorities, these forces of localism, laissez-faire, and
38 PARTI > Foundations

racism were reasserted, continuing the historic tension and conflict between
advocates of national-centered and state-centered power.

The Fourteenth Amendment: The American

Charter of Universal Freedom
Of the Fourteenth Amendment, Fred Friendly and Martha Elliot write, “It
was as if Congress had held a second constitutional convention and created a
federal government: of vastly expanded proportions.”** And of the three
Civil War amendments, including the Fourteenth, Justice Samuel Miller in the
Slaughterhouse Cases wrote,

No one can fail to be impressed with the one prevailing purpose found in
them all, lying at the foundation of each, and without which none of them
would have been suggested; we mean the freedom of the slave race, the
security and firm establishment of that freedom and the protection of the
newly made freeman and citizen from the oppression of those who had
formerly exercised dominion over him.*5

Of the Fourteenth specifically, Justice Miller wrote, “It is so clearly a

provision for that race ... that a strong case would be necessary for its
application to any other” (emphasis added).”°
Although the Fourteenth Amendment did vastly expand the power of the
federal government in relation to the states and establish a basis for the protection
of the freedom of African Americans, it took 100 years for this to happen. In
the meantime, contrary to Justice Miller’s view, the amendment has been applied
to persons of other races, including those fictitious persons called corporations.
Indeed, until the 1960s the amendment was more frequently used to protect the
freedom of corporations than it was the freedom of blacks. Thus, to fully
appreciate how the amendment became the great charter of universal freedom
for all Americans, we need to trace the history of its adoption and
implementation from the 1860s to the 1960s.

The Fourteenth Amendment: Origins and

Development
The Fourteenth Amendment was approved by the House and Senate in 1866
and ratified by the necessary three-fourths of the states two years later. William
Nelson noted that much of the opposition to the amendment, North and South,
was “deeply racist” as opponents argued that equality should not be granted
to the “inferior races,” specifically not just blacks but also Indians and the
Chinese on the West Coast.?” Although racism was the principal basis of
opposition, opponents also argued that the amendment violated the principles
 CHAPTER 2 > Federalism and Limits of Universal Freedom 39

of federalism as it gave the federal government unprecedented authority to

interfere in the affairs of the states.
The Fourteenth Amendment, with five sections, is one of the longest
amendments to the Constitution. The most important and controversial part is
Section 1, which establishes universal citizenship and declares freedom and
equality throughout the United States. As Friendly and Elliot wrote in The
Constitution: That Delicate Balance, the following 17 words brought about a
“quiet revolution” in American government and politics: No state shall make
or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens
of the United States, nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or
property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the law.*® The controversy about this
important language is whether its authors intended it to “incorporate” the Bill
of Rights—that is, whether the “privileges and immunities” of citizens of the
United States are those rights spelled out in the first nine amendments to the
Constitution.??
Although the principal sponsors of the amendment in both the House and
the Senate (Representative Jonathan Bingham of New York and Senator Jacob
Howard of Michigan) declared during the debates that it would require the states
to abide by the Bill of Rights, there is still no agreement even today among
scholars who have studied the amendment’s history. Some argue that the intent
of the Fourteenth Amendment was clearly to incorporate the Bill of Rights.*°
Others are just as certain from their research that this was not the amendment’s
intent.*! There is, as Professor William Nelson notes, voluminous research to
support both sides of the argument; thus, he concludes there is an “impasse in
scholarship.”3* That is, we do not know for sure—and perhaps never will—the
intent of the framers of the amendment.

The Supreme Court and the Fourteenth

Amendment, 1865-1925: Universal Freedom Denied
The Supreme Court historically has also been divided on the intent of the
amendment. Immediately after its adoption, the Court took the view that it did
not make the Bill of Rights applicable to the states. The Slaughterhouse Cases
were the first heard by the Court under the Fourteenth Amendment. In his
opinion for the court’s majority, Justice Miller rejected the argument that the
amendment’s privileges and immunities clause incorporated the Bill of Rights,
holding that the only rights protected were access to Washington, DC, and
coastal seaports; the right to protection on the high seas; the right to use the
navigable waters of the United States; the right of assembly and petition; and
the privilege of habeas corpus. Three justices dissented in this case; however,
what modern legal scholars call Justice Miller’s “pernicious” opinion remained
the law of the land until the beginning of the twentieth century.°?
40 PARTI > Foundations

The Supreme Court took a similar view in its reading of the amendment’s
equal protection clause when it declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconsti-
tutional. This act prohibited racial discrimination in public accommodations
such as hotels, theaters, and streetcars. In the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, Justice
Joseph Bradley declared that the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection
clause only prohibited discrimination by the states, not private businesses or
persons. In language reminiscent of that used today by conservative judges and
others who oppose affirmative action, Justice Bradley declared,

When a man has emerged from slavery, and by the aid of beneficent
legislation has shaken off the inseparable concomitants of that state, there
must be some stage in the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of
a mere citizen, and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws, and when his
rights as a citizen, or a man, are to be protected in the ordinary modes by
which other men’s rights are protected.**

In his dissent, Justice John Marshall Harlan argued that the civil rights law
did not make blacks “special favorites of the law” and that the clear purpose
of both the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth Amendments was to establish and
decree “universal freedom throughout the United States.” In 1896 in Plessy v.
Ferguson, the Court continued its narrow reading of the amendment when it
declared that racial segregation did not violate the equal protection clause. Again
Justice Harlan dissented, declaring that the Fourteenth Amendment made the
Constitution “color blind”; but his view was not to prevail until the Supreme
Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.
Ironically, until the 1960s, the Fourteenth Amendment’s great charter of
universal freedom was used to protect the freedom of corporations rather than
that of African Americans or any other real persons. William Blackstone, in his
Commentaries on the Laws of England published in 1765, defines corporations
as “artificial persons who may maintain a perpetual succession and enjoy a kind
of legal immortality.”*° In 1905 in Lochner v. New York, the Supreme Court
struck down a New York state law that limited the hours of bakery workers to
10 hours a day and 60 hours a week. The Court held that New York’s minimum
hours law violated “the general rights to make a contract in relation to his
business which is part of the liberty of the individual protected by the Fourteenth
Amendment of the federal Constitution.”** New York had passed the law in
the exercise of its police powers—that is, to protect the health and safety of the
workers; however, the Court held that the “liberty of contract” guaranteed by
the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process of law clause meant that if a business
wanted to require its workers to work more than 60 hours a week, the states
could not interfere. Using similar reasoning, the Court subsequently invalidated
other government regulations of business, including child labor laws.37 The
Court’s decision in Lochner was controversial, but it remained the law until the
 CHAPTER 2 > Federalism and Limits of Universal Freedom 41

Court changed its mind during the Depression, when government regulation of
corporations and the economy became more imperative, not to mention popular.

The Supreme Court and the Fourteenth

Amendment, 1925-2015: The Universalization of
Freedom
Today the Fourteenth Amendment is largely used to protect civil liberties and
civil rights. Civil liberties are generally understood as the rights of individuals
that are protected from government abridgement. Civil rights are generally
understood as the right of minorities (blacks, women, and homosexuals) to
freedom and equality under the law. The Court first began to interpret the
Fourteenth Amendment as protecting civil liberties embodied in the Bill of
Rights in 1925, and it began to seriously enforce the amendment’s guarantee
of equality for blacks and other minorities in the 1950s and 1960s.
In 1925 in Gitlow v. New York, the Supreme Court began the gradual
process of incorporating or universalizing the Bill of Rights. In this case, the
Court for the first time held that “freedom of speech and of the press ... are
among the fundamental personal rights and ‘liberties’ protected by the due
process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from impairment by the states.”*°
In Gitlow the Court overturned more than 50 years of prior decisions on the
Fourteenth Amendment. Then, as Table 2.1 shows, the Court began a gradual,
year-by-year, amendment-by-amendment process, sometimes called selective
incorporation of the Bill of Rights. In this process, the Court applied the rest
of the First Amendment to the states, and then, in the 1960s, it applied those
provisions of the Bill of Rights dealing with the rights of persons accused of
crimes (the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments). And in 1973 in Roe
v. Wade, the Court interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment as creating a right
to privacy (either in the Fourteenth’s guarantee of liberty or as a Ninth
Amendment unmentioned right) that is broad enough to cover a woman’s right
to choose an abortion. In 2003 in Texas et al. v. Lawrence, the Court extended
this right of privacy to gays and lesbians, prohibiting the states from making
homosexual relations a crime. And in 2015 in Oberfeld v. Hodges, the Court
held that denial of the right to marry to same sex couples violated both the
Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. Thus,
an amendment once described as only for the “Colored race” is now used to
secure rights and freedoms for all Americans.
With respect to the “Colored’s,” in 1954 the Supreme Court declared in
Brown v. Board of Education that, at least in terms of the public schools, racial
segregation was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection
clause, reversing the half-century precedent set in Plessy v. Ferguson. Then in
the 1960s, Congress, responding to the protests and demonstrations led by
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., passed a series of laws designed to enforce the
42 PARTI > Foundations

oh 2 Dates of |
Freedom: Selected Provisions and Amendments (1-10)
(Key Cases are Italicized) Year of Incorporation/
Universalization

Eminent Domain (5)?

Key case: Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy R.R. v. Chicago 1897
Free speech (1)
Key case: Gitlow v. New York 1925
Free press (1)
Key case: Near v. Minnesota 1931
Free exercise of religion (1)
Key case: Hamilton v. Regents of the University of California 1934
Freedom of assembly (1) and freedom to petition the
government for the redress of grievances (1)
Key case: DeJonge v. Oregon 1937
No establishment of state religion (1)
Key case: Everson v. Board of Education 1947
Freedom from unreasonable search and seizure (4) _
Key case: Mapp v. Ohio (“exclusionary rule”) 1961
Freedom from cruel and unusual punishment (8)
Key case: Robinson v. California 1962
Right to counsel in any criminal trial (6)
Key case: Gideon v. Wainwright 1963
Right against self-incrimination and forced confessions (5)
Key cases: Malloy v. Hogan and Escobedo v. Illinois 1964
Right to counsel and to remain silent when questioned by
police (6)
Key case: Miranda v. Arizona 1966
Right against double jeopardy (5)
Key case: Benton v. Maryland 1969
Right to keep and bear arms (2)
Key case: McDonald v. Chicago 2010
* Number in parentheses refers to the Amendment to the Constitution addressing that right
or freedom. The Court first incorporated the right to privacy in Griswold v. Connecticut (381
U.S. 479, 85. S.Ct., 1678), a 1965 case involving the right of married couples to use
contraceptives.

Source: Craig Ducat and Harold Chase, Constitutional Interpretation, 4th ed. (St. Paul, MN:
West, 1988): 845-46.
 CHAPTER 2 > Federalism and Limits of Universal Freedom 43

Fourteenth’s guarantee of universal freedom and equality. But in passing the

public accommodations section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (which prohibited
discrimination in hotels, motels, and restaurants), Congress relied not on the
Fourteenth Amendment but instead on its power to regulate interstate commerce
(because hotels and motels received products or served customers who crossed
state lines). Since the Supreme Court in 1883 had invalidated a similar civil
rights law based on the Fourteenth’s Section 5 enforcement power, the Congress,
by using the commerce clause, avoided the problem of having the Court overrule
yet another of its precedents. (In general, the Court is reluctant to overturn its
prior decisions, relying on the principle of stare decisis—let the previous decision
stand.)°’ This led Justice William O. Douglas in his concurring opinion in the
case, Heart of Atlanta Motel v. the United States, upholding the 1964 law to
write,

Iam reluctant to... rest solely on the commerce clause. My reluctance is not
due to any conviction that Congress lacks the power to regulate commetce in
the interests of human rights. It is rather my belief that the right of the
people to be free of state action that discriminates against them because of
race ... occupies a more protected place in our constitutional system than
does the movement of cattle, fruit, steel and coal across state lines. Hence, I
would prefer to rest on the assertion of legislative power contained in section
5 of the Fourteenth Amendment which states “The Congress shall have the
power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article”’—
a power which the Court concedes was exercised at least in part.”

One hundred years after the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, it

became the Constitution’s great charter of freedom in fact as well as theory,
establishing a new vision of universal freedom, equality, and liberty under law
for all Americans. It is a vision of freedom that Abraham Lincoln invoked in
1863 at Gettysburg and that Martin Luther King Jr. invoked a hundred years
later at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington (see Box 2.3).
To achieve Lincoln’s vision and King’s dream required a fundamental
transformation in federalism as well as reversal by the Supreme Court of more
than 50 years of its decisions on the relationship between federalism and
freedom. Unfortunately, for African Americans and others interested in universal
freedom, the Supreme Court once more appears to be reversing itself. This time,
however, the Court is seeking to limit freedom by reviving old principles of
federalism and states’ rights.

The Rehnquist and Roberts Courts, and the Revival

of State-Centered Federalism
The “states are not mere political subdivisions of the United States,’ so said
9

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in New York v. United States, a case invalidating
44 PARTI > Foundations

Abraham Lincoln atre and Martin Luther

King Jr. at Lincoln Memorial: Two Speeches in the
Quest for Universal Freedom

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln was asked to

deliver “a few appropriate remarks” at the
dedication of the cemetery at the
Gettysburg battlefield. One hundred
years later, Martin Luther King Jr. was
asked to deliver the closing remarks at the
Lincoln Memorial after the March on
Washington. Lincoln spoke for three
minutes before a crowd of 20,000. King
spoke for 17 minutes before a crowd of
250,000. Lincoln spoke on the bloody
battlefield at Gettysburg to give meaning
to the Civil War. King spoke at the Lincoln
Memorial to give meaning to the civil
rights movement's bloody battles then
taking place in the South. Of all the
American presidents, Abraham Lincoln
was the most gifted in the rhetoric of
freedom, and of all the leaders of the
African American people, Martin Luther
King Jr. was the most gifted in the
rhetoric of freedom. Each man in his own
time and his own way sought to
universalize the idea.
Lincoln at Gettysburg invoked the words
of Thomas Jefferson written “four score
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers the
and seven years ago” in order to declare
“| Have A Dream” speech from the
that a// men are created equal and that the
Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963.
Civil War that would free the slaves had
ushered in “a new birth of freedom.” At Source: AP Images
Lincoln's Memorial, King invoked the
words of Lincoln’s Emancipation deeds they helped to remake the idea of
Proclamation written, as King said, “five freedom for America and the world.?
score years ago” to declare that he had a
® On Lincoln's address, see Garry Wills, Lincoln
dream of universal freedom, a dream that at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade
one day “all of God's children, black men America (New York: Touchstone, 1992), and on
and white men, Jews and Gentiles, King's “| Have a Dream Speech,” see Drew
Protestants and Catholics, will be able to Hansen, The Dream: Martin Luther King Jr. and
join hands and sing in the words of the old the Speech That Inspired a Nation (New York:
Negro spiritual ‘Free at last! Free at last! Ecco, 2003). A panel of experts on the history of
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’” American political rhetoric ranked “| Have a
Abraham Lincoln was murdered on April Dream” as the greatest speech of the twentieth
15, 1865. Martin Luther King Jr. was century. See Thurston Clarke, Ask Not: The
Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the
murdered on April 4, 1968. Neither man
Speech That Changed America (New York:
died in vain because by their words and Henry Holt, 2004): 218.

NEES EE SW cal cat ede

 CHAPTER 2 > Federalism and Limits of Universal Freedom 45

a federal law that required the states either to regulate low-level radioactive
waste within their boundaries or to assume legal liability for it.41 Justice
O’Connor’s observation in this case and the decision of the Court seem to
represent an attempt by the Court’s conservative majority to radically alter the
existing relationship between the federal government and the states. In doing
so, the Court reopened the 200-year-old debate between advocates of national-
centered versus state-centered power in American politics.
The late Chief Justice Rehnquist—appointed by President Nixon in 1972
and elevated to the Chief Justice by President Reagan in 1986—was an advocate
of state-centered federalism, arguing that much of the Court’s federalism
jurisprudence since the New Deal was wrong and not supported by a fair reading
of the Constitution. Until the 1980s, Rehnquist was a lonely dissenter, as his
views on federalism (and civil liberties and civil rights) were not shared by his
colleagues on the nine-member Court. However, with the appointments of
Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia, and Anthony Kennedy by
President Reagan, and Justice Clarence Thomas by President Bush, the Rehnquist
Court (1972-1986) frequently commanded a narrow five-person majority on
many federalism and Fourteenth Amendment cases that continues, with some
inconsistency, under the Roberts Court (Chief Justice John Roberts was
appointed by President G. W. Bush in 2005).
Several important cases decided by the Court suggest that it may be returning
to its Reconstruction Era jurisprudence. Earlier in this chapter we discussed
Justice Thomas’s extraordinary dissent in the term limits case, in which he argued
that the federal government has only those powers expressly granted or
necessarily implied in the Constitution. In his opinion for the Court’s narrow
majority in the term limits case, Justice John Paul Stevens said this of Thomas’s
dissent:

It would seem to suggest that if the Constitution is silent about the exercise
of a particular power—that is, where the Constitution does not speak either
expressly or by necessary implications—the federal government lacks the
power and the states enjoy it. ... Under the dissent’s unyielding approach, it
would seem McCulloch was wrongly decided. Similarly, the dissent’s
approach would invalidate our dormant commerce clause jurisprudence.”

Although Thomas and his colleagues did not prevail in the term limits case
(Justice Kennedy, as he occasionally does, voted with the Court’s more centrist
or liberal justices in this case), in several cases involving the powers of Congress
and federal-state relations, the conservatives have been in the majority. In
United States v. Lopez, the five-person conservative majority declared
unconstitutional a federal law that prohibited the possession of guns near a
school.#3 This was the first time since the New Deal that the Court invalidated
an act of Congress based on its exercise of its commerce clause powers. Similarly,
46 PARTI > Foundations

in Seminole Tribe v. Florida, the Court held (again five to four) that individuals
could not sue a state to enforce federal laws or rights passed by Congress
pursuant to its authority under the commerce clause because such cases were
an “unconstitutional intrusion on state sovereignty,” thereby overturning its own
decision in Pennsylvania v. Union Gas, in which it explicitly held that Congress
could use its commerce clause authority to grant rights to citizens enforceable
in the federal courts against the states.*4 In his dissent in Seminole Tribe, Justice
Stevens used unusually strong language, describing the majority’s decision as
“a sharp break with the past,” “shocking,” and “profoundly misguided.”*°
By the mid- to late 1990s, the Court continued its “sharp break with the
past” in the area of federalism. The Court’s conservative majority invalidated
three federal laws, including the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a provision
of the “Brady” gun control law, and the Communications Decency Act. In
addition, the Court also decided a series of cases that increased the power of the
states at the expense of Congress and private citizens. Summing up these cases,
the New York Times legal correspondent concluded that they represented “the
most powerful indication yet of a narrow majority’s determination to reconfigure
the balance between state and Federal authority in favor of the states.”*°
By the early 2000s, the Court continued its attack on the idea of universal
or national rights by declaring several acts of Congress unconstitutional,
including parts of the 1994 Violence against Women Act. In doing so, the Court’s
five-person majority declared that violence against women did not significantly
impact interstate commerce.*’ In Kimel v. Florida Board of Regents, the Court
ruled that Congress exceeded its authority when it allowed federal lawsuits by
state employees alleging discrimination on the basis of age. Writing for the
majority, Justice O’Connor concluded, “States may discriminate on the basis of
age without offending the Fourteenth Amendment if the age classification in
question is rationally related to a legitimate state interest.”*% Finally, in Board
of Trustees of the University of Alabama et al. v. Garrett et al., the Court ruled
that states were immune from suits under the 1991 Americans with Disabilities
Act if the state’s discrimination had a “rational basis.” Writing for the majority,
Chief Justice Rehnquist said, “The Fourteenth Amendment does not require
states to make special accommodations for the disabled, so long as their actions
toward individuals are rational. They could quite hardheadedly—and perhaps
hardheartedly—hold to job requirements which do not make allowance for the
disabled.”*? In each of these cases, the four more liberal justices who dissented
declared that the majority’s decisions were a radical curtailment of Congress’s
authority to regulate the economy and protect civil rights.
The Court’s relentless attack on the idea of universal freedom or federally
guaranteed rights came to somewhat of a halt in its 2002-2004 terms. Although
its decisions since the mid-1990s returning power to the states on the basis of
the Tenth and Eleventh Amendments have not been noticed by the public at
large, they have excited concern in academic and legal circles and among those
 CHAPTER 2 > Federalism and Limits of Universal Freedom 47

concerned with civil liberties and civil rights. A good example of this concern
was raised by John T. Noonan, a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Noonan was so alarmed by the Rehnquist Court’s state-centered federalism that
he wrote Narrowing the Nation’s Power: The Supreme Court Sides with the
States (2002) to call the matter to broad public attention.5° Noonan essentially
takes the view of the dissenting justices in the federalism cases since the 1990s,
a stance somewhat unusual for a lower court judge who is supposed to follow
and implement the decisions of the Supreme Court majority. But Noonan
believes so strongly that the Rehnquist majority is wrong (particularly in the
way it has interpreted the Eleventh Amendment to deprive individuals of the
right to sue the states) that he argues he is obligated as an informed citizen to
speak out. And speak out he does, arguing that the Court’s recent federalism
decisions are hypocritical; are without foundation in the history or text of the
Constitution; and threaten, if not halted and reversed, to undermine principles
of universal freedom and democratic government.
Although it is doubtful that Noonan’s book or the many critical articles in
the law reviews about the Court’s federalism cases have affected its decisions,
in 2003 and 2004 it did appear in two important cases to back away, if only
slightly, from its state-centered federalism. The two cases involved the Family
Leave Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. However, in one case the
Court continued to narrow the power of the federal government in relationship
to the states. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that the Eleventh Amendment
prohibited the federal government from suing the states to enforce its regulations.
In this case, the Federal Maritime Commission sued the Port of Charleston, South
Carolina, in order to enforce provisions of the Federal Shipping Act. Justice
Thomas, writing for the majority, said the Eleventh Amendment precluded the
suit because the amendment’s preeminent purpose was to “accord the states the
dignity that is consistent with their status as sovereign entities.”*! Justice Stephen
Breyer, writing for the dissenters, rejected the idea that the states were
“sovereign” and went on to argue that the majority decision lacked “any firm
anchor in the Constitution’s text.”**
This, however, was a rather minor, technical administrative case without
great impact on the rights and freedoms of the people (it involved a dispute
about a ship that claimed it had been wrongfully denied berth at the Charleston
port), although the principle underlying the decision has potential far-reaching
implications. In two cases with broad and immediate impact on the lives of
ordinary people, the Court backed away from its rigid adherence to state-
centered federalism. In 2003 in Nevada Department of Human Resources v.
Hibbs, the Court upheld the right of persons to sue the states to enforce
provisions of the Family Leave Act. In 1993 Congress, using the Fourteenth
Amendment’s equal protection clause, enacted the Family Leave Act in order
to remedy what it viewed as widespread gender discrimination in the workplace
(the act allows men and women to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care
48 PARTI > Foundations

for a sick relative). William Hibbs, an employee of Nevada’s Department of

Human Resources, was fired when he took leave to care for his sick wife. He
then sued the state, and in a 6-3 decision, the Court rejected Nevada’s claim
of sovereign immunity under the Eleventh Amendment. The Chief Justice wrote
that the act was “narrowly targeted” to “protect the right to be free from gender-
based discrimination in the workforce by addressing the pervasive sex-role
stereotype that caring for family members is women’s work.”*?
In 2004, the Court upheld provisions of the Americans with Disabilities
Act, allowing individuals to sue states that fail to provide access (ramps or
elevators) to their courthouses. Although the Court had previously rejected the
right of the disabled to sue states for employment discrimination, in Tennessee
v. Lane a 5-4 majority said access to the courts was such a fundamental right
that the states’ Eleventh Amendment immunity had to give way to Congress’s
authority to enforce the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
Justice Stevens’s opinion was limited, however, to access to courthouses, and a
particularly egregious case of discrimination in which George Lane, a paraplegic,
was literally forced to crawl up the stairs of the courthouse in Benton, Tennessee.
(When his case was not heard in the morning session and he refused to crawl
up a second time, he was arrested and jailed for failing to appear.)°° That is,
Justice Stevens specifically refused to rule that states could be sued if they denied
access to the disabled to other public places such as classrooms, swimming pools,
or libraries. It is generally believed that Justice Stevens refused to extend his
opinion to cover all public places because Justice O’Connor (who joined his
opinion) would have dissented. Thus, while the Court has retreated a bit from
state-centered federalism, it still does not have a majority that embraces the
Fourteenth Amendment as the great charter of universal freedom for all
Americans in all cases. With some inconsistencies in cases affecting federal—state
relations, the Roberts Court continued the pattern established by the Rehnquist
Court. For example, in 2012 in Coleman v. Court of Appeals of Maryland et
al., the court used the Eleventh Amendment to declare that states were immune
from suits by citizens for violating the Family Medical Leave Act (see also the
2013 decision of the Court on the Voting Rights Act discussed in Chapter 13).

Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT (1884-1962)
Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, contributed to
universal freedom and equality through a passionate commitment to racial
equality in the 1930s and 1940s and her work in the drafting and enacting of
 CHAPTER 2 > Federalism and Limits of Universal Freedom 49

Former U.S. First Lady Eleanor

Roosevelt.
Source: “AP Photo #693150408695." AP
Images. 9 December 2014. Associate Press.
Web 4 October 2016.

the United Nations (UN) Declaration of Human Rights. Mrs. Roosevelt, with
little success, constantly prodded her husband to take a forthright position in
opposition to lynchings and in support of African American freedom and
equality. Although she could not “educate” her husband on universal freedom
and equality, she did educate the public through her speeches and her “My Day”
column, which she wrote daily from 1936 to 1962. Mrs. Roosevelt also
championed the cause of women, workers, and the poor and dispossessed.
After her husband’s death, President Truman in 1945 appointed her to head
the UN Human Rights Commission. Three years later, she was the major figure
in securing adoption by the international community of the Declaration of
Human Rights. The UN Declaration declares that all persons are equal and
human rights are universal. In addition to civil rights, the Declaration also
declares that all persons are entitled to social and economic rights, including
the “right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of his
family including food, clothing, housing, medical care and social services.”*
4 Shelia K. Hershan, The Candles She Lit: The Legacy of Eleanor Roosevelt (Westport, CT: Praeger,
1995).

Summary eee ee
Federalism is an integral part of the American system of government. But from
the beginning of the country’s history, there has been tension and debate between
those who favor state-centered power and those who favor national-centered
power. For most of American history, advocates of state-centered power have
been dominant. However, in three periods of national crisis—two of which were
directly related to the African American freedom struggle—advocates of national-
centered power triumphed. During the Civil War and Reconstruction, the
50 PARTI > Foundations

Depression and the New Deal, and the 1960s civil rights revolution, the powers
of the federal government in relationship to the states were enormously
expanded. In each of these periods, the federal government began to play a more
active role in protecting civil liberties and civil rights and in regulating the market
economy. The Fourteenth Amendment, adopted after the Civil War to secure
the freedom and equality of African Americans, has been central to the expansion
of national-centered power, serving as the great charter of universal freedom
for all Americans.
Yet after each period of expanding federal power, the forces of states’ rights
and localism reasserted themselves. In the earliest days of the Republic, these
forces were generally liberal, progressive, antifederalist Democrats, but since the
Civil War and especially since the New Deal, conservative Republicans have
generally been hostile to expanding the power of the federal government. Since
the election of Richard Nixon in 1968, Republican presidents have consistently
called for a return of power to the states. The idea of states’ rights appears to
be the direction of the current conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
Thus, the tide in American politics may once again be shifting toward state-
centered power and limited rather than universal freedom.

Critical Thinking Questions

1. Explain federalism, and discuss how it may advantage and disadvantage
racial or ethnic groups in their quest for freedom and equality.
2. Explain the relationships between federalism, race, felonies, and the right
to vote.
3. Explain the difference between national-centered power and state-centered
power.
4. What was the role of the Freedmen’s Bureau and how did it facilitate the
freedom and citizenship for formerly enslaved Africans and poor whites?
5. Why is the Fourteenth Amendment referred to as the American charter of
universal freedom?

Selected Bibliography aaa

Curtis, Michael. No State Shall Abridge: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of
Rights. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1988. A strong argument for the case
that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to incorporate the Bill of Rights.
Dye, Thomas. American Federalism. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1990. One of
the better studies of the operations of the federal system.
Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. New York:
Harper & Row, 1988. The definitive study of the Reconstruction Era and the first
major expansion of the power of the federal government.
Grodzins, Morton. The American System. Chicago, IL: Rand McNally, 1966. A standard
study of the operations of the federal system.
 CHAPTER 2 > Federalism and Limits of Universal Freedom 51

Nelson, William. The Fourteenth Amendment: From Political Principle to Judicial

Doctrine. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. A balanced analysis of
the debate on the intent of the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of
Rights and the relationship of their intent to federalism.
Noonan, John, T. Narrowing the Nation’s Power: The Supreme Court Sides with the
States. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. A federal appeals court judge’s
critique of the Rehnquist Court’s state-centered federalism.
Riker, William. Federalism, Origin, Operation and Significance. Boston, MA: Little,
s Brown, 1964. An important study whose thesis is that federalism in the United States
operates to limit freedom and benefit southern racists.
Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great
Migration. New York: Vintage, 2011. An extensive, in-depth analysis of the migration
from 1915 to 1970 of the six million or so Southern blacks who moved to northern
and western cities.

Notes Beaneeae
1 Robert Bork, The Tempting of America: The Seduction of the Law (New York: Free
Press, 1990): 52-53. Bork’s nomination to the Court was defeated 58 to 42.
William Riker, Federalism: Origins, Operation and Significance (Boston, MA: Little,
Brown, 1964): 140.
Ibid., pp. 132-33.
&
W ibid,, po 155.
On the great black migration from the South to the North between the 1920s and
the 1960s, see Neil Flingstein, Going North: Migration of Blacks and Whites from
the South 1900-1950 (New York: Academic Press, 1981); and James Grossman, Land
of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners and the Great Migration (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 1989). For an extensive, in-depth analysis from 1915
to 1970, see also Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of
America’s Great Migration (New York: Vintage, 2011).
Jean Bodin’s political theory and idea of sovereignty are discussed in George Sabine,
A History of Political Theory, 4th ed. (Hinsdale, IL: Dryden Press, 1973): 377-84.
Max Farand, The Records of the Federal Constitutional Convention (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1937), vol. 1, cited in Riker, Federalism, p. 22.
Of the 190-plus governments in the world, about 17 are federal—mostly in large
nations such as Australia, Canada, India, and Nigeria.
The most famous proponent of this view in American history is South Carolina’s
senator John C. Calhoun in his doctrine of “concurrent majorities,” which argues
that on legislation affecting the interests of the states, both congressional and state
legislative majorities should be required. In other words, the states should have a
veto over federal laws affecting the state’s vital interests. See Calhoun’s A Disquisition
on Government, edited by C. G. Post (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1963).
10 U.S. Term Limits, Inc. et al. v. Thornton et al. (slip opinion) #93-1456 (1995). A
slip opinion is a preliminary draft of a decision issued prior to formal publication.
11 Ibid.
Ds Ibid. Justice Thomas contends that the framers deleted the reference to the states in
the Preamble because they were not certain that all the states would ratify the
Constitution.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
52 PARTI > Foundations

15 See Jack L. Walker’s classic article on this topic, “The Diffusion of Innovation among
the American States,” American Political Science Review 63 (September 1969):
880-99.
16 See E. E. Schattsneider, The Semi-Sovereign People (New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1960); Grant McConnell, Private Power and American Democracy (New
York: Vintage Books, 1966); and Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Government: A
Study in American Politics (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1885, 1973).
cA Wilson, Congressional Government, p. 77.
18 Schattsneider, The Semi-Sovereign People.
13 Riker, Federalism, p. 144.
20 Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New
York: Harper & Row, 1988): 251.
21 Ibid.; see especially chaps. 6-10.
22 On the New Deal, see William Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New
Deal (New York: Crowell, 1967); and Otis Graham, An Encore for Reform: The
Old Progressives and the New Deal (New York: Oxford, 1967).
23 Foner, Reconstruction, p. 34.
24 Fred Friendly and Martha Elliot, The Constitution: That Delicate Balance (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1984): 18.
25 The Slaughterhouse Cases, 16 Wall (83 U.S.) 26 (1873) as reprinted in Kermit Hall,
William Wiecek, and Paul Finkelman, eds., American Legal History: Cases and
Materials (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991): 240.
26 Ibid., p. 240. In its 2000-2001 term, the Supreme Court provided striking examples
of how the Fourteenth Amendment is applied to protect the rights and freedoms of
persons who are not of the black “race.” In Troxel et vir v. Granville (#99-138,
2000), the Court declared unconstitutional a Washington state law that granted
grandparents visitation rights to the daughter of their deceased son, over the objections
of the girl’s mother. In declaring the law unconstitutional, the Court held that the
Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause provides protection against government
interference with certain fundamental rights and liberties of all persons, and that one
of those rights is the right of parents to make decisions about rearing their children
without government intrusion. In an ironic decision—given the origins and purposes
of the amendment—in Bush v. Gore (#00-949, 2000), the Court used the
amendment’s equal protection clause to in effect award the presidency to Bush, the
candidate opposed by more than 90 percent of the blacks for whom the amendment
was originally adopted.
27 William Nelson, The Fourteenth Amendment: From Political Principle to Judicial
Doctrine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988): 96.
28 Friendly and Elliot, That Delicate Balance, p. 18.
22 In 1833 the Supreme Court in Barron v. Baltimore held that the Bill of Rights applied
only to the federal government.
30 See, for example, Michael Curtis, No State Shall Abridge: The Fourteenth Amendment
and the Bill of Rights (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1988). This is also Foner’s
view in Reconstruction, pp. 251-61.
31 Charles Fairman, “Does the Fourteenth Amendment Incorporate the Bill of Rights?
The Original Understanding,” Stanford Law Review 2 (1949): 5-139.
32 Nelson, The Fourteenth Amendment, chap. 1.
33 The term pernicious is used by Hall, Wiecek, and Finkelman in American Legal
History to describe the opinion, p. 241.
34 The Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883) as reprinted in Hall, Wiecek, and
Finkelman, p. 241.
 CHAPTER 2 > Federalism and Limits of Universal Freedom 53

Ibid.,
p. 140.
Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905).
Traditionally, the idea of due process of law as it is found in the Fifth and Fourteenth
Amendments was procedural—that a person would have a fair trial and hearing.
Lochner and similar decisions introduced the notion of substantive due process—the
idea that the substance of a legislative act in and of itself could be unfair and thus
a violation of due process.
38 Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1952). Benjamin Gitlow was a communist who
advocated violent revolution. He was convicted under New York’s criminal anarchy
law. In deciding the case, however, the Court did not overturn his conviction but
simply made the theoretical point that the free speech clause applied to the states.
39 Another reason that the commerce clause rather than the Fourteenth Amendment
was used is that it permitted the leaders of the Senate to refer the bill to the Commerce
Committee (which was chaired by Senator Warren Magnuson, a pro-civil rights liberal
from Washington) rather than the Judiciary Committee, which was chaired by James
Eastland, a racist, white supremacist from Mississippi. See Robert Loevy, Hubert
Humphrey and the Civil Rights Act of 1964: First Person Accounts of Congressional
Enactment of the Law That Ended Racial Segregation (Albany, NY: SUNY Press,
1996).
40 Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 85 S.CT., 348 (1964).
41 New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1995).
42 Justice Stevens’s reference to McCulloch is to McCulloch v. Maryland (4 Wheaton,
316), decided in 1819. This case, along with Marbury v. Madison (1 Cranch, 137,
1813), in which the Court first asserted its power of judicial review, is one of the
landmark cases in the development of constitutional jurisprudence in the United
States. In McCulloch the Court established two fundamental principles that Thomas’s
dissent appears to challenge. The first is the doctrine of implied powers, which asserts
that Congress has powers beyond those expressly listed in Article 1, Section 8; second
is the doctrine of the supremacy of federal laws over those enacted by the states.
Justice Stevens’s reference to commerce clause jurisprudence refers to Article I’s
interstate commerce clause, which since the New Deal has been the major
constitutional basis for Congress’s authority to pass laws regulating the economy as
well as social welfare and civil rights legislation.
43 United States v. Lopez (slip opinion) #93-1260 (1995).
44 Pennsylvania v. Union Gas, 491 U.S. 1, 24 (1989).
45 Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida et al. (slip opinion) #94-12 (1996).
46 Linda Greenhouse, “States Are Given New Legal Shield by Supreme Court,” New
York Times on the Web (June 24, 1999).
47 United States v. Morrison et al., 529, U.S. (2001). In this case a female student at
Virginia Polytechnic Institute sued three male students she alleged raped her.
48 In this case several Florida State University professors sued the state board of regents,
contending that younger faculty members were treated more favorably when it came
to salaries and promotions. In this case, the Court also ruled that the Eleventh
Amendment gave the states immunity from most suits by individuals in federal court.
49 In this case, Alabama in one instance demoted an employee after she was treated for
breast cancer, and in another refused to make accommodations for an employee who
said his health required that he work in an environment free of carbon monoxide
and cigarette smoke.
50 John T. Noonan, Narrowing the Nation’s Power: The Supreme Court Sides with the
States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
54 PARTI > Foundations

51 Linda Greenhouse, “Supreme Court Expands Rights of States in Maritime Suit,” New
York Times (May 28, 2002).
52 Ibid.
53 Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs (slip opinion) #01-1368 (2003).
54 Tennessee v. Lane (slip opinion) #02-1667 (2004).
55 Adam Cohen, “Can Disabled People Be Forced to Crawl up the Courthouse Steps?”
New York Times (January 11, 2004).
Pol ItICa
ical Behaviorism
2 CHAPTER 3
Political Culture and
Socialization

LEARNING OBJECTIVE
Identify the distinctive elements of African American political culture,
and the distinctive roles played by the church, informal groups, and
events in the political socialization process.

In political science, political culture is generally understood in terms of

“psychological or subjective orientations towards politics.”! Specifically, political
culture refers to political orientations—attitudes toward the political system and
toward the role of the individual in the system. Simply put, the concept refers
to the individual’s long-lasting, relatively fixed attitudes, beliefs, and values about
politics and the political system.
Political culture refers to attitudes, values, and beliefs about politics and
the political system. Political socialization refers to the ongoing process by which
individuals acquire these attitudes, values, and beliefs.” In simple terms, political
socialization refers to the processes of political learning. For purposes of studying
this process, political scientists usually center their attention on what are called
agents of socialization—those mechanisms by which individuals acquire their
attitudes, beliefs, and values.* The agents include family, church, school, peer
groups, the media, and political events.

Political Culture
In countries as large and diverse as the United States, there is not a single,
homogeneous political culture.4 Most Americans share common or core values
of the culture (individualism, constitutionalism, democracy, patriotism), and
57
58 PART II > Political Behaviorism

often tend to think and behave politically in similar ways. Yet various groups
in the country distinguished by race, ethnicity, religion, language, or region may
be regulated by different patterns of thought and behavior, and these are
regarded as political subcultures. Thus, a subculture or a political subculture
refers to variations among groups in political attitudes and behavior within the
context of the larger shared culture. In the United States we may refer to a Jewish
subculture, a southern subculture, and an evangelical subculture. Given their
distinctive history in America and their subordinate location in the social
structure, African Americans possess perhaps the most distinctive political
culture or subculture in the United States. The political culture of the oppressed
is likely to be different from that of the oppressor. And “Insofar as systems of
ethnic relations are largely determined by structural asymmetries in wealth,
prestige and power between groups, an inventory of cultural differences are
frequently symptoms rather than determinants of intergroup behavior, even in
systems where the distinguishing criterion of group membership is cultural.”®
And as Holden writes “Since culture is behavior learned in cohorts, it follows
when two groups are separated by legal or behavioral frontiers over any
significant time, some tendency toward cultural difference must develop.”” And
Holden continues “The obverse is also true, at the same time, if they coexist
within the same linguistic, economic or political system they must develop
significant commonalities.”® Holden’s formulation is useful in calling attention
to the fact that blacks in the United States share cultural commonalities with
whites but also certain “partially distinctive” attributes that “constitute a black
culture. The problem, then, is to identify those attributes that constitute black
culture and shape long lasting or relatively fixed black political attitudes and
behavior.”? Again, when we refer to political culture we distinguish it from public
opinion (discussed in the next chapter) which tends to change rather rapidly
depending on issues, events, personalities, and the nature of the times. Political
culture, on the other hand, is relatively fixed, stable, long-lasting beliefs, values,
and patterns of behavior. To be cultural these attributes have to cut across lines
of class, region, place of residence (i.e., urban, suburban, or rural spaces), or
other divisions to encompass the community as a whole.

Elements of Black Culture

The first attribute of the black culture is the idea of the black community itself;
a black community, based on shared history and memory, and includes persons
of African descent of all classes, ethnicities, and regions. This element of the
culture is displayed empirically in evidence from survey data on racial group
consciousness and identity; for example surveys show that more than 90 percent
of blacks say they “feel close to black people in this country,” 69 percent say
they share a common or “linked” fate with other blacks and that “what happens
generally to blacks in this country will have something to do with what happens
in their life.”1°
 CHAPTER 3 > Political Culture and Socialization 59

A second element of black culture, widely acknowledged, is religiosity—an

Africanized Christianity—which, in the view of some scholars, is the “founda-
tion” of the culture. Measured in survey data in questions about belief in God,
frequency of church attendance, and prayer and biblical literalism, African
Americans are among the most religious people in the United States.!!
V. P. Franklin in Black Self-Determination: A Cultural History of the
Faith of Our Fathers identifies self-determination, resistance, education, and
freedom as “core values” of black culture. However, he avers that these values
are not unique to African Americans but are found among other subordin-
ated or oppressed groups such as the Irish and Palestinians.!2 Unique to
African American culture, Holden writes, is the value of the “wish for resist-
ance” or “defiance” of whites and white domination. Of this attribute, Holden
writes that it is used “to compensate for the pervasive insults and humiliations
of the past and present by telling ‘the white man’ where to go and what to do.
... Defiant heroism is represented by the plantation folklore of the ‘bad Nigger’
or the ‘crazy Nigger’ who, pushed beyond his tolerance limits, retaliated with
the simple self-help of personal violence, even if doing this guaranteed his
death.”!°
Houston Baker writes of the “collectivist ethos” and an “ethos of repudia-
tion,” which help to distinguish African American culture from white American
culture. This collectivist ethos, Baker suggests, rejects the “fantasies” of
individual advancement in favor of collective advancement of the race as a whole
based on changes in societal rather than individual behavior. Related to this
ethos, there is an egalitarian value in African American culture, reflected, for
example, in survey data showing that blacks are much more likely to agree with
the statement “The government should reduce income inequality between rich
and poor; 73 percent of blacks compared to 44 percent of whites.”'* Klugel
and Smith, after close examination of American attitudes on inequality, wrote
“Judged by the black-white gap in beliefs potentially challenging the dominant
ideology, blacks are the group closest to being ‘class conscious’ in the Marxian
definition.”!
Finally, on general attributes or elements of the culture Smith and Seltzer
used survey data to document interpersonal alienation or what Hannerz describes
as a “relative suspiciousness of the motives of others” as a characteristic of black
culture. They concluded that stability on this attribute, cutting across all
categories of blacks including education, income, age, gender, region, and
residence, “is remarkable, indicating a high degree of cohesiveness on this
cultural trait.”!” This trait undoubtedly has an impact on black politics at both
elite and mass levels (on its impact at the mass level on many contemporary
issues see the opinion data on alienation in the next chapter). Walters, who
traces the trait back to slavery, which he writes created the “cultural damage
done to the black community that inhibits the trust necessary to pool their
resources for economic and social development.”'8
60 PART II > Political Behaviorism

The specifically “civic culture” element of the political culture includes

attitudes toward the political system and the role of the individual in the system,
including such things as knowledge of politics, interest in politics, political
efficacy (the sense that one thinks one can influence the system), and trust in
government. These civic attributes, except for trust in government, tend to be
shaped more by class than race. That is, middle-class persons, whatever their
race or ethnicity, tend to have more knowledge, interest, and efficacy in politics
then poor and working-class individuals.!? The middle class also tend to vote
and participate in politics generally more than the poor and working class, again
regardless of race or ethnicity. Thus, the civic culture in the United States is
largely a product of class, not ethnic cultures. In other words, middle-class blacks
and whites and lower-class blacks and whites generally tend to resemble each
other in civic attitudes more than they resemble persons in their racially defined
communities or cultures.
There is, however, one exception to these generalizations about race and
the civic culture. Among whites lower-class persons have tended to score lower
on trust in government than middle-class respondents.”? But among blacks there
is little relationship between class and trust in government. Blacks at all class
levels tend to display a relatively low level of political trust. This suggests that
relatively low levels of political trust may go hand in hand with low levels of
interpersonal trust as a characteristic specific to African American culture.

Political Socialization
Political socialization refers to the process by which individuals acquire political
attitudes, values, beliefs, and opinions, with the process of learning and adapting
to political culture.
In 1959, political scientist Herbert Hyman published Political Socialization.
This book was the first scientific study of political socialization in the field of
political science. Hyman’s work focused on socialization as a process that begins
in childhood and is generally completed by adolescence or certainly by early
adulthood. The early socialization studies by Hyman and others focused on
agents or transmitters of socialization, especially the family and schools but also
the church and the media. The work of Hyman established the agenda for
socialization research for several decades, but by the 1980s, scholars were
departing from the view that socialization was complete by adolescence and
questioning the centrality of the role of family and schools. The new socialization
research suggested that the process is a lifelong one. The process of acquiring
political attitudes and values (indeed, all attitudes and values) does not end at
adolescence as it is rarely, if ever, fixed at a given age; rather, it is a developmental
process that covers the entire life span. And while not downplaying the
significance of family and school as agents of socialization, the more recent
research tends to place greater emphasis on the media and on events and the
 CHAPTER 3 > Political Culture and Socialization 61

environment as socialization agents. This new approach, while promising as an

area of inquiry, has not stimulated a great deal of empirical work, unlike
Hyman’s seminal book, which resulted in a massive outpouring of socialization
studies in the 1960s and 1970s. Rather, socialization studies since the 1980s—
whether using Hyman’s approach focusing on children and adolescents or the
new approach focusing on the entire life span—have been in short supply. Thus,
we know relatively little about the political socialization process as it unfolded
in the late twentieth century among Americans generally and even less as it has
unfolded among African Americans, since there have been even fewer studies
of the socialization process in the black community.
One thing is clear about the political socialization process in black America:
It is more complicated than what takes place in white America, since it requires
socialization into the dominant mainstream political culture and simultaneous
socialization into the political subculture of the black community. This dual
process of political socialization may involve resocialization and counter-
socialization.” That is, black children and adults may be first socialized in the
general political culture and then later resocialized to hold different attitudes
and values as a result of exposure to changing environments and events, or these
processes may be reversed, with initial subcultural socialization being dominant
and then mainstream resocialization. With the present state of the research, these
processes of socialization and resocialization are not completely clear. Also, while
the same basic agents or transmitters of socialization—family, church, school,
and media—are present in the black community, they may function differently
because of differences in the structures of these agents. Finally, there is a clear
and discernable process of deliberate countersocialization as a result of
movements of social change.
The family undoubtedly is the major transmitter of attitudes and values in
both white and black America, but some scholars have seen a decline or
attenuation in the role of the family as an agent of socialization, the result of
the changing structure and role of the family in the United States. While noting
a decline in the role of the family, other scholars have observed a simultaneous
increase in the role of the media, which has grown in size, diversity, and
pervasiveness. Since the first socialization studies in the 1960s, there has been
interest in the role of the black family because of the disproportionately large
number of female-headed households. This difference in structure between black
and white families raises the question of whether children, especially boys,
develop different attitudes and values as a result of being reared in households
where no father figures are present. Some of the earliest studies suggested that
male children from fatherless homes exhibited less interest in politics and were
less politically efficacious.?? However, these findings were tentative at the time,
and since the 1980s there have been few systematic empirical studies, although
the proportion of female-headed black families has increased dramatically since
the 1970s.
62 PART II > Political Behaviorism

Research on the school as an agent of socialization is also limited in terms

of the impact of the civics curriculum and the physical environment and
atmosphere of many ghetto schools, where conditions of neglect may operate
as independent agents of socialization. We do know from extensive research
that the black church and religiosity are important agents of lifelong socialization,
transmitting civic attitudes and participatory norms.
The media’s role in political socialization is unclear. Historically, the African
American media was an important agent of socialization and resocialization,
working against the negative stereotypes and negative portrayals of blacks in
the mass media and inculcating a heritage of race pride and ethos of protest.
More recent research is ambiguous on the role of the African American media.
Studies on the impact of the mainstream media’s role in transmitting political
attitudes and values are also ambiguous in their findings.
Music has been shown to be an important component of the overall culture
of African Americans, with possibly both positive and negative consequences.
Concern about the role of music in the socialization process was heightened in
the late twentieth century, with the emergence of rap music (see Box 3.1).
The roles of the physical environment and events have also been shown to
be powerful socialization agents, especially when the process is understood to
be a lifelong one. From the earliest to the most recent studies, it has been shown
that the conditions of poverty and danger in many ghetto neighborhoods are
powerful socializing agents, providing independent learning about the negative
attitudes of white society and the government toward blacks. Thus blacks,
wherever they live, tend to be cynical about the government, but these attitudes
are much more pronounced in high-poverty neighborhoods. Adults in these
neighborhoods also tend to express more antiwhite attitudes and are somewhat
more likely to embrace elements of the philosophy of Black Nationalism.24

Events as Agents of Socialization

Events may also be important agents of socialization. The civil rights and black
power movements were enormously influential agents of socialization and
resocialization as were the 1960s periods of civil unrest and rebellion.
In the 1960s and 1970s, black artists—visual, literary, and performing—
began to focus on political issues and to develop new images of blacks and the
black community, stemming from the black power movement.?5
When the black power movement peaked, a new African American social-
izing agent appeared—African American Democratic presidential candidates.
First, the 1972- presidential campaign of African American congresswoman
Shirley Chisholm.” Her effort galvanized thousands of women and African
American Democrats.*” Although the electoral dimension of the Chisholm
campaign failed, its socializing influence was unique and important. (See Faces
and Voices, Chapter 8.)
 CHAPTER 3 > Political Culture and Socialization 63

BOX 3.1 |
African American Music As An Agent of
Political Socialization
Many observers of African American
culture have pointed to the important role
played by music in the socialization
process. African Americans have often
been heard to say, “You can tell where
black people are at any given moment by
our music.” Novelist James Baldwin once
said, “It is only in his music that the Negro
in America has been able to tell his story.”
Political scientist Charles Henry argues
that music, especially the blues, is an
important socialization agent in African
American politics; historian Frank Kofsky
has demonstrated a relationship between
the revolution in jazz symbolized in the
work of John Coltrane and the militant
nationalism of Malcolm X; poet and
musicologist Leroi Jones points historically
to a relationship between black music and
black politics; and music critic Nelson
George argues that in the 1960s and
1970s rhythm and blues was inspired by
and gave inspiration to the civil rights and
black power movements.?
In a comprehensive study of black Entertainer Curtis Mayfield. From “Keep
music as a political agent during the on Pushing” in the 1960s to “A New
1960s, Robert Walker carried out a
World Order” in the 1990s, Mayfield’s
music consistently involved political
content analysis of all 1,100 songs that
messages or “sermons,” often dealing
appeared on Billboard’s cumulative annual
with themes of freedom.
best-selling black (soul) listings from 1946
to 1972. Walker's hypothesis was that the Source: Bettmann/Corbis
events of the 1960s produced a distinctive
race group consciousness and solidarity
that was manifested in an increase in B. B. King’s “Why | Sing the Blues,” and
songs with a political message. His data Curtis Mayfield’s “We're a Winner.”
show a steady increase in “message Mayfield’s “We're a Winner” was thought
songs” beginning after 1957 and that a to be so politically inflammatory that some
sustained increase of “inordinate black radio stations were urged not to play
proportions” occurred between 1966 and it for fear it might cause uprisings in the
1969, the peak years of the black summer of 1968.
movement. By comparing black to white In some ways, rap artists embraced the
music in this same period, Walker was Obama presidential campaign in the same
able to show that this increase in message fashion rhythm and blues artists embraced
music was peculiar to black music.® the civil rights and black power
Among the popular songs with a political movements. Obama rap songs and lyrics
message during this period were James and online videos appeared throughout the
Brown's “I’m Black and I'm Proud,” the campaign by such artists as Ludacris, Nas,
Temptations’ “Message to the Black and Jay-Z. (Will.LAM.’s “Yes We Can”
Man,” Marvin Gaye's “Inner City Blues, ” YouTube music video was viewed by
64 PARTII > Political Behaviorism

nearly 10 million people prior to the of Rhythm and Blues (New York: Dutton, 1989).
Democratic convention.) The “Hip Hop For a history of black music and its relationship
to politics, hear the six-CD collection (108
Caucus” launched an eighteen-cjty-swing-
recordings ranging from gospel to rap), Say /t
state-targeted tour featuring numerous Loud: A Celebration of Black Music in America,
artists who supported Obama. In fact, on produced by Patrick Milligan, Shawn Amos, and
November 3, 2008, Jay-Z stood on a North Quincy Newell (Los Angeles, CA: Rhino
Philadelphia stage—flanked by Sean Entertainment, 2001); and Harry Belafonte’s
Combs, Mary J. Blige, Beyoncé, and five-CD collection, The Long Road to Freedom:
Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter—and An Anthology of Black Music (New York:
told a crowd of roughly 10,000: “Rosa Buddha Records, 2001).
Parks sat so Martin Luther King could © Robert Walker, “Soul and Society,” Ph.D.
walk. Martin Luther King walked so dissertation, Stanford University, 1976.
© Dewey Clayton, The Presidential Campaign of
Obama could run. Obama's running so all
Barack Obama: A Critical Analysis of a Racially
the children can fly.” ° Obama even used Transcendent Strategy (New York: Routledge,
Jay-Z's “dirt-off—my shoulder” gesture to 2010): 151. Originally quoted in Zach Baron,
dismiss his critics. A hip-hop fan, Obama, “Rappers for Obama, and Vice Versa,” Black
however, at times criticized artists for Power, Entertainment, Politics, January 23,
misogynist lyrics, use of the “N” word, 2009,
and materialism.¢ www.blackpower.com/entertainment/rappers-
for-obama-and-vice-versa/.
@ Charles Henry, Culture and African American 4 Shaun Ossei-Owusu, “Barack Obama’s
Politics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, Anomalous Relationship with the Hip-Hop
1990); Frank Kofsky, Black Nationalism and the Community,” in Charles Henry, Robert Allen,
Revolution in Music (New York: Pathfinder and Robert Chrisman, eds., The Obama
Press, 1970); Leroi Jones, Blues People (New Phenomenon: Toward a Multiracial Democracy
York: Morrow, 1963); Nelson George, The Death (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011).

In 1984 and 1988, civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson took a page
from Chisholm and entered the Democratic presidential primaries. It was a
sensation in the African American community,”® and at the level of political
socialization, it generated significant grassroots political activities and local
candidacies for office.”? It also enlarged the number of registered voters. Thus,
it socialized both masses and elites in the community. As shown in Chapter 8,
the Obama campaigns in 2008 and 2012 had similar effects.
In the aftermath of these presidential candidacies, a different socializing agent
came in the form of the dramatic Million Man March in October 1995.°° Led
by the controversial black nationalist religious figure Louis Farrakhan, the
march brought more African Americans to Washington, DC, than did King’s
1963 March on Washington, and it sent numerous individuals back to their
local communities committed and reinvigorated toward developing grassroots
self-help organizations and programs.

African American Political Socialization: The Church

and Informal Institutions
Professor Ronald Brown took the theories about the church and religion as
African American socializing agents, reduced them to a psychological dimension,
 CHAPTER 3 > Political Culture and Socialization 65

and placed them as testable propositions in questionnaire form in two National

Black Election Studies and the National Black Politics Survey. Brown undertook
these studies with a variety of different colleagues, but he has been the most
consistent and persistent analyst of the religious attribute. In his first work, with
colleagues Richard Allen and Michael Dawson, Brown stressed that an African
American racial belief system existed and that religiosity influenced and socialized
that belief system. Writing about this approach, Brown and his colleagues told
“how belief systems in general and this belief system in particular help process,
constrain, and bias one’s interpretations of reality and influence social and
political behavior”; the article then shows how “religiosity ... influences the
content of individual African American belief systems.”?! Other studies have
documented a strong relationship between religiosity, voting, and other forms
of political participation as well as a sense of racial identification, consciousness,
and political obligation to the black community.°? (See Box 3.2.)

informal Institutions in the Processes of

Political Socialization
Melissa Harris-Lacewell has explored how “everyday talk” among African
Americans in autonomous “black spaces” may contribute to processes of political
socialization and the development and sustaining of black ideological thought.°?
These “safe” spaces such as barber and beauty shops, black fraternities and
sororities, and to some extent historically black colleges and universities
(HBCUs)** operate beyond the presence and control of whites and therefore are
likely spaces for storytelling and shared experiences in everyday talk that help
to define and shape the historical, cultural, social, and political meanings and
boundaries of blackness. African Americans interacting in these places are likely
to be especially important agents in the lifelong processes of resocialization and
countersocialization. However, like political socialization in general we have
very few empirical studies of these informal institutions as socialization agents.
As Harris-Lacewell writes, these are “largely unstudied space(s),”*° and more
research is necessary before we can prove the hypothesized role of these informal
institutions in the socialization process.

Collective Memory: The Transmission Belt of African

American Political Socialization
In 2004, the fourth wave of the University of Michigan’s longitudinal political
socialization project (running from 1965 to 1997) was completed. It
demonstrates that the dominant political socialization model, which focuses on
the transmission process between generations from parents to children, does not
completely explain the process.** Although our discussion in this chapter is
focused on the similar and the unique agents of political socialization within
66 PARTII > Political Behaviorism

BOX 3.2 |
The African American Church

Faith in God, the belief that “God will religiously inclined blacks are more likely
deliver us some day,” has been described to vote and engage in other forms of
as the single most common theme in political participation, such as lobbying.°
African American culture.? Given the “The church historically has always
central role of religion in black life, the been the central arena of the political
church becomes the central political activities of blacks, the place where the
institution in the black community. ‘struggle for power and the thirst for
Freedom is also central. in the African power could be satisfied.’ In the United
American religious tradition. Lincoln and States today, there are approximately
Mamiya write, 60,000 black churches, 50,000 clergy, and
a membership of more than 17 million.
A major aspect of black Christian
These churches are organized into seven
belief is found in the importance
denominations. Although in recent years
given to the word “freedom.”
white evangelical Christians have used the
Throughout black history the term
church as a political base (forming the
“freedom” has found deep religious
Christian Coalition led by Reverend Pat
resonance in the lives and hopes of
Robertson, a 1988 Republican candidate
African Americans. ... In song, word
for president), the black church has always
and deed freedom has always been
been politically conscious and active.
the superlative value of the black
During the 1960s, the largest black church
cosmos.°
denomination—the National Baptist
African Americans are more religious Convention—was led by a conservative,
than whites (measured by frequency of anti-civil rights clergyman, Reverend J. H.
church attendance and prayer, and Jackson. Jackson's leadership was
subjective identification with God), and challenged by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

President Obama Delivers Eulogy in Charleston, SC

Source: "Obama Calls for Racial Understanding, Unity as
Thousands Mourn S. C. Pastor,” Washington Post. 26 June 2015.
Retrieved 4 October 2016 from https://www.washingtonpost.
com/politics/thousands-gather-to-mourn-the-rev-clementa-pinckney-
in-charleston/2015/06/26/af01 aaae-1 cOc-1 1¢5-ab92-c75ae6ab94b5_
story.html
 CHAPTER 3 > Political Culture and Socialization 67

and other progressive ministers, and the political, and ideological equality with
black church became the principal base of whites, spiritual differences for African
the civil rights movement. Today, it is a Americans actually increased rather than
principal base of political organizing and decreased when compared to other racial
electoral campaigning. It served as an or ethnic groups, providing evidence that
important source of organizing and the black religious experience seems to
fundraising for Jesse Jackson's two stem from African American culture and is
presidential campaigns and functions as a not related simply to the politicoeconomic
platform for white politicians seeking the and sociocultural conditions that African
support and votes of African Americans. Americans face; it is “part and parcel of
Empirical studies reveal that church the historic and continuing politico-
attendance and the overall religious economic and socio-cultural conditions of
experience in the black community racial inequality in which Black Americans
remains higher than any other racial or find themselves."
ethnic group in the United States given its
historical position stemming from black @ Matthew Holden, Jr., The Politics of the Black
culture where the African American Nation (New York: Chandler, 1973): 17.
spiritual experience was necessary for © C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence Mamiya, The
survival;® however, like church attendance Black Church in the African American
Experience (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
generally in America, attendance by blacks
1990): 3-4.
has been declining, and the mainstream
© Robert C. Smith and Richard Seltzer, Race,
black denominations have been losing Class and Culture: A Study in Afro-American
members to nondenominational Mass Opinion (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992):
“charismatic” churches. Many of these 29-30, 126-28. For a thorough study of the
churches are “mega churches” with impact of religion on black political participation,
thousands of members. This has led some see Fredrick Harris, Something Within: Religion
scholars to surmise that they tend to be and African American Political Activism (New
less politically and socially conscious, York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
focusing instead on “Prosperity Gospel” o£. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Church in
which tends to use religion as a means America (New York: Schocken Books,
1964): 43.
less to pursue race group interests and
® Major Coleman, “Holier than Thou: The Impact
social change and more as a means for
of Politico-Economic Equality on Black
individuals to personally become wealthy, Spirituality,” National Political Science Review
healthy, and fulfilled.f Yet, the latest 17(2) (2016): 57-94.
empirical study by Coleman found that f Stephanie Mitchum, Name /t and Claim It:
when variables for religious preferences Prosperity Gospel and the Black Church
were measured against data on human (Columbus, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2007).
capital, labor market, demographic, 9 |bid., Coleman, pp. 61 and 93.

the African American experience, with this completed research we can address
in another way the question of how the black community transmits values and
beliefs from generation to generation. This research indicates that it is done
through a process called “collective memory.” This collective memory within
the black community allows the agents of socialization to not only transmit
recent events such as black presidential campaigns or other contemporary
political events but to integrate them with the past (slavery, the civil rights
movement, etc.) in order to transmit enduring beliefs and values. This collective
memory is the intergenerational transmission belt that helps to maintain the
value of universal freedom in African American politics.
68 PART II > Political Behaviorism

Research on this collective memory has been based on multiple methodolo-

gies that have been invaluable in bringing depth to the understanding of this
vital but underexplored process. In addition to surveys by political scientists,
this process has been examined using historical and sociological methods.°”
The work of political scientist Fredrick Harris, centering on religion and the
church, shows that they are among the main repositories of this memory and
principal agents of its intergenerational transmission.** And African American
psychologists, who use the concept of collective identity, have also done
important theoretical and empirical work on collective memory.*

ue
CE

Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom

HARRY BELAFONTE (1927- )
Harry Belafonte, the singer and actor, used his status as a cultural icon to advance
the cause of universal freedom through his support of the civil rights movement,
the anti-apartheid movement, and the cause of international human rights. In
1965, Belafonte’s “The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)” became an instant classic
and made him an international celebrity. In this same year, he met Martin Luther
King Jr. and became his abiding friend, advisor, and financial supporter. He
rallied celebrities to support the movement, financed the freedom rides, and
raised funds to bail protesters (including Dr. King) out of jail. After Dr. King’s

Harry Belafonte.
Source: "Harry Belafonte #ZZZ003917-PP-
RC1" Wolfgang's Vault. Retrieved 4 October
2016 from http://images.wolfgangsvault.
com/images/catalog/detail/ZZZ003917-PP. jpg
 CHAPTER 3 > Political Culture and Socialization 69

death, Belafonte became active in the anti-apartheid movement and close friend
and advisor to Nelson Mandela. In 1987, the United Nations Children Fund
named him a general goodwill ambassador.
Conscious of the role that music and art can play in freedom movements,
Belafonte was instrumental in bringing to American attention the South African
musicians Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba. In 1985, he organized an all-star
cast to produce “We Are the World,” a multicultural recording that raised millions
of dollars for famine relief in Africa. And in 2001, he finally released A Long
Road to Freedom, a historical album on the African American musical tradition.
The son of Jamaican immigrants, Belafonte’s music and his music history
represent a systematic effort to show. that African, African American, and
Caribbean music are part of an integral tradition related to the freedom struggles
of African people.

SUMM ary HC ae eee

The political culture or subculture of African Americans is characterized by a
relatively high degree of racial group consciousness and relatively low levels of
trust in the government, although this level of trust varies with the responsiveness
of the system. The political culture is also characterized by a mix of oppositional
and supportive attitudes with respect to the political system. It also displays a
relatively high degree of alienation and ideological liberalism, attitudes
considered in greater detail in Chapter 5S.
The political socialization process of black Americans is shaped by the same
agents that shape the process in the United States generally—family, church,
school, peers, the media, and political events. However, due to their “closeness”
or “linked” fate based on shared history and memory, and to the extent that
these institutions are different in the black community, then the outcome of
the process—political culture and public opinion—will also be different. The
church—because of the religiosity of blacks and the historical role of the black
church as a political institution—is a particularly powerful agent of political
socialization, and some scholars see music as an important agent. Finally, events
from the civil rights movement of the 1960s to the presidential campaigns of
Barack Obama also shape political attitudes, opinion, and behavior and
contribute to the development of a collective identity or “collective memory.”

Critical Thinking Questions

1. Explain the concept of political subcultures.
2. Identify several distinctive attributes of the African American political
culture.
70 PART II > Political Behaviorism

3. How are the elements of African American political culture unique in terms
of attitudes about race and civic culture?
4. What is meant by a “dual process of political socialization”? How do the
“agents” or “transmitters of socialization” function in the African American
community?
5. Discuss the role of the black church and music in the political socialization
of African Americans.

Selected Bibliography Da
Abramson, Paul. The Political Socialization of Black Americans: A Critical Evaluation
of Research on Efficacy and Trust. New York: Free Press, 1977. A solid review and
assessment of the early literature on black political socialization.
Almond, Gabriel, and Sidney Verba. The Civic Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1963. This classic behavioral study compares the political cultures
of five nations.
Almond, Gabriel, and Sidney Verba, eds. The Civic Culture Revisited. Boston, MA: Little,
Brown, 1980. A conceptual and methodological reexamination of the concept by an
international group of scholars.
Brown, Ronald, and Monica Wolford. “Religious Resources and African American
Political Action.” National Political Science Review 4 (1994): 30-48. A pathbreaking
empirical article charting the effects of religion and the church as agents of political
socialization.
Conover, Pamela. “Political Socialization: Where’s the Politics?” In W. Crotty, ed.,
Political Science: Looking to the Future, Political Behavior, vol. 3. Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press, 1991. An overview of the origins and evolution of
the concept.
Divine, Donald. The Political Culture of the United States. Boston, MA: Little, Brown,
1972. A pioneering behavioralist effort to locate the component parts of the nation’s
political culture.
Fendrich, James Max. Ideal Citizens: The Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement. Albany,
NY: SUNY Press, 1993. A study of the long-term socializing effects of the civil rights
movement.
George, Nelson. The Death of Rhythm and Blues. New York: Dutton, 1989. An analysis
of the relationship between black music and the black movements of the 1960s and
1970s.
Harris, Fredrick. Something Within: Religion in African American Political Activism.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. The most comprehensive study of the
subject.
Henry, Charles. Culture and African American Politics. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1990. An examination of the roots and nature of African American culture,
focusing on religion and music.
Jones, Leroi. Blues People: The Negro Experience in White America and the Music That
Developed from It. New York: William Morrow, 1963. An influential study of the
centrality of music in African American culture.
Lincoln, Eric C., and Lawrence Mamiya. The Black Church and the African American
Experience. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990. A comprehensive historical
study of the role of the black church.
 CHAPTER 3 > Political Culture and Socialization 71

Morris, Aldon, Shirley Hatchett, and Ronald Brown. “The Civil Rights Movement and
Black Political Socialization.” In R. Siegel, ed., Political Learning in Adulthood.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1989. nan excellent article demonstrating
the impact and influence of ad hoc and transitory socializing agents in the African
American community.
Smith, Robert C., and Richard Seltzer. Race, Class and Culture: A Study in Afro-
American Mass Opinion. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992. An effort to identify
empirically certain components of African American political culture.
Walton, Hanes, Jr. “African American Political Culture: The Moral Voice and Perspective
in the Recent Urban Riots.” In Hanes Walton, Jr., ed., African American Power and
Politics: The Political Context Variable. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
Explores and delineates the existence of the African American political culture in non-
conventional political behavior.

Notes Shee ee
1 Glenda Patrick, “Political Culture,” in G. Sartori, ed., Social Science Concepts: A
Systematic Analysis (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1984): 266.
2 Pamela Johnston Conover, “Political Socialization: Where’s the Politics?” in William
Crotty, ed., Political Science: Looking to the Future. Political Behavior, vol. 3
(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991): 126.
Ibid., pp. 273-85.
eS)

4 Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes in Five
Nations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963). The five nations were the
United States, the United Kingdom, West Germany, Mexico, and Italy. For some of
the more interesting studies of political culture in the United States, see Donald Devine,
The Political Culture of the United States (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1972); and
Daniel Elazar, American Federalism: A View from the States (New York: Crowell,
1972); Gabriel Almond, “The Intellectual History of the Civic Culture Concept,” in
G. Almond and S. Verba, eds., The Civic Culture Revisited (Boston, MA: Little,
Brown, 1980): 23.
5 William Reisinger, “The Renaissance of a Rubric: Political Culture as Concept and
Theory,” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 7 (Winter 1995): 348.
6 Pierre van der Berghe, Race and Racism (New York: John Wiley, 1967): 141.
7 Matthew Holden, Jr., The Politics of the Black “Nation” (New York: Chandler,
1973): 17.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 These and related data are analyzed in detail in Michael Dawson, Behind the Mule:
Race and Class in African American Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1994).
11 Fredrick Harris, Something Within: Religion in African American Political Activism
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999): 8.
12 V. P. Franklin, Black Self-Determination: A Cultural History of the Faith of Our
Fathers (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hall, 1984).
13 Holden, The Politics of the Black “Nation,” p. 18.
14 Houston Baker, “Completely Well: One View of Black American Culture,” in Nathan
Huggins, Martin Kilson, and Daniel Fox, eds., Key Issues in the Afro-American
Experience (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971): 21. The survey data are
72 PART II > Political Behaviorism

from the 1996 General Social Survey, National Opinion Research Center, University
of Chicago.
LS James Klugel and Eliot Smith, Beliefs About Inequality: American Views of What Is
and What Ought to Be (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1986): 289.
16 Robert C. Smith and Richard Seltzer, Race, Class and Culture: A Study in Afro-
American Mass Opinion (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992): 89-92, and Ulf Hannerz,
Soulside: Studies in Ghetto Culture and Community (New York: Columbia, 1969).
Li? Smith and Seltzer, Race, Class and Culture, p. 92.
18 Ronald Walters, The Price of Racial Reconciliation (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 2008): 211.
19 Sidney Verba and Norman Nie, Participation in America: Political Democracy and
Social Equality (New York: Harper & Row, 1972).
20 Smith and Seltzer, Race, Class and Culture, pp. 54-57.
aA Ibid., p. 57. See also J. M. Avery, “The Sources and Consequences of Political Mistrust
Among African Americans,” American Politics Research 30 (2006): 653-82.
22 Hanes Walton, Jr., Invisible Politics: Black Political Behavior (Albany, NY: SUNY
Press, 1985): 45-48.
23 Paul Abramson, The Political Socialization of Black Americans (New York: Free Press,
1977). More recently see Vonnie McLoyd et al., “Marital Processes and Parental
Socialization in Families of Color: A Decade Review of Research,” Journal of
Marriage and Family 62 (2000): 1070-93.
24 Cathy Cohen and Michael Dawson, “Neighborhood Poverty and African American
Politics,” American Political Science Review 87 (1993): 288-99.
2S Morris, Hatchett, and Brown, “The Civil Rights Movement,” p. 293. See also
Michael Schwarz, Visions of a Liberated Future: Black Arts Movement Writings (New
York: Thunder Mouth Press, 1989).
26 Shirley Chisholm, The Good Fight (New York: Harper & Row, 1973).
Dif Hanes Walton, Jr., “Black Female Presidential Candidates: Bass, Mitchell, Chisholm,
Wright, Reid, Vans and Fulani,” in Hanes Walton, Jr., ed., Black Politics and Black
Political Behavior: A Linkage Analysis (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994): 251-74.
28 On the Jackson campaigns, see Joseph McCormick and Robert C. Smith, “Through
the Prism of Afro-American Culture: An Interpretation of the Jackson Campaign
Style,” in L. Barker and R. Walters, eds., Jesse Jackson’s Presidential Campaign:
Challenge and Change in American Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1988): 96-107; Robert C. Smith, “From Insurgency toward Inclusion: The Jackson
Campaigns of 1984 and 1988,” in Lorenzo Morris, ed., The Social and Political
Implications of the 1984 Jesse Jackson Presidential Campaign (Westport, CT: Praeger,
1990): 215-31; Ronald Walters, Black Presidential Politics in America: A Strategic
Approach (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1988); Lucius Barber, Our Time Has Come
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989); Charles P. Henry, Jesse Jackson: The
Search for Common Ground (Oakland, CA: Black Scholar Press, 1991); Thomas
Cavanaugh and Lorin Foster, Jesse Jackson’s Campaign: The Primaries and Caucuses
(Washington, DC: Joint Center for Political Studies, 1984).
29 Leslie McLemore and Mary Coleman, “The Jesse Jackson Campaign and the
Institutionalization of Grass-Roots Politics: A Comparative Perspective,” in Walton,
Jr., ed., Black Politics and Black Political Behavior: A Linkage Analysis, pp. 49-60.
30 Hanes Walton, Jr., “Public Policy Responses to the Million Man March,” The Black
Scholar 25 (Fall 1995): 17-23; Hanes Walton, Jr., and Simone Green, “Voting Rights
and the Million Man March: The Problem of Restoration of Voting Rights for Ex-
Convicts,” African American Perspectives (Winter 1997): 68-74.
 CHAPTER 3 > Political Culture and Socialization 73

31 Richard Allen, Michael Dawson, and Ronald Brown, “A Schema-Based Approach

to Modeling an African American Racial Belief System,” American Political Science
Review 83 (June 1989): 421.
32 Ronald Brown and Monica Wolford, “Religious Resources and African American
Political Action,” National Political Science Review 2 (1990): 25-37; Laura Reese
and Ronald Brown, “The Effects of Religious Messages on Racial Identity and
System Blame Among African Americans,” Journal of Politics 57 (1995 ): 23-35.
33 Melissa Harris-Lacewell (aka Harris-Perry), Barbershops, Bibles and BET: Everyday
Talk and Black Political Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).
34 A study by Gallup reported that African American graduates of HBCUs are more
than twice as likely as African American graduates of non-HBCUs to recall
experiencing support measures like experiential learning opportunities, long-term
projects and extracurricular activities that prepared them to be engaged in their
professional workplaces and communities, and to thrive financially (see “Gallup-USA
Funds Minority College Graduates Report, pp. 5-6). These findings are supported
by the work of Ebony O. McGee and David Stovall, “Reimagining Critical Race
Theory in Education: Mental Health, Healing, and the Pathway to Liberatory Praxis,”
Educational Theory 65 (2015): 491-511. McGee and Stovall argue that
“Weathering,” ... is a phenomenon [that is observable among African American
students at predominantly white colleges] characterized by the long-term physical,
mental, emotional, and psychological effects of racism and of living in a society
characterized by white dominance and privilege. [It] severely challenges and threatens
a person’s health and ability to respond in a healthy manner to their environment.
This can cause wear and tear, both corporeal and mental, and lead to a host of
psychological and physical ailments, including heart disease, diabetes, and accelerated
aging” (p. 491).
Eh) Harris-Lacewell (aka Harris-Perry), Barbershops, Bibles and BET: Everyday Talk
and Black Political Thought, p. 170.
36 M. Kent Jennings, “Survey Research and Political Socialization,” in J. House et al.,
eds., A Telescope on Society: Survey Research and Social Science at the University
of Michigan and Beyond (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004): 101-2.
Jennings, the principal investigator of this four-wave study who has followed the
same members of a 1965 senior class over 32 years, summarizes the latest research
on the model from the study’s vantage point.
37 See Genevieve Fabre and Robert O’Meally, History and Memory in African-American
Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Howard Shuman and Jacqueline
Scott, “Generations and Collective Memories,” American Sociological Review 54
(1989): 359-81; Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory (New York: Harper
& Row, 1951); Mary Francis Berry and John Blassingame, Long Memory: The Black
Experience in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).
38 See Fredrick C. Harris, Something Within: Religion in African American Political
Activism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); and his recent work ““They
Kept the Story Before Them’: Collective Memory, Micromobilization, and Black
Political Activism in the 1960s” (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester, unpublished
paper): 1-39.
39 For the best theoretical psychological work, see William E. Cross, Jr., Shades of Black:
Diversity in African American Identity (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press,
1991). For the best empirical work, see Richard Allen, The Concept of Self: A Study
of Black Identity and Self-Esteem (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2001).
Mm CHAPTER 4
Public Opinion

LEARNING OBJECTIVE
Identify three distinctive components of African American mass opinion.

Like many of the terms used by social scientists, public opinion has no precise,
universally agreed-on definition.! Lord Bryce said of public opinion, it is the
“ageregate of views men hold ... that affect the community,” whereas V. O.
Key in Public Opinion and American Democracy specifically links the term to
government, writing that public opinion is those “opinions held by private
persons which governments find it prudent to heed.”* Bernard Hennessy, on
the other hand, writes that it is simply “the complex of preferences expressed
by a significant number of persons on an issue of general importance.”* Lane
and Sears avoid the problem of definition altogether, assuming (presumably)
that its meaning is obvious. So they write that “opinions have to be about
something,”* and the “something” they say public opinion is about is (1) the
political system, (2) the choice of group loyalties and identifications (race,
religion, region, and social class), (3) the choice of leaders, and (4) public policy
preferences.°

White Public Opinion on Race and Racism

From the inception of the scientific study of American public opinion more than
60 years ago, countless surveys have found that the American public is in general
indifferent and-uninformed about politics, political leaders, ideologies, and
issues.° Very few Americans structure their opinions on politics in ideological
terms, and their views on issues tend to be ad hoc, inconsistent, transitory, and
often contradictory. These generalizations hold for virtually all issues—foreign
and domestic—except for race.
74
 CHAPTER 4 > Public Opinion 75

In one of the classic studies documenting the lack of ideological or issue

content in white American mass opinion, Phillip Converse wrote, “For the bulk
of the mass public the object with the highest centrality is the visible, familiar
population grouping (Negroes) rather than abstract relations among parts of
government and the like.””? More than 30 years later Kinder and Sanders
concluded, “Compared with opinion on other matters, opinions on race are
coherent, more tenaciously held and more difficult to alter. ... [White]
Americans know what they think on matters of race.”8 Thus, the first thing to
note about the race opinion of whites is that it tends to be one of the few
consistent anchors in the thinking of white Americans.
Second, in the last 50 years, surveys have shown a steady and generally
consistent decline in overt expressions of racist and white supremacist attitudes
among white Americans.’ For example, in 1963, 31 percent of whites agreed
with the statement that blacks were an inferior people; in 1978, 15 percent
agreed.'° Studies also show significant progress in that white Americans by large
margins now embrace the principle of racial equality.''
However, while white Americans in general are less openly racist in their
attitudes toward blacks, hostility toward the race has by no means disappeared
or withered away. Instead, it has become less obvious, more subtle, and more
difficult to document. This new, more subtle form of racism has been labeled
“symbolic racism,” 2 66 “modern racism,” 9 6 “racial resentment,” or “laissez-faire
racism.”!* What this research purports to show is that white Americans are not
racist in the old-fashioned way; instead, they resent or are hostile to blacks
because of the whites’ commitment to basic or core American values, particularly
individualism.!? White Americans prize self-sufficiency and individualism, and
they believe that black Americans lack these values. Sniderman summarizes the
research this way: “White Americans resist equality in the name of self-reliance,
achievement, individual initiative, and they do so not merely because the value
of individualism provides a socially acceptable pretext but because it provides
an integral component of the new racism. 14
In this modern racism, blacks, according to whites, are not inferior and could
get ahead in society except that they lack the initiative or drive to succeed. As
a function of individualism, modern racism is a product of the “finest and
proudest of American values.”!* It is as American as the flag, baseball, the Fourth
of July, and apple pie. Now that racism is expressed in the language of American
individualism, many white’s opposition to race-conscious policy is based on “the
conjunction of racism and a belief in the principle of hard work . . . self-reliance
[and] opposition to big government or limited-government values.”'® White
Americans’ disapproval of broad-based race-conscious policy provides more
cover than one based on individualist claims,!” which allows many white
Americans to “protect their [own] institutional privileges without admitting
racial privilege.” '®
76 PARTII > Political Behaviorism

This symbolic racism empirically is based on the embrace by large

percentages of whites of negative racial stereotypes. For example, in its General
Social Surveys between 1990 and 1996, the University of Chicago found that
47 percent of whites agreed that blacks tend to be lazy, 59 percent that they
prefer welfare to work, 54 percent that blacks were prone to violence, 65 percent
rated blacks as less hardworking, and 60 percent that they were less intelligent.'”
Although the negative stereotyping subsequently falls for the latter two traits,
in particular, it will remain relatively stable over the ensuing decade.*® During
the 2008 presidential campaign, major news organizations reported similar
results.2! An important question to consider on white race opinion is what
impact, if any, has the campaigns, election, and presidency of Barack Obama
had on white stereotypes about blacks.

The Impact of Barack Obama-on Symbolic

Racism
There is disagreement in the literature on whether Obama’s presence and
prominence on the national scene has had a negative, positive, or no effect on
white race opinion insofar as racial stereotypes are concerned. Pasek, Krasnick,
and Tompson found a statistically significant increase between 2008 and 2012
in “explicit anti-black attitudes or negative stereotyping, from 47.6 percent to
50.9 percent.”*? This increase in antiblack attitudes among whites was
particularly pronounced among Republicans, increasing from 71 to 79 percent;
however, it also increased slightly among Democrats from 31 to 32 percent.?3
Pasek, Krasnick, and Tompson conclude, “According to both explicit and
implicit measures of racial attitudes, it appears that the Obama administration
has not been a time of decline in anti-black attitudes in America. Indeed, these
data suggest that anti-black attitudes have become slightly more prevalent over
those years, especially during the last two years.””4
Separate studies by Seth Goldman, and Susan Welch and Lee Sigelman found
contrary results. Goldman found that exposure in the mass media of Obama
and his family presented a “counter-stereotypical image” of blacks and produced
a “significant and substantive decline in white race prejudice,” even among
McCain supporters, Republicans, and conservatives. Indeed, because
Republicans and conservatives have more preexisting negative stereotypes about
blacks, exposure to Obama reduced their antiblack attitudes more than among
Democrats and liberals, who had more positive views to begin with.25 Welch
and Sigelman write, “Obama’s emergence, candidacy and election appear to
have had modest effects on whites’ assessment of blacks’? work ethic and
intelligence.”*° According to Welch and Sigelman, the largest shifts toward more
positive attitudes toward blacks occurred among both the young and the old.
Among the young, they suggest this is because they had fewer deeply held
 CHAPTER 4 > Public Opinion 77

negative stereotypes to begin with and thus were more open to Obama’s appeal.
Among older whites, they write, the change occurred in part “because Obama
so clearly defied the racial stereotypes that had prevailed when older whites were
growing up, he directly challenged their prejudices and caused many of them
to rethink their image of blacks in general.”2” Welch and Sigelman conclude
that Obama’s election was one of those historical events such as the civil rights
movement that moved “mass public opinion in a more equalitarian direction.”
It helped, they write, that in his image “Obama is the type of political leader
who has historically been popular among whites—one who was not part of the
Civil Rights Movement, who accommodates rather than confronts, and who
maintains close personal and political ties with whites.”2°
Another study by Vincent Hutchings compares antiblack stereotypes in the
2008 election with the 1988 election when Jesse Jackson last ran for president.
He found “scant evidence” that white antiblack stereotypes have “undergone
a fundamental transformation” during this period. On the contrary, he writes,
it is “more of the same.”°
David Wilson concurs in his study measuring “racialized political anger”
arguing that “racial sentiments are tied to Obama and beliefs about race serve
as a stronger predictor of anger toward Obama than one’s subjective evaluation
of the economy, media exposure, or other situational factors.”*! Moving beyond
the traditional measures of racial resentment to measure the effects across the
ideological spectrum of white conservatives and liberals, he found evidence that

beliefs about race are more enduring and more strongly tied to emotions
because racial predispositions rarely change. These more enduring sentiments
become a more consistent part of the appraisal system, and individuals tend
to look at race as a relevant feature of one’s social position even when it is
not. This reasoning leads to the expectations that anger toward Obama and
anything he does, and by extension anything the federal government does, is
largely driven by racial attitudes.°*

At this point, the available research on the Obama effect on symbolic

racism is early, ambiguous, and inconclusive, partly due to differences in
methods, modeling, and data. However, the most recent comprehensive study,
using time series data from the National Election Study and the General Social
Survey from 1988 to 2014, found Obama’s presidency had no effects on white
racial resentment; on traditional racial stereotypes; or attitudes about biological
racism. The authors conclude “Taking all these results into account, what comes
through is the tenacity of prejudice.”°?

African American Public Opinion: Alienation

A key component of contemporary African American public opinion is a
pervasive and deep sense of alienation from or distrust of the government. Black
78 PART II > Political Behaviorism

trust in the government in general tends to fluctuate with system responsiveness

to black concerns. For example, trust in the federal government was very high
during the 1960s era of liberal Democratic reforms when Lyndon Johnson was
president and very low during the 1980s era of conservative Republican reaction
when Ronald Reagan was president. However, surveys conducted since the
1990s show a level of distrust or alienation from the government that is
apparently independent of the perception of the responsiveness of government
to black concerns or whether Democrats or Republicans occupy the presidency.
For example, multiple surveys conducted throughout the 1990s show 64
percent of African Americans, compared to 6 percent of whites, were far more
likely to believe that the “government deliberately makes sure that drugs are
easily available in poor black neighborhoods in order to harm black people.”*4
A comparable racial gap also occurs when respondents were asked whether they
believed the statement that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was involved
in importing cocaine into the black community—78 percent of blacks agreed
compared to 16 percent of whites. By a margin of 59-15 percent, blacks are
more likely to agree that “the government does not make a strong effort to
combat AIDS in the black community because the government cares less about
black people than whites,” and were less likely at 79 percent compared to 38
percent whites to deny the possibility that HIV and AIDS were being used as a
plot to deliberately kill African Americans.*> This profound sense of alienation
from and distrust of the American government coupled with the deep racial
divide between blacks and whites were reflected in 2005-2006 public opinion
polls conducted to measure black and white opinion about the government’s
response to Hurricane Katrina, the nation’s largest and costliest natural disaster
that devastated the overwhelmingly black, low-income Lower Ninth Ward in
New Orleans. For example, a CNN/USA Today poll found that 60 percent of
blacks believed that race caused the delayed government response, a view shared
by only 12 percent of whites.%° Similarly, a Pew poll found that 66 percent of
blacks thought the government’s response would have been faster if most of the
victims had been white, a view shared by only 17 percent of whites.>” The Pew
poll also found that 71 percent of blacks thought the hurricane showed that
racial inequality was still a major problem in the United States, compared to
32 percent of whites. A poll by Michael Dawson found similar results, with 84
percent of blacks believing the response of the government would have been
faster if the victims had been white (20 percent of whites) and 90 percent agreeing
that Katrina showed there was a problem of continued racial inequality in the
United States, compared to 38 percent of whites.38
Recent studies continue to reflect this pervasive sense of alienation and large
racial cleavages on issues regarding black attitudes about policing, criminal
justice, and opportunities for black advancement. After the release of the 2014
Ferguson Commission Report,’’ a series of polls conducted between 1968 and
2015 and archived by the Roper Center for Public Opinion at Cornell University,
 CHAPTER 4 > Public Opinion 79

revealed the same persistent pattern of views between black and white attitudes
on policing,*° the Roper issue brief surmised, many of the same concerns and
recommendations raised in the 1967 Kerner Commission Report*! appeared
again in the Ferguson Report, such as issues on police accountability, appropriate
use of force, training, and inadequate protection of citizens; and, “in almost all
of these areas, blacks perceived greater problems than whites, [yet] there is
significant agreement on many proposed solutions.”4? (For more discussion, see
Chapter 14.)

African American Ideology: Liberalism

In one of the earliest scientific studies of the political beliefs of the American
people, Free and Cantril wrote, “The Negroes were phenomenally liberal.”43 In
his historical tracing of the roots of African American political ideologies,
Dawson identified six unique visions asserting that these ideologies, “and the
discourses around them, form the core of black political thought, which
historically has not only captured the range of political debate within the black
community, but has also produced one of the most trenchant critiques of the
theory and practice of American ‘democracy.’”** Of the six historical black
political ideologies identified, only the four most prevalent and persistent are
discussed here: liberalism, conservatism, nationalism, and the intersection of race
with gender via black feminism. All of the distinctive ideologies, developed out
of the historical experiences and collective memory of African Americans, are
similar in that each vision “tend|[s] to ‘reinterpret’ western ideologies to ‘better
fit the realities of black life by each new generation of activists and intellectuals
in the black community.”4° The shared components found among the distinctions
that characterize African American political thought are: (1) each vision is
explicitly expressed via the point of view of African American or a segment of
the African American community;*° (2) each vision embraces a communal or
holistic approach to politics over individualistic;*” (3) each vision embeds a
spiritual component, expressed in the “values, hopes, and fears” for “liberation”
unique only to black philosophies; and (4) each vision will view theory and
practice as interdependent or symbiotic, yet all variants of African American
political thought envision futures which differ from the dominant culture’s
understanding of the American Dream as a result of their collective, unique
experiences in America.*®
In the United States, African American liberalism, the oldest and most
dominant tradition, is understood as the rejection of the “negative” policeman
state (where the government would maintain law and order, provide for the
national defense, and do little else) in favor of a “positive” welfare state where
the federal government intervenes in the economy, society, and the states in order
to secure the rights of individuals and provide them with some degree of social
security in the form of education, health, housing, and retirement income.*?
80 PART II > Political Behaviorism

As a long oppressed and economically exploited people, “Negroes,” Free and

Cantril wrote, “tend to see government action, particularly action by the federal
government, as the most efficacious way—indeed perhaps the only way—to
remedy problems besetting them.”°°
Although strands of black liberalism are characterized differently based on
historical periods, African Americans have been consistently and increasingly
identified as liberal. Nie, Verba, and Petrocik aver,

even with this predominantly liberal profile in the 1950s, the degree of
change in political attitudes is greater for blacks than for any other group in
the population. The extreme and homogeneous liberal opinion profile of
blacks in the early 1970s is striking. Where we once found 25 percent in the
most liberal decile, we now find 62 percent of all blacks at this point. What
is more, 85 percent of black Americans now respond to the issues in a way
which places them in the three most liberal deciles. ... That over 60 percent
of a group should be found to have such a uniform pattern of response is an
unusual phenomenon.®*!

Blacks have tended to be liberal not only on the welfare state and race-
related issues such as school integration and affirmative action but also on issues
of national defense (favoring less spending on the military) and foreign policy,
where they tend to be skeptical or hostile to U.S. military interventions abroad
(see Chapter 15). However, if African Americans have tended to be
phenomenally liberal on the role of the federal government, the welfare state,
and civil rights or race-related issues and defense and foreign policy, on social
or moral issues, such as abortion and gay rights, blacks have tended to be as
conservative as white Republicans.°? These conservative attitudes in black
America appear to be shaped significantly by religion.

African American Ideology: Conservatism

Black conservatism is described as the “most marginal tendency” or tradition
in African American political thought during most historical periods.%4
Mostly associated with the views expressed by Booker T. Washington (discussed
in the next chapter), the tenets expressed by adherents to this philosophy,
regardless of the historical period, and often shared with conservative white
Republicans, include a belief in “self-reliance” or “self-help” approaches, “an
attack on the welfare state as a set of institutions that retard societal progress
in general and black progress in particular, and [the] belief in the anti-
discriminatory aspects of markets, all in the name of service to the black
community.”°> Generally, black conservatives tend to embrace economic
development approaches over political strategies given their belief that “any
strategy or policy which diminishes the ‘honor’ of African Americans” in favor
 CHAPTER4 > Public Opinion 81

of the perception of “undeserved benefits” is considered both immoral and

counterproductive.°® Also, black conservatives tend to “view themselves as the
fiercest defenders of the poor and disadvantaged of the black community—
warriors who attack middle-class complacency, smugness, and abandonment of
the black poor.”°7 In an in-depth analysis of contemporary black conservatism,
using the 2008 National Election Study and the 2004 National Politics Study,
Angela Lewis found four ideological distinctions—the black right, Afrocentric
conservatives, neoconservatives, and individualist conservatives—largely based
on the differences by which each cluster critiques the black community, the extent
to which each believes whites bear responsibility for the conditions in the black
community, and whether economic empowerment should be purely market
driven, government subsidized, a combination of both, or strictly within the
black community.** Lewis highlights the uniqueness found among these
ideological camps:

* The Black Right is similar to the mainstream Religious Right. They focus on
the moral values of blacks and see the lack of these values as the cause of the
black condition. Afrocentric conservatives also have a religious dimension
similar to the Black Right and they support self-help and the patriarchic
family. Nonetheless, they depart from other groups of conservatives because
they have a strong racial identity and they see racism as practiced by whites
as the primary cause of the black condition. And because these conservatives
have a strong racial identity, they are often misunderstood because they do
not fit very well with other camps of black conservatives. There is no white
equivalent to Afrocentric conservatives. Individualist and neoconservatives
are similar in that they support a limited government, a free market, and the
black condition is largely a result of the inability of blacks to compete. The
major difference between these two groups is that neoconservatives were
former liberals and individualist conservatives have low levels of linked fate,
they do not have feelings of closeness to other Blacks.*?

However, despite some evidence of support in black America for their views
on socially conservative positions, such as school prayer, attitudes about abortion
and civil rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) citizens,
this ideological tradition has little grassroots support.
In fact, black opinion on LGBT rights appears to be becoming more liberal.
For example, an October 2009 Gallup Poll found 38 percent of blacks supported
same-sex marriage. By February 2010, Gallup reported that support had
increased to 55 percent. The endorsement in 2012 of same-sex marriage by
President Obama and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP) likely contributed to this liberal trend.
Also, while blacks may have conservative opinions on social and moral
issues, they tend, unlike whites, not to vote on the basis of those opinions. Rather,
the black vote is largely liberal because blacks prioritize issues of the welfare
82 PARTII > Political Behaviorism
state, civil rights, and foreign policy, which explains why support for black
conservative candidates remains low.
Although blacks continue to constitute the most homogeneous and
consistently liberal voting bloc in the electorate, Michael Dawson finds among
some blacks increasing disillusionment with liberalism and Katherine Tate
argues that there is a trend toward the center among blacks on welfare and
race-related issues.

African American Ideology: Black Nationalism

The ideology of black nationalism is as old as the African American experience
in the United States. While African Americans embrace most tenets of the liberal
ideology, the 1993 National Black Politics Survey—although more than 20 years
old, offers the most comprehensive set of questions about Black political
ideology®!—suggests blacks also embrace elements of black nationalism, which
emphasizes racial solidarity, self-definition, self-reliance, self-determination and
various degrees of cultural, social, economic, and political separation from
white America.® This view is “partly a function of the perception that America
has yet to live up to its promise of racial fairness.”°? Table 4.1 clearly demon-
strates strong attitudinal support for African American autonomy or nationalism.
Most previous studies have largely treated black nationalism as a singular,
uniform ideology. But recent, careful, innovative empirical research has found
that like all ideologies, black nationalism is complex, fluid, and hence
multidimensional, having at least two dimensions that can be characterized as
“community nationalism” and “separatist nationalism.” The former category

TABLE 4.1

Statement from Suey oe 3 Percentage Agreeing

Blacks should rely on themselves and not others. 68. e ss

Blacks should control the government in black 89
communities.
Blacks should participate in black-only organizations 67
whenever possible.
Blacks should shop in black stores whenever possible. a 84
Black children should study an African language. 70
Source: Michael Dawson and Ronald Brown, “Black Discontent: The Preliminary Report of
the 1993-1994 National Black Politics Study,” Report 1, University. of Chicago. The results are
based on a representative, randomly selected sample of the national black Peet
Percentages are of respondents agreeing with the Statement f
 CHAPTER4 > Public Opinion 83

can be said to exist when African Americans “control and support communities
and institutions where they predominate,” while the latter category “rejects
inclusion within the white-dominated American state and seeks the creation of
a new homeland.” The research also reveals that better educated, middle-class
African Americans support community nationalism, while younger, poorer, less
educated African Americans tend to favor separatist nationalism. However,
despite these differences, supporters of both dimensions of black nationalism
converge around the belief that “whites want to keep blacks down” and that
“Africa is a special homeland for blacks.” But they diverge around the issue of
whether other racial and ethnic groups should be used as allies and coalition
partners. Those African Americans who support separatist nationalism see no
benefits in forming coalitions and joining alliances with whites, while community
nationalists have no problem with such allies and coalitions. The groups are
also divided on the outlook for the future. Ironically, separatists see themselves
as achieving their goals and objectives, and for them the future is bright and
promising. The community nationalists doubt that they will be able to achieve
their goals and therefore have a tendency to be pessimistic about the future,
much like black liberals, who can become “disillusioned with racial progress.”*
Contrary to the view of many scholars, black nationalism—one of the least
understood black ideologies—is not associated with a general mistrust, hatred,
or intolerance of white America, but arguably is an attempt to affirm black
culture, promote racial progress through racially collective action while adapting
to evolving challenges of race relations.°® Debates continue to ensue over lasting
causes of African American support for the ideology. Yet, recent evidence
suggests the intersection between perceived linked fate and one’s level of
disillusionment impacts the varying degrees of African American attitudes and
commitment to a range of political attitudes, practices, and support of
nationalistic political strategies to advance their political interests.°” Those
unfamiliar with African American perspectives and dialogue, and their unique
experiences, often misunderstand that African Americans are attuned to the
nation’s contradictory legacies on racial justice, and their opinions and attitudes
about America reveal both affection and disaffection.®® Polls show that a very
strong adherence to the nationalist ideology is associated with disaffection from
whites, particularly white supremacist ideology, but not, as is often alleged, gays,
lesbians, feminists, or middle-class blacks.®?

African American Ideology: Feminism and

Intersectionality
African American women have played a continual role in the struggle for
universal freedom and social justice. By the last half of the nineteenth century,
black women were collectively asserting their rights as women in the “women
84 PART II > Political Behaviorism

club movements” and as African Americans. By the 1970s, feminism emerged

as an important ideology in African American politics. Feminism is the ideology
of gender equality and freedom. Black feminism investigates the intersection of
race, class, gender, and sexuality. Strikingly similar to the research approaches
used by W. E. B. Du Bois in his works in the mid-1890s,”° “Intersectionality””’
research, as employed by black feminism, utilizes a range of theoretical,
methodological, and policy approaches, to focus on the simultaneous and
interactive effects of race, gender, class, sexual orientation, and other social
categories of difference in the United States and beyond.” Black feminist thought
“offers a different understanding of how power, via discourse, is organized,
maintained, and perpetuated.””> Primarily, black feminist thought recognizes
that analytic categories like race or ethnicity, class, gender, and other social
descriptors are not separate and additive, but are rather interactive and
multiplicative”* dimensions that intersect and overlap, resulting in different
social and lived experiences, particularly for black women. Dawson writes that
“adherents of black feminism exhibit more agreement on what constitutes the
political core of their ideology than the adherents of any other ideology” in the
black community.”> However, he also notes that feminism is often in conflict
with other ideologies in the black community, especially black nationalism.”®
Harris-Lacewell also notes that feminism, like conservatism, is unpopular among
many segments of the black community, partly because it is critical of black
sexism and patriarchy.’”” Yet, Nikol Alexander-Floyd asserts,

Some might regard attention to Black women as a key point of emphasis to

be misguided, either because it centers on identity or because it should be
replaced by considerations of gender as a sole analytic category. But, a
priority on research centering on Black women as political, social, historical,
and economic subjects, especially from a specifically Black feminist frame of
reference, is of central importance in countering the paradox of invisibility
and hyper-invisibility. ... in terms of the dominant cultural systems by which
[black women] are defined, a fact that accounts for the impact of stereotypes,
... [and] in the development of social welfare and family-related policy.78

For most black women, race trumps gender. That is, “race remains the
dominant screen through which black women view politics, not only because
most consider racism a greater evil than sexism, but because gender is simply
a weak vehicle for political identification,””? which suggests for black women,
race is a more salient category of identification than gender. Recent studies show
promise that black feminism and black women’s experiences and politics are
“central to how we know and understand space and place [and politics];
[particularly] black women [politics] and workable and lived subaltern
[realities],” tell a different story about women and racial progress.®°
Black feminism, however, is not monolithic. There are divisions among black
feminist ideologies—ranging from liberal to radical—and differences based on
 CHAPTER 4 > Public Opinion 85

class, sexual orientation, age, and marital status. Yet, the unifying distinguishing
characteristics include “a tendency to see the struggle of African American
women as being more holistic and universalist than that of most white feminists,”
placing greater emphasis on the concern for the entire community.®! Thus, issues
like abortion rights (since Roe v. Wade the right to an abortion has become
widely accepted in the black community, generally supported by the public, and
supported by virtually all black organizations and leaders except black
nationalists), equal employment and pay, health and child care, violence against
women, and the full inclusion of women in the political process are necessary
to racial advancement and ending multiple forms of oppression for black women.
In 2015, in a public opinion poll of black women voters, conducted by Essence
magazine and the Black Women’s Roundtable, 78% would strongly support
2016 presidential candidates who “want to improve law enforcement/community
relations,” in addition to other communal issues most important to them such
as affordable healthcare (49%), living wage jobs (43%), college affordability
(38%), and access to a quality public education (38%).?

African American Opinion: Monolithic and

Diverse
African American opinion compared to the opinion of whites is near
monolithically liberal; however, there is also considerable diversity. While
liberalism is the dominant ideology, there is some degree of support in black
opinion for a variety of ideologies, including conservatism. Since the Reagan
administration, black conservative spokespersons (largely in the media, think
tanks, and universities) have argued that liberal black politicians and civil rights
leaders have imposed the liberal ideology on the masses of blacks, and, acting
as a kind of thought police, have suppressed and marginalized conservative
ideas.82 The available social science research, however, indicates that while
African Americans were not immune to the conservative political climate ushered
in by the Reagan presidency, there was little increase in black support for the
Republican Party and its conservative ideology. While there is a great deal of
ideological diversity in black America—liberalism, conservatism, feminism, black
nationalism, and Marxism—conservatism is the weakest of the ideologies among
African Americans.
Evidence reveals that liberal ideology is not imposed on the black community
by politicians and civil rights leaders. Rather, studies show that black opinion—
as perceived by views on linked fate and levels of disillusionment—is shaped at
the mass level by a variety of community institutions, such as churches,
barbershops, beauty salons, and the black media.** These institutions contribute
to the diversity of black opinion by airing multiple ideologies and complex belief
systems.
86 PART II > Political Behaviorism

Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom

RONALD W. WALTERS (1938-2011)
At his death, Ronald Walters was the nation’s foremost scholar of the politics
of race. Like W. E. B. Du Bois, he was an activist scholar or what the Washington
Post called a “participatory pundit,” committed to synthesizing theory and
practice in service to what he often called “the liberation of black people.”*
Walters’s activism in the struggle for universal freedom began in the early years
of the protest phase of the civil rights movement, when at the age of 20 in 1958
he organized and led the first modern lunch counter sit-in.>
After graduating from Fisk University, Walters earned a Ph.D. from
American University. In the late 1960s, he established and became the founding
chair of the first African American Studies program at Brandeis University. In
the early 1970s, he chaired Howard University’s political science department,
helping to turn it into one of the two leading academic centers for the study of
African American politics. He was later named distinguished leadership professor
at the University of Maryland and director of its Academy of African American
Leadership.
In addition to his academic work, Walters was the leading interpreter of
African American politics in the national media, writing articles for most of the
leading newspapers and appearing on virtually all of the national television and
radio news and commentary programs. His column on black politics was
syndicated by the National Newspaper Association.

Dr. Ronald Walters.

Source: Edney, Hazel Trice. “Dr. Ron Walters:
‘Scholarly Giant,’" Los Angeles Sentinel. 17
September 2010. Retrieved 4 October 2016
from https://lasentinel.net/dr-ron-walters-
scholarly-grant.html
 CHAPTER4 > Public Opinion 87

From these vantage points, Walters contributed to the development and

maturation of black participation in electoral politics, serving as an advisor to
the Congressional Black Caucus and multiple organizations of black elected
officials. His 1988 book Black Presidential Politics: A Strategic Approach
developed the theory of “leverage politics” to explain how blacks could use
their vote in presidential elections to extract policy benefits from the political
system. As the principal strategist in the Jesse Jackson presidential campaigns,
they in effect became laboratories for the testing of his leverage theory. At the
time of his death, he was pressing black leaders to leverage President Obama
to develop race-specific policies to address the double-digit unemployment rate
in the black community.‘
* Jacqueline Trescott, “Ronald Walters: Howard University’s Participatory Pundit,” Washington Post,
November 8, 1980.

> Matt Schudel, “Scholar Ronald W. Walters Led What Is Considered the First Lunch Counter Sit-in,”
Washington Post, September 12, 2011. See also Gretchen Cassel Eick, Dissent in Wichita: The Civil
Rights Movement in the Midwest, 1954-1972 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001): 1-17.
© For an assessment of Walters’s contributions see Robert C. Smith, Cedric Johnson, and Robert
Newby, eds., What Has This Got to Do with the Liberation of Black People?: The Impact and
Influence of Ronald W. Walters on African American Thought and Leadership (Albany, NY: SUNY
Press, 2014), and Smith’s Ronald W. Walters and the Promises and Paradoxes of Black Power: A
Political and Intellectual Biography (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, Forthcoming).

SUMM ary Bee

ee eee
Since the 1960s, there has been a major decline in racist and white supremacist
opinion among white Americans. However, scholars of race opinion have
identified what they call modern racism, where whites today do not say blacks
are inferior but rather they say blacks lack the initiative or drive to succeed.
Meanwhile, African American opinion tends to blame racism for the failure of
blacks to get ahead in the United States. African American public opinion also
has a strong degree of racial group identification and consciousness, alienation
from or distrust of the government, and ideological liberalism. There is also a
tendency for strong support of elements of black nationalism.

Critical Thinking Questions

1. What is symbolic or modern racism?
2. Discuss how African American political opinion differs from white public
opinion on certain issues.
3. Discuss the historical components of black ideologies. What are distinctive
elements?
4. Discuss the differences between liberalism, conservatism, and nationalism
among African Americans. Why is liberalism the dominant ideology among
African Americans?
88 PART II > Political Behaviorism

5. In the quest of universal freedom, discuss how the concept of “inter-

sectionality” explains the lived unique experiences of African Americans
generally and black women specifically.

Selected Bibliography RSs

Converse, Phillip. “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics.” In D. Apter, ed.,
Ideology and Its Discontent. New York: Free Press, 1964. A seminal work on the
methodology of studying public opinion.
Dawson, Michael. Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African-American Politics.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. A study that analyzes the relationship
between racial and class attitudes and their different influences on individual political
behavior.
Dawson, Michael. Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African-American Political
Ideologies. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001. A comprehensive study
of the subject.
Harris-Lacewell, Melissa. Barbershops, Bibles and BET: Everyday Talk and Black
Political Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. An interesting study
of opinion formation in black America.
Key, V. O. Public Opinion and American Democracy. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1961.
The classic study of public opinion and its relationship to government leaders and
the policy process.
Kinder, Donald, and Lynn Sanders. Divided by Color: Racial Politics and Democratic
Ideals. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996. A comprehensive study of
black-white opinion differences in the United States.
Rosenstone, Steven J., and John Mark Hensen. Mobilization, Participation and
Democracy in America. New York: Macmillan, 1993. Covers African American
attitudes about political mobilization and participation in America.
Sigelman, Lee, and Susan Welch. Black Americans’ Views of Racial Inequality: The Dream
Deferred. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1994. A pathbreaking analysis
of black opinion about the sources of blacks’ inequality in American society and the
appropriate means for achieving equality.
Smith, Robert C., and Richard Seltzer. Contemporary Controversies and the American
Racial Divide. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. A study of the huge
differences between blacks and whites on recent controversial issues, such as O. J.
Simpson, Rodney King, AIDS-HIV, the Iraq War, and crack cocaine.
Tate, Gayle and Lewis Randolph, Dimensions of Black Conservatism (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). A collection of essays by black scholars assessing the
origins and substantive policy content and consequences of contemporary black
conservatism.
Tate, Katherine. From Protest to Politics: The New Black Voters in American Elections.
Enlarged edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994. Analyzes the
attitudes of African American voters in the 1984, 1988, and 1992 presidential elections.

Notes o
(2° es
1 Bernard Hennessy, Public Opinion, Sth ed. (Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1985).
2 V. O. Key, Public Opinion and American Democracy (New York: Knopf, 1961):
14.
 CHAPTER4 > Public Opinion 89

Hennessy, Public Opinion, p. 8.

Robert Lane and David Sears, Public Opinion (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall,
1964): 2.
Ibid., pp. 2-3.
Donald Kinder, “Diversity and Complexity in Public Opinion,” in A. Finifter, ed.,
The State of the Discipline, I (Washington, DC: American Political Science
Association, 1983); and Paul Sniderman, “The New Look in Public Opinion
Research,” in A. Finifter, ed., The State of the Discipline, II (Washington, DC:
American Political Science Association, 1993).
Phillip Converse, “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics,” in D. Apter, ed.,
Ideology and Its Discontent (New York: Free Press, 1964): 238.
Donald Kinder and Lynn Sanders, Divided by Color: Racial Politics and American
Democracy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996): 14.
Howard Schuman, Charlotte Steeth, and Lawrence Bobo, Racial Attitudes in America:
Trends and Interpretations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985).
10 Louis Harris, A Study of Attitudes Toward Racial and Religious Minorities and
Women (New York: National Conference of Christians and Jews, 1978): 16. By the
late 1990s, only 10 percent of whites agreed with the statement that blacks were an
inferior people.
11 Schuman, Steeth, and Bobo, Racial Attitudes in America. See also Paul Sniderman
and Michael Hagan, Race and Inequality: A Study in American Values (Chatham,
NJ: Chatham House, 1985).
We David Sears, “Symbolic Racism,” in P. Katz and D. Taylor, eds., Eliminating Racism
(New York: Plenum, 1988); Kinder and Sanders, Divided by Color, pp. 272-76; and
Lawrence Bobo, James Klugel, and Ryan Smith, “Laissez-Faire Racism: The
Crystallization of a ‘Kinder, Gentler’ Anti-Black Ideology,” in S. Tuch and J. Martin,
eds., Racial Attitudes in the 1990s: Continuity and Change (Westport, CT: Praeger,
1997),
13 Sniderman and Hagan, Race and Inequality.
14 Sniderman, “The New Look in Public Opinion Research,” p. 232.
15 Sears, “Symbolic Racism,” p. 54.
16 J. Gainous, “The New ‘New Racism’ Thesis: Limited Government Values and Race-
Conscious Policy Attitudes,” Journal of Black Studies 43(3) (2012): 252.
AWA Ibid., p. 253.
18 M. Beeman, M. Chowdhry, and K. Todd, “Educating Students about Affirmative
Action: An Analysis of University Sociology Texts,” Teaching Sociology 28(2) (2000):
101.
19 Cited in Robert C. Smith, Racism in the Post Civil Rights Era: Now You See It,
Now You Don’t (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1995): 39.
20 See Lawrence Bobo, Camille Z. Charles, Maria Krysan, and Alicia D. Simmons, “The
Real Record on Racial Attitudes,” in Peter V. Masden, ed., Social Trends in American
Life: Findings from the General Social Survey since 1972 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2012): 59.
21 See, for example, Jon Cohen, “3 in 10 Americans Admit to Race Bias,” Washington
Post, June 22, 2008.
22 Josh Pasek, Jon Krasnick, and Trevor Tompson, “The Impact of Anti-Black Racism
on Approval of Barack Obama’s Job Performance and Voting in the 2012 Presidential
Election,” Unpublished Manuscript, Stanford University, 2012.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid., p. 18.
90 PART II > Political Behaviorism

25 Seth Goldman, “Effects of the 2008 Presidential Campaign on White Prejudice,”

Public Opinion Quarterly 76 (2012): 663-87.
26 Susan Welch and Lee Sigelman, “The Obama Effect and White Attitudes,” Annals
of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 634 (2011): 207.
Ibid., p. 218.
Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 219-20.
Vincent Hutchings, “Change or More of the Same: Evaluating Racial Attitudes in
the Obama Era,” Public Opinion Quarterly 73 (2009): 917.
David Wilson, “Racialized Political Anger: Affective Reactions to Barack Obama
and the Federal Government,” National Political Science Review 17 (2016): 22.
Ibid., p. 23.
Donald Kinder and Jennifer Chudy, “After Obama,” Forum 14 (2016): 6.
These and related data are analyzed in detail in Robert C. Smith and Richard Seltzer,
Contemporary Controversies and the American Racial Divide (Boulder, CO: Rowman
& Littlefield, 2000): chap. 5, “Rumors and Conspiracies: Justified Paranoia.”
Ibid.
“Reaction to Katrina Split on Racial Lines,” USA Today, September 13, 2005.
Pew Poll for the People and the Press, September 13, 2005.
Glen Ford and Peter Gamble, “Katrina: A Study, Black Consensus, White Dispute,”
The Black Commentator, January 5, 2006.
See the report, “Forward through Ferguson: A Path to Racial Equality” (2014),
published by the Ferguson Commission. Accessed online on January 23, 2016 at
http://forwardthroughferguson.org/.
40 See the Issue Brief, “Black, White, and Blue: Americans’ Attitudes on Race and
Police,” published by the Roper Center (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University), September
22, 2015. Accessed online on January 21, 2016 at http://ropercenter.cornell.edu/black-
white-blue-americans-attitudes-race-police/.
41 See digital report, “National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (The Kerner
Report), 1967.” Accessed online on January 21, 2016 at http://staff.washington.edu/
qtaylor/documents_us/Kerner%20Report.htm.
Ibid., “Black, White, and Blue: Americans’ Attitudes on Race and Police.”
Lloyd Free and Hadley Cantril, The Political Beliefs of Americans: A Study in Public
Opinion (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1967): 17.
See Michael Dawson, Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African-American
Political Ideologies (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001): 2.
Ibid., p. 5.
Ibid., p. 22. See also Mack Jones, “A Frame of Reference for Black Politics,” in Jones,
Knowledge, Power and Black Politics (Buffalo, NY: SUNY Press, 2014).
Ibid. See also Fred Lee Hord and Jonathan Scott Lee, IAm Because We Are: Readings
in Black Philosophy (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995).
Ibid.
The concepts of the “negative” and “positive” are derived from Isaiah Berlin, “‘Two
Concepts of Liberty’ in Berlin,” Two Essays on Liberty (New York: Oxford, 1970):
118-72.
Free and Cantril, The Political Beliefs of Americans, p. 36.
Norman Nie, Sidney Verba, and John Petrocik, The Changing American Voter
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1976): 253-54.
Frank Newport, “Blacks as Conservative as Republicans on Some Moral Issues,”
www.gallup.com/poll12807/blacks-conservative-republicans-some-moral. See also
Robert C. Smith and Richard Seltzer, Race, Class and Culture: A Study in Afro-
 CHAPTER4 > Public Opinion 91

American Mass Opinion (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992): 41; and Katherine Tate,
What’s Going On?: Political Incorporation and the Transformation of Black Public
Be (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2010): 15.
Ibid.
Dawson, Black Visions, p. 19.
Ibid., p. 20.
Ibid.
Ibid.
See Angela K. Lewis, Conservatism in the Black Community: To the Right and
Misunderstood (New York: Routledge, 2013): 30.
Ibid., p. 30.
Dawson, Black Visions, pp. 273-80; and Tate, What’s Going On?
See Ray Block, Jr., “What About Disillusionment? Exploring the Pathways to
Black Nationalism,” Political Behavior 33 (2011): 27-51. Online version, published
June 25, 2010, doi:10.1007/s11109-010-9126-9, http://link.springer.com/article/10.
1007%2Fs11109-010-9126-9.
Ibid., p. 30. See Dawson, Black Visions, p. 21.
Ibid., p. 27.
Robert Brown and Todd Shaw, “Separate Nations: Two Attitudinal Dimensions of
Black Nationalism,” Journal of Politics 64 (2002): 20-44.
See Block, Jr., “What About Disillusionment? Exploring the Pathways to Black
Nationalism,” p. 28.
Ibid., p. 30.
See ibid., pp. 27-51.
Ibid., p. 28.
See Mary Herring, Thomas Jankowski, and Ronald Brown, “Pro-Black Doesn’t Mean
Anti-White: The Structure of African American Group Identity,” Journal of Politics
61 (1999): 363-86, and Darren Davis and Robert Brown, “The Antipathy of Black
Nationalism: Behavioral and Attitudinal Implications of African American Ideology,”
American Journal of Political Science 46 (2000): 717-32.
70 See Aldon Morris, The Scholar Denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern
Sociology (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015): 220.
71 See Kimberle Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black
Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist
Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum (1989): 139-67. See also, Julia S.
Jordan-Zachery, “‘Talking’? about Gender While Ignoring Race and Class: A
Discourse Analysis of Pay Equity Debates,” National Political Science Review 16
(2014): 49-66; and Nikol Alexander-Floyd, “Why Political Scientists Don’t Study
Black Women, But Historians and Sociologists Do: On Intersectionality and the
Remapping of the Study of Black Political Women,” National Political Science
Review 16 (2014): 3-17.
Wes Evelyn M. Simien and Ange-Marie Hancock, “Mini-Symposium: Intersectionality
Research,” Political Science Quarterly 64 (2011): 185-86.
73 See Jordan-Zachery, “‘Talking’ about Gender While Ignoring Race and Class: A
Discourse Analysis of Pay Equity Debates,” p. 52.
74 See Prudence Carter, Sherrill L. Sellers, and Catherine Squires, “Reflections on
Race/Ethnicity, Class and Gender Inclusive Research,” Perspectives 5 (2007): 111-24.
vs Dawson, Black Visions, p. 153.
76 Ibid., p. 140. See also Alexander-Floyd, “Why Political Scientists Don’t Study Black
Women, But Historians and Sociologists Do,” pp. 3-17.
92 PARTII > Political Behaviorism

77 Melissa Victoria Harris-Lacewell (aka Harris-Perry), Barbershops, Bibles and BET:

Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2004): 115.
78 Alexander-Floyd, “Why Political Scientists Don’t Study Black Women, But Historians
and Sociologists Do,” p. 10.
79 Claudine Gay and Katherine Tate, “Doubly Bound: The Impact of Gender and Race
on the Politics of Black Women,” Political Psychology 19 (1998): 12.
80 Alexander-Floyd, “Why Political Scientists Don’t Study Black Women, But Historians
and Sociologists Do,” p. 15.
81 Dawson, Black Visions, p. 20.
82 See the discussion of the poll results of black women voters in the report, “The Power
of the Sister Vote,” conducted by Essence magazine and the Black Women’s
Roundtable, published in Essence magazine (November 2015): 96-99. http://ncebep.
org/news/releases/Essence.BWR.Power_of_the_Sister_Vote_Poll_Results.9.15.15.FIN
AL.pdf.
83 Shelby Steele, The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990).
84 See Taeku Lee, Mobilizing Public Opinion: Black Insurgency and Racial Attitudes
in the Civil Rights Era (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2002); and Harris-
Lacewell, Barbershops, Bibles and BET.
mmm CHAPTER 5 Gt
African Americans
and the Media

LEARNING OBJECTIVE
Contrast the coverage of the black community by the mainstream and
African American media.

“We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us.”! So
said the editorial in the first edition of the first black newspaper, appropriately
called Freedom’s Journal, founded in 1827 by Samuel Cornish and John B.
Russwurm. Since 1827, the black press and the black church have been central
institutions in the African American freedom struggle. Historically, the African
American media has played three distinct roles in black society and politics.
First, it has served as a crucial socialization agent, fostering race group
consciousness and solidarity. Second, it has been a vehicle of protest against
racism and the ideology of white supremacy. Third, it has portrayed positive
images of blacks and the black community as an antidote to the negative
stereotypes and characterizations in the white press.

The African American Media and African

Americans in the Mass Media
The African American Media
Like the media in general, the African American media are quite diverse. They
include about 200 weekly newspapers, approximately 450 black-oriented radio
stations, seven black-owned full power television stations, and several national
circulation news and special interest magazines. BET (now owned by Viacom),
93
94 PART II > Political Behaviorism

TVONE, and OWN are black-owned or oriented cable entertainment and

information networks and blacks also own and operate Bounce. The broadcast
Radio One, “The Power” (now owned by SiriusXM, “Urban View”), is an all-
African American talk channel on satellite radio (as of 2013 blacks owned 11
percent of AM radio stations, 6 percent of FM stations, and 6 percent of
broadcast television stations).? In general, the black weeklies serve as the voice
for the local African American communities, focusing on local rather than
national news.° Their focus tends to be on the internal black community’s civic,
cultural, and religious affairs. The mainstream or white-dominated media tend
to ignore the internal life of the black community, thus the black media serve
as a vehicle for intragroup communication and solidarity. Many, aithough not
all, of the black weeklies serve as watchdogs on local government and continue
the tradition of a fighting press. For example, in 1995 during the time of the
famous O. J. Simpson case, research revealed while the Los Angeles Times tended
to present the O. J. Simpson arrest and trial in an unsympathetic way, the black
Los Angeles Sentinel in effect became Simpson’s champion in the media,
apparently reflecting the views of the city’s black community as the Los Angeles
Times reflected the views of the city’s whites.*
At the national level, in 2014 Jet ceased publication—but relaunched as an
online weekly—leaving Ebony (a monthly) as the only general circulation news
and information African American magazine. Earlier, Emerge, the only serious
national black news magazine, was shut down in 2000. There are specialized
magazines such as Essence (focusing on women), The Source (the hard-news
hip-hop magazine), and Black Enterprise (focusing on business). Although these
magazines occasionally provide critical coverage on race issues and internal black
society, culture, and politics,’ they generally tend to focus on celebrities and
consumerism showcasing the black middle class. Thus, with the loss of print
outlets like Emerge (see Box 5.1) and Jet, there is not a national circulation
magazine providing hard news and critical commentary on issues important to
the black community. Broadcast radio retains high levels of connectivity for black
America, with 92 percent of African Americans tuning in to various formats
each week.® One powerful black voice on radio is Tom Joyner, the host of the
Tom Joyner Morning Show, whose nationally syndicated show is heard by over
10 million listeners in more than 100 cities, giving him an audience size
equivalent to Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh. (During the 2008 election,
Joyner’s program was a major forum for the mobilization of the black vote.)
Joyner also operates a website—Black America Web—that logs millions of page
views daily, and manages the Tom Joyner Foundation that, through its annual
“Fantastic Voyage” cruise and “Family Reunion,” has raised millions to help
keep students in HBCUs.” With the expansion of digital platforms, other
black-oriented simulcasts have the potential to reach a national audience dealing
with social, economic, cultural, and political issues from African American
perspectives.
 CHAPTER 5 > African Americans and the Media 95

BOX 5.1
Media Conglomerates and the African
American Media
The mass media in the United States are this concern.’ In the lawsuit filed initially
business corporations that provide news, against Comcast, Time-Warner Cable, Al
information, and entertainment in order to Sharpton’s National Action Network, the
make a profit. In recent years in pursuit of NAACP, and the Urban League (Comcast
profits, many media companies have been later became the only defendant), Allen
purchased by large multinational alleged Comcast conspired with the civil
corporations. For example, NBCUniversal, rights organizations and federal officials to
is a subsidiary of Comcast, CBS of systematically discriminate against black-
Viacom, ABC of Walt Disney, and Time- owned media companies and deny them
Warner is an enormous media carriage placement. On the basis of
conglomerate that owns Time and CNN, evidence showing these mega-companies
and is also the largest magazine publisher, decreased ownership opportunities for
the largest record company, the second African Americans as well as opportunities
largest cable company, and one of the for business relationships, the proposed
largest book publishers in the world. This merger of Comcast and Time-Warner was
trend toward media conglomeration in struck down by the Federal
2001 affected the African American media Communications Commission (FCC);
when BET, the black cable company, was however, the AT&T merger with DirectTV
purchased by Viacom for $3 billion. Earlier was approved. While the Allen case
Time-Warner had purchased Essence, the against Comcast was dismissed, a
black women’s magazine, and later separate $10 billion lawsuit was filed in
Africana.com, a major black online news 2016 against the FCC and Charter
site. By 2014, iHeartMedia, Inc. (formerly Communications by Allen and the National
Clear Channel Communications) effectively Association of African American Owned
wiped out many small and black-owned Media (NAAAOM) for “racial discrimination
radio stations with its purchase of more in contracting for television channel
than 850 AM/FM stations nationwide. carriage.” In a statement, Allen asserted,
While the acquisition of these black media “Everyone talks about diversity, but
outlets by large white-owned diversity in Hollywood and the media
conglomerates may provide more starts with ownership. African Americans
resources for news gathering, don’t need handouts and donations; we
programming, marketing, and distribution, can hire ourselves if white corporate
it may also result in less competition and America does business with us in a fair
the loss of independent African American and equitable way.”°
voices in the media. It also may result in
undue focus on the corporate bottom line @ See press release, “Statement,” March 10,
2015, http://nabob.org/wp-
at the expense of independent, critical,
content/uploads/2015/05/press_031015.pdf.
and controversial reporting of the news 5 See Janell Hazelwood, “FCC and Charter Face
from African American perspectives. $10 Billion Racial Discrimination Lawsuit,”
The $20 billion lawsuit filed by the January 31, 2016, www.blackenterprise.com/
African American Byron Allen's lifestyle/fec-and-charter-face-1 0-billion-racial-
Entertainment Studios Networks, Inc., discrimination-lawsuit/.
against Comcast and Time-Warner raised
Rane
ecard alot
TICMSTE
96 PART II > Political Behaviorism

African Americans and Digital Media

Traditional media is on the decline. Innovations in technology have substantially
increased the number of digital platforms that provide much more critical news
and analysis of issues from African American perspectives. The choices available
through content online, accessible across an array of devices, has made the
journey to content discovery virtually endless.’ Popular websites in the African
American media digital footprint (e.g. The Root, NewsOne, The Grio, the
Huffington Post “Black Voices,” and NBCBLK.com—NBC’s site targeted at
African Americans) mirror the content and format as traditional venues.’ The
hard news and critical commentary are found on other verticals like The Black
Commentator and Black Politics on the Web. The major civil rights
organizations, black members of Congress, and the Congressional Black Caucus
(CBC) also maintain sites, as do the National Newspaper Publishers Association
(NNPA), the trade association of the black newspapers that distributes news
exclusively from the black media; and Reach Media, Inc., the digital affiliation
pool of national black radio shows and websites.!° In 2000, at the outset of
systematic data collection of digital usage, it was estimated that only 36 percent
of black households were online compared to 50 percent of whites, 41 percent
of English-speaking Latinos, and 69 percent of Asian Americans.'! However,
the racial “digital divide” has significantly narrowed. One recent study found
that African Americans “fully engage and connect through various mainstream
and niche media outlets and platforms, and they consume more content than
other groups on all fronts.”!*
In fact, a digital-based study found African American voters overwhelmingly
rely on a mix of mainstream and digital platforms to receive content and
information on candidates and political issues.!> Although most black Americans
still prefer television, print, and the radio broadcasts that are “culture-rich,”
they have become avid users of social media and blogging channels via their
mobile devices. In fact, smartphone penetration for African Americans is 81
percent compared to 71 percent of whites, 81 percent of Latinos, and 84 percent
of Asian Americans.'* Engaging politics and political action via the power of
the Internet has been led by young black online activists and bloggers, who have
demonstrated remarkable intellectual sophistication with the use of social media
(e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.),!5 successfully mobilizing thousands of
citizens and activists across the nation to action, from the “Jena 6” protest
against race-based mistreatment of black school children in Jena, Louisiana, in
2007, to the propagation of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, spurred by the
murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012.

African Americans in the Mass Media

Until the 1960s, relatively few blacks were employed in the mass media. In the
aftermath of the rebellions in the 1960s, many newspapers and radio and
television stations for the first time began to hire black reporters, editors, and
 CHAPTER 5 > African Americans and the Media 97

producers.'® Yet, even today, their numbers in the mainstream mass media are
relatively small. And, according to the National Association of Black Journalists,
the ranks of black journalists (between 2002 and 2012) employed by newspapers
were cut by nearly a thousand, the largest decline for any ethnic group. During
this period, overall employment of journalists dropped by 2.4 percent, but for
blacks it was 5.2 percent.!”
Table 5.1 displays data for 2014. Blacks constitute 4.4 percent of newspaper,
10.8 percent of television, and 4.4 percent of radio workforces; black news
directors comprise 1.7 percent in radio and 4.3 percent in television. Blacks and
other minorities in the mass media tend to be concentrated in larger cities.
Approximately, one-fourth of minority television journalists work in the 25
largest cities compared to 10 percent in the nation’s smallest cities.!8 The same
phenomenon is observed with respect to newspapers. Indeed, 44 percent of the
nation’s daily newspapers (mostly in smaller cities) have no black reporters.!?
More recently, however, African Americans assumed two of the most powerful
and influential positions in the American media. In 2014, Dean Baquet was
named executive editor of the New York Times, the nation’s most influential
newspaper, and in 2015, Lester Holt became anchor and managing editor of
NBC Nightly News.
The mainstream or mass media is just that: “mass” media; this designation
means that it gathers and reports news of interest to the mass public—in general,
middle-class whites. For this reason, news in the newspapers and on radio and

TABLE5.1

Percentage of African Americans

dards
Radio
AA
News Workforce
17
News Directors
Television
10.8
News Workforce
43
News Directors
Newspapers
44
News Workforce
Source; Data on radio and television personnel are based on a survey of all 1,659 operating,
nonsatellite television stations in the United States and a sample of 3,263 radio stations. The
survey was conducted in the fourth quarter of 2013 by the Radio-Television News Directors
Association and Hofstra University. Data on newspaper personnel are based on a 2014 survey
of the 1,446 daily newspapers conducted by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
98 PARTI > Political Behaviorism

television tends to be essentially the same, whether one watches NBC, CBS, or
ABC, or reads the New York Times, the Detroit Free Press, the Washington
Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, Time, or Newsweek, although the Washington
Post and the New York Times do provide more detailed stories on national and
international affairs.
In an important study, sociologist Herbert Gans argues that the primary
motive guiding the mass media is the preservation of “social order,” the
prevailing values and power relationships in the society.*” The African American
community, however, are often dissatisfied with the prevailing values and power
relationships given the routine, day-to-day coverage in mass media. This
dissatisfaction tends to place in a difficult position the African American
journalist who wishes to reflect the perspective of her community. She must
simultaneously seek to balance the “black perspective” on the news with the
mass media’s social control perspective. A former Washington Post reporter
describes this as a “creative tension” between “Uncle Tomming and mau
mauing.”*! (See Box 5.2.)

Mass Media Coverage of African Americans

Content analysis of the mass media has consistently shown that routine,
day-to-day coverage of African Americans is predominantly negative and stereo-
typical; blacks are portrayed as poor or criminal, or they were shown as athletes
and entertainers.2* Although this kind of coverage is on the decline in mass
media, due to diversity in employment, today media still fails to display the full
diversity of black humanity. There remains a kind of “split image” in the
portrayal of African Americans, as the old stereotypes persist especially in
the coverage of crime and poverty.”*
Examples of this continuing stereotypical coverage were on display in 2005
in coverage of Hurricane Katrina. A widely cited example, in numerous studies,
was two Associated Press photos showing a person taking food from an
abandoned grocery story. The caption under the photo of a black man described
his behavior as “looting” while a photo of two whites described the same
behavior as “finding” food. Television newscasts repeatedly broadcast photos
(often the same ones) showing blacks allegedly looting, reinforcing the stereotype
of African Americans as criminals. During the hurricane disaster the media also
reported unsubstantiated allegations and rumors—later proven false—of violent
and sadistic behavior by black men in the Superdome and other shelters,
including robberies, sniper attacks, rape, and murder. Although many of these
rumors were given credence by the city’s black mayor and police chief, as Dyson
writes: “It is safe to say that the media’s framework was ready to receive and
recycle rumors of vicious black behavior because such rumors seemed to confirm
a widely held view about poor blacks.””4
 CHAPTER 5 > African Americans and the Media 99

Political Scientists on Television

On cable television, most of the talk is
about politics, but very few of the hosts or
their regular contributors are political
scientists. Indeed of the multiple shows
on FOX, CNN, and MSNBC, the only two
regularly featured African American
political scientists are Melissa Harris-Perry
and Dorian Warren on MSNBC. Harris-
Perry was, until she left the network in
2016 in a dispute over election year
coverage,°® the host of a morning
program—The Melissa Harris-Perry
Show—on the weekends, and Warren is
an MSNBC contributor and host of
Nerding Out on the networks’ digital
platform, shift.msnbc.com. Both remain
active in academia and the profession.
Harris-Perry is the Presidential Chair
Professor of Politics and International
Affairs at Wake Forest University, and the
author of two important works in black Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry.
politics: Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Source: “Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC"
Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought Retrieved 4 October 2016 from www.msnbc.
(Harris-Lacewell, 2004) and Sister Citizen: com/sites/msnbc/files/styles/headshot—260tall/
Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in public/field_headshot_small/melissaharris-perry_
America (Harris-Perry, 2011). Warren is an s.png?itok=EBYtvLMu
associate professor in the Department of
Political Science, the School of
International and Public Affairs, and the
Institute for Research in African-American
Studies at Columbia University; and is Co-
Director of the Program on Labor Law &
Policy, specializing in labor studies, and a
Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.
MSNBC, the most liberal of the cable
news channels, has the smallest audience
of the three major outlets (Fox has an
average 1.8 million daily viewers, CNN
730,000, and MSNBC about 600,000).
However, it is the network of choice for
African Americans, who make up 30
percent of the network's audience. The
network features more black hosts and
contributors (in addition to Harris-Perry and
Warren, civil rights leader Al Sharpton for a
time hosted a daily show and now hosts a
Sunday morning program, Tamron Hall is a Dr. Dorian Warren.
daily news anchor, and Joy Reid, Michael Source: "Dorian Warren at the Roosevelt
Eric Dyson, and former Republican Institute” Retrieved 4 October 2016 from
National Committee chair, Michael Steele, http://rooseveltinstitute.org/dorian-warren/
100 PART II > Political Behaviorism

are regular contributors) and focuses more contributors. The program also tended to
on issues of concern to the black focus more on issues of race and gender
community. than the typical cable program.
All of the cable news talk programs in
@ Paul Farhi, “MSNBC Severs Ties with Melissa
format and content tend to be
Harris-Perry after Host's Critical Email," The
characterized by their overwhelming
Washington Post, February 28, 2016, accessed
sameness. Harris-Perry’s program (which
at httos:/Awww.washingtonpost.com/
began in 2012), was somewhat distinctive. lifestyle/style/msnbc-will-cut-ties-with-show-host-
Although no one would confuse it with a who-wrote-critical-email-to-colleagues/2016/02/2
political science seminar, it frequently 7/bce380c8e-dd82-1 1e5-891a-4ed04f421368_
displayed more intellectual content than story.html.
the typical cable talk show, tended to > Kelefa Sanneh, “Twenty Four Hour Party
feature more professors as contributors, to People: MSNBC Tries to Figure Out What
focus more on popular culture, and to Liberals Really Want," New Yorker,
feature more diverse guests and September 2, 2013.

Cues eee OR ME RE Ne pos cel hayt nega nares UT AWE ht |

African American Celebrity Impact on Politics

Throughout black history, entertainment was not only a form of cultural
expression for black America, but also a form of resistance to oppression.
Each period from the “New Negro” Movement (also known as the Harlem
Renaissance) to the Jim Crow era, the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements
witnessed the emergence of black art, music, literature, and other creative
impressions that “tasked blacks with instilling dignity and uplifting the race”
by using their talent to encourage the black community, affirm black pride, and
counter prevailing stereotypes in a white-dominated society.*> Celebrities and
athletes, during these periods, often used their “star power” as a platform to
raise consciousness about the struggle in the black community. Many risked
their careers due to their social and political activism: Paul Robeson, Harry
Belafonte, Eartha Kitt, Nina Simone, Sam Cooke, Dick Gregory, Bill Russell,
James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Muhammad Ali, and Kareem Abdul Jabar, to
name a few. In the post-civil rights era, with the integration of black entertain-
ment into the mainstream, the millennial generation of black celebrities has been
criticized for their silence,*® lack of cultural awareness, and accountability to
the black community to vocalize issues of social injustice, racial oppression, and
white privilege. In fact, evidence shows that the visibility of famed African
Americans can influence the attitudes of black America. In a study by the Pew
Research Center,”’ black respondents rated two celebrities—Oprah Winfrey
(at 87 percent) and Bill Cosby (at 85 percent)—as the most influential black
newsmakers edging out prominent political actors (this study was conducted
before the widespread allegations of Cosby’s sexual abuse of women).
A related study by University of Maryland economists,’ testing the effects
of celebrity endorsements during the 2008 presidential primary (see Chapter 8),
 CHAPTER 5 > African Americans and the Media 101

found evidence that Oprah Winfrey’s public endorsement of Obama during the
Democratic caucuses and primaries had a positive effect on the political outcomes
of Barack Obama’s candidacy. Winfrey’s visibility and involvement increased
the share of the vote and number of contributions received by the Obama
campaign. This was the first time the immensely popular Winfrey had ever
endorsed a presidential candidate. With her proven track record of influencing
the consumerism choices of her millions of fans—composed disproportionately
of white suburban women—via her daytime talk show, the O! Oprah magazine,
Oprah’s Book Club, the study estimated that Winfrey’s endorsement gave
Obama as much as a million votes in the democratic primaries.2? This became
known as the “Oprah Effect.”
Political scientists usually discount the effects of celebrity endorsements on
how citizens vote. In fact, research is mixed on the validity of “The Oprah
Effect”—defined as the influence of consuming soft news political content on
vote choice and action.°° Although not all celebrity endorsements have the level
of influence of Oprah Winfrey, the research suggests given the increasing
emphasis on celebrated personal images and audiences’ preference for personality
over policy dimensions, one’s fame “can be politically advantageous,” and one’s
associated media enterprises “can be a serious channel of communication in the
fast-moving, complex, political landscapes of the present day.”>!

The Transformation of the Black Press in the

Post-Civil Rights Era
In the post-—civil rights era, as a result of integration, the black press has to
continually transform as both an instrument of protest and of group solidarity
and direction. It has to adapt as an instrument of protest because the withering
away of overt white supremacism and racism removes the direct targets of protest
that had given purpose to black press since the founding of the first newspaper.
It has to acclimate as an instrument of group solidarity and direction as a result
of the integration of blacks, in various ways, into the mainstream of American
society. With the decline of “culture-rich” traditional media outlets, still preferred
by the majority of black Americans, African American media has reemerged on
myriad digital platform choices, accessible across an array of devices, and
heavily utilized by African Americans. Few studies exist to measure the impact
of African American digital media on black community solidarity and direction,
but one thing is certain, this medium has proven successful in mobilizing
thousands of citizens and activists across the nation to action.
102 PART II > Political Behaviorism

Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom

IDA B. WELLS-BARNETT (1862-1931)
Ida B. Wells-Barnett used her pen to pursue the cause of universal freedom.
Perhaps the most famous black journalist of her time, she was sometimes
referred to as the “princess of the black press.” Born during slavery, at age 16
she assumed responsibility for raising her five siblings after her parents died of
yellow fever. After attending Fisk University, she edited two newspapers and
then began writing a weekly column under the pen name “Iola.” This column,
which was published in black newspapers throughout the country, made her
one of the most prominent African American leaders in the United States.
Wells-Barnett is best known for her campaign against lynching. After three
of her friends were lynched, at great personal risk she became the nation’s leading
crusader against lynching. She conducted detailed investigations and wrote
articles and pamphlets and lectured throughout the United States and Europe.
Her 1895 Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in
the United States is a classic study of the subject. In addition to work in the
media, Wells-Barnett was a founding member of the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a leader of the National
Association of Colored Women, and was active in several women’s suffrage
organizations. She also ran unsuccessfully for the Illinois state senate.?

Ida B. Wells-Barnett.
Source: “Legend: Ida B. Wells-Barnett,
Journalist and Anti-Lynching Crusader”
National Women’s History Museum.
Retrieved 4 October 2016 from
https://www.nwhm.org/html/support/events/d
epizan/ida.html

® Linda O. Murray, To Keep the Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1998).

ee
NU Re EW SELLA ee i ears ree |
 CHAPTER 5 > African Americans and the Media 103

Summary Beier now

Since the 1827 founding of Freedom’s Journal, the first black newspaper, the
media have been a central institution in the African American struggle for
freedom and equality and a major agent of political socialization. As a result
of the integration of blacks into the mainstream media and the expanded
coverage of the black community, the influence of the black media has broadened
beyond traditional mainstream outlets to a multiplicity of digital platforms. Yet
the black media are still important institutions in black America. This is partly
because African American employment is not fully or proportionately integrated
into the mainstream media, and there is still a tendency toward racial and gender
stereotyping in mainstream media coverage of the African American community.

Critical Thinking Questions

1. Discuss the role of the black media as socialization agent in fostering

group consciousness and solidarity and as a vehicle of protest in the black
community.
2. Discuss the use of social media among African Americans. How do young
African Americans use social media? Are there links between the use of social
media and major events affecting the black community? Discuss and provide
specific examples.
3. Discuss the representation of African Americans in the mainstream media.
4. Is there a difference in the coverage of major events in the African American
community by African American journalists? Discuss and provide examples.
5. How do stereotypes in the mass media reinforce blacks’ subordinate status
and work against universal freedom for African Americans? Discuss and
provide examples.

Selected Bibliography Ds
Behnken, Brian, and Gregory Smithers, Racism in American Popular Media: From Aunt
Jemima to the Frito Bandito. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2015. A history of the
racist stereotyping of blacks and other minorities in the media.
Dates, Jannette, and William Barlow, eds. Split Images: African Americans in the Mass
Media, 2nd ed. Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1993. The leading work
on the macrolevel dimension of the media and African Americans.
Gans, Herbert. Deciding What’s News: A Study of the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly
News, Newsweek and Time. New York: Pantheon, 1979. An important sociological
analysis of the relationship between social order and conflict in determining what is
news.
Graber, Doris. Mass Media and American Politics, 4th ed. Washington, DC: Con-
gressional Quarterly, 1992. The standard political science analysis of the role of the
media in American politics.
Nelson, Jill. Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience. Chicago, IL: Nobel Press,
1993. A humorous and passionate account of the travails of the Washington Post
104 PART II > Political Behaviorism

Magazine's first black and first woman reporter, a post from which she resigned
because she says she was unable to tolerate the Pos?’s “paternalistic culture.”
Wolseley, Roland. The Black Press, U.S.A., 2nd ed. Ames: Iowa State University Press,
1990. A general survey of the black press, covering newspapers and magazines.

Naies Gio let Lacie ace al

See “The First Negro Newspaper’s Opening Editorial, 1827,” in H. Aptheker, ed.,
A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States (New York:
Citadel, 1967): 82.
Nm See Kristol Brent Zook, “Blacks Own Just 10 U.S. Television Stations, Here is Why,”
Washington Post, August 17, 2015,
Roland Wolseley, The Black Press, U.S.A. (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1990).
Ronald Jacobs, “Civil Society and Crisis: Culture, Discourse and the Rodney King
Beating,” American Journal of Sociology 101 (1996): 1238-72.
na For example, in 2015 Essence magazine partnered with Black Women’s Roundtable,
a program of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, Inc., to conduct
surveys on black women’s political behavior (www.essence.com/2015/09/16/essence-
and-black-womens-roundtable-release-survey-power-sister-vote). Also, in 2014,
Essence partnered with the Nielsen Company on a custom survey of African American
consumer choices (http://sites.nielsen.com/africanamericans/).
Black Radio Today 2013: How America Listens to Radio, Radio’s Enduring
Relationship with Black Listeners, www.arbitron.com/downloads/Black_Radio_
Today_2013_execsum.pdf.
Summary statistics were taken from Reach Media, Inc., accessed online on January
27, 2016, www.reachmediainc.com/
Data from two studies conducted by the Nielsen and Essence magazine were used,
“Powerful. Growing. Influential. The African-American Consumer 2014 Report” and
“The Total Audience Report December 2014.” Both can be accessed at http://sites.
nielsen.com/africanamericans/.
The Pew Research Center, State of the News Media, African-American Media Fact
Sheet, April 29, 2015, www.journalism.org/2015/04/29/african-american-media-fact-
sheet/.
10 Reach Media, Inc., www.reachmediaine.com/.
11 See reports, “Wire Internet Use,” Pew Internet & American Life Project, July 2009,
pp. 3-6; and “African-Americans and Technology Use: A Demographic Portrait,”
Pew Research Center, January 6, 2014.
Quoted from Nielsen report summary released on the website on February 3, 2015,
www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2015/multifaceted-connections-african-
american-media-usage-outpaces-across-platforms. html,
e “The Race for the White House 2016: Registered Voters and Media and
Information during the Primaries,” released January 2016, www.iab.com/insights/the-
race-for-the-white-house-201 6-registered-voters-and-media-and-information-during-t
he-primaries/.
See “The Total Audience Report December 2014,” p. 20.
LS Ibid., and “African-Americans and Technology Use: A Demographic Portrait” report.
16 The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (popularly known as the
Kerner Commission) was appointed by President Johnson to investigate the causes
of the civil unrest. The commission’s findings pointed to the absence of black reporters
and scant coverage of the black community as factors contributing to the discontent
 CHAPTER 5 > African Americans and the Media 105

that led to the uprisings. Also, many newspapers and television stations found that
without black reporters they could not adequately cover the rebellions, since white
reporters were reluctant to go into the black community or did not understand what
they saw and heard.
17 “Black Journalists’ Ranks Cut By Nearly 1,000 in Past Decade,” NAB] News, April
4, 2012, www.nabj.org/news/88558/.
18 See Vernon Johnson, “Minorities and Women in Television News” and “Minorities
and Women in Radio News” (University of Missouri, School of Journalism, 1996).
19 American Society of Newspaper Editors, press release on the 1996 Annual Survey
on Diversity in the Newsroom, April 16, 1996.
20 Herbert Gans, Deciding What’s News: A Study of the CBS Evening News, NBC
Nightly News, Newsweek and Time (New York: Pantheon, 1979).
21 Jill Nelson, Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience (Chicago, IL: Noble
Press, 1993).
22 Brian Behnken and Gregory Smithers, Racism in American Popular Media (Santa
Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2015).
23 Jannette Dates and William Barlow, eds., Split Images: African Americans in the
Mass Media, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1993) and Martin
Gilens, “Race and Poverty in America: Public Perceptions and the American News
Media,” Public Opinion Quarterly 50 (1996): 515-41.
24 Michael Eric Dyson, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color
of Disaster (New York: Basic Civitas, 2006): 72.
phe) Cierra Lockett, “Ending Apathy from African-American Entertainers,” July 28,
2015, www.huffingtonpost.com/cierra-lockett/ending-apathy-in-entertai_b_7861846.
html.
26 Ibid.
vie See “Optimism about Black Progress Declines: Blacks See Growing Values Gap
Between Poor and Middle Class,” Pew Research Center, November 2007, p. 45.
28 Craig Garthwaite and Tim Moore, “The Role of Celebrity Endorsements in Politics:
Oprah, Obama, and the 2008 Democratic Primary,” August 2008, p. 39, www.stat.
columbia.edu/~gelman/stuff_for_blog/celebrityendorsements_garthwaitemoore.pdf.
29 Ibid., see also Brian Stetler, “Endorsement from Oprah Quantified: A Million Votes,”
New York Times, August 11, 2008.
30 Matthew A. Baum and Angela Jamison, “Soft News and the Four Oprah Effects,”
in Robert Y. Shapiro and Lawrence R. Jacobs, eds., The Oxford Handbook of
American Public Opinion and the Media (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011):
123:
31 Ibid., pp. 134-35.
; x

~
emey
Ph
ee
eres
PO
PART Ill
Coalitions, Movements,
Interest Groups, Parties,
and Elections
- erate
ee
Hm CHAPTER 6 Ea
Social Movements and
a Theory of African
American Coalition
Politics

LEARNING OBJECTIVE
Define minority—majority coalitions in the context of social movements
that have been important in African American history.

For much of their history in the United States, African Americans have been
excluded from the normal, routine processes of political participation such as
lobbying, voting, elections, and political parties. Indeed, in the Republic’s more
than 200-year history, African Americans have been included as nearly full
participants for barely 60 years—the 10-year Reconstruction period from 1867
to 1877 plus the years since the adoption of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. As
for much of their history, African Americans have been excluded from the interest
group, electoral, and party systems, they have had to resort to social movements
to challenge the exclusionary system. William Gamson makes this point when
he observes that in the United States certain groups have been systematically
denied entry into the political process and gain entry only through protest or
system crisis—what he calls “the breakdown of the normal operation of the
system or through demonstration on the part of challenging groups of a
willingness to violate ‘rules of the game’ by resorting to illegitimate means of
carrying on political conflict.”?
109
110 PARTII > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

Therefore, before we examine the African American interest group, voting,

and party behavior, we need to look first at African American participation in
social movements. A social movement may be understood as a group of persons
organized in a sustained, self-conscious challenge to an existing system and its
values or power relationships. An interest group is typically defined as a group
of persons who share a common interest and seek to influence the government
to adopt policies favorable to that interest. In other words, movements challenge
systems, whereas interest groups accept and work within systems. In this rather
long chapter we examine the history, development, and contemporary
manifestations of African American social movement behavior. Before doing
this, however, we develop a theory of African American minority—majority
coalition politics.

A Theory of African American Coalition

Politics
This book has two major themes. The first is that African Americans in their
quest for freedom in the United States have sought to universalize the idea of
freedom. The second theme is that African Americans—given their status first
as slaves and then as an oppressed racial minority—have had to form coalitions
with whites to achieve their freedom. Historically, however, these black-white
coalitions have been tenuous and unstable, requiring constant rebuilding in
an ongoing quest. To understand the dynamic instability of African American
coalition politics, we must know some basic concepts and theoretical proposi-
tions.
There are various concepts and definitions of coalitions, including compli-
cated, technical-mathematical ones and social-psychological and economic
cost/benefit analyses.* But simply, a coalition involves two or more persons or
groups bringing their resources together to achieve a common objective. When
a group can achieve its objectives alone, it is less likely to join a coalition.
Historically, as blacks have sought freedom in the United States, this has rarely
been the case for them. They have always needed coalition partners to achieve
many, if not all, of their objectives. However, blacks frequently have not been
able to find coalition partners among whites for their objectives; thus, they have
been forced to act alone. Black nationalists in the United States reject in principle
the possibility of whites as reliable coalition partners and therefore always
embrace the strategy of intraracial coalitions among blacks rather than interracial
coalitions with whites. But even those blacks (the overwhelming majority) who
in principle accept the idea of interracial coalitions have also embraced the go-
it-alone strategy, when suitable white coalition partners were not available or
when independent race group organizations were thought to be preferable or
complementary to coalition politics. A final theoretical point is that a coalition,
 CHAPTER 6 > Social Movements and Coalition Politics 111

to be viable, must have sufficient resources—money, status, size—to achieve its

objectives vis-a-vis opposing groups and coalitions. In summary, a theory of
African American coalition politics suggests that blacks will seek to pool their
resources with whites, when possible, in order to achieve their objectives. When
suitable white partners are not available, they will seek to pool their resources
among themselves to achieve these objectives.?
Historically, as Figure 6.1 shows, African Americans have sought to form
or participate in two categories of coalitions. The first type is a rights-based
coalition, one that seeks to achieve fundamental universal freedom in terms of
basic human, constitutional, and legal rights; examples are the abolitionist and
civil rights movements. The second is a material-based coalition, which seeks
access to economic benefits such as land, education, employment, and social
security; examples are the populist movement, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal
Coalition, and Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition.’ Historically, also, the rights-
based coalitions have had priority over the material-based ones. For example,
before the black slaves could fight for land and education, their first objective
had to be the abolition of slavery. Similarly, a major objective of black leaders
and organizations during the 1970s was to form a material-based coalition to
secure passage of legislation guaranteeing full employment (see the discussion
of the Humphrey-Hawkins Act in Chapter 10). Before this material-based issue

Social & Political

Movements

To establish human,
constitutional,
and legal rights

African Public
Americans Policies

iim Political Parties : .

To acquire economic,
social, and
cultural benefits

FIGURE 6.1
The Dual Categories for Coalition Formation of African Americans: Rights- and
Material-Based
Sources: Adapted from Hanes Walton, Jr., Black Politics: A Theoretical and Structural Analysis
(Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott, 1972); and Robert Allen, The Reluctant Reformers: Reform
Movements in the United States (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1993).
112 PART II > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

could become the priority, however, the rights-based objectives of the civil rights
movement had to be achieved.
African American minority-majority coalitions tend to be tenuous and
unstable because of racism, white supremacist thinking, and the ambivalence of
white Americans toward race and universal freedom and equality. Figure 6.2

1760-1865

1865-1877

1880s—1900s

1880s—1890s

1910-1960s

1930s—1940s

1936-1968

1955-1968

1970s—1990s

1984-1988

2008-—

FIGURE 6.2
African American Coalition Partners, 1700s—Forward
Sources: Robert Allen, The Reluctant Reformers: Reform Movements in the United States
(Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1973); and Robert Smith, We Have No Leaders: African
Americans in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Aloany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996).
 CHAPTER 6 > Social Movements and Coalition Politics 113

displays the white and other coalition partners of blacks from the founding of
the Republic in the 1770s to the present. It shows that in both rights- and
material-based coalitions, blacks have over time formed coalitions with all
elements of the white population (and since the 1960s, other racial minority
groups)—Quakers and Jews, middle-class professionals and poor white farmers,
white liberals and white conservatives, rural whites and urban whites, and white
men and white women. Yet, as we show in this chapter and in those following
on electoral and party coalitions, these varied coalitions have frequently been
weak and unstable because of the forces of racism and white supremacy.
In summary, here are the basic elements of this theory of African American
coalitions, as we use them to analyze black social movements in this chapter
and to examine interest groups, elections, and party behavior in Chapters 7, 8,
and 9:

¢ Black-white coalitions tend to shift from rights-based to material-based,

depending on historical conditions.
¢ Viable coalitions with whites are sometimes not possible, forcing blacks to
act alone in black nationalist or other forms of intragroup coalitions.
e Because of racism and white supremacist thinking, when coalitions with
whites are formed they tend to be tenuous, unstable, and frequently short-
lived, requiring constant rebuilding.

Given these basic theoretical points, we begin by analyzing the first

significant African American coalition: the rights-based abolitionist movement.

The First Rights-Based Movement:

The Abolitionist Coalition
The movement that emerged in the 1830s to abolish slavery was the first rights-
based coalition in the United States. It, like the early twentieth-century civil rights
movement, was organized and led by well-educated, middle- to upper-class
blacks and whites, many of whom (especially among the blacks) were ministers.°
The abolitionist movement anticipates the conflicts and tensions that have
characterized all subsequent reform coalitions involving African Americans and
whites, whether rights-based or material-based.
In The Reluctant Reformers: Racism and Social Reform Movements in the
United States, Robert Allen analyzes six major social reform movements, begin-
ning with the abolitionist movement and including populism, the progressive
movement, feminism, the labor movement, and the socialist and communist
movements. African Americans were involved in each of these reform movements
in coalitions with whites. These alliances span 100 years, from the 1830s to the
1930s, and as Allen points out, they cover the whole span of social classes from
114 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

middle- and upper-class whites in the abolitionist movement to poor and

working-class whites in the populist and labor movements. Some of these
movements were based in the North; some, like the populist movements, were
rural; and others, like the progressive and labor movements, were predominantly
urban. White men led most of these movements, but white women in the 1860s
developed a movement of their own. However, as Allen observed, none of these
differences among whites—middle class or poor, urban or rural, North or
South, and male or female—resulted in the absence of some degree of racism.°
That is, beginning with the abolitionist movement, racism and the ideology of
white supremacy have operated to effectively undermine all reform coalitions
in the United States.
The principal white leader of the abolitionist movement was William Lloyd
Garrison, who in 1833 founded the American Anti-Slavery Society. The leading
black abolitionist was Frederick Douglass. Although both Douglass and Garrison
were “militant abolitionists,” favoring the immediate abolition of slavery, they
differed over strategy and tactics. Eventually, these differences led to the breakup
of the coalition.
Garrison was an uncompromising critic of slavery and the Constitution that
ordained it, as may be seen in the following famous quote from the first issue
of his newspaper The Liberator:

Let southern oppressors tremble ... let northern apologists tremble, let all
the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble. ... Urge me not to use
moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest—I will not
equivocate—I will not excuse—and I will be heard!”

Despite this militancy, Garrison was committed to “moral suasion,”

nonviolence, and white leadership of the abolitionist movement. Garrison and
his followers were also opposed to the formation of the all black National Negro
Congress. These positions eventually led Douglass and other black abolitionists
to break with Garrison and seek their way alone. One hundred years later, similar
differences between blacks and whites would lead to a breakup of the civil rights
coalition and the emergence of the separatist black power movement.
Although the middle-class whites who led the abolitionist movement were
not racists, many were white supremacists and based their opposition to slavery
not on a belief in the equality of the races but on moral and religious grounds.
That is, although blacks might not be the equal of whites, for one man to enslave
another was nevertheless a violation of the principles of the Declaration of
Independence and Jesus’s doctrine of universal brotherhood.’ This moral and
religious basis of the movement led many whites to insist that nonviolent
resistance was the only acceptable way to oppose slavery.
Douglass initially embraced Garrison’s moralism and nonviolence, but as
time went on and these approaches did not prove successful, he and many other
 CHAPTER 6 > Social Movements and Coalition Politics 115

black abolitionists abandoned a sole reliance on moral suasion and embraced

political action (support for the antislavery Liberty Party) and violent resistance
and revolt. The final reason for the collapse of the abolitionist coalition was the
issue of who should lead it—in Douglass’s words, who should be part of “the
generalship of the movement.” Douglass argued that whites in the movement
ignored blacks, refusing to recognize or respect their leadership. In words that
sound like Stokely Carmichael and the 1960s black power advocates, Douglass
said, :

The man who has suffered the wrong is the man to demand the redress—the
man struck is the man to CRY OUT and he who has endured the cruel
pangs of slavery is the man to advocate liberty. It is evident that we must be
our own representatives and advocates, but peculiarly—not distinct from—
but in connection with our white friends.?

This first rights-based coalition did not directly result in the abolition of
slavery but it did, along with the slave revolts and John Brown’s raid at Harpers
Ferry, contribute to the climate that resulted in the crisis leading up to the
Civil War.'°

Abolitionism and Feminism

Early black and some white feminists—advocates of equality of rights for
women—supported the abolition of slavery as part of a general moral stance
in favor of universal freedom for all persons. Black women abolitionists Harriet
Tubman, Sarah Forten, Lucy Stanton, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Isabella
Baumfree (aka “Sojourner Truth”), and Sarah Parker Redmond blatantly
criticized the institution of slavery and its violent attempts at dehumanization
for enslaved Africans.'!! Frederick Douglass, viewed as the prominent voice and
leader of the black race, and many black male abolitionists were strong
supporters of women’s rights, again as part of a general moral stance in favor
of universal freedom.'* Thus, these two rights-based movements formed a
coalition on the basis of equality and universal freedom for all persons without
regard for race or gender. Yet this coalition, like the abolitionist coalition, was
tenuous and unstable; in the end, it collapsed.
First, unlike Douglass, many male abolitionists—black and white—dis-
criminated against women, refusing, for example, to allow women to sign the
Anti-Slavery Society’s Declaration of Principles, hold leadership positions in the
group, or serve as antislavery lecturers. As a result, a group of “women of color”
organized America’s first women’s antislavery organization, the Salem Female
Anti-Slavery Society, to champion their cause for supporting secular and Sabbath
schools for free blacks, and it assisted blacks in bondage who were newly freed
or runaway via the Freedmen’s Bureau, and opposed racial segregation and
116 PARTW > Coalitions, Movemens, Interest Groups, Partias, and Sotions

discrimination in the northern free states. Two years afer 8 Randing, the
society expanded its membership toinchade whit women. S Although Mat wR
female abolitionists and early feminists were also middle clasy, men neverthelss
argued that they, too, were inferior in status and therefore showld not be allowed |
to exercise freedom on the same basis as men, White Rominiss were ako whit
supremacists who embraced the antislavery coalition Only as & MEARS TH RAN
the cause of women’s rights for whites, which would ultimanilly become the key
issue, leading to the collapse of the black-feminist coalition. The cracial Kee
was black suffrage—whether black men should be granted the neh ~ vo

Amendment, which for the first time incladed the word »aziz in the Comsmaminn,
Foner contends that feminist leaders felt a “deep sense of betrayal” by ths action
and “consequently embarked on a course that severed their historic aliiaance with
"ote o7tpedheger totenseedapomab emenestite se cstlings aos Brie mS
consoutside titu ency
of the reform milieu.”
ie Gs-dive tak ‘came wok theadogeion stax Ranaah, Rasa?
which granted black men the nght to vor but denied 8 t} women. Leadizg
white feminists opposed the amendment unless women wer indded naw
they said it would permit black men, their “inferior,” more Neh than whee
women. Although most black women feminist viewed the amendment as
necessary for racial advancement, some like Sojourner Trath argeed that wthot
voting rights for black women, the race could not progress at all, Trath argeed
that “Men have got their nghts, and women has [sic] not got their nghtes. That
is the trouble. When woman gets her nghts man will be night. ... The great
fight was to keep the rights of the poor colored people.” Rredenck Dowglas,
a supporter of women’s suffrage and vice-president of the National Egual Rights
League, made an eloquent rebuttal to these arguments;

I must say that I do not see how anyone can pretend that there & the @aRe
urgency in giving the ballot to the woman as the Negro. With us the maner
is a question of life and death, at least in fifteen states of the anion. When
women are dragged from their houses and hung up on lamp posts when
their children are torn from their arms and their brains dashed on the
pavement; when they are the object of insult and outrage at every tary
when they are in danger of having their homes barnt down over their
heads; when their children are not allowed to enter schools then they will
have an urgency
to the ballot equal to our own.**

Douglass's arguments were not persuasive, and by the end of Reconstruction,

the feminist movement had become largely a movement of mostly whites, with
white women advocating for inclusion on an equal basis in racist America.”
This again illustrates our theoretical point about the tenuousness and instability
of black-white coalitions. These tensions and conflicts benween the women’s
 CHAPTER6 » Social Moveand
mentCoalition s
Polttics 117

based rights movement and the black-based rights movement continue 100
years later, as reflected in the debate about the inclusion of gender in the Gwvil
Rights Act of 1964 and the debate about affirmative action in the 1990s which
fail to recognize the intersectionality of black women’s struggles and expericaces.

Booker T. Washington’s Coalition for Limited

Freedom
In many ways the strangest and most paradoxical coalition in African American
politics is the one fashioned by Booker T. Washington in the aftermath of
Reconstruction. It can be considered strange and paradoxical because x was 2
coalition for limited rather than universal freedom. For a brief period of time
during Reconstruction, African Americans had the freedom to exercise their basic
civil rights, including the right to vote, hold office, and have access along with
whites to places of public accommodation such as inns, theaters, and restaurants.
However, as a result of the so-called Compromise of 1877 that led to the disputed
election of President Rutherford B. Hayes, these freedoms were taken away.
The essence of the 1877 Compromise was Hayes’s promise to withdraw the
army from the southern states in exchange for the electoral votes that would
allow him to become president. The withdrawal of these soldiers was critical
to the end of Reconstruction since they had protected the newly freed slaves in
the exercise of their newly won freedoms. Once the soldiers left, white
southerners engaged in a campaign of open terror, torture, massacres, and
lynchings in order to deprive African Americans of their freedoms. In spite of
the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, blacks were denied the right to vote
and were denied access to public office, public places, and quality education.
Finally, in the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court codified this
denial of freedom by declaring that the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of
equality did not prevent the states from segregating the races in all public places,
from streetcars to schoolrooms.
Frederick Douglass and other African American leaders bitterly protested
this denial of freedom as a betrayal not only of the Negro but also ofthe very
idea of freedom for which the war had been fought. While Frederick Douglass
and others continued their fight for universal freedom, Booker T. Washington,
the head of Tuskegee University in Alabama and probably the single most
powerful African American leader in the history of the United States, formed a
coalition with the former southern slave owners and northern businessmen that
embraced the idea of limited freedom. That is, he argued that the newly freed
slaves were not at the time ready for universal freedom because he said they
lacked the necessary education, property, and character. Thus, he argued that
Reconstruction was a mistake and blacks, at least temporarily, should give up
their quest for universal freedom in terms of social and political rights. In return
118 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

for giving up social and political freedoms, Washington asked the former slave
owners to grant blacks personal autonomy or freedom, the freedom to work,
and the freedom to develop their own economic, social, and cultural institutions
on a separate but equal basis.'®
Booker Washington’s thought is ambivalent and controversial. He is viewed
by many African Americans as the quintessential “Uncle Tom”—a man who
sold out the interests of the race to rich and powerful whites. Yet, for others,
he was a pragmatic politician who made the best deal for his people he could,
given the concrete conditions and circumstances of the time—circumstances of
overwhelming white hostility and antiblack violence. There was also in
Washington’s thought a powerful strain of black nationalism in terms of racial
separatism in economics, education, and community autonomy. (Marcus Garvey,
the 1920s black nationalist leader, originally came to the United States to visit
Washington, whose thought had tremendously impressed him as a young man
in Jamaica.) In any event, Washington’s thought is unique in the African
American experience since it embraced limited, not universal, freedom. However,
it should be clear that for Washington this was a temporary accommodation to
the conditions of the time. That is, he thought—wrongly as it turned out—that
through education, work, and property, African Americans would eventually
“earn” universal freedom or what he called “full citizenship rights.”

Material-Based Coalitions: From Populism

to Communism
Populism
The populist movement of the 1890s set the pattern of all future material-based
coalitions between whites and African Americans. C. Vann Woodward, historian
of the populist movement, writes, “It is altogether probable that during the brief
populist upheaval of the nineties Negroes and Native whites achieved a greater
comity of mind and harmony of political purpose [than] ever before or since
in the south.”!? A reexamination of Woodward’s research on the populist
movement shows, as one historian says, that he was “much too generous”—
that rather than being a grand coalition of poor whites and blacks, populism
from the outset was undermined by the racism and white supremacist thinking
of its white leaders who sought to manipulate their black coalition partners for
their own interests.?°
The populist movement emerged out of the economic depression of the
1890s as black sharecroppers and poor white farmers were faced with falling
wages and prices, high taxes, and heavy debt. As a result of this crisis, there
was a material basis for a coalition between these two groups, who by pooling
their resources (including their votes) could effectively challenge the power of
the dominant economic and political elites. Led by Tom Watson of Georgia,
 CHAPTER 6 > Social Movements and Coalition Politics 119

the populists formed the Southern Alliance and later the Populist Party, both
of which advocated such progressive reforms as debt relief, government
ownership or regulation of the railroads, and a graduated income tax. Although
some white populists for a time sincerely tried to build a biracial, class-oriented
movement, from the outset racism was a major stumbling block. For example,
blacks were not allowed to join the Southern Alliance; rather, they were
segregated in a separate white-led Colored Farmers Alliance. And while the
Populist Party appealed for black voter support and allowed blacks to serve as
leaders (although in small numbers), it too was eventually undermined as poor
whites were convinced by Democratic Party leaders that a vote for the interracial
Populist Party was racial treason.?! As a result, white populists eventually
succumbed to what Richard Hofstadter called the “Negro bogey,” and within
a decade, this first material-based coalition of African Americans and whites
had collapsed.”? Eventually, Tom Watson, the movement’s leader, turned from
preaching interracial unity and solidarity to an extreme form of racism and white
supremacy, supporting lynching and the disenfranchisement of blacks.?3 Thus,
within the short span of a decade, populism went from “colored and white in
the ditch unite” to “lynch the Negro.”*4

The Progressives
The populist movement was, as Hofstadter writes, “the first modern political
movement of practical importance in the United States to insist that the federal
government has some responsibility for the common weal; indeed it was the
‘first such movement to attack seriously the problems created by industrialism.””°
It was succeeded a generation later by the progressive movement. The pro-
gressives, unlike the populists, were largely urban, middle-class professional
whites who sought, like the populists, federal regulation of the economy and
reforms in the political process, such as the initiative and referendum. It too,
however, was affected by the “Negro bogey.””® The Progressive Party, for
example, refused to condemn racial discrimination, lynching, or the denial of
black voting rights. One of its principal leaders, President Theodore Roosevelt,
was one of the most racist presidents of the twentieth century (see Chapter 11).

The Labor Movement

The African American people are largely a working-class people; therefore, their
natural coalition partners should be working-class whites and their trade union
organizations. As Carmichael and Hamilton said in their chapter “The Myth
of Coalitions” in the book Black Power, “It is hoped eventually that there will
be a coalition of poor whites and blacks. This is the only coalition which seems
acceptable to us and we see such a coalition as the major instrument of change
in American society.”2” For much of American history, Carmichael and
Hamilton’s hope for a coalition with the white working class has been just that,
a hope, because for much of its history the American labor movement was
120 PART II > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

committed to white supremacy and racism. With a few exceptions—the Knights

of Labor during Reconstruction and the International Workers of the World
early in the twentieth century—American trade unions have either excluded
blacks or forced them into segregated unions.?® Even today, although organized
labor has abolished racial segregation and was a major partner in the 1960s
civil rights coalition, the white working class continues to exhibit more racist,
white supremacist thinking than do middle-class, professional whites.
As is shown in Chapters 8 and 9, blacks and working-class whites were
partners, although uneasy ones, in the New Deal coalition (which enacted many
of the reform proposals of the populists and progressives), but this was because
President Franklin D. Roosevelt scrupulously avoided taking any stand on race
issues, even refusing to support antilynching legislation. Once the Democratic
Party in the 1960s embraced the cause of civil rights, the New Deal coalition
of blacks and working-class whites began to collapse. Despite eloquent pleas
and constant campaigning on working-class concerns, Jesse Jackson in his two
campaigns for president received more support from middle-class white
professionals than from poor and working-class whites, as did Barack Obama
in 2008.

Socialists and Communists

Even socialists and communists have not been able to avoid the “Negro bogey”
of racism and white supremacy. The Socialist Party was organized in 1901, and
although it was ostensibly devoted to a broad-based coalition of workers, it
initially embraced racism and white supremacy. Jack London, one of the party’s
founders, said, “I am first a white man and only then socialist,” and the party’s
newspaper, Appeal to Reason, declared, “Socialists believe in justice to the
Negro, not social equality. Socialism will separate the races.”*? Only when the
socialists began to face competition from the Communist Party did they change
their racist position, begin to recruit blacks (such as A. Phillip Randolph, the
labor leader), and, under the leadership of Norman Thomas in the 1930s, take
forthright stands against racial segregation and discrimination.°° The Communist
Party probably was more sympathetic to universal freedom than any other
organized group of white Americans.
However, as the African American novelist Richard Wright argued in his
eloquent essay in The God That Failed, although the Communist Party supported
the cause of universal freedom sincerely, it was also a part of a strategy dictated
from Russia to manipulate African Americans in order to further the objectives
of the Soviet Union.*!
Historically, blacks have been willing to join as partners in material-based
reform coalitions with whites; however, whites have been reluctant, unreliable
partners, forcing blacks to act alone or seek white partners in rights-based
coalitions.
 CHAPTER 6 > Social Movements and Coalition Politics 121

A “Rainbow” Coalition?
In 1984 and 1988, Jesse Jackson ran for the Democratic Party’s presidential
nomination. In both the campaigns, he sought to build what he called a
“Rainbow Coalition” of blacks and other “peoples of color”—Latinos and Arab
and Asian Americans—as well as progressive or liberal whites. The idea of a
multiracial coalition of peoples of color is attractive to African American leaders
because since the 1960s the United States has become increasingly racially
diverse as a result of immigration from Asia, Latin America, and, to a somewhat
less extent, Africa. Until the 1960s, the immigration laws of the United States
were based on principles of racism. Enacted in the 1920s, these laws generally
excluded persons from eastern and southern Europe and the so-called Third
World. Partly as a result of the antiracism reform climate brought about by the
civil rights movement, the immigration laws were changed in 1965 to permit
immigration from all parts of the world. These changes in the law, the
globalization of the economy, and the creation of refugees as a result of wars
in Asia, Africa, and Latin America have resulted in a massive influx of
immigrants, documented and undocumented, since the 1970s. The 2010 U.S.
Census indicated that persons from Latin America or “Hispanics” accounted
for 16 percent of the U.S. population of 309 million, Asian Americans 5 percent,
African Americans 13 percent, and non-Hispanic whites 63 percent—about half
the Hispanics identified themselves as white. (This represents a dramatic change
from the 1960s when blacks and whites accounted for approximately 90 percent
of the population.) Although it is common for social scientists and journalists
to refer to Hispanics and Asian Americans as if they are single, discrete ethnic
groups, they obviously are not, and to treat them as single, discrete groups
conceals the extent of ethnic diversity in the United States. While Latinos share
a common language, they do not necessarily share a common culture, and Asian
Americans do not share a common language, let alone a culture. Thus, it is
important to break down these artificially created groups because they may hold
different racial and political attitudes and engage in different political behavior.
Among Hispanics, the largest ethnic group is Mexican Americans at 58.5
percent, Puerto Ricans are 28.4 percent, Cubans 3.5 percent, and persons from
other Latin American countries 21 percent. Among Asian Americans the
breakdown is Chinese at 23.7 percent, Filipinos (classified as Asian although
many speak Spanish) 18 percent, Korean 9.5 percent, Japanese 7 percent, Asian
Indians 16 percent, Vietnamese 11 percent, and persons from other Asian
countries 12.5 percent.
Given this ethnic diversity, the idea of a rainbow coalition of people of color
is based on the assumption that the new immigrants tend to be poor and may
face discrimination or racism from the white majority, and therefore there is an
objective basis for a coalition with blacks in terms of support for civil rights
and social welfare legislation. Blacks and the leaders of Asian American and
122 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

Latino communities are part of a broad leadership coalition for civil rights, but
it has been marked by tensions and conflicts (see Box 7.2). At the mass level,
while majorities of both Latinos and Asian Americans feel they face
discrimination from the white majority, they feel they have more in common
with whites than they do with blacks.32 Latinos and Asian Americans in general
tend to embrace the same negative stereotypes about blacks. For example, a
major report shows that 51 percent of Latinos, 53 percent of Asian Americans,
and 45 percent of whites said they believed blacks were prone to crime and
violence; and 40 percent of whites, 33 percent of Latinos, and 48 percent of
Asian Americans said they believed blacks “care less about family.” As the
authors of the report write, these negative stereotypes regarding blacks constitute
a “serious barrier” to cooperation and coalitions between blacks and other
people of color.*? Thus, Jesse Jackson in his two campaigns for president
received relatively little support from other groups of color except Puerto Ricans
in New York. There is also competition for political offices*and resources
between blacks and Mexican Americans in California and Texas, between
blacks and Cuban Americans in Florida, between blacks and Puerto Ricans in
New York and Illinois, and even between blacks and African Americans of West
Indian origins in New York. Thus, whether in the twenty-first century the
relationship between blacks and the new immigrants will be characterized by
cooperation and coalition or competition and conflict is unclear.**

African Americans, Immigration, and the Prospects

for a New Majority Coalition
Historically, African Americans have been skeptical or hostile to immigration,
fearing competition for jobs.** As Frederick Douglass said in the 1880s referring
to the waves of immigrants from Europe, “The old employment by which we
have heretofore gained our livelihood, are gradually and it may seem inevitably,
passing into other hands. Every hour sees the black man elbowed out of
employment by some newly arrived immigrant whose hunger and color are
thought to give him a better title to the place.” Yet, the reforms that ended
racial discrimination in the nation’s immigration laws in 1965 and opened the
doors to immigrants from all over the world were partly an outgrowth of the
civil rights movement. As Vernon Briggs writes, “It was the passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964... that created the national climate needed to legislatively
end the discriminatory national origin system the following year with the
adoption of the Immigration Act of 1965.”37 However, in 1977 it was Barbara
Jordan, the nationally renowned African American congresswoman from Texas,
who chaired a commission that recommended, among other things, substantial
reductions in the annual level of legal immigration, limits on the admission of
unskilled adults, and a concerted effort to stop illegal immigration.38
 CHAPTER 6 > Social Movements and Coalition Politics 123

Although the econometrics literature is mixed on the impact of immigration

on the employment and wages of low-income workers in general and African
Americans particularly,» it is clear that immigration has increased the supply
of low-wage labor, which tends to reduce wages and employment opportunities
for low-wage American citizens and legal immigrants.4° Employers may also
prefer to hire undocumented immigrants, who are viewed as harder working
and less complaining than native-born Americans. Yet, immigrants also likely
contribute to growth in the overall economy and may do certain kinds of
work that native-born Americans are unwilling to do, at least at the prevailing
wages.*! Finally, the new immigrants from Latin America, Asia, and, to a lesser
extent, Africa may provide a long-term basis for the expansion of a multi-
cultural rainbow coalition that could increase support for affirmative action,
unionization, living wages, and national health insurance.
By 2050, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that nonwhites will constitute
half the U.S. population, bringing an end to the majority status of white or
European Americans. (Latinos are projected to constitute 24 percent of the
population, blacks 14 percent, Asians 8 percent, and 4 percent Native American,
Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders, and mixed race.)** This suggests the possibility
or prospect in the future that a rainbow coalition could become the electoral
majority in the United States. In other words, immigrants could become the
basis for a new coalition in the quest for universal freedom. (See Chapter 9,
which discusses the growth of the rainbow coalition in the 2012 presidential
election.)

Black Ethnicity and Immigration: The Impact on

Race and Group Consciousness
In the reporting in the media and in scholarship on immigration, much of the
attention focuses on immigrants from Latin America and to a lesser from Asia,
with little reporting or research on immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean.
Similarly, in the reporting and research on black Americans, relatively little
attention is devoted to the increasing ethnic diversity of the group as a result
of the immigration which has led to an increasingly diverse group of blacks in
the United States. However, just as it is necessary to disaggregate Hispanic and
Asian Americans into discrete ethnic groups, it is also imperative to disaggregate
blacks into discrete ethnicities, distinguishing the historical and common
experiences between those descendants from the “native born” (i.e., those whose
roots emanate from the transatlantic slave trade) and those from the multiple
nations of Africa and the Caribbean who have voluntarily migrated to the United
States.
For generations in American history, there has been a significant West
Indian or Caribbean part of the African American community; with the West
Indian community having produced such notable black figures as Marcus
124 PARTIII > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

Garvey, Stokely Carmichael, Shirley Chisholm, and Colin Powell. (President

Barack Obama is the biracial son of a Kenyan immigrant father and white
American mother.) Until recently the African immigrant population was small
and concentrated heavily along the east coast. But in the last decade—due to
changes in immigration law, particularly the Refugee Act of 1980—immigration
from Africa has increased rapidly and has become dispersed widely across the
country.*+ In 2013, an estimated 1.8 million African-origin immigrants resided
in the United States, up from 800,000 in 2000.*5 Overall, according to the 2010
census there were 1.5 million immigrants from Africa and 3.5 million from the
Caribbean. Together they constitute close to 10 percent of the all-inclusive black
population of the United States.
While the census tends to lump persons for Africa and the Caribbean into
single groups, disaggregation here is also needed as there are distinct differences
in languages and cultures among and between the influx of documented and
undocumented immigrants from Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, and
South Africa as well as those from Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and
other Caribbean nations.*° Diversity among African-descended communities
“remains a black box and a mystery to most Americans,”*’ given the dearth of
available research and the link to the ethnic diversity within black America
generally.
Most of the research on ethnic diversity focuses on educational attainment.
For example, the 2000 census reported among all immigrants, 43.8 percent of
African immigrants had earned a college degree, compared to 42.5 percent of
Asian Americans, 28.9 percent for immigrants from Europe, Russia, and Canada,
and 23.1 percent of the U.S. population as a whole.*® Similar findings,
highlighting aspects of ethnic diversity within black America, were reported in
the census bureau’s 2012 American Community Survey that found 30 percent
of African-born blacks residing in New York City had a college degree, compared
with 22 percent of native-born blacks, 18 percentof Caribbean-born blacks,
and 19 percent of the non-black foreign.*? In fact, the media tend to laud the
achievements of first- or second-generation African immigrants’ offspring—
particularly those who have been accepted to multiple Ivy League schools—
sparking new debates about affirmative action (black immigrants now comprise
the overwhelming majority of black students at these elite institutions),°° as the
“invisible model minority.”°' However, more studies are needed to investigate
black immigrants’ feelings about racial identity, group consciousness, and
solidarity with native-born African Americans and their levels of political
participation.
A recent study is Cristina Greer’s Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration and the
Pursuit of the American Dream. Greer uses the concept of “elevated minorities”
to analyze the interrelationships between black immigrants, whites, and native
African Americans. Akin to the idea of Asian Americans as “model minorities,”
whites tend to view foreign-born blacks as “different,” “special,” as harder
 CHAPTER 6 > Social Movements and Coalition Politics 125

working and more productive than native blacks.5? Some Caribbean and African
immigrants tend to play into this idea by maintaining their immigrant status so
as not to be linked with the negative attitudes many whites have toward native
blacks. Meanwhile native black opinion tends to vary between feelings of racial
solidarity and feelings of threat “as competitors for jobs, resources and overall
political advancement.”*?
More specifically, Greer found that Caribbean ethnic groups are more likely
to support black racial identity and solidarity than the African groups, and the
African groups are more likely to express positive attitudes toward the possibility
of success in the U.S.*4 On issues native and foreign born tend to share the liberal
ideology, favoring, for example, increased spending on domestic education,
health and welfare programs while opposing increases in defense spending.*5
Overail, Greer concludes that while ethnic differences are present, “a
significant overreaching black racial solidarity is present among native born and
foreign born populations.”** This, she theorizes, is because “It is impossible to
remove the black phenotype that serves as the fundamental distinction between
black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean and assimilationist narratives
of Irish, Italian or Jewish immigrants or even current immigrants from Latin
America or Asia.”*’ Further, events like the police killing of Amadou Diallo (an
unarmed African immigrant), the torture and sodomizing of Abner Louima (a
Haitian immigrant) “socialize the effects of race in the minds of blacks in the
United States, regardless of their origin.”°*® In other words, “where public safety
is concerned, black is all that matters.”*?
As of this writing, there are no major studies that disaggregate the political
participation of black immigrants. However, Sharon Wright Austin, Director
of African American Studies at the University of Florida, will serve as the editor
of a special issue of the National Political Science Review, the journal of the
national conference of black political scientists (NCOBPS), entitled The
Caribbeanization of Black Politics: Race, Group Consciousness and Political
Participation,© based on her forthcoming book.

The Second Rights-Based Coalition: The Civil

Rights Movement

The NAACP Coalition

The civil rights movement has its origins in the Niagara Conference, comprised
of 29 leading black men and women business owners, teachers, and clergy*!
called by W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter in 1905 (see Box 6.1).
Four years after the conference, the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP) was founded; until the 1960s it was the principal
civil rights protest organization. Until the late 1960s, the NAACP was the classic
126 PART Ill Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

We Face a Condition, Not a Theory:

W. E. B. Du Bois and the Changing African
American Quest for Universal Freedom

It is often suggested that political the University of Berlin). His doctoral

philosophy and ideas are the products of dissertation, The Suppression of the
the concrete conditions and circumstances African Slave Trade to the United States,
of a people. Nowhere is this better 1638-1870, was the first volume
demonstrated than in the long life and published in Harvard’s Historical Studies
career of Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, the series. He later went on to publish 15
greatest scholar and thinker in the history other books on politics and race, three
of African American thought. Du Bois was historical novels, two autobiographies, and
born on February 23, 1868, in Great numerous essays and works of fiction and
Barrington, Massachusetts. He died 95 poetry. While a professor at Atlanta
years later.in the West African country of University, Du Bois directed the first large-
Ghana on the eve of the 1963 March on scale social science research project on
Washington. In these 95 years, Du Bois’s the problem of race in the United States.
life was one of extraordinary scholarship Among his more important books are
and political leadership, a life that at one Black Reconstruction in America, a
point or another embraced every tendency massive study showing that
in African American thought—integration, Reconstruction was one of the first efforts
black nationalism, and finally socialism and in American history to achieve democracy
communism. for working people; The Philadelphia
Du Bois graduated from Fisk University, Negro: A Social Study, the first sociological
a black institution in Nashville, Tennessee, analysis of an urban community; and The
in 1888. In 1895, he became the first Souls of Black Folk, his classic analysis of
African American to receive a Ph.D. from the psychological, cultural, and
Harvard (he came within a couple of sociopolitical underpinnings of the African
months of earning a second Ph.D. from American experience. Probably no other

Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, preeminent African American intellectual, a leader of the civil

rights and Pan-African movements, embraced communism in the last years of his
life.
Source: Schomburg Center/Art Resource, NY
 CHAPTER 6 > Social Movements and Coalition Politics 127

book has had a greater impact on African universal freedom. Watching the
American thinking than The Souls of Black deteriorating conditions of blacks during
Folk. In it Du Bois states for the first time the Depression, Du Bois once again
the enduring tension in African American embraced black nationalism, arguing that
thought between integration and blacks should develop a separate “group
nationalism: economy” of producers and cooperative
One ever feels his twoness—an consumers. Charging that the NAACP had
American, a Negro, two souls, two become too identified with the concerns
thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, of middle-class blacks, in 1934 Du Bois
two warring ideals in one dark body, resigned from the association and his
editorship of The Crisis. Du Bois also
whose dogged strength alone keeps
expressed his interest in nationalism in
it from being torn asunder. ... He
terms of Pan-Africanism—the idea that the
simply wishes to make it possible for
African people everywhere share a
a man to be both a Negro and
common culture and interest. In 1900, he
American, without being cursed and
organized the first Pan-African Conference
spit upon by his fellows, without
in London, which brought together African
having the doors of opportunity
leaders and intellectuals from Africa, the
closed roughly in his face.
United States, and the Caribbean. He was
In addition to his life of the mind and a principal leader of the four other Pan-
scholarship, Du Bois was an extraordinary African Conferences held between 1912
political leader (from the death of Booker and 1927. At the end of World War | and
T. Washington in 1915 until the mid- again at the end of World War ||, Du Bois
1930s, Du Bois was probably the most attended the peace conferences, urging
influential African American leader). Early that the European powers should develop
in his career, Du Bois remarked, “We face plans to free their African colonies. Du
a condition, not a theory.” Therefore, any Bois briefly joined the Socialist Party in
philosophy, ideology, or strategy that gave 1912 and continued to flirt with socialist
promise of altering the oppressed ideas thereafter; however, during the
conditions of the race should be 1950s he apparently came to the
embraced. As the conditions of African conclusion that universal freedom for
Americans changed, so did the thought of blacks and working people could not be
Du Bois. Early in his career in his famous achieved under capitalism, and so in 1956
“Conservation of Races” essay, Du Bois he joined the Communist Party and shortly
appears to embrace black nationalism and thereafter moved to Ghana. The last years
separate development as a means to of his life were spent editing the
conserve the distinctive culture of the Encyclopedia Africana, a project funded
group. Later, in the face of Booker and supported by the Ghana Academy of
Washington's accommodation of the Sciences.
segregation and racial oppression that In his autobiography, Du Bois wrote,
emerged after the end of Reconstruction,
| think | may say without boasting
Du Bois embraced integration, organizing
that in the period 1910-1930 | was a
in 1905 the Niagara Conference as a
main factor in revolutionizing the
forum for militant protest for civil rights
attitude of the American Negro
and universal freedom in the United toward caste. My stinging hammer
States. In organizing the Niagara blows made Negroes aware of
Conference and authoring its manifesto, themselves, confident of their
Du Bois became the “Father of the Civil possibilities and determined self-
Rights Movement.” Four years later in assertion. So much so that today
1909, Du Bois was the major black among common slogans among Negro
the founders of the NAACP. Until the people are taken bodily from the
1930s he edited The Crisis, the NAACP’s words of my mouth.
magazine, using it as a forum to attack
white supremacy and racism and to Du Bois was not an immodest man;
espouse the cause of equality and in fact, he was often referred to as an
128 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

arrogant elitist, but in regard to the Athenaeum, 1968); Gerald Horne, Black and
recedin observation, he was not Red: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Afro-American

cece etne a Response to the Cold War, 1944-1963

, (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1986); David L.
Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Autobiography of
a There are several good book-length
a h studies
i a Race, 1868-1919 (New York: Henry Hott,
of Du Bois’s life and career. See Francis
Broderick, VW. E. B. Du Bois: New Leader in 1973); and Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight
Century,
‘
Time of Crisis : :
‘ai (Palo Alto, CA: ; Stanford University f° Equality and the American
i
Press, 1959): Elliot Rudwick, W. EB. Du Bois; 1979-1963 (New York: Henry Holt, 2000).
Propagandist of the Negro Protest (New York:

interracial (mostly black-white) rights-based coalition. It was founded by upper-

middle-class white Protestants and Jews, including Mary White Ovington,
Oswald Garrison Villard, William English Walling, and Dr. Henry Moscowitz.
Appalled at the continuing violence committed against blacks, these white
liberals, socialists, and descendants of abolitionists issued a call for a meeting
to discuss racial justice. Some 60 people—seven of whom were prominent
African American leaders like Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Mary Church
Terrell—signed the call that became its founding charter, released on the 100th
anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.°?
From the beginning, there was tension between blacks and whites in the
organization over its leadership and strategy. William Monroe Trotter and a
number of other blacks who were involved in the Niagara Conference refused
to join the group, arguing that whites could not be trusted to advance the cause
of blacks. These tensions over white leadership continued until the 1960s (the
association did not get its first black executive director until James Weldon
Johnson was appointed in 1920) when blacks took over all the top leadership
positions and the overwhelming majority of seats on the executive board.

The Strategy of the NAACP, 1910-1954: Persuasion,

Lobbying, and Litigation
The civil rights movement may be divided into three phases, based on the
dominant strategy employed to pursue its goals.°? From roughly 1910 to the
1930s, the dominant forms of activity were persuasion and lobbying. During
these years, the NAACP developed a campaign of public education and
propaganda under the direction of Du Bois, editor of the NAACP magazine,
The Crisis.°* This campaign was designed to combat white supremacist
propaganda and shape a favorable climate of public opinion on civil rights for
African Americans.
The NAACP also engaged in an unsuccessful lobbying effort to convince
Congress to pass a law making lynching a federal crime. Under the federal
system, lynching—the ritual murder of blacks by southern racists—was a state
 CHAPTER 6 > Social Movements and Coalition Politics 129

crime, but southern states refused to arrest and punish the perpetrators. Thus,
there was need for a federal law. Although the antilynching legislation twice
passed the House, it was defeated in the Senate as a result of southern
filibusters.°> The NAACP was more successful in other lobbying efforts. It
succeeded in blocking passage of immigration legislation that would have
prohibited the legal entry into the United States of persons of African descent.
And in a coalition with organized labor, it was successful in lobbying the Senate
to defeat President Herbert Hoover’s nomination of John C. Parker to the
Supreme Court because of his alleged antilabor and antiblack views.%
From the 1930s to the 1950s, litigation was the dominant strategy of the
NAACP, In 1939, the NAACP created a separate organization—the NAACP
Legal Defense Fund—and this organization under the leadership of Charles
Hamilton Houston and later Thurgood Marshall filed a series of cases in the
Supreme Court seeking enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amend-
ments. Several important cases were won during this period, including Smith v.
Allwright, which invalidated the Texas Democratic Party’s whites-only primary,
and the famous Brown v. Board of Education decision, which reversed the
doctrine of separate but equal established in 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson®’ (see
Chapter 12).

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and

the Strategy of Protest, 1955-1965
The final phase of the civil rights movement involved mass protests and
demonstrations.®* From the 1900s until the 1950s, the civil rights movement
was dominated by the middle-class, northern-based NAACP coalition. From
1955 to 1965, the movement was dominated by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Unlike the NAACP,
the SCLC was an intraracial coalition of black ministers and churches filled with
active men and women parishioners based in the South.®? Beginning with the
Montgomery bus boycott (a city-wide boycott spurred by the heralded act of
Rosa Parks, a civil rights activist who refused to surrender her bus seat to a
white passenger on December 1, 1955), King and the SCLC led a series of
demonstrations in the South protesting segregation in public places and the denial
of black voting rights. King and the SCLC were later joined in the southern
protest movement by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC),
an interracial coalition of black and white college students, and the Congress
of Racial Equality (CORE), also an interracial coalition of black and white
activists.”
Although the strategy of King and his colleagues was to hold peaceful,
nonviolent demonstrations, these actions were met with widespread violence
by racist southern whites (including the police). This violence, televised around
the world, forced a reluctant President Kennedy (and later President Lyndon
130 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

Johnson) to propose comprehensive civil rights and voting rights legislation. After
the violent demonstrations in 1963 at Birmingham, Alabama, President Kennedy
proposed the Civil Rights Act, which Congress enacted in 1964. After the
violent demonstrations in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, President Johnson proposed
and Congress passed the Voting Rights Act.
Two points should be emphasized about the passage of these laws in 1964
and 1965. First, the president and Congress responded to the demands of the
movement only after the violence at Selma and Birmingham was televised.
Second, the strategy of protest developed by Dr. King and his associates was
deliberately designed to bring pressure on the president and Congress by
activating a broad lobbying coalition: liberals, labor, and northern religious
groups.’! It was this broad coalition—not blacks acting alone—that brought
about the ultimate passage of the first comprehensive civil rights legislation since
Reconstruction.”* However—as our theory of African American coalition politics
predicts—almost immediately after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, this
coalition of blacks and whites began to fall apart, as blacks shifted from a rights-
based movement politics to a material-based interest group politics.

The Black Power Movement and the

Transformation from Movement to Interest
Group Politics

The Origins of the Black Power Movement

The political scientist Sidney Tarrow writes,

Protest cycles can either end suddenly, through repression, or more slowly,
through a combination of features: the institutionalization of the most
successful movements, factionalization within them and new groups which
rise on the crest of the wave, and the exhaustion of mass political
involvement. The combination of institutionalization and factionalization
often produce determined minorities, who respond to the decline of popular
involvement by turning upon themselves and—in some cases—using
organized violence.”

This combination of features characterized the end of the civil rights

movement.”4
Two weeks after the signing of the Voting Rights Act, Watts, the black
section of Los Angeles, exploded in three days of civil unrest. The 1965 Watts
rebellion was followed by a series of revolts in most of the large cities of the
North. In 1966, Stokely Carmichael, the newly elected chairman of the SNCC,
started the black power movement. The urban rebellions and black power led
 CHAPTER 6 > Social Movements and Coalition Politics 131

to a fundamental transformation of the civil rights movement and the emergence

of a new structure of black interest organizations.
The SNCC—the most radical of the civil rights organizations—sparked this
transformation by introducing the rhetoric and symbol of black power during
the 1966 Meredith March in Mississippi.75 For several years, the more
nationalistic SNCC workers had attempted to bring a greater number of
nationalist themes into the civil rights movement, themes drawn from Malcolm
X and Algerian writer Frantz Fanon.’ In 1966, they prepared a position paper
that set forth the fundamental themes of black power, including a call for the
exclusion of whites from the organization. Although Stokely Carmichael initially
joined the majority of the SNCC staff in rejecting these nationalist themes,
after he defeated the incumbent SNCC chairman John Lewis (now a revered
congressman from Georgia) in a bitter and divisive election, he changed his
position and embraced the principles of black power. He then persuaded the
SNCC to join the Meredith March and use it as a forum to articulate and
build support for black power. For a week, television coverage of the Meredith
March highlighted the divisions within the civil rights movement. In his speeches,
Dr. King continued to espouse the philosophy of black-white coalitions,
integration, and nonviolence, while Carmichael shouted black power and called
for racial separatism and violent resistance to attacks by southern racists.
Although the national media presented black power as a radical, revolutionary
movement, it actually had a dual impact on African American politics: one
radical, one reform.

The Dual Impact of Black Power: Radicalism

and Reform
As Figure 6.3 illustrates, the black power movement sparked two separate,
distinct, and contradictory developments in black politics. First, it stimulated
the development of a wide variety of radical, nationalistic, and revolutionary
organizations and leaders, including Huey Newton and the Black Panther Party
(see Box 6.2), Ron Karenga and US (a radical cultural nationalist organization),
and Imari Obadele and the Republic of New Africa. For a decade the African
American freedom struggle took a sharp turn toward radicalism. However, by
1980, as a result of factionalism and infighting within and among the groups,
and political repression by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the army,
and the police, the radical wing of the movement had collapsed.””
The second development sparked by black power was the beginning of the
integration or incorporation of blacks into the routine interest group structure
of conventional American politics. Although radicalism and nationalism
characterized the early years of black power, ultimately it came to represent, as
Figure 6.3 shows, a mild form of reformist black nationalism appealing to race
132 PARTIII > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

Radical

1966-1980 1966-Present

Y
Group consciousness/solidarity
Y
Group consciousness/solidarity

Y
Radical/revolutionary organizations
Y
Interest group organizations

Y
¢ Black Panther party (1966)
Y
* Congressional Black Caucus (1969)
¢ US (1966) * Other organizations of black elected
¢ Black Liberation Army (1967) officials (1970-1972)
* Republic of New Africa (1968) ¢ Joint Center for Political Studies (1969)
« All African People Revolutionary party (1969)
¢ National Black Political conventions (1972)

Y
Repression, factionalism Integration, incorporation, cooptation
collapse (1966-1980) into routine interest group system
(1968-)#

FIGURE 6.3
The Dual Impact of the Black Power Movement on African American Politics,
1960-1990.
2 Integration, incorporation, and cooptation are used interchangeably to mean the absorption of
previously unrepresented groups into the routine operation of the political system.
Source: Robert C. Smith, We Have No Leaders: African Americans in the Post-Civil Rights Era
(Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996).

itv —__
The Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense Lowndes County, Alabama, Freedom
was founded in 1966, one year after the Democratic Party, which used a black
Watts rebellion, by Huey P. Newton and panther as its symbol. (The Lowndes
Bobby Seale, student activists at County party was founded in the early
Oakland's Merritt College in efforts to 1960s by southern civil rights workers to
combat police brutality. Two years later, encourage blacks to register to vote and
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover declared that run for office.) The Panthers, as the full
the Black Panthers were “the greatest name of the party implies, was originally
threat to the internal security of the United founded as a “self-defense” organization.
States” and targeted the group for Newton and Seale were aware that the
elimination.? By 1970, the party was in police in the nation’s big cities frequently
disarray and on the verge of collapse as a harassed and brutalized blacks. To try to
result of the FBI’s systematic campaign of stop this kind of police misconduct, the
repression and of the group's own Panthers (dressed in black leather jackets
factional infighting and corruption. and berets) organized armed patrols and
The Black Panthers adopted the name dispatched them to the scene of any
and symbol, black panther, from the police incident involving blacks. Their
 CHAPTER 6 > Social Movements and Coalition Politics 133
purpose was to observe the behavior of
the officers. Their slogan, to “Observe and
protect,” was derived from the Los
Angeles Police Department's motto, “To
serve and protect.” In addition, Newton
found a loophole in California law that
allowed the open carry of loaded
weapons. Thus, the Panthers were the
first political group to fiercely defend the
Second Amendment right to bear arms—
as a means to monitor police patrols in
African American neighborhoods—prior to
the National Rights Association (NRA)
open-carry movement.® Although the
Panthers did not intervene in the police
incidents, the mere presence of armed
black men observing their behavior
alarmed the police. Soon a series of
deadly gun battles occurred between the
Panthers and the police in Oakland and
San Francisco. Shortly thereafter the
California legislature began consideration
Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale,
of legislation to ban carrying loaded
founders of the Black Panther Party.
weapons in public. To protest this
legislation, 30 armed Panthers marched Source: S.F. Examiner/AP Images
into the state capitol at Sacramento on
May 2, 1967. This demonstration received
primarily self-defense and self-help group
widespread attention and brought the
to violent revolution, its destruction was
heretofore obscure group to the attention
inevitable, since no government that has
of the nation. The image of armed black
the power will long tolerate a violent
men dressed in black captured the
challenge to its authority.°
imagination of young blacks across the
country, and Panther party membership 2.U.S. Congress, Senate, Select Committee to
and chapters grew rapidly. By late 1968, Study Government Operations with Respect to
the group had a membership estimated at Intelligence Activities and the Rights of
3,000-5,000 and more than 30 chapters Americans, Book III, Final Report (Washington,
throughout the United States. DC: Government Printing Office, 1976): 187.
Accompanying this rapid growth in Additionally, as mentioned in Box 11.5, the
government's program of political repression
membership, the Panthers adopted the
known as “COINTELPRO”" also targeted
ideology of revolutionary black nationalism
mainstream leaders such as Martin Luther King
and Marxist-Leninism, calling for violent Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership
revolution to overthrow the government of Conference. See Nelson Blackstock,
the United States. COINTELPRO: The FBI’s Secret War on Political
Many of the Black Panthers were brave Freedom (New York: Pathfinder, 1975).
young men and women, willing to sacrifice ® See John Blake, “The Black Panthers are
their lives for freedom. Despite the Back—and Never Really Went Away,” accessed
paranoia and corruption of some of its top at www.cnn.com/2016/02/1 6/us/balck-
panthers/index.html, February 17, 2016.
leaders, in the early years the party did
© For an overview of the rise and decline of the
good works, including forcefully Panthers, see Charles E. Jones, ed., The Black
challenging police brutality and providing a Panther Party Reconsidered (Baltimore, MD:
variety of community services such as free Black Classics Press, 1998); and Joshua Bloom
medical clinics, breakfast programs for and Waldo Martin, Black Against Empire: The
poor kids, and food cooperatives. History and Politics of the Black Panther Party
However, once the party turned from a (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019).

SeNaS
MPRSeK
A Gee IES
SARce RON
eee eT MO ea
LS oeOB Eittrs eon easy eee
SS eaeiee Ee geCee
134 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

group consciousness, solidarity, and independent, all-black interest group

organizations.”°

Black Power and Race Group Solidarity

Black power contributed to an increase in black group identification and
solidarity. Political scientist Warren Miller observed that, as a result of black
power,

the appropriate dimension for understanding the political behavior of black

citizens may have changed. Contemporary black leaders may have helped
shape the political meaning of being black in ways black leaders two decades
before could not. Certainly, racial identity is now the most useful prescriptive
measure of the political choice of many citizens.”?

Table 6.1 displays data on the immediate impact of black power in historical
context. The data show the progression of black political conceptualization in
terms of racial group interest during the 20-year period 1960-1980—from 26
percent in 1960 to 54 percent in 1980; comparable figures for whites are 31
percent in 1960 and 28 percent in 1980. Although the highest level of group
benefit responses among blacks is observed in 1968 at the high point of the
black power movement, even after black power declined in salience, the group
benefit percentages did not return to their earlier low levels. This rise in group-
based identification and solidarity is true of all categories of blacks, irrespective
of gender, education, age, or partisan affiliation.®°

Black Power, Black Groups, and System Incorporation

Related to this increase in race group consciousness and solidarity, the black
power movement also sparked the creation of a large number of new, racially

TABLE 6.1

1960 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980

"Whites § °° 31%. 25% 20% 24% 28% 7285
Blacks «28% «= 47% = 60% «= 51% = 48% «=A
Source: Paul R. Hagner and John C. Pierce, “Racial Differences in Political Conceptualization,”
Western Political Quarterly 37 (June 1984): 222. Employing data from the Interuniversity
Consortium for Political Research at the University of Michigan, Hagner and Pierce identified
four major levels of political conceptualization: ideological, group benefit, nature of the times,
and no political content. The “group benefit” category measures the extent to which
individuals evaluate political issues in terms of their negative or pods impact on the group
or group interests.
 CHAPTER 6 > Social Movements and Coalition Politics 135

exclusive (all-black) interest group organizations, including for a time an

intraracial black coalition—the National Black Political Convention.! From
1966 to 1969—the peak years of black power activism—more than 70 new
black interest organizations were formed.’2 These organizations covered a broad
range of interests—business and economic, educational and cultural, and
professional and political. Also during this period, the growing number of black
elected officials began to form racially separate caucuses, including the
Congressional Black Caucus and caucuses of black mayors, school board
members, and state legislators.®9
At the beginning of this chapter, we discussed the argument of William
Gamson that some groups are excluded from the routine system of American
interest group politics and gain entry only as a result of a crisis in the system
or if the excluded group shows a willingness to violate the “rules of the game”
by resorting to illegitimate means for carrying on political conflict. The radical,
revolutionary rhetoric of black power, the summers of urban civil unrest from
1965 to 1968, and the revolutionary politics of the Black Panthers and other
groups created a perception of crisis and showed that some blacks were indeed
willing to engage in illegitimate forms of political conflict. Thus, the most endur-
ing consequence of black power was reform, not radicalism—the Congressional
Black Caucus rather than the Black Panther Party.
Yet another consequence of the black power and civil rights movements
was their impact on other American citizens who felt excluded from the system.
These black movements of the 1960s served as models for a wave of social
movements and interest groups in the late 1960s to date. Among the groups
that patterned their activities after the civil rights and black power movements
are women, Indians, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, gays, Chinese
Americans, the elderly, and, to an extent, the youth and antiwar protesters.**
In fact, over 50-years after the educational comic book Martin Luther King and
the Montgomery Story was released in 1958, the executive director of the
American Islamic Congress said it was translated into Arabic and Farsi and used
to bring a message of nonviolent resistance to the Middle East. That message
was especially important in Egypt, where protesters gathered in February 2011
in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to call for an end to the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak
in what would later become known as the “Arab Spring.”®° As recently as 2016,
the civil rights protest anthem, “We Shall Overcome,” was sung in defiance by
citizens and survivors of recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels as well.

New Movements in African American Politics:

Values and Beliefs in the Post-Civil Rights Era
By the late 1970s, many black-white civil rights coalitions dissipated; even while
the majority of black Americans showed favor for interest group politics and
136 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

inclusion over radicalism as the more effective means of securing rights- and
material-based outcomes. Some scholars had pronounced the civil rights
movement as dead because of the tendency to view it as a national rather than
a series of local movements. Within the scholarship on the civil rights move-
ment, as Professor Clayborne Carson observes, is “the assumption that the black
struggle can be understood as a protest movement orchestrated by national
leaders in order to achieve national legislation.”®® However, this creates a
problem in understanding the movement because it ignores the role that a wide
range of local movements played during the civil rights era. A careful review of
social movements will reveal that, often, local movements and leaders laid the
groundwork that resulted in the success of national leaders and legislation. And,
because universal freedom values and beliefs are embedded in black culture, this
collective memory is transmitted generationally through grassroots activism. A
similar process can be seen occurring in the post-civil rights struggles calling
for socioeconomic justice as well as racial and gender inclusion throughout
American society. These localized campaigns have coalesced around the lowering
of the confederate flag on state buildings in the south,®” environmental racism,*®
racial profiling and policing, and the restoration of voting rights while
challenging state efforts to limit access to the ballot. However, some scholars
have tended to ignore or downplay local movements that do not have national
leaders or dimensions as witnessed in the grassroots demonstrations like Occupy
Wall Street, raising the national minimum wage, the fight for “living wages,”
marriage equality, and climate change. Yet, these movements have proved
successful at focusing public attention on the issue, placing the issues on the
public agenda, and winning favorable legislation without centralized leadership.
One can argue that this process is uniquely unfolding via diverse, allied coalitions
emanating from the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Emerging out of mounting
anger over the killing of unarmed citizens by the police,®? this movement may
be pivotal in a resurgent national discussion on race in the “post-racial era,”
and as part of the centuries-long struggle for universal freedom.

The “#BlackLivesMatter” Movement

Black Lives Matter (BLM) originated in the summer of 2013 as a conversation
among friends. What began as a Facebook post by Alicia Garza then
“retweeted” on Twitter as a hashtag (#BlackLivesMatter) by Patrisse Cullors
and Opal Tometia, grew into an online slogan and became an Internet-driven
contemporary human rights movement.”! These self-identified queer activists—
born of native-born African American and African immigrants—were outraged
not only by the acquittal of George Zimmerman, a white security officer who
fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager as he walked in his
gated community; but, more so, by the way Martin was in a sense posthumously
placed on trial for his own murder in raising suspicion about his “character”
while not holding Zimmerman accountable for the racial bias that led to the
 CHAPTER 6 > Social Movements and Coalition Politics 137

killing.” Using their professional backgrounds” in community organizing and

drawing inspiration from the long tradition of African American activism in
historical movements, including the civil rights, black power, black feminists,
Pan-African, anti-apartheid, political hip-hop, LGBT rights, and Occupy Wall
Street,”* Garza writes that their hashtag/call to action is “an ideological and
political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and
intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ contribu-
tions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly
oppression.”*> Their collective effort is to raise awareness about the “anti-Black
racism that permeates our society” through a neoteric digital campaign against
antiblack, state-sanctioned violence and violation.» The movement was
propelled forward by the availability of video—captured mostly on personal
smartphones—gone viral on the Internet that showed out-of-control and
sometimes lethal actions by the police against blacks.?” The ability to connect
instantly across multiple digital platforms (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and
Instagram) to showcase high-profile, racially charged incidents as they occurred
led to “moving the hashtag from social media to the streets.”
In August 2014, Garza, Cullors, and Tometi, and their allies, organized their
first national protest in the form of a “Black Lives Matter Ride,” (modeled after
“Freedom Rides”) to Ferguson, Missouri, after Darren Wilson, a white police
officer, fatally shot Michael Brown, another unarmed black teenager whose body
was then left untended for four and a half hours in the street.?? Reminiscent of
the 1960s civil rights movement, the series of events!" leading up to the protests
in Ferguson, Missouri, were historically rooted in the pernicious effects of
decades of racial and socioeconomic segregation, due to discriminatory housing
practices and unregulated suburban development.'”! In addition, the complicated
structure of municipal government, black political disenfranchisement because
of low voter turnout and voter ineligibility, and the “arrogance” of white elected
officials, created a sense of “empowerment” among the predominantly white
and working-class police force that may have contributed to the killing of
Brown,!°2 which by now had the full attention of the black public that became
more outraged each time videos surfaced of police killings involving black
victims. In the wake of the events and protests organized to focus public
attention on police killings, the BLM social media network'®? became the
organizing project linking other online movements, including “This is the
Movement” (#Ferguson) and “Campaign Zero,” in support of policies to end
police brutality and mass incarceration.
With its role in shaping the public agenda, mainstream media coverage
focused heavily on the random outbreaks of retaliation such as glass smashed
along routes leading to panic and retreat, the destruction of black-owned
businesses, and burning of police cars in Ferguson;!™ the disruption “from a
week-long sit-in” that led to the “deadly scuffle between Minneapolis police”
and BLM demonstrators in Minneapolis;!°% the confrontations of 2016
138 PART II > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

democratic presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, at their

respective rallies.1°° However, coverage in black media portrayed the incidents,
more positively, from the perspective of the black community. As a black
reporter wrote, “[T]he people have been blocking highways, shutting down
shopping malls, lying in the streets, and walking out of classrooms around the
world,” with the rallying cry, “Hands up; don’t shoot.”!°” In an in-depth
analysis of the movement, Professor Jerome Karabel, a sociologist at the
University of California, Berkeley, concluded, “The videos—and the outrage that
followed—helped to ignite the most powerful civil rights movement since the
4960s."
108
The BLM is not without its critics in the media. Leaders of the Republican
Party, including most of its 2016 presidential candidates and the conservative
media (particularly Fox News), have demonized it “as an inflammatory or even
hateful anti-white expression that has no legitimate place in a civil rights
campaign.”! Veterans of the 1960s civil rights movement have also been
critical of the movement. For example Barbara Reynolds, the former African
American columnist for USA Today wrote, “This ain’t your grandparents’ civil
rights movement.”!!° Describing BLM activists as “boorish in language and
dress” and as a “motley-looking group .. . [lacking] dignity and decorum,” she
wrote, “It is difficult to distinguish BLM legitimate activists from mob actors
who burn and loot .. . demonstrations are peppered with hate speech, profanity,
and guys with sagging pants that show their underwear.”!!! And Harvard law
professor Randall Kennedy wrote,

a marginalized group should be attentive to how it is perceived. The politics

of respectability is a tactic of public relations that is, per se, neither
necessarily good nor necessarily bad. A sound assessment of its deployment
in a given instance depends on its goals, the manner in which it is practiced,
and the context within which a given struggle is being waged. Its association
with esteemed figures and episodes in African American history suggests that
the politics of respectability warrants a more respectful hearing [from BLM]
than it has recently received.!!2

Yet, despite the critiques about their style of protests, the BLM made the
issues of police killings and mass incarceration politically salient for the public
agenda.
The BLM is therefore another movement in the struggle for universal
freedom, that deploys the civil rights activism styles of Bayard Rustin and Ella
Baker (“a gay guy and a woman”!!3); meaning, this movement is about radical
inclusivity—the essence of intersectionality—that seeks to frame contemporary
racial justice movements in a digitized society as something beyond the black
masculine-centered narratives to include the voices of women, queer and trans
people.''* As the BLM movement progresses, cofounder Alicia Garza has written
 CHAPTER 6 > Social Movements and Coalition Politics 139

a reminder to those who wish to co-opt their work, but exclude or erase their
contributions as queer black women:

Black Lives Matter is a unique contribution that goes beyond extrajudicial

killings of Black people by police and vigilantes. It goes beyond the narrow
nationalism that can be prevalent within some Black communities, which
merely call on Black people to love Black, live Black and buy Black, keeping
straight cis Black men in the front of the movement while our sisters, queer
and trans and disabled folk take up roles in the background or not at all.
Black Lives Matter affirms the lives of Black queer and trans folk, disabled
folks, Black-undocumented folks with records, women and all Black lives
along the gender spectrum. It centers those that have been marginalized
within Black liberation movements. It is a tactic to (re)build the Black
liberation movement. When we say Black Lives Matter, we are talking about
the ways in which [ALL] Black people are deprived of our basic human
rights and dignity.!!5

Black Lives Matter has made a unique and important contribution to the
debate about state-sanctioned violence against African Americans, affecting the
policy debate and the 2016 presidential election. What is not clear is whether
it is an enduring movement or a transitory moment in the long African American
protest tradition.

Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom

John Brown (1800-1859)
John Brown, a deeply religious white man, was so committed to African
American freedom and equality that he was willing to do what few black
Americans have been willing to do—use revolutionary violence to fight for
freedom. In 1859, Brown and an interracial group of 22 men attacked the federal
arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Their plan was to seize weapons, flee into
the mountains, and establish a base of operations to wage guerrilla war. Prior
to Harpers Ferry, Brown and his men had killed pro-slavery settlers in Kansas,
pledging to “purge this land with blood” in order to end slavery and establish
democracy for all. Completely free of white supremacist thinking, Brown
interacted with African Americans on the basis of complete equality.
Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry failed. He and most of his men were killed
or captured and quickly executed. At his sentencing, Brown made an eloquent
speech in favor of universal freedom. The day of his execution was declared
“martyr’s day” by black leaders; businesses were closed and churches held
140 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

John Brown.
Source: "John Brown, 1800-1859" The West,
PBS. Retrieved 4 October 2016 from
www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/
brown.htm

memorial services. The song “John Brown’s Body” became a Union marching
song during the Civil War and is an enduring part of the African American folk
tradition.
Although Brown’s raid failed, historians agree that it contributed to the
intensification of the crisis that resulted in the bloody Civil War that emancipated
the slaves.?
* David Reynolds, John Brown: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War and Seeded Civil
Rights (New York: Knopf, 2005).

SUMM aly e
22 e es
When a group is excluded from participation in the political system, it will often
resort to social movements as a means to challenge the system in order to gain
entry and inclusion. From the abolitionist movement of the 1830s to the civil
rights and black power movements of the 1960s, African Americans engaged
in movement politics. Throughout, however, as an oppressed, relatively
powerless minority they have had to form coalitions with whites—male and
female—and all ideologies, regions, and social classes. Because of racism and
white supremacy, these coalitions have tended to be tenuous, unstable, and short-
lived, and they have been more effective on rights-based than material-based
issues. The black movements of the 1960s served as models and inspiration for
similar movements among other Americans and spurred protests in other nations
that followed thereafter.
 CHAPTER 6 > Social Movements and Coalition Politics 141

Critical Thinking Questions

1. What is the fundamental difference between a social movement and an
interest group?
2. What is a minority—-majority coalition? Explain why they have been
indispensable in the African American quest for freedom.
3. Distinguish between rights- and material-based coalitions in African
American politics, providing examples of each.
4. Explain the idea of a rainbow coalition.
5. Given what you have learned about what constitutes a social movement,
would you characterize #BlackLivesMatter as a social movement or
historical moment? Explain your answer using examples.

Selected Bibliography Is
Alex-Assensoh, Yvette, and Lawrence Hanks, eds. Black and Multiracial Politics in
America. New York: New York University Press, 2000. A useful collection of papers
exploring the relationship between black and multiracial politics.
Allen, Robert. The Reluctant Reformers: Racism and Social Reform Movements in the
United States. Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1983. A study of how
racism historically has undermined liberal and progressive reform movements in the
United States.
Browning, Rufus, D. Marshall, and D. Tabb. Protest Is Not Enough: The Struggle of
Blacks and Hispanics in Urban Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
An influential study of the conditions and policy consequences of multiethnic coalitions
in post-civil rights era urban politics.
Carmichael, Stokely, and Charles Hamilton. Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in
America. New York: Vintage Books, 1967. The influential manifesto of the rationale
and strategy for the transformation from civil rights movement politics to black interest
group politics.
Freeman, Jo, ed. Social Movements of the Sixties and Seventies. New York: Longman,
1983. A collection of papers showing how the African American civil rights and black
power movements served as a model for social movement activism of many other
groups in American society.
Gomes, Ralph, and Linda Faye Williams. “Coalition Politics: Past, Present and Future.”
In R. Gomes and L. Williams, eds. From Exclusion to Inclusion: The Long Struggle
for African American Political Power. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992. A historical
analysis of African American coalition politics and a discussion of future prospects.
Greer, Christina, Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration and the Pursuit of the American
Dream (New York: Oxford, 2013). The most comprehensive study of the growing
ethnic diversity of the U.S. black community, and its political consequences.
Kluger, Richard. Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black
America’s Struggle for Racial Equality. New York: Vintage Books, 1977. A long but
interesting account of the NAACP’s litigation strategy from the 1930s to the 1950s,
focusing on a detailed study of the famous Brown school desegregation case.
Morris, Aldon. Origins of the Civil Rights Movement. New York: Free Press, 1984. A
study of the development of the final protest phase of the civil rights movement,
focusing on the role of indigenous institutions such as black churches and colleges.
142 PART Ill > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

Nelson, William, and Jessica Lavariega Moniforti, eds. Black and Latino/a Politics: Issues
in Political Development in the United States. Miami, FL: Barnhardt & Ashe
Publishing, 2005. A wide-ranging collection of essays on black and Latino politics
and their interrelationships.
Payne, Charles. I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition in Mississippi.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. An alluringly written account of the
role of local movements during the civil rights era.
Piven, Frances Fox, and Richard Cloward. Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed,
Why They Fail. New York: Vintage Books, 1977. A detailed study of how various
reform movements of poor people have been transformed into interest groups and
thereby rendered largely ineffective.
Shulman, Steven, ed. The Impact of Immigration on African Americans. New Brunswick,
NJ: Transaction, 2004. This volume presents. research and analysis that reflects and
advances the debate about the economic and political consequences of immigration
for African Americans.
Smith, Robert C. “Black Power and the Transformation from Protest to Politics.”
Political Science Quarterly 96 (Fall 1981): 431-44. A theoretical and empirical
analysis of the important role of the black power movement in shaping contemporary
black politics.
Walters, Ronald, and Robert C. Smith. African American Leadership. Albany, NY: SUNY
Press, 1999. A treatment of the topic historically, theoretically, and in relationship
to its practice.
Wilke, H. A. M. Coalition Politics. New York: Harcourt, 1985. Although somewhat
technical, a useful collection of papers on theory and research on coalition formations
in politics.
Zackodnik, Teresa C. “We Must Be Up and Doing”: A Reader in Early African American
Feminisms. Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press, 2010. A comprehensive collection of
writings by African American women in the early nineteenth century.
Zangrando, Robert. The NAACP Struggle against Lynching, 1909-1965. Philadelphia,
PA: Temple University Press, 1980. A study of the NAACP’s lobbying strategy,
focusing on the unsuccessful effort to secure passage of federal antilynching legislation.

Notes e
Bis scsi
e Se e ae
1 William Gamson, “Stable Unrepresentation in American Society,” American
Behavioral Scientist 12 (November—December 1968): 18.
2 See Aldon Morris and Cedric Herring, “Theory and Research on Social
Movements,” in S. Long, ed., Annual Review of Political Science, vol. 2 (Norwood,
NJ: Ablex, 1987): 137-98; and H. A. M. Wilkie, ed., Coalition Formation (New
York: Harcourt, 1985).
3 Ralph Gomes and Linda Williams, “Coalition Politics: Past, Present and Future,”
in Gomes and Williams, eds., From Exclusion to Inclusion: The Long Struggle for
African American Political Power (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992): 129-60.
4 In drawing a distinction between material- and rights-based issues and coalitions,
we do not mean to imply that the right to health care or a job might not be
appropriately viewed as a civil or citizenship right. Rather, the point is that in the
United States a sharp line is usually drawn between economic and political or civil
rights, a distinction African Americans and their leaders, willingly or not, have
embraced. See Dana Hamilton and Charles Hamilton, The Dual Agenda: Social
 CHAPTER 6 > Social Movements and Coalition Politics 143

Policies of Civil Rights Organizations, New Deal to Present (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1996).
On the abolitionist movement, see Leronne Bennett, Before the Mayflower
(Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1966): chap. 6; John Hope Franklin, From Slavery
to Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1980): 180-89; and Robert Allen, The Reluctant
Reformers: Racism and Social Reform Movements in the United States (Washington,
DC: Howard University Press, 1983): chap. 2.
Allen, The Reluctant Reformers, p. 248.
Quoted in Allen, The Reluctant Reformers, p. 24.
Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, p. 182.
Quoted in Bennett, Before the Mayflower, p. 149.
ooOn the slave revolts, see Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts (New
ON
won]

York: Columbia University Press, 1948); and Eugene Genovese, From Rebellion to
Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the New World (New
York: Vintage Books, 1981).
11 Teresa C. Zackodnik, “We Must Be Up and Doing”: A Reader in Early African
American Feminisms (Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press, 2010): xiii-xv.
12. Benjamin Quarles, “Frederick Douglass and the Women’s Rights Movement,”
Journal of Negro History 25 (1940); and Phillip Foner, Frederick Douglass on
Women’s Rights (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976).
13 July Roy Jeffrey, The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the
Antislavery Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998) and
Shirley J. Yee, Black Women Abolitionists: A Study in Activism, 1828-1860
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992), and the Phillips Library of the
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, see more at www.blackpast.org/aah/
female-anti-slavery-society-salem-massachusetts-1832-1866#sthash.GUI7Iz8s.dpuf.
14 Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New
York: Harper & Row, 1988): 253-54.
15 Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist
Thought (New York: New Press, 1995): p. 36.
16 Quoted in Allen, The Reluctant Reformers, p. 143.
9 Ibid., p. 128.
18 Washington stated his ideas most succinctly in his famous Atlanta Exposition
Address delivered in September 1895 at Atlanta’s Cotton States Exposition. The
address is reprinted in the 2nd edition of August Meier, Elliott Rudwick, and Francis
Broderick, eds., Black Protest Thought in the Twentieth Century (New York:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1971): 3-8. On Washington’s leadership of black America, see
Louis Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1972) and his Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of
Tuskegee (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983).
19 C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1966): 64. See also Woodward’s detailed study of populism, Tom
Watson: Agrarian Rebel (New York: Oxford, 1938, 1963).
20 John Herbert Roper, C. Vann Woodward, Southerner (Athens: University of Georgia
Press, 1987): 114.
21 On blacks and the populist movement, see Charles Crowe, “Tom Watson, Populists
and Blacks Reconsidered,” Journal of Negro History 40 (April 1970): 99-116; and
Gerald Gaither, Blacks and the Populist Revolt: Ballots and Bigotry (Tuscaloosa:
University of Alabama Press, 1977).
Dap Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform (New York: Vintage Books, 1955): 61.
144 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

23 Historians disagree as to whether Watson was always a racist or whether his

attitudes changed over time with changing circumstances.
24 This quote is from Roper, C. Vann Woodward, p. 121.
25 Hofstadter, The Age of Reform, p. 61.
26 On the progressives, see Hofstadter, The Age of Reform, chaps. 4-7.
27 Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton, Black Power (New York: Vintage
Books, 1967): 82.
28 On the racist, exclusionary history of organized labor, see Phillip Foner, Organized
Labor and the Black Worker, 1619-1981 (New York: Praeger, 1974).
Phy) Allen, The Reluctant Reformers, p. 213.
30 Ibid., p. 215.
Sl! Richard Crossman, ed., The God That Failed (New York: Harper & Row, 1949).
On this point, see also Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (New
York: William Morrow, 1967): 147-71.
OZ National Conference of Christians and Jews, Taking America’s Pulse: The Full
Report of the National Conference Survey on Inter-Group Relations (New York:
National Conference of Christians and Jews, 1994): 7. See also Paula McClain et
al., “Racial Distancing in a Southern City: Immigrant Views of Black Americans,”
Journal of Politics 68 (2006): 541-84.
33 Ibid.
34 See Paula McClain and Albert Karnig, “Black and Hispanic Socioeconomic and
Political Competition,” American Political Science Review 84 (1990): 535-45; and
Yvette Alex-Assensoh and Lawrence Hanks, eds., Black and Multiracial Politics in
America (New York: New York University Press, 2000).
35 Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity (New
York: HarperCollins, 1990): 76, 323.
36 Quoted in Steven Shulman and Robert C. Smith, “Immigration and African
Americans,” in C. Conrad et al., eds., African Americans in the U.S. Economy
(Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005): 199.
SI Vernon Briggs, “The Economic Well-Being of Black Americans: The Overarching
Influence of U.S. Immigration Policies,” in $. Shulman, ed., The Impact of
Immigration on African Americans (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2004): 12.
38 U.S. Commission on Immigration, Reform, Legal Immigration: Setting Priorities
(Washington, DC, 1994), cited in ibid., p. 19.
39 See Shulman, The Impact of Immigration on African Americans.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 Projected Population Change in the United States, by Race and Hispanic Origin:
2000-2050 (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2001).
43 Mary Waters, Black Identities: West Indian Immigrants Dreams and American
Realities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2000).
44 “African Immigrant Population in the U.S. Steadily Climbs,” Pew Research Center
Fact Sheet, November 2, 2015, http://pewrsr.ch/2005CTT. See also, “Influx of
African Immigrants Shifting National and New York Demographics,” New York
Times, September 1, 2014, http://nyti.ms/1x3rTds.
45 “African Immigrant Population in the U.S. Steadily Climbs,” Pew Research Center,
46 “Influx of African Immigrants Shifting National and New York Demographics,”
New York Times.
47 Ibid., “African Immigrant Population in the U.S. Steadily Climbs,” Pew Research
Center.
 CHAPTER 6 > Social Movements and Coalition Politics 145

48 Clarence Page, “Black Immigrants, An Invisible ‘Model Minority’,” Real Clear

Politics, March 19, 2007, www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/03/black_
immigrants_an_invisible.html.
49 Ibid., “Influx of African Immigrants Shifting National and New York
Demographics,” New York Times.
50 Page, “Black Immigrants, An Invisible ‘Model Minority’”; see also Douglas S.
Massey, Margarita Mooney, Kimberly C. Torres, and Camille Z. Charles, “Black
Immigrants and Black Natives Attending Selective Colleges and Universities in the
United States,” American Journal of Education 113 (November 2006): 243-271,
published electronically, https://www.soe.vt.edu/highered/files/Perspectives_Policy
News/02-07/BlackImmigrants pdf.
.
Page, “Black Immigrants, An Invisible ‘Model Minority’.”
Christina Greer, Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration and the Pursuit of the American
Dream (New York: Oxford, 2013): 7.
Ibid., p. 83.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 6.
Ibid., p. 39.
Ibid., p. 17.
Ibid., p. 17.
Quoted in “Influx of African Immigrants Shifting National and New York
Demographics,” New York Times.
Sharon Austin, The Caribbeanization of Black Politics: Race, Group Consciousness
and Political Participation (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, Forthcoming).
Kate Tuttle, “Niagara Movement,” Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and
African American Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Susan
Altman, “Niagara Movement,” The Encyclopedia of African American Heritage
(New York: Facts On File, 1997); Scott Kirkwood, “And Justice for All,” National
Parks (Washington, DC: Summer 2006), see more at: www.blackpast.org/aah/
niagara-movement-1905-1909#sthash.E5GB79MK.dpuf.
62 Taken from NAACP.org history, www.naacp.org/pages/naacp-history.
63 See Robert C. Smith, “Politics Is Not Enough: On the Institutionalization of the
Afro-American Freedom Struggle,” in Gomes and Williams, eds., From Exclusion
to Inclusion, pp. 97-126; and Robert C. Smith, We Have No Leaders: African
Americans in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996): chap. 1.
64 David Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 (New York:
Henry Holt, 1993): chap. 15.
65 Robert Zangrando, The NAACP Crusade Against Lynching, 1909-1950
(Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1980).
66 Gilbert Ware, “Lobbying as a Means of Protest: The NAACP as an Agent of
Equality,” Journal of Negro Education 33 (Spring 1964): 103-7. On the NAACP’s
lobbying strategy, see the biography of its long-time chief Washington lobbyist by
Denton Watson, Lion in the Lobby: Clarence Mitchell and the Black Struggle (New
York: William Morrow, 1990).
67 Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black
America’s Struggle for Racial Equality (New York: Vintage Books, 1975).
68 Aldon Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Free Press,
1984).
69 David Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (New York: William Morrow, 1986).
146 PARTIII > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

70 Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981); and August Meier and Elliot
Rudwick, CORE: A Study in the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1973). For excellent studies of the heroic role of ordinary people
in the civil rights movement, see John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil
Rights in Mississippi (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995); and Charles
Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi
Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).
ra Michael Lipsky, “Protest as a Political Resource,” American Political Science
Review 62 (1968): 1144-58; and David Garrow, Protest at Selma (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1978): chap. 7.
72 The last of the 1960s civil rights acts—the Fair Housing Act of 1968—was enacted
shortly after Dr. King’s murder, in part as a kind of final memorial tribute to him.
Prior to his death the bill appeared to be stalled in Congress.
Sidney Tarrow, “Aiming at a Moving Target: Social Science and the Recent
Rebellions in Eastern Europe,” Political Science and Politics 24 (1991): 15.
Smith, We Have No Leaders, chaps. 1-2.
The Meredith March was initially organized by James Meredith; the first known
African American to be graduated from the University of Mississippi, as a “march
against fear.” It was designed to demonstrate to blacks in the state that they need
not fear to exercise their newly gained civil rights. On the second day of the march,
Meredith was shot and wounded. The civil rights leadership then decided to
continue the march in Meredith’s honor and as a means to demonstrate to the nation
the continuing climate of fear and violence in the state.
76 Carson, In Struggle, chap. 14.
77] By political repression, we mean “a process by which those in power try to keep
themselves in power by attempting to destroy or render harmless organizations and
ideologies that threaten their power”; see Robert Goldstein, Political Repression in
Modern America (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Press, 1979): xvi. The FBI’s program
of political repression was called COINTELPRO (for counterintelligence program).
The black groups targeted by the program included the SNCC, the SCLC, the Nation
of Islam, and the Black Panther Party. See Nelson Blackstock, COINTELPRO:
The FBI’s Secret War on Political Freedom (New York: Vintage Books, 1975); and
Stephen Tompkins, “Army Feared King, Secretly Watched Him, Spying on Blacks
Started 75 Years Ago,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, March 21, 1993, p. Al.
See Robert C. Smith, “Black Power and the Transformation from Protest to
Politics,” Political Science Quarterly 96 (Fall 1981): 431-44; and Smith, We Have
No Leaders, chap. 1.
Quoted in Paul Hagner and John Pierce, “Racial Differences in Political
Conceptualization,” Western Political Quarterly 37 (June 1984): 215.
Ibid., p. 215.
Smith, We Have No Leaders, chap. 2.
Smith, “Black Power and the Transformation from Protest to Politics,” pp. 436-37.
Ibid.
See Jo Freeman, ed., Social Movements of the Sixties and Seventies (New York:
Longman, 1983).
Elliott Francis, “MLK Comic Book Helped Inspire Arab Spring,” August 24, 2011
http:/Awamu.org/news/11/08/24/mlk_comic_book_helped_inspire_arab_spring.php.
Carson, In Struggle, p. 13.
Although the goals were somewhat different in each state, in all three there was a
consensus set of values and beliefs that the confederate flag was a symbol of slavery,
 CHAPTER 6 > Social Movements and Coalition Politics 147

white supremacy, inequality, and injustice. Each of these flag protests were local
with the Mississippi and Georgia movements emanating out of efforts in South
Carolina. Each also had embedded within them a generalized American quest for
freedom from this symbol of slavery and segregation. South Carolina lowered its
flag only after the fatal massacre of nine parishioners gunned down in the historical
Emanuel AME Church in Charleston in 2015.
88 Robert Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality,
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994): 35. Bullard’s empirical research—upheld by
a 1983 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) study—documents that
toxic waste dumps, garbage incinerators, and other environmentally hazardous sites
are much more likely to be located in mostly black neighborhoods and communities,
particularly in the south (regardless of class), than either affluent or poor white
neighborhoods.
89 Jerome Karabel, “Police Killings Surpass the Worst Years of Lynching, Capital
Punishment, and a Movement Responds,” Huffington Post, November 4, 2015,
www.huffingtonpost.com/jerome-karabel/police-killings-lynchings-capital-
punishment_b_8462778.html.
90 The title of the Facebook post was “A Love Note to Black People” that ended with
“Our Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter.”
94 John Eligon, “One Slogan, Many Methods: Black Lives Matter Enters Politics,”
New York Times, November 18, 2015, http://nyti.ms/1SFUnQY. See also Herbert
Ruffin, “Black Lives Matter: The Growth of a New Social Justice Movement,”
blackpast.org. Retrieved 10 November 2015, www.blackpast.org/perspectives/black-
lives-matter-growth-new-social-justice-movement.
92 Alicia Garza, “A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement,” thefeministwire.
org, see www.thefeministwire.com/2014/10/blacklivesmatter-2/.
93 Alicia Garza is a special projects director for the National Domestic Workers
Alliance (Los Angeles, CA), Patrisse Cullors is a reinvestment director at the Ella
Baker Center for Human Rights (Oakland, CA), and Opal Tometi is an executive
director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (Brooklyn, NY), as told to
Cosmopolitan Magazine, “Meet the Women Who Created #BlackLivesMatter,”
October 17, 2015, www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/a47842/the-women-
behind-blacklivesmatter/.
94 Elizabeth Day, “#BlackLivesMatter: The Birth of a New Civil Rights Movement,”
The Guardian. Retrieved November 19, 2015, www.theguardian.com/world/2015/
jul/1 9/blacklivesmatter-birth-civil-rights-movement; see also, “Black Lives Matter:
How the Events in Ferguson Sparked a Movement in America,” cbsnews.com.
August 7, 2015. Retrieved November 19, 2015, www.cbsnews.com/news/how-the-
black-lives-matter-movement-changed-america-one-year-later/.
Garza, “A Herstory of #BlackLivesMatter.”
Treva B. Lindsey, “Post—Ferguson: A ‘Herstorical’ Approach to Black Violability,”
Feminist Studies 41 (1) (2015): 232. |
Karabel, “Police Killings Surpass the Worst Years of Lynching, Capital Punishment,
and a Movement Responds.”
Garza, “A Herstory of #BlackLivesMatter.”
Darryl Pinckney, “In Ferguson,” New York Review of Books, January 8, 2015,
www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/01/08/in-ferguson/.
Pinckney, “In Ferguson,” see this report for a comprehensive review of the history
of Ferguson.
Daniel Marans and Mariah Stewart, “Why Missouri Has Become the Heart
of Racial Tension in America,” HuffPost Black Voices, November 16, 2015,
148 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ferguson-mizzou-missouri-racial-tension_us_5647
36e2e4b08cda3488f34d.
102 Pinckney, “In Ferguson.”
103 As of this writing, the Black Lives Matter network consists of 26 local chapters,
including Toronto and Ghana.
104 Pinckney, “In Ferguson.”
105 Jessica Mendoza, “How Black Lives Matter Operates When Spotlight Is Trained
Elsewhere,” CSMonitor, November 25, 2015, www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/
2015/1125/How-Black-Lives-Matter-operates-when-spotlight-is-trained-elsewhere.
106 John Eligon, “One Slogan, Many Methods: Black Lives Matter Enters Politics.”
107 Pinckney, “In Ferguson.”
108 Karabel, “Police Killings Surpass the Worst Years of Lynching, Capital Punishment,
and a Movement Responds.”
109 “The Truth of Black Lives Matter,” New York°Times, September 3, 2015.
110 Barbara Reynolds, “I was a Civil Rights Activist in the 1960s, But It’s Hard for
Me to Get Behind Black Lives Matter,” Washington Post, August 24, 2015S.
111 Ibid.
112 Randall Kennedy, “Lifting as We Climb: A Progressive Defense ofRespectability,”
Harper’s Magazine, harpers.org/archive/2015/1 O/lifting-as-we-climb/2.
113 Pinckney, “In Ferguson.” The author mentioned Bayard Rustin, the architect of
the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, who put emphasis on building
coalitions among black groups, white liberals, labor unions, and religious
progressives; and Ella Baker’s activist career as an organizer for tenants’ rights
(1930s), voter registration for the NAACP (1940s), field organizer for SCLC
(1950s), and youth organizer for SNCC (1960s), who favored broad coalitions and
decentralization in activism.
114 Lindsey, “Post—Ferguson: A ‘Herstorical’ Approach to Black Violability.”
115 Garza, “A Herstory of #BlackLivesMatter.”
2 CHAPTER 7
Interest Groups

LEARNING OBJECTIVE
Identify major black interest groups and explain how they differ from
major and majority-white interest groups in the United States.

As late as the late 1960s, with the exception of the NAACP, the Urban League,
and, to a lesser extent, the SCLC and the National Council of Negro Women,
there was little organized black interest group influence on the Washington
policy-making process. Even the NAACP and Urban League were engaged
mainly in rights-based civil rights lobbying rather than in broader, material-
based public policy concerns.! However, since the 1970s blacks have developed
a significant presence in the Washington policy-making process, one that focuses
on both rights-based and broader, material-based policy interests.
Table 7.1 displays the contemporary structure of black interest groups,
illustrating the range of interest and policy concerns of the organized black
community. Many of these groups (such as the National Medical Association
and the National Association of Black Manufacturers), like their white
counterparts, are special interest organizations, generally pursuing their own
narrow professional or economic interests. Others, like Trans Africa, have a
single policy focus—in its case, American foreign policy toward Africa and the
Caribbean. (On Trans Africa’s influence on policy in these regions, see Chapter
15.) Still others have broad, multiple-policy agendas (the NAACP, the
Congressional Black Caucus), lobbying on the full range of domestic and foreign
policy issues.

149
 ==

150 PARTM > Casittions, Movamanss, Ines Gauss Patas and Seas |

a SSS Se

Civil Rights Soonomib Pravtessinnn’ |

Urban League (21D) Natrona! Rar Bssonanan RES)

Conference (1357)
NAACP Lease) Deterse
Funes (RD) Natons Commerce oF RA LSerss
A BS .

Nationa! Coun
oF Naga
di/ Women Nationa Saanoaton oF Ba |
(1387) Vere (SR)
: Saaittion oF Rar Pare UnaASs CV
PUBLIC POLICY GRUQUSSS OF BLACK RETO
OFFORS
Trans Airica (1377) CVOsSsoe BEX CAS TRAD)
Children’s Defense Fons (S73P Natone Gauss of Bax Seawe OAs
Tw
Nationa! Association of Blank Sana! Samer Cone
oF BAXs
Maas
Workers (1963) _ (STD Navona! Sart Ques oF Gare
LaBSaws (TSI) Navara QuesoF

REVIGIOUS
Notional Baptist Comention (ISD
Neton of Siem (1S8D)
= Year ih DSNTNSSSS TEINS | The yar MS TRU was OBAMIVs. Rorg BHA AVS BRA
ESt OFDlATk OTUSNIASTONS, Their QUMOSSs, Sng Wi MEMS GM Ve %
Dw W Rar
Organizations (New Yaro Philip Mors, 82) :
» Saridtly Speaking
the Chitren'’s
, Deters Rune S Sh RSPR RAVI VBI
however, TRwes Foundand ed & BO dy S DAAC waran—Aiaram Vang RMA ans Pear
of HS advacady 8 for poor and GSahanwead Minar Ghigian.
:
Stee
re anieeninnnah

Black Groups, the “Black Agenda,” and the

Problem of Resource Constraint

Thesubordinate, dependent statusoftheBlack popelation Bands thecapacty

ofblack interests tocreate well-funded and supported group
s capable ofthe:
 CHAPTER7 > Interest Groups 151

consistent monitoring required in administration and implementation of law.

This same status multiplies the number of potential issue areas of importance
to black constituencies, but their resource difficulties limit the number of
issues they can address, and weaken their likelihood of being taken seriously
within any of those areas.”

The problem identified by Pinderhughes may be seen by comparing the

post—civil rights era black agenda of African Americans and the resources of
the three major Washington black interest organizations compared with the
resources of selected nonblack Washington-based interest groups.
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies is a Washington-based
think tank devoted to research on African American affairs (Box 7.1). In 1976,
it called a bipartisan (Democrats and Republicans) conference of more than
1,000 black elected officials as well as appointed officials then serving in the
Carter administration. At the conference’s conclusion, the group issued a docu-
ment, the “Seven Point Mandate,” that it said represented a leadership consensus
on the post-civil rights era black agenda.
The agenda includes rights-based items (busing for purposes of school
desegregation and contract set-asides for minority businesses), but its main items
are material-based, nonracial issues, such as universal health insurance and full
employment. In this sense, the “black” agenda is not really black but is rather
a broad-based liberal reform agenda. It is also a consensus agenda. With minor
changes in emphasis and specifics, the original items remain the principal issues
on the black agenda today. This agenda has been periodically revised and
extended at various black agenda-setting conventions since 1976, for example,
at the 2004 “Black Agenda Convention” in Boston. The focus of most of these
more recent agendas has involved the criminal justice system and material-based
issues such as employment, home ownership, black wealth, poverty, the media,
and entrepreneurship.°
Blacks therefore have a broad-based material and rights agenda; yet when
compared to other lobby groups in Washington—many with narrow, single-
issue agendas—black groups have relatively few resources. Table 7.2 displays
data on the membership and financial resources of selected Washington interest
groups, including the three most important black groups. Although the African
American groups are not competitive in membership or budgets with such
giants of the lobbying world as the American Association of Retired Persons,
known today as simply the AARP (with its 38 million members and $1.4 billion
annual budget, no group can be competitive with this association that seeks
membership from and claims to represent everybody over the age of 50), or
even the National Rifle Association (NRA). The NRA has 4.5 million members
and a budget of almost $250 million, compared to the NAACP’s 200,000 or
so members and $33 million budget. The budgets of the three black groups are
somewhat competitive in resources with groups such as Mothers Against Drunk
152 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

BOX 7.1
The Joint Center for Political and Economic
Studies
Think tanks—organizations of scholars and Although its budget was modest
former government officials who do compared to the budgets of other
research and planning on domestic and Washington think tanks, the center did a
foreign policy issues—are an important remarkable job in facilitating tne
part of the policy-making process in the institutionalization of black politics. Its
United States.2 They develop ideas that studies of the growth and development of
shape the public policy debate and, unlike black elected officials, its work on the
university-based scholars, they tend to be implementation of the Voting Rights Act,
directly linked to Washington policy its work on the development of a
makers, frequently serving in the consensus black agenda, and its
government for periods of time and then monthly newsletter Focus made the Joint
returning to the think tank to do research Center the recognized, authoritative source
on policy-related issues. For example, on black politics in the post-civil rights
many of the ideas that shaped the Reagan era.°
administration's early policy agenda came Unfortunately for research and data
directly from the Heritage Foundation, a collection on black politics, in 2014 the
conservative think tank. Other important Center virtually ceased operations. This
Washington think tanks include the came about as a result of a steady decline
Brookings Institution, the American in corporate, foundation, and government
Enterprise Institute, and the Urban financial support. Although it maintained a
Institute. small research unit on health policy, its
As the civil rights era drew to a close political and economic staff and programs
and black politics began its shift from were terminated. Black elected officials
movement-style protests to routine and others pledged to try to raise funds to
interest group policies, it was recognized reestablish these programs; it is unlikely,
early that African Americans needed their however, that the Center will ever be able
own think tank. The Joint Center for to reestablish itself as the preeminent
Political and Economic Studies was think tank on black politics and public
founded to meet this need for policy policy.?
research and analysis.
In 1972, Eddie Williams became @ For an analysis of the increasingly important
president of the Joint Center. Williams set roles played by think tanks in policy making, see
James Smith, Think Tanks and the Rise of the
about to broaden the center’s work
New Policy Elites (New York: Free Press, 1991).
beyond its heretofore educational, > Joint Center for Political Studies, Annual
technical assistance, and research support Report, 1991, p. 3.
for black elected officials. The result was ° For a more detailed analysis of the history and
an announcement that the center would development of the Joint Center, see Robert C.
become a “national research organization Smith, We Have No Leaders: African Americans
in the tradition of Brookings and the in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Albany, NY: SUNY
Press, 1996): 113-20.
American Enterprise Institute,” rather than
¢ Hazel Trice Edney, “Joint Center, Once
simply a “technical and institutional Bastion of Black Political Research Now
support resource for black elected Pressing to Survive”, Trice Edney News Service,
officials.” May 25, 2014.
DISENELNSESES ODO NM ISON SIN Sa ASL TIED ENG RS PORE ETS
 CHAPTER7 > Interest Groups 153

TABLE 7.2

African American Organization Estimated Membership Annual Budget?

NAACP 150-250,000; 2,000 $33
local chapters
Urban League 95 local affiliates $58
Congressional Black Caucus® 43 members of $11
Congress
Selected National Organizations

AARP 38 million $1.4 billion

Mothers Against Drunk Driving 86 local chapters $37
National Rifle Association 4.5 million $250 —
Sierra Club | 2.4 million $98
Anti-Defamation League 27 Affiliate Offices $57
Human Rights Campaign 1.5 million $38
@ Unless otherwise noted, the budget figure is rounded in millions of dollars.
© The budget for the Congressional Black Caucus is for the Congressional Black Caucus
Foundation, a separate, tax-exempt organization formed in 1982 to raise funds to support the
group. Until 1995, the Caucus itself raised $4,000 from each of its members to support its
operations. The Republican congressional majority under speaker Newt Gingrich discontinued
this form of member support.
Sources; Annual reports or tax returns for each organization, accessed online. The data are for
2013 or 2014.

Driving and the Sierra Club, the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, and the
Human Rights Campaign, the principal lobby for gay and lesbian rights. The
black groups, however, have a multiple-issue agenda that focuses on rights- and
material-based issues in both domestic and foreign affairs.
The size of an interest group’s membership and budget are important
resources. A large membership permits grassroots mobilization by letters and
phone calls to the media and members of Congress as well as voter mobilization
on election day. Money is, as former California House Speaker Jesse Unruh
once said, “the mother’s milk of politics.” It can be employed in a wide range
of activities, such as grassroots organizing, voter mobilization, polling, radio
and television ads, and litigation. A large financial base is critically important
because it permits interest groups to form PACs—political action committees—
to raise and give campaign contributions to candidates for office. Since the 1970s,
PACs have become very important in the lobbying-election process, contributing
nearly half the money raised by incumbent congressional candidates. Many
154 PARTII > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

nonblack groups (e.g., the NRA, the trial lawyers, the AFL-CIO) have large
PACs that contribute millions of dollars to congressional candidates. None of
the black interest groups have PACs, although several unsuccessful efforts to
form one were made in the 1970s by a number of black groups.*
Given their multiple rights- and material-issue agendas and their relative
lack of resources compared to other interest groups, black groups are at a
considerable disadvantage unless they can form coalitions with other groups.
On most rights-based issues, civil rights lobbying is done through a broad,

BOX 7.2
The Leadership Conference on Civil and
Human Rights

The theory of African American coalitions were black, anditwas widely viewed as
we have developed in this book suggests an African American coalition. Today, this
that such coalitions, whether rights-based is no longer the case, as black
or material-based, tend to be unstable and organizations constitute little more than a
frequently short-lived. While this is third of the LCCR’s membership.? The
generally true, there is one coalition—the expansion of the coalition has inevitably
LCCR (originally the Leadership led to tensions and conflicts along racial,
Conference on Civil Rights)—that has ethnic, and gender lines.
lasted more than a half-century; although From the beginning there were gender
in recent years it too has experienced conflicts within the civil rights coalition.
tensions and conflicts. African Americans, labor leaders, and
The LCCR is a rights-based coalition. spokespersons for working-class women
It was founded in 1949 by A. Phillip opposed the inclusion of a ban on sex
Randolph, the African American labor discrimination in employment in the 1964
leader; Roy Wilkins, assistant director of Civil Rights Act. Labor opposed gender
the NAACP; and Arnold Aronson, a Jewish equality in favor of preferential treatment
labor activist. Initially it was a coalition of for women: laws limiting working hours
about 40 black, labor, and Jewish and and the physical burden of work for
other religious groups whose principal women and providing such special
objective was to secure legislation benefits as rest and maternity leave.
ensuring the civil rights of African African American leaders (mainly men)
Americans, especially those in the opposed the inclusion of gender because
South. This coalition, along with the they argued that it would take jobs from
NAACP, was the principal lobby group for black men—the putative family
the 1964 Civil Rights Act (at that time, oreadwinner—and give them to white
Clarence Mitchell, head of the NAACP’s women. By contrast, support for the
Washington office, also was head of the inclusion of gender came from
LCCR). conservatives (the amendment on sex was
The African American civil rights introduced by Howard Smith of Virginia, an
movement of the 1960s and its successes opponent of civil rights, who thought the
served as a model for other groups facing inclusion of sex would kill the entire bill)
various forms of discrimination. These and white upper-class women’s groups
groups (women, gays, and other such as the National Federation of
minorities) joined the LCCR, expanding its Business and Professional Women.
memberships from about 40 groups in Although African Americans and labor
1949 to more than 150 today. In 1949, leaders now support gender equality in
most of the organizations in the LCCR employment, sex—race tensions continue
 CHAPTER7 > Interest Groups 155

over affirmative action, with some now settled, it for a time left a residue of
African Americans arguing that white bad feeling between blacks and Latinos.
women are the principal beneficiaries of a In addition, some African Americans have
program originally set up for blacks. expressed concerns about the impact of
Affirmative action has also caused conflict illegal immigration on the employment
with some Jewish groups in the LCCR; opportunities of low-income urban blacks,
these groups tend to object to racial a position that upsets the Asian American
quotas and preferences (especially in and Hispanic American groups in the
higher education) because quotas coalition.
historically were used to exclude Jews The LCCR is a rights-based coalition that
and because some Jewish leaders see has endured for 50 years, but its
them as a violation of merit and the successes in the 1960s, the development
principle of equality for all persons. of new rights groups in the 1970s and
Jewish-black tensions in the coalition 1980s, and the expansion of the coalition
were also exacerbated by conflicts over have inevitably created some instability.
black support for the Palestinians in the However, as a broad-based coalition that
Middle East conflict, Israeli support for the embraces universal rights for all
apartheid regime in South Africa, and the Americans, it is likely to endure, although
anti-Semitic remarks of the Nation of not without continuing conflicts and
Islam's Louis Farrakhan. tensions. In 2010 to reflect its broader
Another source of tension in the LCCR universal freedom constituency and
is between African Americans and concerns, the group modified its name to
Mexican Americans. When the 1965 Leadership Conference on Civil and
Voting Rights Act was renewed in 1975, Human Rights.
the NAACP opposed the inclusion of an
amendment to prohibit discrimination @ Dianne Pinderhughes, “Black Interest Groups
against language minorities. Decisions of and the 1982 Extension of the Voting Rights
Act,” in Huey Perry and Wayne Parent, eds.,
the LCCR require a unanimous vote of its
Blacks and the American Political System
executive committee, thus the NAACP’s (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995):
opposition effectively killed coalition 206.
support, forcing Latino groups in the Bids Paz le
coalition to act alone in a successful effort ° Dianne Pinderhughes, “Divisions in the Civil
to get language groups covered by the Rights Community,” Political Science and
Voting Rights Act.° Although this issue is Politics 25 (1992): 485-87.

Wade Henderson, President and CEO of LCCHR.

Source: Malet, Jeff. “Inside the D.C. Statehood Senate Hearings,” The Georgetowner. 17
September 2014. Retrieved 4 October 2016 from www.georgetowner.com/articles/2014/sep/17/
inside-dc-statehood-senate-hearing-photos/
eA ares Ses
uALSCOP A SNR pesrad Tate ap pe a Dar
156 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

multiethnic coalition: the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

(LCCHR). (There are, however, tensions within this group; see Box 7.2.) On
welfare and poverty issues, the Center for Budget Priorities (a white group) is
an effective lobby and advocacy group, and on national health insurance and
full employment, the AFL-CIO and the Conference of Catholic Bishops are, with
blacks, part of a broad labor-liberal reform coalition.

African American Women and the Quest for

Universal Freedom
Although some black male leaders were ardent feminists—supporters of universal
freedom for women—most were not and even those who were always were more
concerned with ending racism and white supremacism than sexism and male
dominance (see Chapter 6). Thus, African American women in politics have
tended to embrace a more universal version of freedom than African American
men, a version encompassing the elimination of race, gender, and other barriers
to equality. We know that feminism—the ideology of gender equality and
freedom—has historically been an ambivalent phenomenon in the black com-
munity and in African American politics. Black feminism promotes an inter-
sectional approach to understanding the complex ways in which race, gender,
class, sexual orientation, and other social categories of difference have simul-
taneously and inextricably been interwoven in black women’s lives (see Chapter
4). In this context, African American women historically have faced oppression
and discrimination not only as a result of racism and sexism, but also in relation
to how their multiple social statuses intersect and overlap, which result in
different social and lived experiences. This creates dilemmas. On one hand, the
challenge is to decide whether the elimination of racism or sexism—often viewed
as mutually exclusive—is to be the main focus of the struggles of black women
committed to racial justice. On the other hand, in their fight for gender equality,
black women must consider to what extent should they identify and form
coalitions with white women, some of whom can be as racist in their thinking
as some white men. Also, historically in the United States the struggle for
women’s rights and the struggle for the rights of blacks have been symbiotic
and conflictual. Mainstream history records that the earliest movement for
women’s rights originated from the activism of largely middle- to upper-class
white women in the abolitionist movement, who tended to view sexism as equal
as Of more important than racism. Although the modern feminist movement
that originated in the late 1960s and early 1970s also has its roots in black
social movements for freedom, it specifically emphasized the activism of middle-
class white women in the protest phase of the civil rights movement during the
1960s.° In addition, the modern movement for women’s liberation also drew
on the black power movement for parts of its militancy in rhetoric, strategies,
 CHAPTER7 > Interest Groups 157

and organizing principles. But, as during the abolitionist movement, tensions

emerged with black allies or intergroup coalitions as these middle-class white
women also tended to see sexism as equal as or more important than racism.
The roots of black feminism predates white feminism early in the Antebellum
Era in the writings and activism of women like Maria B. Stewart, Frances Ellen
Watkins Harper, and Sojourner Truth, and in the late nineteenth-century writings
of women like Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary Church Terrell, Nannie Helen
Burroughs, and Anna Julia Cooper, whose 1892 book A Voice from the South
is an important early work in the development of a distinctive black feminist
thought. Black feminism is also rooted in the activities of black women aboli-
tionists and the club movement among women (see Chapter 6). These activities
led to America’s first women’s and nonwhite abolitionist organization, the
Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1832,° the formation of the National
Association of Colored Women in 1896, and later the National Council of Negro
Women in 1935. The National Association of Colored Women, organized a
decade before the NAACP, was the first national black organization to deal
with race issues, and the National Council of Negro Women, founded by Mary
McLeod Bethune and for years led by Dorothy Height, dealt with women’s issues
as well as broader issues of civil rights during the 1950s and 1960s. The success
of the civil rights movement in removing the obvious barriers to racial equality
allowed for a renewed focus on gender equality among black women.
In the 1970s, black women’s issues became marginalized in the black
nationalist movements and isolated from the middle-class dominated white
feminist movement. In fact, black feminists during this period spent much time
“deconstructing” the racial/sexual politics dichotomy, captured eloquently in
the book title “all the women are white, all the blacks are men, but some of us
are brave,”” that often excluded women of color. In the political arena, Shirley
Chisholm’s election as the first black woman in Congress in 1968 and her 1972
campaign for the presidency were important symbolically in inspiring black
female political activism, which historically has been concentrated in working-
class, grassroots black women’s activism seeking to improve the living conditions
in their racially segregated communities with access to jobs, childcare, health
care, environmental justice, crime, and affordable housing.’ This prompted
black women in New York City to form the National Coalition of 100 Black
Women, taking its name from 100 Black Men of America, with local chapters
nationwide to address these common issues. The Supreme Court’s 1973 decision
in Roe v. Wade to legalize abortion was a catalyst to action, particularly for
working-class and low-income black women who viewed access to reproductive
health as key to eradicating the concentrated, residual effects related to the
feminization of poverty.’ The decision was opposed by virtually the entire male-
dominated black leadership establishment, including the NAACP and the Urban
League. The National Black Political Convention in 1972 rejected a resolution
supporting legal abortions; leading black nationalists denounced the decision as
158 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

genocidal and Jesse Jackson equated Roe v. Wade with the Dred Scott decision.
(Of major black organizations, only the Black Panther Party endorsed Roe and
a woman’s right to choose an abortion.)
In 1973, black women formed the National Black Feminist Organization,
which advocated a specifically black agenda of gender equality. In 1974, self-
identified “radical black feminists and lesbians” formed the Combahee River
Collective (taking its name from a campaign led by Harriet Tubman that freed
several hundred slaves), which issued a manifesto defining concepts of identity
as it relates to black women “struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual and
class oppression”; an intersectional approach to women’s liberation. (This group
was heavily influenced by the writings of Audre Lorde, a young black lesbian
feminist and political activist who saw sexuality as an important part of black
feminism.)!° In 1984, politically active black women led by convening founders,
Shirley Chisholm and C. Delores Tucker, formed the National Congress of Black
Women in order to pursue a distinctive agenda dedicated to African American
women and their families, focusing on related political issues and the election
and appointment of black women to office. In 1990, C. Delores Tucker and
other black women also founded the national African-American Women for
Reproductive Freedom as a way to show support for Roe v. Wade. More
recently, the millennial National Coalition Black Women’s Roundtable, an
intergenerational civic engagement network of the National Coalition on Black
Civic Participation founded in 1976, was formed to champion public policies
that promote health and wellness, economic security, education, and global
empowerment.

The State of Black Nationalist Movements

Black nationalism is a movement more than an interest group organization.
Interest groups accept the legitimacy of the system and seek to have it accept
their demands for rights and freedoms; movements challenge system legitimacy
and seek fundamental system transformation. Historically, black nationalists
have certainly challenged the legitimacy of the American system; in their view,
it is incapable of delivering universal freedom and equality. This is shown
clearly in the system-challenging rhetoric of nationalist leaders, with each new
generation altering their views to better fit contemporary realities of black life.
This means that over time the black nationalist continuum has moved from
emigration to community separation while maintaining its focus on self-
determination, entrepreneurism, and activities that emphasize and promote race
group solidarity.
As early as 1901, Bishop Henry M. Turner, born a free man of color in
1834 who became a successful entrepreneur,!! caused a national furor when he
proclaimed “to the Negro in this country the American flag is a dirty and
contemptuous rag. Not a star in it can the colored man claim, for it is no longer
 CHAPTER7 > Interest Groups 159

a symbol of our manhood rights and freedom.” In the 1890s, Turner attempted
to organize the first mass effort at a “back-to-Africa” movement because in his
view the choice for blacks was simple: “emigrate or perish.”!3 Faced by the
withdrawal of African American freedom, the terrorism of white southern
racists, and Booker T. Washington’s “accommodationist” strategy for black
liberation, Turner drafted and delivered speeches, organized numerous
conferences, and filed many petitions with Congress requesting support for his
plan; he was even able to persuade several racist southern congressmen to
introduce emigration legislation. Relatedly, for a time, he was also an honorary
vice-president of the American Colonialization Society, an organization of racists
formed in the 1770s that favored and monetarily supported emigration because,
in its view, the United States was a “white man’s country.” By the time of
Turner’s death, it is estimated that perhaps a thousand blacks emigrated to
Africa.1*
In the end, Turner’s overall plan was met with little success due to these
enduring dilemmas for black nationalist groups: On one hand, those who
advocate emigration are faced with rejection by most African Americans—
especially the middle class—who do not wish to leave the United States. On the
other hand, their potential white coalition partners tend to be racists and white
supremacists. However, from a policy perspective, Turner was the first African
American leader to petition Congress for reparations, calling for a $40 billion
payment to blacks for their 200 years of slave labor (see Box 7.3).
In 1914, Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican immigrant inspired by Booker T.
Washington’s vision, would ignite a second major black nationalist and Pan-
African movement during the Harlem Renaissance era with the formation of
his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). At its peak in the 1920s,
it claimed a membership of 2 million in the United States and the West Indies.’°
Like Turner, Garvey promoted race group solidarity in all facets of life from
the sacred to the secular. Also, like Turner, he founded a steamship company,
a newspaper, and a number of small factories and businesses—entrepreneurism
is heavily valued by black nationalists. A charismatic leader and powerful
orator, Garvey would draw huge crowds to his rallies and UNIA parades
through Harlem. An autocratic leader, in 1921 Garvey declared” himself
provisional president of Africa, although he had never set foot on the continent
and never would.
Similar to Turner’s movement, Garvey’s was opposed by the mainstream,
middle-class black leadership establishment (an especially bitter critic was W.
E. B. Du Bois). Also, he met with representatives of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK)
and other racist groups about forming coalitions to secure emigration. Garvey’s
strongest base of support came from the poor and working classes in racially
segregated neighborhoods, primarily in the North. Unlike Turner’s movement,
Garvey’s attracted the attention of the federal government, since its mass
following and radicalism were viewed as a threat to internal security, making
160 PART II > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

mH 80X73 &
The African American Reparation Movement

In the Post-Reconstruction Era, Bishop Since its formation, the coalition engaged
Henry M. Turner was the first African in a variety of tactics to advance the cause
American leader to demand reparation— of reparation, including petitions to
repayment for the damages of slavery— Congress and the president, lawsuits, and
from the American government. After the protest demonstrations at the White
Civil War, there was talk of providing a House.
kind of reparation to blacks in the form of Using the Japanese case as a
"40 acres and a mule.” In the 1865 precedent, NCOBRA made a proposal to
Freedmen’s Bureau Act, Congress Congress, called “An Act to Stimulate
included a provision granting blacks 40 Economie Growth in the United States and
acres of abandoned land in the southern Compensate, in Part, for the Grievous
states. President Andrew Johnson, Wrongs of Slavery and the Unjust
however, vetoed the bill, arguing that to Enrichment Which Accrued to the United
take land from the former slave owners States Therefrom.” The proposal indicates
was "contrary to that provision of the no dollar amount for payment (Suggesting
Constitution. which declares that no person that the figure be established by an
shall ‘be deprived of life, liberty and independent commission, as was done in
property without due process of law.’ "? the Japanese American case) but requires
The closest the U.S. government ever that one-third of the payment go to each
came to paying reparation was General individual African man, woman, and child;
William Sherman's Special Order #15 one-third to the Republic of New Africa;
issued on January 16,1865.» It provided and one-third to a national congress of
40 acres to black families living on the black church, civic, and civil rights
Georgia and South Carolina coasts (some organizations.®
of the descendants of these families still In the Japanese case, the first step was
live or Own property on these lands). the appointment by the Congress of a
Blacks, however, never abandoned their commission to study the issue. Thus, in
claim for reparations,° and the payment by 1995, Congressman John Conyers, an
the Congress and several American cities African American, and Congressman
of reparation to Japanese Americans for Norman Mineta, a Japanese American,
their World War II incarceration introduced a bill to establish a
contributed to the rebirth of an African “Commission to Study Reparations for
American movement seeking similar African Americans.” Aiso, in 1995 several
remuneration.? African Americans filed a suit in a federal
The contemporary reparation movement court in California asking the court to
was led by Imari Obadele, a former direct the government to pay reparation.
professor of political science at the The Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit
historically black Prairie View A & M rejected the suit, holding that the United
University and the former provisional States could not be sued unless it waived
president of the Republic of New Africa. its “sovereign immunity” and that the
The Republic of New Africa is a black “appropriate forum for policy questions of
nationalist organization founded in 1968 by this sort ... is Congress rather than the
Obadele (who was then known as Richard courts."2
Henry). The organization favors the This new reparation movement, given
creation of a separate, all-black nation in the present climate of race relations in the
the southern part of the United States. In United States, has little prospects for
1989, Obadele and others formed the success in the near term." However, in
National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations part because of the publication in 2000 of
(NCOBRA), a nonprofit coalition of black The Debt: What America Owes Blacks by
religious, civic, and fraternal organizations. Randall Robinson, the head of Trans
 CHAPTER 7 > Interest Groups 161

Africa, the issue received increased In another development, in January

attention. In 1992, the state of Florida 2016 a United Nations panel—the Working
agreed to pay reparations to the survivors Group of Experts on People of African
and descendants of Rosewood (a black Descent—in a preliminary report urged the
town that was destroyed by a white mob U.S. Congress to consider reparations to
in 1923), and the Oklahoma Commission descendants of Africans enslaved in the
to Study the Tulsa Race Riots of 1921 U.S. A final report of the panel will be
recommended that the survivors and issued at the end of 2016.
descendants be paid reparations for the
riots in which white mobs attacked a black
@ The text of the Freedmen’s Bureau bill and
neighborhood, destroying homes and President Johnson's veto message are in The
businesses and killing hundreds of people. Forty Acres Documents, \ntroduction by Amitcar
In June 2014 the Atlantic published a Shabazz (Baton Rouge, LA: House of Songhay,
major cover story article making the case 1994): 65, 74, 75-94.
for reparations, which stimulated national © The text of Sherman's Order is also in The
debate. The article by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Forty Acres Document, pp. 51-58.
“The Case for Reparations,”' not only ° See Boris Bittker, The Case for Black
revived debate in the national media on Reparations (New York: Random House, 1973);
the controversial issue but made Coates, and Daisy Collins, “Reparations for Black
an award-winning essayist, something of a Citizens,” Howard University Law Review 82
(1979): 65-94.
national spokesperson on reparations. In
2 Tom Kenworthy, “House Votes Apology,
“The Black Family in the Age of Mass
Reparations for Japanese Americans, ”
Incarceration”! in the October 2015 Washington Post, September 18, 1987, p. A1.
Atlantic he argued that the ultimate © Chokwe Lumumba, Imari Obadele, and Nkechi
solution to mass incarceration was not Taifa, Reparations NOW! (Baton Rouge, LA:
reform of the criminal justice system, but House of Songhay, 1995): 67.
comprehensive reparations. When Bernie f The text of the Conyers-Mineta bill is in
Sanders, the socialist candidate for the Lumumba, Obadele, and Taifa, Reparations
2016 Democratic presidential nomination NOW! pp. 97-107.
expressed opposition to reparations as 9 Cato et al. v. United States of America, United
impossible to pass Congress and States Circuit Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
“divisive,” Coates wrote a scathing #94-17102 (1995): 151-62.
rejoinder declaring that if a “candidate of " An ABC News poll found that overall, 77
percent of Americans were opposed to
the radical left” could so casually dismiss
reparation for blacks. Sixty-five percent of blacks
reparations “then expect white supremacy supported the idea, while it was opposed by 88
in American Politics to endure well beyond percent of whites. See ABC News Nightline,
our lifetimes and lifetimes of our children. July 7, 1997.
Reparations is not one possible tool ' Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations,”
against white supremacy. It is the The Atlantic, June 2014,
indispensable tool against white www. theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/
supremacy’”* (italics by authors). the-case-for-reparations/361631/.
Meanwhile, a 2014 HuffPost/YouGov poll 1 Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Black Family in the Age
found overwhelming opposition among of Mass Incarceration,” The Atlantic, October
whites to reparations in the form of “cash 2015,
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/
payments” or special job training and
the-black-family-in-the-age-of-mass-
educational programs for “descendants”
incarceration/403246/.
of slaves. Ninety-four percent opposed
k Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Why Precisely Is Bernie
cash payments and 81 percent opposed Sanders Against Reparations?,” The Atlantic,
employment and educational programs. & January 2016,
And although Congress in 2009 formally www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/be
apologized for the enslavement of rnie-sanders-reparations/424602/.
Africans, the HuffPost/You Gov poll found 'Emily Swanson “Americans Can't Stomach an
79 percent of whites in 2014 were Apology for Slavery, Much Less Reparations,”
opposed: Huff/Post, June 2, 2014.
162 PARTIII > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

him a primary target of the FBI and New York City police. In 1925, Garvey
and several of his associates were indicted on federal mail fraud charges of using
the mail to sell phony stock in his steamship company. His associates were found
not guilty, but Garvey was convicted, sentenced to prison for several years, and
then deported. With his deportation in 1927, his organization and movement
split into a number of small sects and factions and lost its effectiveness. He died
in London in 1940.
Garvey’s movement promoted self-help and a separatist philosophy of social,
political, and economic freedom for blacks. In fact, tenets of his UNIA
community program would appeal to and influence a range of black nationalist
groups such as the Nation of Islam, Father Divine’s Universal Peace Mission,
and the Rastafarian movement. Of these groups, the most influential black
nationalist organization of the post-civil rights era is the Nation of Islam, under
the leadership of Minister Louis Farrakhan. The Nation of Islam—popularly
known as the “Nation” or the Black Muslims—was founded by W. D. Fard in
1931. After Fard’s disappearance, it was led by Elijah Muhammad until his death
in 1976.*°
The Nation grew slowly until the charismatic convert Malcolm X became
its national spokesman in the 1960s. Like Garvey, Malcolm helped to build
a large following for the group among the urban poor and working class.!”

Malcolm X with Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam.

Source: Eve Arnold/Magnum Photos
 CHAPTER7 > Interest Groups 163

Like Garvey’s movement, the Nation was based on racial chauvinism, glorifying
everything black, condemning white supremacy, and characterizing whites as
“racist devils,” which made it a target of the FBI as well. The Nation, similar
to Garvey’s movement, also promoted self-help through entrepreneurism,
established chapters (mosques) throughout the country, operated small businesses
and farms, and published a weekly newspaper. Unlike the historic Turner and
Garvey movements, the Nation did not establish a steamship line since it does
not favor emigration to Africa. Instead, it desires the creation of a separate black
nation within the boundaries of the United States.
When Elijah Muhammad died in 1976, the Nation of Islam split into a series
of sects and factions; the main body of the group, led by Wallace Muhammad,
Elijah Muhammad’s son, was transformed into a mainstream, integrationist
(including whites as members) orthodox Islamic group.!8 For a short time in
the 1970s, the Nation of Islam disappeared until Minister Farrakhan rebuilt it
on the original principles of Elijah Muhammad.!? However, in his clearest break
with the traditions of the Nation, Farrakhan in 1993 abandoned the Nation’s
doctrine of nonparticipation in American electoral politics. Farrakhan did this
first by encouraging his followers to register and vote for Chicago mayoral
candidate Harold Washington in 1983, and in 1984 he supported Jesse Jackson’s
campaign for president.
Unlike most African American organizations, the Nation of Islam receives
no money from white-dominated corporations or businesses, but has accepted
funding from leaders of Islamic nations. It has approximately 120 mosques in
various cities around the country, operates a series of modest small business
enterprises, and has a somewhat effective social welfare system for its members.
It publishes a weekly newspaper and Farrakhan can be seen and heard on
broadcast and digital media globally. The organization does not reveal the size
of its membership, but it is estimated at roughly 20,000. However, the Nation
and Farrakhan have millions of followers. A 1994 Time magazine poll found
that 73 percent of blacks were familiar with Farrakhan, making him, with Jesse
Jackson, one of the best-known African American leaders. Most blacks familiar
with Farrakhan viewed him favorably, with 65 percent saying he was an-effective
leader, 63 percent that he speaks the truth, and 62 percent that he was good
for black America.?° The Time poll that produced these figures was taken prior
to Farrakhan’s success in calling the 1995 Million Man March—the largest mass
demonstration in Washington in American history—which drew notable black
male leaders, including Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Barack Obama. The
demonstration failed to inspire a movement. By 2007, Louis Farrakhan was no
longer identified by African Americans as an influential leader on any major
public opinion poll. In fact, in 2013 only 3 percent of blacks indicated that he
speaks for them.”!
164 PARTIII > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom

Maria W. Stewart (1803-1879)
Maria W. Stewart contributed to universal freedom and equality by becoming
the first African American woman to take a leadership role in the abolitionist
movement. Born in Boston in 1803, at age 5 she was orphaned and became a
servant to a white clergyman, where she received her education by attending
Sunday school and reading books from the church library. A deeply religious
woman, she was widowed after three years of marriage, at which time she began
her brief career as an antislavery and feminist lecturer.
Historians describe Stewart as the first black woman lecturer and writer
and probably the first woman, black or white, to speak before an audience of
both men and women. Stewart’s career as a writer and lecturer lasted only three
years, during which, while living in Boston, she gave three public lectures and
published a political treatise and a religious pamphlet. In addition to her
antislavery work, Stewart was also an ardent feminist. Not only did she
encourage the formation of black women’s rights organizations, she also urged
black women to pursue education and careers outside the home, writing, “How
long shall the fair daughters of Africa be compelled to bury their minds and
talents beneath a load of iron pots and kettles?”

Maria W. Stewart.
Source: Zeilinger, Julie. “Maria W. Stewart.” /dentities.Mic. 3 March 2015. Retrieved 4 October
2016 from https://images.mic.com/qhcestoueglge8xiosoiud9tz6weiwycnpn9no9Bio8f0f7xzb48wb
l2ztgnybfh.jog
 CHAPTER 7 > Interest Groups 165

After the Civil War, Stewart became a teacher in Washington, DC. She died
in 1879. Shortly before her death she published a collection of her speeches and
essays, Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart.
"Marilyn Richardson, Maria Stewart: America’s First Black Woman Political Writer (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1987).

Summary e
Be e
Once a group gains entry into the American political system, if it is to be effective
it has to form interest groups. Although there is a fairly diverse structure of
interest group organizations representing black interests in Washington, these
interests are multifaceted, embracing both rights- and material-based interests.
In addition, compared to nonblack interest groups, black groups tend to be
relatively underfunded. Historically, a number of black leaders and groups have
rejected participation in the system, believing it is not effective because of racism
and white supremacy and/or because they desire to pursue independent,
autonomous political paths. These individuals and groups have embraced black
nationalism. In addition, African American women have developed separate
organizations in their quest for universal freedom, utilizing an intersectional
approach to combat the interactive and interlocking effects of racism, sexism,
classism, heterosexism, and other social identities of difference that may impact
their daily lives.

Critical Thinking Questions

1. Explain the fundamental difference between interest groups and political

parties.
2. Explain the problem of resource constraint in African American interest
group lobbying in Washington.
3. Discuss the differences between the rights-based and material-based issues
on the “Black Agenda.” What issues have received the most attention from
African American elected officials?
4. Explain the symbiotic and conflictual relationships historically between the
African American and women’s freedom movements in the United States.
5. What is the state of the black nationalist movement in relation to interest
group formation and activities? Define and discuss highlighting the black
nationalist programs of Bishop Henry M. Turner, Marcus Garvey, and Louis
Farrakhan.
166 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

Selected Bibliography ==
Garson, G. David. Group Theories of Politics. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1978. A review
and critique of the major theories and the research on the interest group basis of
American politics.
Giddings, Paula. When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and
Sex in America. New York: William Morrow, 1984. One of the earliest and best
studies of the subject.
Guy-Sheftall, Beverly. Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist
Thought. New York: New Press, 1995. A comprehensive anthology of African
American feminist thought from the Antebellum Era to the late twentieth century.
Hamilton, Dana, and Charles Hamilton. The Dual Agenda: Social Policies of Civil Rights
Organizations from the New Deal to the Present. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1996. Although they do not use the terms rights-based and material-based, this
book is an exhaustive study of the dual agenda of black Americans.
Johnson, Ollie, and Karen Stanford, eds. Black Political Organizations. New Brunswick,
NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003. A collection of 11 essays examining the activities
and impact of contemporary black interest organizations, including the NAACP, Urban
League, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, Nation of Islam, and the National Council of
Negro Women.
Lowi, Theodore. The End of Liberalism. New York: Norton, 1979. An influential study
of how interest groups manipulate public policy making in pursuit of narrow, parochial
interests.
Pinderhughes, Dianne. “Collective Goods and Black Interest.” Review of Black Political
Economy 12 (Winter 1983): 219-36. A largely theoretical analysis of the role of black
interest groups in pursuing the multiple policy interests of blacks in an environment
of resource constraints.
Pinderhughes, Dianne. “Black Interest Groups and the 1982 Extension of the Voting
Rights Act.” In Huey Perry and Wayne Parent, eds., Blacks and the American Political
System, pp. 203-24. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995. A case study of
African American interest group politics in the context of the contemporary civil rights
coalition.
Smith, Robert C. We Have No Leaders: African Americans in the Post-Civil Rights Era.
Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996. A detailed study of the transformation of the 1960s
African American freedom struggle from movement to interest groups politics, focusing
on African American interest groups, the Congressional Black Caucus, black
presidential appointees in the executive branch, and Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition.
Stuckey, Sterling. The Ideological Origins of Black Nationalism. Boston, MA: Beacon,
1972. A seminal study that includes some of the classic black nationalist writings.
Taylor, James. Black Nationalism in the United States: From Malcolm X to Barack
Obama. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2011. Focusing on the religious foundations
of nationalist ideologies, this book provides an assessment of the contemporary
relevance of black nationalism.

Notes (2. 2 Oe ee eee

1 Harold Wolman and Norman Thomas, “Black Interests, Black Groups and Black
Influence in the Federal Policy Process: The Cases of Housing and Education,”
Journal of Politics 32 (November 1970): 875-97.
 CHAPTER7 > Interest Groups 167

Dianne Pinderhughes, “Racial Interest Groups and Incremental Politics” (unpublished

paper, University of Illinois, Urbana, 1980): 36.
See the National Black Agenda, National Black Agenda Convention, Boston, 2004.
www.nationalblackagenda.com_NatinalBlackAgendafinal.pdf.
Ibid.
Michelle Newman, White Women’s Right: The Racial Origins of Feminism in the
United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
July Roy Jeffrey, The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the
Antislavery Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); and
Shirley J. Yee, Black Women Abolitionists: A Study in Activism, 1828-1860
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992).
Gloria Hull, Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith, All the Women are White, All the Blacks
Are Men, But Some of Us are Brave: Black Women’s Studies (New York: Feminist
Press, 1982).
See Andrea Y. Simpson, “Going It Alone: Black Women Activists and Black
Organizational Quiesence,” in Wilbur Rich, ed., African American Perspectives on
Political Science (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2007): p. 152.
Ibid., p. 153.
See Audre Lorde, I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities
(Latham, NY: Kitchen Table Women of Color Press, 1985).
11 On the historical origins of black nationalist thought, see Sterling Stuckey, The
Ideological Origins of Black Nationalism (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1972); and Sterling
Stuckey, Slave Culture: Foundations of Nationalist Thought (New York: Oxford,
1967). In these texts, it is noted that Turner was a bishop of the African Methodist
Episcopal church. He served as a chaplain in the Union army and as a member of
the Reconstruction, Georgia constitutional convention. Also, he organized the Colored
Emigration League, published a monthly newsletter, and established the Afro-
American Steamship Company. And, he was the first black leader to declare that
God is black, a notion advanced by Marcus Garvey and some sects of the Black
Muslims.
12 Edwin Redkey, “The Flowering of Black Nationalism: Henry McNeal Turner and
Marcus Garvey,” in Nathan Huggins, Martin Kilson, and Daniel Fox, eds., Key Issues
in the Afro-American Experience, vol. 2 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
Mea sslaess
13 Stuckey, The Ideological Origins of Black Nationalism, p. 199.
14 Ibid., p. 114.
fs See Edmund Cronon, Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal
Negro Improvement Association (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press; 1955).
16 Claude Andrew Clegg, An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997).
Uy Bruce Perry, Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America (Barrytown,
NY: Station Hill Press, 1991); and Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of
Reinvention (New York: Viking, 2011).
18 Don Terry, “Black Muslims Enter Islamic Mainstream,” New York Times, May 3,
1993.
19 On Farrakhan’s strategy to revitalize the Nation of Islam, see Robert C. Smith, We
Have No Leaders: African Americans in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Albany, NY:
SUNY Press, 1996): 99-100; Lawrence Mamiya, “From Black Muslim to Bialian:
The Evolution of a Movement,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 21 (1982):
141; and Mattias Gardell, In the Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan and
168 PART Ill > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

the Nation of Islam (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996). Gardell’s work
contains a detailed analysis of the theological underpinnings of the Nation of Islam.
20 William Henry, “Pride and Prejudice,” Time, February 28, 1994, p. 22.
aa See “Optimism about Black Progress Declines: Blacks See Growing Values Gap
Between Poor and Middle Class,” Pew Research Center, November 2007, p. 45. The
Grio’s “2011 African-American Leadership Survey,” at http://thegrio.com/2011/
01/17/thegrios-201 1-african-american-leadership-survey/. Robert Johnson and Zogby
Analytics poll 2013 at www.rljcompanies.com/phpages/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/
Results-of-a-National-Opinion-Poll-Conducted-by-Zogby-Analytics-Black-Opinions-
in-the-Age-of-Obama_2013.pdf.
mm CHAPTER 8 St
Political Parties

LEARNING OBJECTIVE
Explain the history of political party participation as it relates to African
Americans.

In 2008 the impossible happened: An African American was elected president

of the United States. To understand the extraordinary nature of Obama’s capture
of the Democratic nomination and the presidency and its significance in the
African American quest for universal freedom, one must locate the 2008 election
in the historical context of the African American relationship to the two-party
system. It is also necessary to analyze what happened in 2008 in relation to the
role of blacks in the Democratic Party since the pivotal 1964 election and the
collapse of the New Deal coalition. Finally, to fully understand the Obama
phenomenon, it is useful to compare his campaign for the nomination with
previous efforts by African Americans to win major party nominations,
particularly Jesse Jackson’s.

African Americans and the American

No-Party System
Virtually all political scientists are committed to the idea that a competitive party
system is indispensable to the effective operation of any democracy. The essence
of this commitment according to Leon Epstein is the theory “that voters should
be able to choose between recognizable competing leadership groups” that offer
alternative programs and policies addressing citizen needs and interests.’ The
two-party system in the United States has historically worked reasonably well
for white Americans, offering alternative candidates, programs, and policies from
which they could choose. For African Americans, this has rarely been the case.
169
170 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

The American two-party system, Paul Frymer argues, represents a form of

institutional racism, in that it was partly designed to marginalize black interests
by keeping the issue of slavery off the national political agenda.” Thus, for most
of American history, blacks have faced a no-party system, as from 1787 until
the 1860s both major parties ignored the major issue of concern to blacks—
freedom.
African Americans—where they were allowed to vote—supported the
antislavery Free Soil and Liberty parties from the 1840s to the 1860s. However,
these parties, because of the structural characteristics of the electoral system
that maintain the two-party system, were rarely able to elect their members to
office? (see Box 8.1). It was not until the Civil War brought about the emergence
of the Republican Party and the destruction of slavery that one of the two major
parties began to pay some attention to the interests of blacks.

African Americans and the American

One-Party System: 1868-1936
During the Civil War—Reconstruction era, when African American men first
achieved the right to vote, Frederick Douglass is said to have told a group of
black voters, “The Republican Party is the deck, all else the sea.”* What
Douglass meant was that only one of the two major parties—the Republican—
was willing to address the concerns of blacks. The Democratic Party, on the
other hand, was the party of racism and white supremacy, committed to denying
universal freedom to the newly emancipated Africans. Since Douglass’s days,
except for the brief period of the New Deal, discussed in the following section,
hardly anything has changed; one party is the deck, the other the sea—except
that today the deck is the Democratic Party.
The Republican Party became the deck because beginning with the
Emancipation Proclamation it adopted policies that addressed the universal
freedom concerns of blacks, including three constitutional amendments and three
civil rights bills. It also addressed the material-based concerns of blacks with
legislation establishing the Freedmen’s Bureau, the government’s first social
welfare agency (see Chapter 2). Although we do not have precise figures, it is
probably the case that from the 1868 election (when African Americans in
significant numbers were first allowed to vote) until 1936 the Republican Party
averaged more than 80 percent of the black vote in presidential elections.
By the late 1870s, however, a white backlash developed, and in the
“Compromise of 1877,” the Republicans under the leadership of President
Rutherford B. Hayes effectively abandoned the interests of blacks in favor of
reconciliation with southern white racists. The African American leadership and
those blacks who could still vote continued to support the Republicans because
the Democratic Party was worse. Thus, as Gurin, Hatchett, and Jackson
 CHAPTER 8 > Political Parties 171

amie «BOX 8.1 Gee

Beyond the Two-Party System?
Polls indicate that more than half the the vote, would have been awarded 108
public, black as well as white, is electoral votes (20 percent of 538) instead
dissatisfied with the two-party system and of the zero he got. Similarly, a
would like to see another party or parties multimember district system for House
in addition to the Democrats and elections could allow a minor party to win
Republicans. In spite of this discontent, because seats in the House would be
the structure of the electoral system determined by each party’s percentage of
makes the emergence of a viable third the vote. For example, if in a 10-member
party extremely unlikely. The American district, the Democrats won 40 percent of
electoral structure involves two distinct the vote, they would get four seats; the
features that discourage the formation of Republicans, with 40 percent, would get
third parties. The first is the winner-take-all four seats, and Ross Perot’s Reform Party,
method of allocating electoral college with 20 percent of the vote, would get
votes for president, in which the candidate two seats.
with the most votes gets all of a state’s There is discussion in academic circles
electoral college votes. (For example, in about reform of the American electoral
1992 Bill Clinton got 43 percent of the system to encourage proportional
popular vote in California but 100 percent representation and a multiparty system.?
of that state’s 55 electoral votes.) The But unless a massive grassroots
second is the single-member district movement develops, these reform ideas
system used in electing members of the will probably not go very far, since the
House, in which voters vote for only one Democrats and Republicans will not easily
congressperson and the winner needs yield their shared monopoly on political
only a plurality to win. By contrast, virtually power.
every other democratic country uses some
@ See Lani Guinier, The Tyranny of the Majority:
form of proportional representation that Fundamental Fairness in American Democracy
encourages the formation of third or minor (New York: Free Press, 1994); Douglas Amy,
parties, since their candidates have a Real Choices/New Voices: The Case for
chance to win. A system of proportional Proportional Representation Elections in the
representation in the United States would United States (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1993); and Kay Lawson, “The Case for a
allocate electoral college votes to a
Multiparty System,” in P. Herrnson and J.
candidate according to the proportion of
Green, eds., Multiparty Politics in America:
the popular vote that candidate won. Had Performance, Promise, Prospects and
such a system been in effect in 1992, Possibilities (Boulder, CO: Rowman, Littlefield,
Ross Perot, who received 20 percent of 1999).

conclude, “The history of the black electorate is characterized by blacks’

continual commitment to the electoral system and repeated rejection by one party
or the other,” but “black leaders have persistently searched for strategies that
would make the party system work for the black electorate.”* Those strategies
have included abandoning the Republican Party in favor of Democrats,
attempting to use the black vote as the balance of power between the two parties,
and running as candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination.
172 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

African Americans, Limited Party

Competition, and the Balance of Power,
1936-1964
Most blacks remained loyal to the Republican Party in the Depression era 1932
presidential election, in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt defeated Herbert
Hoover in a landslide. In 1936, however, a majority of blacks voted Democratic
in a presidential election for the first time. Blacks did not vote for FDR because
he was a Democrat or because he supported their concerns for civil rights and
universal freedom. Rather he was able to win black support in 1936 and
thereafter because he embraced their material-based interests in jobs, housing,
and social security.
By 1945, a majority of blacks were voting Democratic in national elections,
but a significant minority remained Republican, and even some black Democrats
would vote Republican if the candidate and his policies were attractive. Thus,
for the first time in history—and for a brief time—African American voters
enjoyed the benefit of a two-party system. Thus, they could occasionally operate
as the balance of power determining the winner in close elections.
On the eve of the 1948 election, Henry Lee Moon, the NAACP’s public
relations director, wrote Balance of Power: The Negro Vote. This volume
summarized the strategic significance of the black vote: “The Negro’s political
influence in national elections derives not so much from its numerical strength
as from its strategic diffusion in the balance of power and marginal states whose
electoral votes are considered vital to the winning candidate.”®
The black vote (in the swing states of the Northeast and Midwest) did tip
the balance to President Truman in 1948 and to President Kennedy in 1960.
But it was not a monolithic vote during this period. Truman’s Republican
opponent in 1948 received about 25 percent of the black vote, as did Republican
Richard Nixon in 1960, and Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s may have received
as much as 35 percent. Both parties during this period attempted to appeal to
black concerns. In the 1950s, Eisenhower’s civil rights record was about as good
as the Democratic nominee and Nixon’s in 1960 was the equal of Kennedy’s.

The Collapse of the New Deal Coalition and

the Return of the One-Party System
With the entry of blacks into the New Deal coalition, it became inherently
unstable and subject to collapse. The coalition FDR patched together included
the industrial working class of the Northeast and Midwest, with such ethnic
immigrants as Poles, Italians, and the Irish; it also had Jews, liberal intellectuals,
white southerners, and blacks. This coalition of opposites—African Americans
and southern white racists—was held together by a common interest in universal
 CHAPTER 8 > Political Parties 173

material benefits. Once the Democratic Party embraced the African American
civil rights agenda—first in 1948 under President Truman and then in the 1960s
under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson—the New Deal coalition began to fall
apart. In 1948, southern white supremacists and racists left the coalition and
formed a third “Dixiecrat” Party. With South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond as
its presidential candidate, the new party carried four Deep South states. In 1964,
southern racists again left the coalition—this time to support the Republican
presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, who had opposed the Civil Rights Act
of 1964. Goldwater, like Thurmond, carried the Deep South states. In the 1968
presidential election, southern whites supported George Wallace, the racist, white
supremacist governor of Alabama, and in 1972, they supported Richard Nixon.
By 1972, the New Deal coalition was dead; southern whites had defected along
with elements of the northern white industrial working class. By 1980, the
Republican Party had consolidated itself as the conservative party of racial
reaction. The New Deal coalition collapsed for many reasons, but the major
one was racism. Many whites, especially in the South, were unwilling to be a
part of a broad material-based coalition if that coalition also embraced the
historic quest of African Americans for equality and universal freedom.
The collapse of the New Deal coalition signaled the return of one-party
politics. The Democratic Party was now the deck, all else the sea. While only
10 percent of the overall electorate, blacks since the 1970s have constituted 20
percent of the Democratic Party’s electorate.’ The size and geographic
distribution (in the South and Midwest) of the vote within the Democratic Party
means that the black vote routinely constitutes the balance of power in
determining the party’s presidential nominee. This was the case with the
nominations of Jimmy Carter in 1976, Bill Clinton in 1992, Barack Obama in
2008, and Hillary Clinton in 2016.
However, since the 1970s and especially since the 1980s, the Democratic
Party has taken the black vote for granted, just as the Republicans did a century
ago. Knowing that it can count on nearly 90 percent of the black vote, the
Democrats pocket it at the outset of the elections, while offering little in the
way of policies to address the main concerns of blacks—joblessness and racialized
poverty (see Chapter 14). Indeed, in order to compete for the votes of “Reagan
Democrats” since the 1990s, the party under Clinton has moved steadily to the
right on most issues of concern to blacks.’ Meanwhile, the Republicans ignore
the black vote altogether or, as in the case of President George W. Bush, engage
in patronage and symbolism.
Nevertheless, at the beginning of the twenty-first century in the American
party system, black identification with the Democrats is near universal. This is
because black partisanship is based on “their perceptions of each Party’s respon-
siveness to the needs and interests of the black community.”? That is, individual
black voters hold a group-based perception of the parties. In other words, racial
identification determines Democratic partisanship.
174 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

It is in this context of the historic one-party system in the United States,

and the emergence of blacks since the 1960s as the core Democratic voting bloc,
that Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination in 2008. Beyond these
broad historical considerations, the Obama nomination emerges out of two other
circumstances. First, the efforts spearheaded by blacks to democratize the
Democratic Party and universalize access to its nominating process. Second, Jesse
Jackson’s two campaigns for president helped to universalize access to the party
and laid the foundations for the kind of rainbow coalition that Obama built on
in his quest for the nomination.

The Democratization of the Democratic Party

and the Role of African Americans
Donald Robinson writes, “ever since the founding a determination to democratize
the selection of presidents gradually cast aside every impediment.”?° In the latter
half of the twentieth century, African Americans played a major role in this
democratization process. The African American role in the process began with
the challenge by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to the seating of the
all-white Mississippi delegation at the 1964 convention (see Box 8.2). The 1964
challenge was “historically important,” writes Walters, because “it ultimately set
the stage for other challenges and, thus, some changes in the delegate allocation
process.”!! At the 1968 Democratic Convention (where antiwar protesters were
beaten by police outside the convention hall), Hubert Humphrey won the
nomination although he had not competed in any of the primaries and was clearly
not the popular choice of most Democrats. To avoid such a situation in the future,
a commission was established to reform the nominating process. Headed by
Senator George McGovern, among the commission’s findings was that although
blacks comprised more than 20 percent of Democratic voters, they were only 5.5
percent of delegates at the 1968 convention. To remedy this inequality, the
commission required the states to take “affirmative measures to encourage the
representation of minority groups, young people and women in a reasonable
relationship to their presence in the population of the state.”!2 The commission
also required each state to establish delegate-selection procedures to “assure that
voters in each state, regardless of race, color, creed or national origin will have
meaningful and timely opportunities to participate fully in the election or
selection of such delegates and alternates.”!
The results of these reforms were to take the selection of delegates out of
the hands of party leaders and place it in the hands of the people through
primaries and caucuses. (In 1968, only 17 states used primaries or caucuses to
select delegates.) In 1972, the party required all states to use some form of
proportional allocation of delegates, instead of the winner-take-all approach,
which was used by many states.
 CHAPTER 8 > Political Parties 475

BOX 8.2
“No Two Seats”

In 1964, a poor sharecropper from

Mississippi challenged Lyndon Johnson
and the Democratic Party and helped to
set in motion a process that fundamentally
changed the relationship of the
Democratic Party and African American
voters.
Fannie Lou Hamer was born in rural
Mississippi in 1917, the youngest of 20
children. She spent most of her life
working as a sharecropper on a plantation;
in 1962 her life was changed forever when
she was inspired by a civil rights rally to
attempt to register to vote. For this she
was fired and ordered off the plantation.
From this point until her death at the age
of 59 in 1977, she was a major leader of
the southern civil rights movement.
In 1964, Fannie Lou Hamer cofounded
the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party,
an interracial party that challenged the
white supremacist, all-white regular Fannie Lou Hamer, speaking at the 1968
Mississippi Democratic Party. In 1964, the Democratic National Convention on
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party behalf of the Mississippi Freedom
(MFDP) challenged the seating of the all- Democratic Party.
white Mississippi delegation at the
Source: Bettmann/Corbis
Democratic convention. Mrs. Hamer, the
party’s co-chair, in a dramatic, nationally
televised testimony, recounted the
atrocities committed against Mississippi Although Mrs. Hamer and the MFDP did
blacks who tried to register and vote, not succeed in 1964, they were seated at
including a vivid description of her own the 1968 convention, and it was their
brutal beating in a Mississippi jail. Despite uncompromising position at the 1964
the eloquence of her testimony, the convention that helped to spark the
convention, under instructions from reforms of 1972 that eventually opened
President Johnson, rejected the MFDP the Democratic Party to full or universal
challenge, voted to seat the all-white participation by all Americans. In 1977
delegation, and as a compromise offered Fannie Lou Hamer died, poor and humble
the MFDP two honorary “at large” seats. despite her fame and still uncompromising
The MFDP, despite the urgings of in the struggle for universal freedom.?
Martin Luther King Jr. and white liberal
2 See Mamie Locke, “Is This America? Fannie
leaders such as Hubert Humphrey,
Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom
rejected the compromise because, as Democratic Party,” in Vicki Crawford et al., eds.,
Mrs. Hamer said, it represented “token Women in the Civil Rights Movement:
rights” and “we didn’t come all this way Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941-1965
for no two seats.” Later, she led a (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing, 1990): 27-37.
demonstration on the convention floor, See also Kay Mills, This Little Light of Mine:
protesting the compromise and singing The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer (New York:
freedom songs. Dutton, 1993).
176 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

New York Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, the first African American to seek a
major-party presidential nomination, appears on “Meet the Press” in 1972, with
the other candidates George McGovern, Hubert Humphrey, Edmund Muskie, and
Henry Jackson.
Source: Bettmann/Corbis

When Jesse Jackson ran for president in 1984, he won 18 percent of the
vote but was allocated only 8 percent of the delegates. Jackson argued that this
was undemocratic and pressed for changes in the rules.'* As a result, the 1984
Convention appointed a “Fairness Commission,” which revised the delegate
allocation rules so that they would more closely reflect the wishes of the voters.
Without these reforms in the nominating process, Obama could not have won
the Democratic nomination.
In reaction to these democratizing reforms, party leaders attempted to place
some limitations on the role of the people in choosing the nominee. This led in
1980 to the creation of “super delegates” (members of Congress, governors,
and national and state party leaders)—delegates who could be seated at the
convention without having run in the primaries and could vote for any candidate
they wished.!> In general, as Richard Herrera shows, super delegates are more
likely to support establishment candidates than outsiders. In 1988, for example,
Jackson got 20 percent of the primary vote but only 9.3 percent of the super
delegates’ votes, but Congressman Dick Gephardt, a congressional leader,
received 5 percent of the primary vote but 19 percent of the super delegates’
votes.!¢
In 2008, these super delegates accounted for 20 percent of the total. Senator
Hillary Clinton, as the establishment candidate, expected these super delegates
to be a “reliable firewall against the Obama insurgency.”!” This was one of
several strategic miscalculations on her part, since in the end most super delegates
ended up supporting Obama.
 CHAPTER 8 > Political Parties 177

Race and the Polarization of American

Politics
A principal theme of this text is that the presence of African Americans has
pervasively influenced American political institutions and processes. The
contemporary polarized state of American politics is yet another example of
this influence.
It is generally agreed that the Democratic and Republican parties are more
ideologically polarized today than at any time since the late nineteenth century.
It is also generally agreed that after the civil rights movement the parties
realigned and polarized ideologically on the basis of race, setting in motion a
process that over time resulted in a return to the historic levels of polarization
observed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although issues
like abortion, prayer in school, and other social—-moral issues played important
roles in the transformation, as well as changes in the economy, communications,
and lifestyles, it is clear that the proximate and most consequential cause of the
transformation was the issue of race.!® The most recent study is clear and
unambiguous in its conclusion “Stated succinctly, the partisan and political
transformation of the South over the past half century has, most centrally,
revolved around the issue of race” and “the level of polarization in the American
party system is inconceivable in the absence of disintegration of the Solid South
and the partisan transformation of southern politics. ... [In fact, the] southern
political dynamic enabled the development of whatever ideological polarization
exists in the modern party system.””
It is also generally conceded that polarization in the party system is
asymmetrical, with the Republican Party being much more ideologically con-
servative than the Democratic Party is ideologically liberal. While both parties
are more ideologically cohesive than in the 1950s and 1960s, it is fair to say
the Republican Party has displaced nearly all of its previously moderate faction
that acted as a buffer on the party’s more extreme conservative faction.”° The
emergence and influence after the 2010 election of the Tea Party movement
reinforced this conservative ideological homogeneity and hegemony.?! The
Democratic Party while dominantly liberal is more a broad center-left,
middle-of-the-road coalition. For example, when Barack Obama was elected
only 37 percent of Democrats identified as liberals, 39 percent were moderates,
and 22 percent were conservative.” Meanwhile, the Republican Party was 77
percent conservative, 18 percent moderate, and only 6 percent liberal.??
The result of this asymmetrical polarization is “The Republican Party has
become an insurgent outlier—ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the
inherited social and economic policy regime, scornful of compromise, unper-
suaded by conventional understanding of facts; and dismissive of the legitimacy
of its political opposition.”~*
178 PARTIII > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

In general, in a separation of powers, two-party system polarizations of the

parties is a recipe for incoherence, inconsistency, irresponsibility, and gridlock
in policy making, often with abrupt changes in policy as party control of
government alternates. Historically, this situation is only changed when one of
the parties utterly defeats the other and establishes a new governing majority
coalition and consensus as the Republicans did in 1896 and the Democrats in
1932. In the long run demographic and ideological trends suggest the Democrats
may be better positioned to achieve this new majority coalition and consensus.”°
However, we emphasize in the long run. In the meantime, with the parties evenly
divided the U.S. in the short term will have only a semblance of a responsible
and accountable government. Yet another example of how the presence of
African Americans continues to profoundly shape American government and
politics.

The Election of the First African American President

Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. was born in Hawaii in 1961. His father was from
Kenya studying at the University of Hawaii where he met Obama’s white
American mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. Obama and Dunham were married in
1961 but shortly after Obama’s birth his parents divorced. Because his mother
was frequently away doing anthropological research, he was raised mainly by
his white grandparents. Although raised in a white household, Obama in his
coming of age memoir Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
tells us his mother and grandparents socialized him to be black, and as a young
boy he identified with and embraced African American culture.*®
After graduating from an exclusive prep school in Honolulu, Obama
attended Columbia University and earned a degree in political science. After
graduation and a brief visit to his father’s ancestral village in Kenya, he moved
to Chicago where for a year he worked as a community organizer in a low-
income African American community. He then entered Harvard Law School,
where he was graduated Magna Cum Laude and was the first African American
elected president of the Harvard Law Review. After law school he returned to
Chicago to start a political career. In 1997 he was elected to the Illinois state
senate. Three years later in 2000 he challenged Bobby Rush, the eight-term
congressman and former leader of the Black Panther Party. Although easily
defeated by the popular Rush, Obama was undaunted and in 2004 he ran for
the U.S. Senate. After he won the Democratic nomination for the Senate, Obama
was immediately seen as a “rising star” in the Democratic Party. John Kerry,
the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, invited Obama to deliver the keynote
address at the Democratic convention. The speech was a sensation, and
immediately political commentators began to suggest that the young, charismatic,
biracial senator might become the first black president. In 2006 after only two
years in the Senate Obama announced that he would indeed seek the Democratic
nomination for president.
 CHAPTER 8 > Political Parties 179

The Jesse Jackson Campaigns: Implications for the

Obama Campaign
Obama was not the first African American to run for the Democratic presidential
nomination. In 1972 New York Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm ran a largely
symbolic campaign for the nomination (see Faces and Voices in the Struggle for
Universal Freedom at end of this chapter). Despite the nature of the campaign,
the 151 delegate votes cast for her were the largest for an African American
and a woman until Jesse Jackson in 1984 and Hillary Clinton in 2008.
In 1984 and 1988 civil rights leader Jesse Jackson ran for the Democratic
nomination. Unlike Obama, Jackson did not expect to win the nomination or
the presidency. Rather, the strategic purposes of his campaigns were to exercise
“leverage” on the party and its nominee.?’ The leverage Jackson wished to
exercise was to use the campaigns to slow or stop the conservative drift of the
party, to inject progressive perspectives on policy into the campaign debates and
party platform, to mobilize the black vote by increasing registration and turnout,
to serve as the “balance of power” in determining the nominee, and to lay the
groundwork for the mobilization of a multiethnic “rainbow coalition” that might
in the future become an electoral majority in presidential politics.
Although Jackson achieved few of these objectives, as discussed earlier the
changes in the delegate allocation rules that were a result of the Jackson
campaigns were indispensable to Obama winning the nomination. (Jackson’s
1,219 delegates—29 percent of the total—in 1988 were the largest for a black
candidate until Obama in 2008.) Jackson’s campaigns also established in their
demography the kind of “rainbow” Obama would assemble in his winning
minority—majority coalition. First, both candidates relied on the size and
solidarity of the black community, each receiving 90 percent or more of the
black vote. Second, their white support was drawn disproportionately from the
young, well-educated, and high income rather than the elderly, less educated,
poor or working class. Although the class and age bases of the Obama and
Jackson coalitions were identical, Obama’s white support was larger—large
enough to allow him to win the nomination.
The Obama campaign was a genuine phenomenon, not in the technical sense
that scientists use the word but rather as a rare, exceptional, unexpected
occurrence. That an African American—any African American—could win a
major party nomination for the presidency is phenomenal in itself. However,
that an African American of immigrant African heritage with a foreign sounding
name and less than four years’ experience in national politics could be nominated
is even more phenomenal. In winning the nomination, Obama, 46, defeated some
of the leading Democratic politicians of the era, including Hillary Clinton, the
60-year-old former first lady and two-term U.S. senator.
180 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

The 2008 Primaries and Caucuses

Obama’s presidential campaign, in the primaries and caucuses of 2008 and in
the general elections of 2008 and 2012, established a more sophisticated
organization than his opponents. The campaign employed teams of behavioral
scientists and technicians to develop detailed databases of potential Obama
voters, and it was the first presidential campaign to make extensive use of social
media such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube.
The campaign organization first demonstrated its sophistication in
fundraising.?° It relied on the Internet and small donors (less than $100) and
advertisements on Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft search engines (more than
half of the online donations of less than $100 came from 1.5 million donors,
the highest in history for any presidential campaign). Overall, Obama raised
$240 million compared to Clinton’s $195 million. Although Obama relied
disproportionately on small donors, like all presidential candidates he received
major contributions from wealthy, corporate-connected individuals and
Hollywood celebrities. Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Obama and campaign-
ing with him during the early caucuses and primaries may, however, have been
worth more to the campaign than all the celebrity campaign contributions
combined. As we indicated previously, her endorsement of Obama was estimated
to be worth as much as a million votes (see Chapter 5).
The Obama campaign organization also deployed a more sophisticated
political strategy’? during the contest with Hillary Clinton (the organization was
led almost entirely by whites). The Clinton strategy was based on winning the
popular vote in the big states on “Super Tuesday” when 24 states voted on the
same day. Obama, by contrast, focused on winning delegates in the small, largely
white caucus states, while holding down her margin in the big states so that he
would get a reasonable share of their delegates. The strategy worked. On Super
Tuesday, Clinton won eight states (including all of the big ones except Illinois),
but Obama won in the smaller, largely white states, winning 14 states to her 8
and 847 delegates to her 834. Thereafter, he went on to win 11 consecutive
states, which gave him an insurmountable delegate lead.
Obama’s strategy was also based in part on winning overwhelming support
in African American congressional districts. The Democratic Party awards
bonus delegates to districts with a history of strong support for the party, giving
them in some cases twice as many delegates as less loyal or more Republican
districts. Since African Americans are the party’s strongest supporters, win-
ning their districts gave him an advantage over Clinton in the states she won,
like Ohio, Texas, California, and New York. Obama, thus, won the nomination
—paradoxically—by winning in the “blackest” Democratic places and in the
“whitest” most Republican places—states like Alaska, Utah, Wyoming, and
Nebraska.
Obama, unlike Jesse Jackson, ran a campaign based on the strategy or theory
of “Deracialization.”>° The fundamentals of the theory require black candidates
 CHAPTER 8 > Political Parties 181

running for high office in majority white constituencies (governor, U.S. senator,
president) to avoid references to issues of concern to blacks such as affirmative
action or antipoverty policies. Instead, a deracialized campaign focuses on issues
important to the white middle class, such as tax cuts, health care, and education.
It also requires the candidate to project a “nonthreatening” image; for example,
he or she should avoid association with black leaders such as Jesse Jackson and
Al Sharpton. In other words, a black candidate should avoid any association
with “blackness.”
With respect to issues and ideology in general, in 2008 all the Democratic
candidates were liberals, and there was widespread agreement among them on
the issues of taxes, health care, education, immigration, the environment and
the Iraq war. Of the major candidates, however, Obama was the only one to
oppose the Iraq war from the beginning. During the campaign debates, he used
his early opposition to the war to make the case that while he did not have the
long Washington experience of Clinton and his other opponents, his opposition
to the war showed he had better judgment. (By the time of the election more
than 80 percent of Democratic voters opposed the Iraq war.)
On issues of specific concern to blacks, there were little differences between
Clinton and the deracialized Obama. In early 2008, the NAACP submitted 37
questions to Clinton and Obama, asking them their position on issues ranging
from affirmative action to reparations. The Obama and Clinton positions were
almost identical (both opposed reparations). On welfare, Obama indicated he
supported the legislation signed by President Clinton in 1996 (which ended the
federal guarantee of assistance to poor women and their children), although he
and virtually the entire black leadership had opposed it at the time. On the
death penalty Obama also flip-flopped. When he ran for the state Senate in 1996,
he opposed the death penalty, but in his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign he said he
accepted it for “the most heinous crimes.” On affirmative action, he implied
that it should be a class- rather than race-based program, saying he did not
think his daughters should be eligible, because of their class, for affirmative action
in university admissions.
Since there were no ideological differences between Clinton and Obama,
the campaign came down to style or symbolism. Obama emphasized change—
“change we can believe in.” Clinton emphasized experience—that she would be
ready to be president “on day one.” The media coverage and the opinions of
voters matched these symbolic differences between the candidates.
Obama won a bare 50.5 percent of the Democratic primary vote, and
2,158.5 delegates to Clinton’s 1,920. He won majority support among only two
demographic categories, African Americans, where he had a 67-point advantage
over Clinton, and among young whites (ages 18-29) where he had a 9-point
advantage. Clinton won among white men and women—particularly those who
were without a college education, low income, and over 65—and Latinos. Both
Obama and Clinton received roughly the same proportion of the white college-
182 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

educated and upper income vote. Obama narrowly won the Jewish vote, but
Clinton defeated Obama by a margin of two-to-one among Asian Americans,
and she won the gay and lesbian vote 60 to 25 percent.

Race and Gender: The Challenge to Identities and

Loyalties
As we indicated in Chapter 6, the African American and mainstream women’s
freedom movements have existed in tentative, unstable coalitions for universal
freedom. So, it was perhaps inevitable that tensions would emerge when the
first woman with a realistic chance of winning the presidency would compete
with the first African American, a man, with a chance to win. Some white
feminist leaders, including the feminist icon Gloria Steinem and Geraldine
Ferraro, the first female vice presidential nominee, claimed Obama was clearly
less qualified than Clinton and that he was able to thwart the dream of the first
woman president because of sexism.?!
The Democratic electorate was divided, with a huge race-gender chasm in
voting. African American women, as we discussed in Chapter 4, tend to prioritize
race over gender because race is considered more salient for collective action to
achieve universal freedom. Thus, from the earliest voting in the Iowa caucuses,
there was no gender gap in black voting behavior. Black women were as likely
to vote for Obama as black men; indeed black women had the highest level of
turnout and support for Obama. There were, however, significant gender gaps
in the white electorate: Among white men, there was only a modest 3-point gap
in voting, with Clinton on 48 percent and Obama 45 percent. But among white
women, the gap was 24; with 60 to 34 percent in favor of Clinton. The gap
was especially pronounced among older white women, who overwhelmingly
supported Clinton. Clinton’s core constituency was white women, who
comprised 37 percent of the primary electorate and nearly half of her total vote.
Obama’s core constituency of African Americans constituted 19 percent of the
electorate and provided him more than a third of his vote. Put another way
Clinton won the votes of almost 3 million more white women than Obama, but
he won 4 million more black votes than she.
Initially, the Obama campaign divided the African American community.
For example, African Americans were extraordinarily supportive of Bill Clinton,
although on race he governed “In the Shadow of Ronald Reagan” with
conservative policies on crime, welfare, and to an extent affirmative action>2
(see Chapter 11). In the earliest stages of the 2008 election, support for President
Clinton translated into support for his wife. A late November 2007 poll, for
example, found that her favorability rating among blacks (83 percent) was higher
than Obama’s (75 percent). Early preference polls showed her leading Obama
by as much as 30 points. However, after Obama defeated Clinton in near all
white lowa—demonstrating that he could possibly defeat her and perhaps
 CHAPTER8 > Political Parties 183

become the first black president—virtually the entire black community rallied
around him.
A few blacks expressed sentiments that he was not “black” or, at least, not
black enough, because of his mixed race heritage and the fact that he was raised
by his white grandparents. But this was mainly chatter in the media, because
there is little evidence this was ever a major concern of the black mass public.
In a fall 2008 poll, 70 percent of blacks said there was a “black experience in
America” and 83 percent said Obama was “in touch with it.”35 Earlier in a
2006 poll, when respondents were told about the ethnic background of Obama’s
parents and asked to identify his ethnicity, two-thirds of blacks labeled him black,
while more than three-quarters of whites, Latinos, and Asians identified him as
multiracial.*4
Ultimately, the idea of Obama—a talented, handsome, and charismatic
young black man—becoming president captivated almost the entire black
community. After hundreds of years of slavery, lynching, and Jim Crow
segregation, Obama’s candidacy came to embody Dr. King’s dream. As Valerie
Grimm, chair of Indiana University’s African American Studies Department said:

I have parents who are still living who are very enthusiastic about Obama.
They live in Mississippi. For a time my parents couldn’t vote, and when they
could vote, their only choice was a white person. This means more than just
seeing a black person on the ticket. It represents things they had been denied.
It is being able to see the unbelievable, that the impossible might be possible.
It represents for them a new day.°*°

The 2008 and 2012 General Elections

Once Obama won the Democratic nomination in 2008, he knew the only thing
that could defeat him in the general election was his race. And it almost did.
Most presidential elections are “retrospective”; that is, they are referendums on
the past four years.** This made for an ideal strategic environment for Obama
or any Democratic nominee in 2008. Throughout the year the “generic” ballot
(which asks voters which party they would like to see win the presidency) showed
a double-digit Democratic lead. As the general election approached 90 percent
of the electorate thought the country was headed in the wrong direction; the
nation faced rising gasoline prices, a collapse of the housing market, a massive
budget deficit, rising unemployment, an unpopular war, and an incumbent
president whose popularity was in the low 30s. A month before the election the
stock market dramatically declined and the credit markets collapsed, requiring
a $700 billion bailout from the federal treasury. Newspaper headlines and
television newscasts raised the specter of another Great Depression. Under these
circumstances it hardly mattered who the Republicans or Democrats nominated;
the Republican was going to lose.
184 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

Neither race or racism were nonfactors in the 2008 election but compared
to prior post-civil rights era presidential elections (1968-2000),*” appeals based
on race and racism were rare and inconsequential. Senator John McCain, the
Republican nominee, was encouraged by his vice presidential running mate
Alaska governor Sarah Palin and others to use the controversial remarks of
Obama’s then pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., to exploit racial fears and
anxieties but he declined to do so.
Obama joined Wright’s Afro-Centric church as part of his quest to reinforce
his blackness. He was aware that Wright—whom Ebony magazine named in
1998 as one of the 15 leading black preachers in America—adhered to black
liberation theology, which holds that God is committed to the liberation of his
most oppressed peoples—Africans—and it requires preachers to be
unapologetically committed to blackness and militant opposition to racism and
white supremacy. Thus, among the black churches of Chicago, Wright’s
church—Trinity United Methodist—was unique, when compared to traditional
black Baptist and Methodist congregations.
Rev. Wright also preached jeremiads, prophetic, sometimes apocalyptic, and
always passionate outcries against racial injustices. Excerpts from one of Wright’s
jeremiads was broadcast in the midst of the Democratic primaries, which
Obama’s aides described as “the greatest threat to Obama’s candidacy” that
put the campaign in a “desperate fight for survival.”°* In the excerpts, Wright
suggested the 9/11 attacks on the United States were God’s punishment for the
injustices of U.S. foreign policy and that the government purposely created AIDS
to harm blacks. “America’s chickens are coming home to roost” he preached
and “The government gives them [African Americans] drugs, builds bigger
prisons, passes a three strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America’.
No, no, no, God Damn America.”%?
Because of the controversy about Wright’s remarks, Obama decided to give
the only speech of the campaign devoted specifically to race. Titled “A More
Perfect Union,” the speech was delivered at Philadelphia’s Constitution Hall.
The speech was well received by the public and the press, with the New York
Times comparing it to inaugural addresses by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin
Roosevelt and John Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religion.*°
The speech quieted the controversy about Wright (Obama and his wife
subsequently resigned from Wright’s church), but Sarah Palin and some McCain
advisors urged McCain to make television ads exploiting the relationship
between Wright and Obama. Although McCain declined to do so, his campaign
did attempt to portray Obama as a radical because of his association with Bill
Ayres, the University of Illinois professor and former Weatherman—commonly
known as the Weather Underground, a 1960s radical left-wing organization.
Although Obama’s association was longer and more substantive with Wright
than his association with Ayres, the campaign nevertheless focused on Ayres,
with Palin frequently accusing Obama of “palling around with terrorists.” The
 CHAPTER 8 > Political Parties 185

Associated Press and other news outlets suggested that this was a subtle appeal
to racism. Palin’s comments, the wire service wrote, were “tinged with racism,”
were “incendiary,” and “whether intended or not... portraying Obama as ‘not
like us’ is another potential appeal to racism. .. . Palin’s words avoid repulsing
voters with overt racism. But there is a subtext for creating the false image of
a black presidential nominee ‘palling [sic] around’ with terrorists while assuring
a predominantly white audience that he doesn’t see their America.”4! The
McCain campaign also attempted to “otherize” Obama by suggesting that he
was a socialist, and parts of the conservative media suggested that he was a
Muslim who might be associated with terrorists.42
Obama won the election 53 to 46 percent, winning 65 million votes to
McCain’s 57 million and 28 states and the District of Columbia with 364
electoral votes to McCain’s 163. However, multiple political scientists suggest
that if Obama had not been black he would have won in a landslide with at
least 55 percent of the vote.*? Alan Abramowitz explains the “race deficit” or
the effects of “Ballot Box Racism”: “Obama’s twelve point deficit among white
voters was identical to Gore’s in 2000. However, the fact that white voters
favored the Republican candidate by a double-digit margin in 2008 despite the
poor conditions of the economy and the unpopularity of the incumbent
Republican president suggests racial prejudice did affect the level of white
support for the Democratic candidate.”*4 Among whites Obama lost by 12
points, winning only 43 percent although he won a majority among young whites
(ages 18-29) of 53 percent. In addition, he won among Jews (86 percent), Latinos
(67 percent), and Asian Americans (66 percent).
Obama also won 94 percent of the black vote. However, it was not his
margin of victory among blacks that was crucial (since 1964 Democratic
presidential nominees have averaged about 88 percent of the black vote), it was
the turnout. While the number of non-Hispanic white voters remained the same
as in 2004, in 2008 2 million more blacks turned out, nearly equaling (at 65
percent) for the first time ever the white turnout of 66 percent. Obama’s
campaign mobilized its black base in other ways as well, with black participation
greater than whites with respect to volunteering (14 to 7 percent) and campaign
contributions (31 to 21 percent).*° Smith refers to this mobilization of the black
vote as “ballot-box blackness,” writing “This relatively high turnout and
participation of blacks suggest that Obama was successful because he was
black; that is, among whites Obama suffered a race deficit because of ballot-
box racism, but among blacks because of racial consciousness and solidarity,
he benefited from ballot-box blackness.”4¢ In other words “Obama’s race elected
him and it almost defeated him.”*”
The 2012 election was not strategically conducive to Obama’s reelection. The
recovery from the recession of 2007-2009 was the weakest since the Great
Depression, with the unemployment rate at 8 percent it was the highest ever
recorded this long after a recession. GDP (gross domestic product) growth during
186 PARTIII > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

Obama’s first term averaged 1.6 percent, the worst for any postwar recovery.
Adjusted for inflation real wages grew by only 0.8 percent, also the worst for
any postwar recovery.’ Finally, unlike in 2008 when the Obama campaign had
an enormous financial advantage over McCain (spending more than $750,000
compared to McCain’s $350,000), in 2012 the Republican and Democratic cam-
paigns were evenly matched (each with about $900 million), and if expenditures
by outside, private groups are included, the Republicans outspent the Democrats.
In this dismal strategic environment the Obama campaign’s main strategy
was to make his opponent, Mitt Romney, the multimillionaire businessman, the
issue. The campaign did this by portraying Romney as a “vulture capitalist,” a
rich, tax-avoiding, job exporting businessman who did not care about ordinary
people, and who destroyed jobs in America and outsourced them to China.
Romney seemingly added credibility to the idea that he did not care about
ordinary voters when he was videotaped telling a group of wealthy donors that
Obama supporters were the “47 percent of the population which did not pay
taxes and believed the government should take care of them.”*? In other related
campaign gaffes, Romney remarked that he “liked to fire people” and that
“corporations were people.”
The Obama strategy of demonizing his opponent apparently worked. Exit
polls identified four qualities that voters said were important in a president—
sharing respondents’ values, strong leadership, and a vision for the future and
“cares about people like me.” Of the four, Obama was viewed favorably on
only one, but in 2012 perhaps the most important one, whether the candidate
cares “about people like me.” From this group—21 percent of the electorate—
Obama won an overwhelming 81 percent of the vote. For the 74 percent in the
other three categories Romney averaged 57 percent.°°
Like 2008, race was not an issue in 2012; however it is estimated Obama
suffered a net loss of 3 percentage points because he was black.*! He won by
the narrowest of margins 51.1 percent, winning 26 states and the District of
Columbia, and 332 electoral votes to Romney’s 206. Obama won majorities
among mostly racial and ethnic groups (93 percent of blacks, 71 percent Latinos,
and 73 percent Asian Americans), while losing among the white majority,
including—and unlike in 2008—the white youth vote by a margin of 44 to
51 percent. Also, he won a majority of the Jewish vote, although it was down
from 86 percent in 2008 to 78 percent in 2012. Overall, Obama’s 2012
minority—majority coalition was constituted by 80 percent of mostly racial and
ethnic groups and 39 percent by whites, with the former groups constituting 26
percent of the electorate in 2012, up from 25 percent in 2008. (In 2012 for the
first time ever black turnout exceeded the turnout of whites, 66 to 64 percent.)
The expansion of support for Obama among Latinos, and especially Asian
Americans may be significant for the future prospects of a progressive rainbow
coalition, since these multiethnic cohorts are the fastest growing segments of
the electorate while the white majority is declining. Again, this is especially
 CHAPTER 8 > Political Parties 187

important in the case of Asian Americans, since this group—particularly Japanese

and Asian Indians—tends to be wealthier and better educated than blacks and
Latinos and historically has tended to lean Republican (as late as 1992 Bill
Clinton received only 31 percent of the Asian American vote). If the 2012 vote
is an indicator, this part of the rainbow is not only growing but may be trending
in a left-liberal Democratic direction.
The election of the first African American to the presidency was a historical
watershed in a country founded on principles of racism, white supremacy, and
the enslavement and subordination of Africans. However, it perhaps should be
emphasized that Obama’s winning coalition in both elections was a
minority—majority coalition, and his average white vote in both elections was
well below 50 percent. Put another way, if the white majority had its way in
2008 and 2012 Obama would not have become the nation’s first black president.

Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom

SHIRLEY CHISHOLM (1924-2005)
“I ran because somebody had to be first,” said Shirley Chisholm of her 1972
campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. Chisholm went on
to write in her memoir of the campaign, “The next time a woman of whatever
color, or a dark-skinned person of whatever sex aspires to be President, the way
should be a little smoother because I helped to pave it.”* Chisholm, the first African
American woman elected to Congress, in the 1960s and 1970s, became a

Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm

(D, NY).
Source; Photo retrieved 4 October 2016 from
www.rnarketsmithinc.com/wp-content/uploads/
2013/02/Chisholm.gif
188 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

national symbol of black, feminist, and liberal politics, and her 1972 campaign
for the presidency helped prepare the groundwork for the historic 2008
campaigns for the Democratic nomination by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Shirley St. Hill (she married Conrad Chisholm in 1949) was born in
Brooklyn, New York, in 1924 to Caribbean immigrants. As a child, she often
accompanied her father, a follower of Marcus Garvey, to black nationalist rallies.
After graduating from Brooklyn College and earning a Master’s from Columbia,
she became a teacher and activist in Democratic Party politics in the Bedford-
Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Although Bedford Stuyvesant was more than
two-thirds black, in the 1960s it was dominated politically by the white-
controlled Democratic Party Machine. Chisholm and her fellow activists in the
Bedford Stuyvesant Political League ousted the Machine, and in 1964 Chisholm
was elected to the New York state assembly. In 1968, she was elected to the
U.S. House of Representatives. Running under the slogan “unbought and
unbossed,” she challenged the Brooklyn establishment with a coalition of blacks,
Latinos, and women. In Congress, she continued her maverick style, challenging
the seniority system as “rule by a small group of old men.”> She was an
outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, and a passionate advocate for children,
racial and gender equality, and abortion rights.
Chisholm’s 1972 presidential campaign was opposed by the largely male
black political establishment. An early feminist, she said, “I’ve always faced more
discrimination being a woman than being black. ... Men are men.” Although
the Chisholm campaign was largely symbolic, the 151 delegate votes cast for
her at the convention were the largest for an African American and a woman
until Jesse Jackson in 1984 and Hillary Clinton in 2008.
In addition to her pioneering roles in congressional and presidential elections,
Chisholm was a founder of the Congressional Black Caucus and the National
Congress of Black Women. In 1982, at the peak of her power (she was then
the only woman and African American among the House Democratic Party
leadership), Chisholm retired from Congress. Subsequently, she taught women’s
studies at Mount Holyoke and Spellman Colleges. In 1984 and 1988, she
campaigned for Jesse Jackson. She was inducted into the National Women’s
Hall of Fame in 1991. In 2015, Chisholm was posthumously awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama. In addition to the memoir
of the 1972 campaign, Chisholm also authored Unbought and Unbossed.4
* Shirley Chisholm, The Good Fight (New York: Harper & Row, 1973): 161-62.
> James Barron, “Shirley Chisholm, ‘Unbossed’ Pioneer in Congress, is Dead,” New York Times,
January 3, 2005.
© Tbid.
4 PBS televised a documentary of Chisholm’s 1972 campaign “Unbought and Unbossed,” 2004. See
also Hanes Walton, Jr. “Black Female Presidential Candidates,” in Walton (ed.) Black Politics and
Black Political Behavior: A Linkage Analysis (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994); and Susan Brownmiller,
Shirley Chisholm: A Biography (New York: Doubleday, 1970).
 CHAPTER 8 > Political Parties 189

Summary Saaaaareme
nee ermmunes
For most of their history, African Americans have had to deal with a no-party
system or a one-party system. Until the Civil War—Reconstruction era, blacks
confronted a no-party system since they were excluded from both major parties.
Since Reconstruction, except for the brief period from 1936 to 1968, blacks
have confronted a one-party system, with one party ignoring the black vote and
the other taking it for granted. Since the 1960s, blacks have been the most loyal
and reliable voters in the Democratic Party coalition, but since the 1970s, the
Democrats have been reluctant to embrace black concerns, especially their
material-based interests. In order to leverage their influence in the Democratic
Party, blacks have sought the party’s presidential nomination. None, however,
came close until Barack Obama in 2008. What impact the nomination of the
deracialized Obama will have on the party system and the capabilities of African
Americans to use it in their continuing struggle for universal freedom cannot
now be known. One thing is clear, however: It is likely for the foreseeable future
that blacks will reinforce their attachment to the Democratic Party, thus
reinforcing the one-party system.

Critical Thinking Questions

1. Explain why for most of African American history the U.S. party system
has been a one-party system.
2. Explain the concept of the black vote as the balance of power in presidential
elections.
3. Discuss the role of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) and
its challenge to the all-white Mississippi delegation at the 1964 convention.
How did their efforts advance universal freedom for African Americans and
political party participation?
4. Describe the presidential campaign coalitions of Jesse Jackson and Barack
Obama. Are there significant similarities or differences? Explain using
examples.
5. Explain the concept of deracialization as the campaign strategy of African
Americans running for office in majority white places. What“is the
implication for universal freedom?

Selected Bibliography DAD

Abramowitz, Alan. The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization and
American Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010. An important
study focusing on the role of race, and the mass base of the polarization of the party
system.
Baer, Kenneth. Reinventing the Democrats: The Politics of Liberalism from Reagan to
Clinton. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2000. A study of how and why the
Democratic Party moved in a more conservative direction.
190 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

Chisholm, Shirley. The Good Fight. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. A memoir of her
run for the presidency in 1972.
Clayton, Dewey M. The Presidential Campaign of Barack Obama: A Critical Analysis
of a Racially Transcendent Strategy. New York: Routledge, 2010. This text is a
comprehensive analysis of the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign and unique,
innovative organizational strategies used to win office.
Eldersveld, Samuel, and Hanes Walton, Jr. Political Parties in American Society. Boston,
MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2000. A comprehensive assessment of the status of
the American party system.
Frady, Marshall. Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson. New York: Random
House, 1996. A comprehensive, full-length biography of the civil rights leader and
presidential candidate.
Frymer, Paul. Uneasy Alliances: Race and Party Competition in America. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1999. A study of the two-party system and how it operates
to create a one-party system for blacks.
Gillespie, Andra, ed. Whose Black Politics?: Cases in Post-Racial Black Leadership. New
York: Routledge, 2010. A series of papers examining the new generation of black
leadership from which Obama emerges.
Henry, Charles. Jesse Jackson: The Search for Common Ground. Oakland, CA: Black
Scholar Press, 1991. A brief, readable account of the Jackson campaigns.
Henry, Charles, and Robert Allen, eds. The Obama Phenomena: Toward A Multiracial
Democracy. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011. A group of eminent African
American political scientists interpret Obama’s election.
Ladd, Everett C., and Charles Hadley. Transformation of the American Party System:
Political Coalitions from the New Deal to the 1970s. New York: Norton, 1975. An
analysis of the decline of the New Deal coalition.
Lawson, Kay, ed. Political Parties and Linkage. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1980. A collection of papers examining the decline of political parties as the linkage
between citizens and government.
Marable, Manning, and Kristen Clarke, eds. Barack Obama and African American
Empowerment. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Another group of distinguished
black scholars assess the Obama campaign.
Mills, Kay. This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. New York: Dutton,
1993. A biography of the famous Mississippi freedom fighter.
Morris, Lorenzo. “Race and the Rise and Fall of the Two Party Systems.” In L. Morris,
ed., The Social and Political Implications of the 1984 Jesse Jackson Campaign. New
York: Praeger, 1990. An important article analyzing the functional limitations of the
two-party system in terms of black voter choice.
Obama, Barack. Dreams from My Father. New York: Crown, 1995. A memoir of his
journey to adulthood and his search for community.
Obama, Barack. The Audacity of Hope. New York: Crown, 2006. A campaign manifesto.
Rigueur, Leah Wright. The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and
the Pursuit of Power. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014. A study of the
often “lonely” struggle of blacks for acceptance and inclusion in the Republican Party,
focusing on the period since the Goldwater nomination in 1964.
Walter, John C. The Harlem Fox: J. Raymond Jones and Tammany Hall. Albany, NY:
SUNY Press, 1989. A memoir of the first African American head of Tammany Hall,
the New York City Democratic Party organization.
Walters, Ronald. Black Presidential Politics in America: A Strategic Approach. Albany,
NY: SUNY Press, 1988. An influential study of the strategic use of the black vote in
presidential elections.
 CHAPTER 8 > Political Parties 191

Walton, Hanes, Jr. Black Political Parties: A Historical and Political Analysis. New York:
Free Press, 1972. A comprehensive analysis of African American political parties.
Walton, Hanes, Jr. “Democrats and African Americans: The American Idea.” In P. Kover,
ed., Democrats and the American Idea. Washington, DC: Center for National Policy
Press, 1992. A brief history of African Americans in the Democratic Party.
Weiss, Nancy. Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983. A historical account of the shift of
blacks from the Republican to the Democratic Party.
Wilson, John. Barack Obama: This Improbable Quest. New York: Paradigm, 2008. An
examination of Obama’s candidacy from liberal and conservative perspectives.

Notes Be ee eee
1 Leon Epstein, “The Scholarly Commitment to Parties,” in A. Finifter, ed., The State
of the Discipline (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 1983):
129.
2 Paul Frymer, Uneasy Alliances: Race and Party Competition in America (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).
3 Hanes Walton, Jr., The Negro in Third Party Politics (Philadelphia, PA: Dorrance,
1969).
4 This section draws on Robert C. Smith and Richard Seltzer, “The Deck and the Sea:
The African American Vote in the Presidential Elections of 2000 and 2004,” National
Political Science Review 22 (2008): 263-70.
5 Patricia Gurin, Shirley Hatchett, and James Jackson, Hope and Independence: Black
Response to Electoral and Party Politics (New York: Russell Sage, 1991): 64.
6 Henry Lee Moon, Balance of Power: The Negro Vote (Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1948): 198.
7 Robert Axelrod, “Where the Votes Come From: An Analysis of Electoral Coalitions,”
American Political Science Review 66 (1972): 11-20; and his “Communications,”
American Political Science Review 76 (1982): 393-96.
8 Kenneth Baer, Reinventing the Democrats: The Politics of Liberalism from Reagan
to Clinton (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000); and Robert C. Smith, “In
the Shadow of Ronald Reagan: Civil Rights Policy Making in the Clinton
Administration,” in Kenneth Osgood and Derrick White, eds., Winning While Losing:
Civil Rights, the Conservative Movement and the Presidency from Nixon to Obama
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014).
9 Michael Dawson, Behind the Mule: Race, Class and African American Politics
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994): 112. See also Katherine Tate, From
Protest to Politics: The New Black Vote in American Elections (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1994).
10 Donald Robinson, To the Best of My Ability: The Presidency and the Constitution
(New York: Norton, 1987): 173.
11 Ronald Walters, Black Presidential Politics: A Strategic Approach (Albany, NY:
SUNY Press, 1988): 53.
12 Quoted in ibid., p. 55.
13 Ibid.
14 E. J. Dionne, “Jackson Says Delegate Rules Have Been Unfair,” New York Times,
May 5, 1988.
15 Samuel Eldersveld and Hanes Walton, Political Parties in American Society, 2nd ed.
(New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2000): 215, 216.
 SL

Ue Raden eng “Ae Gane Degas Gepee,” Ralitinal Raaeiae 1G(IIA TBI.
yr Sates Reps, “Hee Gama, 2 Sew Gea Dirt Baki” Naw Kent Times Jane

SS The emer Sak ar es cS Gen Ght etemater ef de madken pare

TTD Sse NE Bemane Press. =

TRS. Se aie Teel Oke, “Winters anf tie Bolaezanen of Amescam Politic,

MW Reet TE Queer Nike ami Ie Mere. Tbe Ramona! Soucierner=

Raz Wos aac E reson Tarstrmattum
of te Sout?

Sees Seacatin Squib

4 EL Sem |
> Ret Oiheee Rouliie. QQ: looms Rikers Rs TS
33 ee. >
3¢ Thames Neon: and Neemam Qe, ES Zhen Worse dha It Leads: Row the
New Yank Rast Faas, DIDS ie,

Re Sm,
> at. on SS.

Ghie, Max 3h DR |

SeunrS Shadow.” im Kenmeh Qqmad and Densck Whing edi Winin

on g While ~
 CHAPTER 8 > Political Parties 193

35 Darryl Fears, “Black Community Is Increasingly Protective of Obama,” Washington

Post, May 10, 2008.
36 Morris Fiorina, Retrospective Voting in National Election (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1981).
a7 On racism in post-civil rights era elections see Tali Mendelberg, The Race Card:
Campaign Strategies, Implicit Messages and the Norm of Equality (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2001).
38 Quoted in Robert C. Smith, John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama and the Politics of
Ethnic Incorporation and Avoidance (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2013): 153.
By) “Preacher with a Penchant for Controversy,” Washington Post, March 15, 2008.
40 “Mr. Obama’s Profile in Courage,” New York Times, March 9, 2008.
41 Douglass Daniel, “Analysis: Palin’s Words Carry Racial Tinge,” West County Times,
October 5, 2008.
42 Nickolas Kristoff, “The Push to Otherize Obama,” New York Times, September 21,
2008.
43 Michael Lewis-Beck, Charles Tien, and Richard Nadeau, “Obama’s Missing
Landslide: A Racial Cost?” paper prepared for presentation at the annual meeting
of the Southern Political Science Association, February 7-11, 2009, New Orleans;
Spencer Piston “How Explicit Racial Prejudice Hurt Obama in the 2008 Election,”
Political Behavior 32 (2010): 431-51; and Walter Hill, “Should Obama Have Won
in a Landslide in 2008 as Did Roosevelt in 1936?” paper prepared for presentation
at the 2011 annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, March
31-April 2, Chicago.
Alan Abramowitz, The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization and
American Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010): 115.
Harris, Survey on Race, Politics and Society, p. 11.
Smith, John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama, p. 163.
Ibid.
Paul Wiseman, “Economic Recovery?: The Numbers Don’t Say So,” West County
Times, May 16, 2012.
Mitt Romney, “47 Percent” comments, www.youtube.com/water?r=m2gry2wqi7m.
Exit Poll, 2012 Election, CNN.
Charles Tien, Richard Nadeeau, and Michael Lewis-Beck, “Obama and 2012: Still
A Racial Cost to Pay,” PS: Political Science and Politics 45 (2012): 591-95.
mm CHAPTER S
Voting Behavior
and Elections

LEARNING OBJECTIVE
Identify trends in racial or ethnic groups’ voting behavior and
participation in elections.

In 1984, during his campaign for the presidency, Jesse Jackson would frequently
tell black audiences, “Hands that picked cotton can now pick presidents.” To
understand the significance of the black vote in American politics and presidential
elections, we must place the phenomenon in its historical and systemic contexts.

The Historical and Systemic Dimensions of

African American Voting Behavior
The first presidential election in American history in which virtually all African
Americans could vote was 1968, three years after passage of the Voting Rights
Act in 196S.
Between the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and the end of the Civil
War in 1865, only six states permitted the “Free” Negroes to vote; enslaved
persons, of course, could not vote in any state. The Revolutionary War, with
all its discussion of freedom, did not ‘change the nonvoting status of African
Americans. In fact, between the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, Tennessee in
1834, North Carolina in 1835, and Pennsylvania in 1838, all withdrew the right
to vote from “Free Negroes.”
New York, on the other hand, did not deny the right; rather, it restricted
voting by requiring that “Free Negroes” show ownership of property valued at
 CHAPTER 9 > Voting Behavior and Elections 195

$200. When this rule went into effect, the number of voters dropped. New York
subsequently held three statewide suffrage referenda in which the state’s white
voters were asked to decide whether to give “Free Negroes” full, universal voting
rights. The first referendum was held in 1846, the second in 1860, and the third
in 1869. All three were voted down by the state electorate.!
However, if the northern and Midwestern states opposed a simple aspect
of universal freedom such as voting rights prior to the Civil War and thereafter,
the South would become the central opponent after the Civil War until the
present day. Beginning with the Compromise of 1877, which the South brought
about through the fraud, corruption, and violence of the 1876 election, African
Americans’ newly won voting rights were once again restricted and curtailed,
the Fifteenth Amendment notwithstanding. The South’s drive to eliminate
African Americans from the ballot box culminated in the “era of disenfranchise-
ment” (1890-1901), when all 11 of the states of the Old Confederacy adopted
new state constitutions that prevented, prohibited, or manipulated African
Americans out of their voting rights. Because of a series of inventive, innovative,
and amazingly effective devices like the Grandfather Clause, white primaries,
preprimaries, poll taxes, reading and interpretation tests, multiple ballot boxes,
single-month registration periods, party- instead of state-administered primaries,
single-state party systems, evasion, economic reprisals, terror, fraud, corruption,
violence, mayhem, and murder, African Americans found it exceedingly difficult
to register, much less to vote.” In Louisiana, one of the southern states where
voter registration data were kept by race, it is possible to see in empirical terms
just how effective these tactics were in crippling African American voters. Figure
9.1 shows percentages for an entire century comparing the eligible African
American voting age population with those who overcame the obstacles and
became registered voters. African American registered voters plummeted from
a high of 130,444 in 1897 to a low of 5,320 in 1910. The new state constitution
in Louisiana disenfranchised, in a very short span of time, more than 95 percent
of the entire African American electorate. Nearly the same reality prevailed in
the other states of the Old Confederacy.
But as had happened in the antebellum period, African Americans once again
organized and lobbied to regain their suffrage rights, doing so from 1895 to
1965. With the NAACP taking the lead nationally and numerous courageous
individuals and groups spearheading efforts at the local and state levels, the
drive to regain the ballot met with some success.’ Although the success was
uneven, painfully slow, and in numerous places quite deadly, some partial
success was achieved.
Initially, victories came from Supreme Court cases, like Guinn and Beal v.
U.S. (1914), which declared the Grandfather Clause unconstitutional; Lane v.
Wilson (1939), which voided the single-month registration scheme; Smith v.
Allwright (1949), which outlawed white primaries; Terry v. Adams (1953),
which eliminated privately administered elections; and a federal district court
196 PARTIII > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

70

60

50

40
30
Percentage

20

10

~oowrnarnrgdoortron
orRomowmnooodcecoor
amamanmnnmnndnoandanaa HD
bred ty cea cee aS ek ol ihre oe eaanes 0 SR a 19161920192419281930193219401944194819501952195619601964
Years

FIGURE 9.1
The Percentage of African American Registered Voters in Louisiana, 1867-1964
Sources: Adapted from Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1867, vol.
VIl (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1869): 461 for the year 1867; Perry H. Howard, Political
Tendencies in Louisiana, revised and expanded (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
1971): 421-22 for the years 1879-1964. Calculations prepared by the authors, thus some year
intervals are irregular due to various data sources.

decision in 1949 that declared “understanding and explaining clauses” to be

unconstitutional.*
Later, congressional legislation assisted the court decisions. The Civil Rights
Acts of 1957 and 1960 and Title I of the 1964 Civil Rights Act added limited
federal protection for African American voting rights. Then in 1965, Congress
passed the Voting Rights Act, which was renewed in 1970, 1975, 1982, and 2006.
This law permitted federal registrars to go into the states covered by the law and
register African Americans to vote. However, by the 1960s, the African American
community in the South had lost considerable political power. For example, as
Table 9.1 shows, in 1900 blacks were a majority of the population in Mississippi
and South Carolina, but by the 1960s, they constituted less than a third of citizens
of voting age. Between 1900 and 1970, in particular, similar declines in voting
power are observed in Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. An upward
trend in African American voting power is not observed until after 2000.

African American Voting Behavior: Empirical

Renderings
Data from the Bureau of the Census permit us to compare voter registration to
actual voting in Table 9.2. From the mid-1960s until the present, nearly two-
 CHAPTER 9 > Voting Behavior and Elections 197

‘TABLE9.1

Southern
States 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Alabama 43.9 41.7 87.7 36.6 33.4 29.5 26.2 21.1 22.5 23.2 20.0 25.7
Arkansas 27,8: 28:2) 27-4°26.6 24.6 20.5°18;5 14.8°13:9-13:6.14.3°15:0
Florida 44.2 42.0 34.0 29.0 26.0 20.1 15.2 11.9 11.6 11.9 13.6 14.2
Georgia 44.6 43.0 39.8 36.6 32.8 28.6 24.5 22.7 23.9 24.5 26.8 30.9
Louisiana 45.4 42.2 38.2 36.6 34.4 30.3 28.5 26.0 27.3 28.0 29.4 31.0
Mississippi 96.9 54.9 51.3 49.4 47.1 41.3 36.1 30.3 31.2 31.7 33.0 35.8
North Carolina 30.7 29.4 28.1 27.2 25.6 23.8 21.6 18.7 19.6 20.2 20.2 21.6
South Carolina 54.0 50.5 47.2 42.0 38.7 33.9 29.2 25.4 27.7 27.5 27.4 27.1
Tennessee - 23.1 21.6 19.9 19.2 18.1 16.1 15.0 13.4 14.0 14.7 15.0 16.1
Texas 18.7 16.7 16.4 14.6 14.0 12.3 11.7 11.0 11.7 11.4 12.1 12.9
Virginia 32.) 30,5-28:8 25:3. 23.1521. 1218:9 162.424) 17-8 19H 1973
Sources: Adapted from U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States:
1910-2000 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1911-2000). The 2010 data were
based on estimates tabulated using the U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2070-2014 American
Community Survey 5 Year Estimates for “Voting Age Population by Citizenship and Race
(CVAP)” (Washington, DC: Census Bureau, 2014), Calculations prepared by the authors.

thirds of the African American community registered to vote. With the exception
of the 1976 presidential election, more than half of all African American
registered voters voted in presidential elections. There is, however, an almost
10 percent gap between African American registered voters and those who
actually vote.
Table 9.3 reveals the demographic correlates of the black vote. African
American voters tend to be female and over 45 years of age. The majority live
in the South and Midwest, four-fifths have a high school education or better,
two-thirds earn more than $25,000 per year, and over half own their own homes.

The Election of 2016

The Presidential Candidates and Identity Politics

The 2016 presidential election was one of the most extraordinary in American
history, comparable in its distinctiveness, in some ways, to the historic election
of the first African American president in 2008. In addition to the Election of
Donald J. Trump, the 2016 election featured the first major party nomination
198 PARTIII > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

TABLE 9.2

Year Percentage Registered Percentage Voting

1964 60.08 59.0

1966 60.0 — 42.0
1968 66.0 58.0 =
1970 — 61.0 ; 44.0
1972 a 7000 52.0
1974 50.0 34.0
1976 59.0. 49.0
1978 57.0 eee Sal®
1980 60.0 51.0
1982 59.0 43.0
1984 66.0 56.0
1986 64.0 43.0 Se
1988 65.08 52.0
1990 — 39.0 39.0
1992 64.0 54.0
1994 59.0 37.0
1996 64.0 51.0
1998 60.2 39.6
2000 68.0 57.0
2002 4G 62.4 67.5
2004 68.7 60.0
2006 60.9 41.0
2008 69.7 64.7
2010 62.8 : 43.8
2012 vee 66.2
2014 64.3 42.2
@ Estimated data. ;
Sources: For the presidential election data, see Jerry T. Jennings, “Voting and Registration in
the Election of November 1992,” Current Population Reports, Population Characteristics,
Series P20-422 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1993); for congressional
election data, Jerry T. Jennings, “Voting and Registration in the Election of November 1990,”
Current Population Reports, Population Characteristics, Series P10-453 (Washington, DC:
_ Government Printing Office, 1991); U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Voting and Registration in
the Election of November 1998,” Current Population Survey P20-523RV (Washington, DC:
Census Bureau, 2000); U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Voting and Registration in the Election of
November 2000," Current Population Reports, Population Characteristics, Series P20-542
(Washington, DC: Census Bureau, 2002): 5; U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Voting and
Registration in the Election of November 2002," Current Population Reports, Population
Characteristics, Series P20-552 (Washington, DC: Census Bureau, 2004): 5: U.S. Bureau of
the Census, "Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2004,” Current Population
Reports, Population Characteristics, Series P20-556 (Washington, DC: Census Bureau, 2006):
4; U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2006,”
Current Population Reports, Population Characteristics, Series P20-557 (Washington, DC:
Census Bureau, 2008): 4; “Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2008,”
Current Population Reports, Population Characteristics, Series P20-562RV (Washington, DC:
Census Bureau, 2012): 4; and “The Diversifying Electorate—Voting Rates by Race and
Hispanic Origin in 2012 (and Other Recent Elections),” Current Population Survey, Population
Characteristics, Series P20-568 (Washington, DC: Census Bureau, 2013): 3.
ROSES SNRSTI NS AI TILSEN RERSS IE ST NET SIE Se EGS NEI IHERB SIRT NEBL SR AY CITE NIE,
 CHAPTER 9 > Voting Behavior and Elections 199

TABLE 9.3

Demographic Percentage Percentage Percentage Percentage

Variables of 2000 of 2004 of 2008 of 2012
Voters Voters Voters Voters

TOTAL CITIZENS
REPORTED VOTED 56.8 60.0 64.7 66.2
SEX
Male 46.0 46.5 58.2 60.4
Female 54.0 Bor 64.1 66.4
AGE
Under 45 61.0 52.4 59.7 55.6
Over 45 39.0 47.6 68.3 TAZ
REGION
Northeast 17.6 16.0 58.6 57:0
Midwest ; 18.8 20.5 67.3 62.9
South 54.8 53.9 66.0 56.83
West 8.9 9.6 63.0 54.75
EDUCATION
Grade school at 8.1 12.8 11.8
High school 49.7 28.6 S5.0 Stee
Some college 26.8 31.0 31.9 32.4
College 16.5 PA | 20.2 24.4
LABOR
Employed 60.8 62.7 59.5 57.9
Unemployed 5.0 6.7 6.6 id!
Not in labor force 34.2 30.6 33.9 35.0
FAMILY INCOME
Under $25,000 397 32.6 27a 32.7
$25,000-$49,999 29.7 20.1 25.4 26.9
$50,000 and above 23.7 85:2 28.3 40.4
TENURE
Owner occupied 47.1 62.3 60.0 577.
Renter occupied 52.9 36.7 39.0 41.4
Sources: Adapted from U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Voting and Registration in the Election of
November 2000,” Current Population Reports, Population Characteristics, Series P20-542
(Washington, DC: Census Bureau, 2002); U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Detailed Tables for
Voting and Registration in the Election of November, 2004,” Current Population Reports,
Population Characteristics, Series P20-556 (Washington, DC: Census Bureau, 2006);"Voting
and Registration in the Election of November 2008,” Current Population Reports, Population
Characteristics, Series P20-562RV (Washington, DC: Census Bureau, 2012): 4; and “The
Diversifying Electorate—Voting Rates by Race and Hispanic Origin in 2012 (and Other Recent
Elections)," Current Population Survey, Population Characteristics, Series P20-568
(Washington, DC: Census Bureau, 2013). Calculations prepared by the authors.
200 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

of a woman; the first credible candidacy of a declared socialist; the nomination

for only the second time by a major party of a candidate with no prior
government or military experience (the first was the Republican Wendell Willkie
in 1940); and the most ethnically diverse field of candidates ever, including the
first credible Jewish candidate, two persons of Hispanic origins, an Indian
American, two women, and an African American.
Although the field of candidates was ethnically diverse, all of the “ethnic”
candidates downplayed their ethnic identities. Florida Senator Marco Rubio and
Texas Senator Ted Cruz, sons of Cuban immigrants, presented themselves as
“Anglo” Cubans rather than Hispanics, while embracing positions on immigra-
tion that antagonized much of the Hispanic community. Dolores Huerta, the
iconic Mexican American civil rights and labor leader, called Rubio and Cruz
“sellouts” and “traitors” who “turn[ed] their backs on the Latino community.”°
Louisiana’s Republican Governor Bobby Jindal, the son of immigrants from
India, declared that he was “done with all the talk about hyphenated Amer-
icans”; he was “just American.”® Many in the Indian American community said
they were “disappointed” and felt “abandoned” because Jindal had changed
his name from “Piyush” to Bobby and was “trying to run away from his
identity and was embarrassed about being Indian.”” Bernie Sanders, the Jewish
candidate, downplayed his Jewish identity referring to himself as the son of Polish
rather than Jewish immigrants and declaring he was “not very religious.”®
Sanders also took positions on the Israeli—Palestine conflict which antagonized
some in the Jewish community. The African American candidate Ben Carson,
the esteemed neurosurgeon, while adhering to the extreme individualism of black
conservatism, nevertheless embraced his black identity, even going so far as to
suggest because Obama was “raised white” that he would actually be the first
“black” president.”
Notably, Carson is the third African American to seek the Republican
nomination. In 1996 and 2000 Alan Keyes, the political scientist and state
department official, ran for the nomination and in 2012 Herman Cain, the
businessman and talk show host, was a candidate. Charles Henry avers that
since the Republican Party is “not interested in changing its positions on issues
to appeal to the black community. It simply seeks to find a black face to sell
[its] position to that community.”!° Leah Wright Rigueur, author of The
Loneliness of the Black Republican (2014), wrote:

For white conservative audiences Carson is safe. ... For Carson racism is
something to be changed through individual acts rather than something to be
eradicated through structural change. Conservative voters can thus look at
Carson and have their personal beliefs on race validated, especially because a
black man is articulating these same beliefs."

Carson came to the attention of conservative elites after he made a gratuitous

attack on President Obama, while the President was sitting, at the 2013 National
 CHAPTER 9 > Voting Behavior and Elections 201

Prayer Breakfast. After the breakfast speech, the Wall Street Journal editorially
urged him to run for president. Subsequently, Carson went on the conservative
lecture circuit and Fox television attacking the President’s health insurance
program, calling it “the worst thing that has happened since slavery ... and a
new conservative folk hero was born.” !2
At several points during the primaries and caucuses polls showed the mild-
mannered, religiously devout Carson running second to Trump. Carson also
raised a respectable $77 million and had a plausible performance in several
debates. In the end, however, he did not win a single caucus or primary, and
dropped out after the second Super Tuesday and endorsed Trump. Although
Carson likely never had a realistic chance to win, he is the most successful of
black Republican presidential candidates, coming in fifth in a field of seventeen
and winning 850,000 votes and seven pledged delegates. After endorsing Trump,
Carson became an advisor and Trump surrogate on television.

The Republican Party and the Nomination of

Donald J. Trump
Like the nomination of Obama, Trump’s nomination was a genuine phenome-
non; a rare, exceptional unexpected occurrence. When Trump announced,
political scientists and political pundits dismissed his candidacy as a fantasy and
a distraction from the real contest between establishment candidates like Senators
Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul, and Governors Jeb Bush, Scott Walker,
Chris Christie, and Rick Perry. Trump was dismissed as a possible nominee
because he had no prior political experience and was viewed by many as a
buffoon. Yet, he prevailed in one of the most stunning upsets in American
political history.
Trump briefly considered running for the presidency in 2012 on a campaign
based on “Birtherism,” the discredited idea that Obama was not born in the
United States. Starting in 2011, he began to appear on television questioning
Obama’s birth certificate. He claimed he had sent investigators to Hawaii to
look into Obama’s birth and repeatedly asserted, “They cannot believe*what
they are finding.”3Although he probably never sent investigators to Hawaii,'*
Trump’s repeated questions about the legitimacy of Obama’s birth certificate
increased his standing in the early 2012 preference polls for the nomination; in
some polls he was tied for first place.!° After Obama definitively settled the matter
by releasing his long form birth certificate, Trump stopped talking about the
issue and decided not to run in 2012. However, the issue had “served its
purpose, raising Mr. Trump’s profile and whether he knew it or not at the time,
providing him a rudimentary foundation upon which to build the 2016
campaign.”!6This is because the idea Obama was foreign-born is a widely held
belief among about 43 percent of Republicans, and roughly one in five
202 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

Americans.!? Thus, when Trump announced his presidential candidacy in June

2016 he already had a constituency among Republican base voters.
As soon as Trump announced his campaign he began to attract large crowds
and established a lead in the polls he never relinquished. Trump maintained this
lead despite saying, according to the Washington Post, “twenty-three things that
would have doomed another candidate.”!8 Among the things the Post identified
were calling Mexican immigrants rapists, alluding to a newswoman’s
menstruation, alluding to the size of his penis, insulting the looks of Carly
Fiorina, his female opponent, claiming George Bush was involved in the 9/11
attacks, mocking a disabled reporter, falsely claiming thousands of Muslims in
New Jersey celebrated the 9/11 attack, proposing to ban all Muslims from
entering the United States, encouraging violence at his rallies, attacking the Pope,
and declining to immediately disavow the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
Major newspapers routinely ran stories and columns suggesting Trump was a
fascist and a racist.!? Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, labeled
Trump a “con man” and a “fraud” who practiced “trickle-down bigotry,”
“trickle down racism,” “trickle down misogyny,” and has been “vulgar time
and time again.”*° His major competitor in the Republican primaries, Senator
Cruz, said Trump was a “pathological liar,” “utterly immoral,” a “bully” a
“serial philanderer,” and a “narcissist.”*! The National Review, the leading
journal of conservative opinion, labeled Trump a “philosophically unmoored
political opportunist,” the New York Times, “a shady, bombastic liar,” and the
Washington Post lamented the “utter ugliness” of Trump’s “pernicious and
preposterous” campaign.”” In conclusion, George Will, the dean of the nation’s
conservative pundits, announced after Trump won the Republican nomination
that he was leaving the Republican Party. Meanwhile, thousands of the nation’s
writers signed a letter “opposing as a matter of conscience, unequivocally, the
Trump candidacy.”
Yet, in spite of, or perhaps, in some cases, because of this widespread
opposition of both the liberal and conservative intellectual, political, and media
establishments, Trump won—decisively—the Republican nomination. In
winning, he defeated 16 opponents including four incumbent senators, three
incumbent governors, and three former governors, including Jeb Bush, the
former Florida governor and son and brother of a president. Trump won 13
million votes (the largest ever for a Republican primary winner), 41 states or
territories, and 1,441 delegates. His nearest competitor, Senator Cruz, won
almost 8 million votes, 11 states, and 551 delegates. Although Trump’s 13
million votes (45 percent of the total) was a record for a Republican primary
candidate, he also set a record for the most votes against a nominee (16 million),
and while he received 70 percent of the delegates, the 30 percent opposed to
him were also a record for a Republican nominee.”4
Yet Trump’s extraordinary achievement should not be gainsaid. His
thoroughly unorthodox campaign raised and spent relatively little money
 CHAPTER 9 > Voting Behavior and Elections 203

($58 million, mostly in candidate loans) compared to Jeb Bush’s $138 million,
Cruz’s $127 million, and Rubio’s $111 million. The campaign did not employ
a pollster, speech-writer, or advertisement consultant, had little organization
and ran few ads. Trump won, therefore, not on the basis of the traditional
metrics—organization, money, polls, and television ads—but on the basis of
charisma, the force of his personality and the controversial, unorthodox nature
of his issue positions.
In a study of media coverage of the campaign, the New York Times
estimated in the early months of the campaign Trump earned close to $2 billion
in free media coverage, twice the amount earned by Hillary Clinton the next
best in free media, while Sanders earned more free media attention than any of
Trump’s Republican opponents.”° A Harvard Kennedy School study of media
coverage of Trump concluded, “Trump [was] arguably the first bona fide media
created nominee. ... Journalists are attracted to the new, the unusual and
sensational. Trump fit that need as no other candidate in recent memory.”°
Most of the coverage of Trump was positive by a margin of 2-1, notwithstanding
the media criticism of Trump discussed above.’ This was because, as usual in
presidential campaigns, the media focused on the “horserace” and since Trump
was winning the race the coverage was positive (only 12 percent of coverage
focused on issues).”8
Trump’s support in the primaries came disproportionately from white, low-
income males with only a high school education. There are too few nonwhite
voters in Republican primaries to calculate Trump’s support, but exit polls
conducted in 27 states show Trump did well among all categories of white
voters.2? For example, while he won 45 percent of the male vote, he also
received 37 percent of the vote of women, winning a plurality of the female
vote in 19 of the 27 states where exit polls were conducted. And while he won
52 percent of the votes of those with only a high school diploma, he won 45
percent among college graduates. Forty-five percent of low-income voters
(making less than $50,000) supported Trump, but so did 40 percent of the higher
income. Thus, in a field of multiple candidates Trump’s triumph was broad-
based among the virtually all-white Republican electorate in terms of class and
gender.
What explains Trump’s remarkable victory in the face of the overwhelming
opposition of the Republican establishment? In the years ahead, hundreds of
dissertations and articles and scores of books will be written to explain this
phenomenon. At this early stage in the research, some view Trump’s nomination
as the maturing of trends since the late 1960s toward authoritarianism among
Republican voters, accelerated by demographic and economic changes “which
activated authoritarian tendencies, leading many Americans to seek out a strong
man leader who would preserve the status-quo under threat and impose order
on a world they perceive as increasingly alien.”°° Others view it as a populist
revolt by those who believe the system is stacked against them.*! While still
204 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

others reject authoritarianism and populism and instead see Trump’s success as
rooted in white racial prejudice.>2 At this point, we do not have sufficient research
to accept any single theory of “Trumpism.” It likely may be explained by some
combination of theories; however, we advance the theory of white nationalism
as the most comprehensive explanation of Trump’s success.
White nationalism as an explanation was advanced in several media
assessments of the Trump campaign.*? These media accounts are supported by
a small but robust body of political science research. In his seminal book, White
Nationalism, Black Interests: Conservative Public Policy and the Black
Community (2003), Ronald Walters—the late pioneering scholar in identifying
white nationalism or white identity politics as an emergent force in American
politics—traced its beginnings to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 (see
Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom in Chapter 6). Walters
attributes the activation of white nationalist sentiments among segments of the
white population to three factors: First, white resentment of perceived black
social, economic and political advancement, which many whites viewed as
coming unjustly at their expense through programs such as affirmative action.*4
Second, white economic stagnation and growing income inequality, which
results in a third factor, “the perception of a threat to white dominance which
has “produced growing anxiety among whites, especially males.”°°
In 2010, a team of political scientists prepared a proposal for the American
National Election Study (ANES) entitled, “White Racial Consciousness in the
U.S.,” which concluded that because of two decades of mass immigration, a
growing nonwhite population, and the election of a black president the
“dominance of whites as a racial group seems to be in jeopardy.”** As a result,
“There is growing evidence that in response to this threat, whites are increasingly
identifying with their racial group, and this group attachment has important
political consequences.”°” One of these political consequences is the Election of
Donald Trump.
In fact, survey data show that both white identity and nationalist beliefs
are associated with voter support for Trump in the Republican primaries. For
example, those whites who said their identity as whites was “extremely
important” to them were 30 points more likely to vote for Trump; those who
perceive a great deal of discrimination against whites, 40 points more likely;
and those who thought it was “extremely likely that many whites were unable
to find a job because employers were hiring minorities,” 50 points more likely.28
Moreover, T'rump supporters were more likely to report they were economically
struggling and that whites were “losing out” because of preferences for African
Americans and Latinos.
Thus, white nationalism appears to be at least one robust explanation for
the Trump triumph. White identity becomes nationalist politics “when group
conflict leads to perceptions that one’s group is relatively deprived and collective
action is an agreed upon means by which to challenge the social order in an
 CHAPTER 9 > Voting Behavior and Elections 205

effort to improve the position of the group.” Many whites, as a result of

economic stagnation, Hispanic immigration, and affirmative action perceive
themselves under threat; thus, white nationalist politics may become even
more pronounced as the nation trends toward a “majority-minority” status.
The Trump phenomenon, even without Trump, may be an enduring feature of
American politics, which undermines the quest for universal freedom for all
American citizens.
Consequently, at the 2016 Republican Convention of 2,472 delegates only
18 (0.7 percent) were African American, the lowest number since 1964 when
the party nominated the conservative, anti-civil rights Senator Barry Goldwater.
Black delegates reportedly felt dismayed as the Convention “veered unexpectedly
and unhappily toward lecturing, moralizing . . . as [it] focused on appealing to
voters.”*°

The Democratic Party and the Nomination of

Hillary Rodham Clinton
The black vote was central to Hillary Clinton’s success in her second bid for
the Democratic nomination, just as it was central when she lost to Barack Obama
in 2008.
When Gallup in 1937 first asked Americans would they vote for a woman
for president if she was qualified “in every other respect,” 64 percent said “no.”
In 2016, when Clinton announced for a second time, less than 5 percent said
“no.” In fact, in 2016 she was considered likely to win the Democratic
nomination without serious competition until Senator Bernie Sanders, the 74-
year-old Vermont registered Independent, self-declared socialist, announced his
candidacy as a democrat, and subsequently ran a surprisingly competitive race.
Interestingly, first, because of Sanders’s socialist ideology, which has long
been a “bogeyman” in American politics, according to a June 2015 Gallup poll
that revealed 90 percent plus of Americans would vote for a woman, Catholic,
African American, Latino, or a Jew for the presidency, 81 percent for a Muslim,
74 percent for a homosexual, 58 percent for an atheist, but only 47 percent for
a socialist. Whites were particularly hostile to socialism with only 24 percent
expressing a positive view compared to 55 percent of blacks and 44 percent of
Latinos.*! Forty-nine percent of young people had a positive opinion of socialism
compared to 13 percent of those 65 and older, and 59 percent of liberal
democrats compared to 6 percent of conservative Republicans. Thus, the
“socialist” Sanders had a potential base constituency among African Americans,
Latinos, young people, and liberal Democrats. We have limited data on the
voting behavior of Latinos and liberal Democrats during the Democratic
primaries, but we know that young people did constitute a base of Sanders’s
constituency while African Americans were the core Clinton constituency.
206 PARTIII > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

Sanders’s major issue during the campaign was the struggle for equality, an
issue that has consumed him for most of his career. A long-term leftist (Sanders
and his first wife honeymooned in the Soviet Union), Sanders in the 1960s was
a member of the Young People’s Socialist League and affiliated with two of the
more radical black civil rights organizations, SNCC and CORE. Sanders during
the campaign did not, however, propose traditional or explicit socialist policies
such as nationalization of industries or confiscatory taxes on inherited wealth.
Instead, he advanced traditional liberal ideas such as universal health insurance
(“Medicare for All”), a $15 minimum wage, paid family leave, free tuition at
public universities, expanded social security and pensions for the elderly and
increased taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Most of these ideas were
advanced or accepted by Clinton. In foreign policy Sanders, unlike Clinton,
opposed the Iraq war, U.S. intervention in Libya and Syria, and was critical of
what he called the “one-sided” U.S. support for Israel.
Sanders and Clinton each raised more than $200 million. More than 90
percent of Sanders’s contributions were from individuals in small contributions
under $200 with an average contribution of $2747—a popular slogan during
campaign speeches—while most of Clinton’s were from wealthy individuals
connected to lawyers, corporations, and financial institutions.
Initially Sanders’s campaign was ignored by the media; however, after he
started to attract large crowds and gain support in the polls press coverage
increased and tended to be positive while coverage of Clinton was over-
whelmingly negative.*? Plagued by “scandals” involving her emails and Benghazi,
“Clinton’s negative coverage can be equated to millions of dollars in attack ads,
with her on the receiving end.”“4
Nevertheless, Clinton easily prevailed, winning 55 percent of the primary
votes, 34 states or territories, and 54 percent of the pledged delegates compared
to Sanders’s 45 percent primary vote, 23 states, and 43 percent of the pledged
delegates. As the favorite of the party establishment, Clinton received 78 percent
of the super delegates compared to Sanders’s 3 percent.
Sanders won the white vote 49 to 47 percent; the vote among men was even
at 49 percent each while Clinton decisively won the vote of women, 60 to 38.45
Sanders’s core or base constituency was young people (ages 18-29), which he
won 68 to 21, while Clinton won the elderly vote by an equally decisive margin
of 64 to 30. The limited data available indicates that Clinton also won the Latino
vote 56 to 43. No exit poll data are available on the Jewish vote, not even from
New York and Florida where it is sizeable. This is inexplicable since Sanders
was the first competitive Jewish candidate for a major party nomination.
Clinton won 80 percent of the African American vote, which provided the
competitive edge in states won, primary votes, and pledged delegates. To put it
another way, if Clinton’s margin among African Americans had been similar to
her margin among whites or even among Latinos, she could have only won the
 CHAPTER 9 > Voting Behavior and Elections 207

nomination with the super delegates who in that case might have decided to
split their votes.
How can we account for this overwhelming lack of support for the most
liberal candidate by the most liberal group in the electorate, and the group most
positive toward socialism? First, at the start of the campaign Sanders was nearly
completely unknown to most African Americans compared to the well-known
and popular Clintons. Second, Clinton was generally supportive of Obama
while Sanders was often critical of Obama’s failure to do more to remedy income
inequality, challenge Wall Street, or pursue more comprehensive health
insurance. Third, while Sanders attacked Clinton for supporting the “crime and
welfare” bill—adopted as the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement
Act—signed by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, these issues
apparently had little impact on African American voters (Sanders voted for the
crime bill because, he said, it included provisions related to violence against
women). Fourth, while Sanders addressed the problem of income inequality
generally he did not offer policies to address or target specifically racial inequality
or poverty. Moreover, some economists calculated that Sanders’s specific pro-
posals for family leave, college tuition, and health insurance would dispro-
portionately benefit the middle class rather than the poor.*® Finally, although
Sanders was endorsed by African American celebrities like Spike Lee, Danny
Glover, and Harry Belafonte, no African American mayor, civil rights leader
and only one of the 43 black members of Congress endorsed him.
At the Democratic National Convention, African Americans accounted for
1,182 or 25 percent of the delegates compared to the 18 delegates or 0.7 percent
at the Republican National Convention.*” And rather than moralizing lectures
about their behavior, the mothers of African Americans killed by the police
were spotlighted as a positive nod to the Black Lives Matter movement. Their
tempered, emotional appeal for accountability was reinforced by the First Lady,
Michelle Obama, during her memorable, impassioned speech about being an e

African American and a mother at this time in America’s history. And, President
Obama’s celebratory speech sought to unite the Democratic Party by appealing
to Sanders’s “Bernie or Bust” backers in a strong endorsement of Clinton. The
party platform in general and with respect to civil rights and poverty was the
most liberal since 1972, promising vigorous enforcement of the former and a
renewed assault on the latter. It also promised reform of the criminal justice
system and development of policies to address institutional racism and the racial
wealth gap.*8
Interestingly, at the end of the national conventions, both parties (Republican
and Democratic) had nominated candidates disliked and distrusted by the
electorate. Indeed, Trump and Clinton had near the end of the primaries the
highest “very” unfavorable ratings of any candidates in modern history: Clinton
at 37 percent, Trump 53 percent (the previous highs were Obama at 24 in 2008
and Reagan at 20 in 1980 and 1984). Clearly, for many voters, the contest
208 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

between Trump and Clinton was a choice between two of the most disliked
candidates in recent American history, setting the stage for one of the most
rancorous presidential elections ever.

The Election of Donald J. Trump

By September, the Clinton-Trump campaign was vitriolic, vituperative and
dispiriting, leaving many voters angry, fearful and disgusted. The American
Psychological Association in a report released in mid-October reported that half
the electorate was suffering from what might be called “election stress disorder,”
including headaches, stomachaches and loss of sleep.°° The two campaigns began
with both Clinton and Trump accusing each other of corruption, racism,
misogyny, bigotry’! and personal attacks that grew progressively worse.
In early October, the Washington Post published a story and accompanying
video of Trump bragging in lewd and obscene language about how he interacts
with women, which was analogous to sexual assault. Then, eleven women came
forward alleging that Trump had sexually assaulted them. The Clinton campaign
exploited the issue targeting women voters and their allies. Trump retaliated
by accusing former president Bill Clinton of sexual assault, and even had four
women, who were his alleged victims, as guests at the second presidential debate.
Beginning at the Republican National Convention and repeatedly thereafter,
Trump said Clinton, because of her use of a private email server while Secretary
of State, was a criminal—referring to her as “Crooked Hillary”—who should
be jailed. His supporters at the national convention and his campaign rallies
often shouted “Lock her up! Lock her up!” and referred to her in unspeakable
epithets and gendered language. At their final debate, Trump derisively called
Clinton a “nasty woman” and stated, if he won, that he would have a special
prosecutor appointed to investigate and jail her.
Both campaigns came under scrutiny by the FBI. In July, in an unprecedented
news conference, the FBI Director, James Comey, declared that while Clinton
had been “extremely careless” in her use of the private email server, there was
no evidence of criminal behavior. However, in October, less than two weeks
before the general election, the Director released a letter sent to Congress
indicating that there may be possible incriminating emails sent by Clinton that
were found on the computer of former congressman, Anthony Wiener—the
estranged husband of one of Clinton’s top aides—discovered during an
investigation of him in a sexting scandal with a minor. As a result, Comey
reopened the previous investigation. Then, just two days before the general
election, he indicated the FBI had once again found no criminal wrong-doing
by Clinton. Meanwhile, US intelligence agencies accused Russia of hacking the
emails of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign in order
to help Trump, leading Clinton to accuse the Trump campaign of working with
the Russians to corrupt the election. The hacked emails, released by WikiLeaks,
resulted in allegations that donors to the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton
 CHAPTER 9 > Voting Behavior and Elections 209

Foundation had been given special access and favors by Clinton while she was
Secretary of State. The leaked emails also revealed some of the unsavory
maneuvering of Clinton aides as they attempted to undermine the Sanders’
campaign during the primaries. With respect to Trump’s campaign, the US
intelligence agencies’ accusations proved to be true; it was revealed a day after
the election that a senior Russian diplomat confirmed that Russian government
officials conferred with members of his campaign team.°2
As Election Day grew closer, nearly all of the media pundits and pollsters
had Clinton projected as the winner, causing Trump to repeatedly imply that
the entire election was “rigged” and corrupt. In fact, he even refused to say he
would accept the results if he did not win, and called on his supporters to be
“vigilant against widespread voter fraud”*> and to monitor polling places for
“ballot security” in “certain areas.”** In response, in the last week before the
election, the Democratic Party filed lawsuits against the Trump campaign and
the Republican Party in four states charging violations of the 1871 Ku Klux
Klan Act—the basis of the RNC 1982 consent decree whereby the RNC agreed
to curb its vote watching tactics— and the Voting Rights Act alleging they were
conspiring to intimidate and discourage nonwhites from voting in the election.**
It was within this venomous, vulgar atmosphere that dispirited Americans
went to the polls on November 8 to elect Donald John Trump the 45‘ President
of the United States in, perhaps, the most stunning upset in presidential election
history.

Race and the 2016 Election

Race was not a major issue during the campaign. Although Trump occasionally
made racially insensitive remarks, overall he did not attempt to use race as a
wedge issue in the way, for example, he used immigration. To the contrary,
Trump was the first Republican nominee since Richard Nixon in 1960 to make
explicit appeals to the black electorate. Among Trump’s white nationalist
supporters, two issues are salient: immigration and affirmative action.
Trump began his campaign by exploiting the immigration issue but paid no
attention to affirmative action. Indeed, he never mentioned it, even though
affirmative action is more unpopular among whites generally—both liberals and
conservatives—than immigration.°°
Trump’s overtures to blacks were often arrogant, condescending and ill-
informed. He charged that for fifty years the Democrats had taken the “black
vote” for granted while doing nothing to address the problems of the community.
In making this charge, Trump frequently exclaimed that the “inner cities”—his
description for African American communities—had “[h]orrible education, no
housing, no homes, no ownership; crime at levels that nobody has seen. . . what
in the hell do you have to lose?” in voting for him.*” Despite his crude appeal,
he nevertheless was the first Republican nominee in decades to verbally raise
210 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

the issue of the plight of low-income and poor African Americans. He proposed
enhanced access to education, tax incentives for businesses to locate in black
communities, easing access to credit, creating jobs and infrastructure rebuilding
as part of what he called a “New Deal for Black America.”°* However, some
of the proposed solutions (e.g., “stop and frisk” and “school choice”) are
controversial in the African American community.
Whatever the merits of Trump’s entreaties toward the black electorate, exit
polls revealed he had little appeal to African American voters perhaps because
of his racially insensitive rhetoric, the well-documented “long history of racial
bias” by his real estate company in New York,°? and his refusal to renounce
the endorsement days before the election by the official newspaper of the Ku
Klux Klan. Perhaps, his “black outreach” was not directed to African Americans,
but rather was an effort to assuage white voters concerned about voting for a
person often accused of racism.°?
Like the Democratic platform, Clinton embraced the most progressive
rhetoric on race since 1972, even going so far as to adopt some of the language
of the Black Lives Matter Movement.*! However, the leaked emails revealed
that even during the primaries Clinton and her staff were wary of talking about
poor people and poverty for fear of alienating white conservative and centrist
voters in the general election.®* As one commentator wrote,

[s]he struggled always to neatly encapsulate her vision of America. [Her

slogan] ‘Stronger Together’ was never as snappy as [Trump’s] ‘Make America
Great Again.’ Indeed, the Clinton campaign went through dozens of possible
slogans, which spoke of her difficulties in crafting a message.

In order to win, she had to appeal to the diverse electorate in Obama’s

rainbow coalition—comprised of majority nonwhite, women, millennial,
working-class, LGBT, liberal voters.

Barack Obama’s Winning Rainbow Coalition:

The Challenge for Hillary Clinton
In another unprecedented act in the history of presidential campaigns, both
President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama frequently and fervently
campaigned for Clinton’s election. The president told audiences that her election
was indispensable to preservation of his legacy, declaring “everything we have
done over the last eight years will be reversed with a Trump presidency.”
If the President was correct, the outcome of the election was not just a rejection
of Hillary Clinton but could be a repudiation of his legacy.
A key question from the outset of Clinton’s campaign was would she be
able to maintain Obama’s winning minority-majority rainbow coalition. The
 CHAPTER 9 > Voting Behavior and Elections 211

data in Table 9.4, comparing the demographic bases of Obama’s coalition in

2012 with Clinton in 2016, show she was not. While Latinos and Asians in the
coalition slightly increased their share of the electorate (from 10 to 11 percent
and 3 to 4 percent, respectively), their support for Clinton declined when
compared to Obama in 2012 (Latino support decreased from 71 to 65 percent
and Asian support from 73 to 65 percent). Although the African American share
of the electorate declined from 13 to 12 percent, Clinton received 88 percent
of their vote—the highest among all groups—compared to Obama’s 93 percent.
The white share of the electorate also declined from 72 to 70 percent; Clinton
received 37 percent compared to Obama’s 39 percent.
Women were a key constituent in the rainbow coalition. Interestingly, the
first woman major party nominee did less well among women than the first
African American male nominee at 54 to 55 percent, respectively. While Clinton
did only one point better than Obama among white women generally (43 to 42
percent), due mainly to college educated white women,® she trailed Obama
among white men 31 to 35 percent. Clinton won among nonwhite women and
men voters, including 94 percent of black women.
Among the millennials, 18-to-24-year-olds, Obama won 60 percent and
Clinton won 55 percent, including 83 percent of blacks, 70 percent of Latinos,
but only 43 percent of whites.°© Among the 30-to-34-year-olds, Obama won
52 percent and Clinton won 50 percent, including 87 percent of blacks,
71 percent of Latinos, but only 55 percent of whites.°” This population com-
prised a significant share of Clinton’s coalition, in addition to her share of
LGBT (78 percent), Jewish (71 percent) and voters of secular backgrounds
(68 percent), which was comparable to Obama’s (76, 78, 70 percent,
respectively).
Obama won voters with a high school or some college education (51 and
49 percent). Clinton received 45 and 43 percent of these voters, losing to Trump
who won 51 to 52. As in the primaries, Trump won disproportionately among
white men and women without a college education®® with a majority-white
coalition—comprised of conservatives, populists, racists and white nationalists—
that was broad-based, including white college graduates, suburbanites and
persons living in rural areas.®
Overall, these relatively small changes in voter turnout and margins of
support—possibly due overall to lack of enthusiasm and new voter suppres-
sion laws—made the difference in Trump’s election, making him the fifth
president in history who became a winner while losing. That is, Clinton led in
the popular vote with 65.2 million (48%) to Trump’s 62.6 (46%) for more than
2.5 million votes. Yet, Trump won thirty states compared to Clinton’s twenty
and the District of Columbia yielding an Electoral College margin of 279 to
228. This unexpected outcome caused thousands to erupt into organic protests
in cities across the country and on social media, exclaiming “Trump is not my
president.””°
212 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

TABLE 9.4 |

2012 2016

Percent Percent Percent Percent Percent Percent

Electorate Obama Romney Electorate Clinton Trump :

Gender
Women 53 55 44 5Z 54 42
Men cay 45 52 48 41 5S
Race/Ethnicity :
Black 13 93 6 242 88 8
White DPD 39 61 70 37 58
Men 34 35 62 34 31 63
Women 38 42 56 37 43 wy. 53
Latino 10 71 ZT. 11 ae OD 29
Asian 3 73 26 4 65 29
Religion
Protestant 53 30 69 52 39 58
Evangelical 26 21 78 26 16 81
- Catholic 25 40 59 23 45 52
Jewish ee 78 21 3 71 24
None 12 70 26 15 68 26
Age
18-29 19 60 S3y/ 19 55 37
30-34 Bik 52 45 25 50 42
35-64 38 47 51 40 44 53
65+ 16 44 56 15 45 53
Education
High school 21 51 48 18 45 51
Some college 29 49 48 32 43 52
College Grad. 29 47 51 32 49 45
Postgraduate 18 55 42 18 58 37
Sexual Orientation
LGBT@ 5 76 LD 5 78 14
Heterosexual 95 49 49 95 49 48
“LGBT is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender identity.
Source: CNN Presidential Race, 2016, www.cnn.com/election/results/exit-polls. CNN,
Presidential Race, 2012. www.cnn.com/election/201 2/results/race/president#exitpolls. Exit poll
data are only rough approximations of turn out and voting behavior.

RES SO PEAS RPL MEATS SILL LE I LS ELT DIED SSDS EAI SIE ED EI OR SHS
 CHAPTER 9 > Voting Behavior and Elections 213

The electorate was as politically and ideologically polarized as it was by

race, age and gender. Although a number of Republican and conservative elites
abandoned Trump, 90 percent of Republicans and 81 percent of conservatives
voted for him while 89 percent of Democrats and 84 percent of liberals supported
Clinton.7!
Trump’s surprising victory was all the more remarkable since Clinton had
a clear advantage in money, outspending Trump on everything from television
ads to staffing field offices to get out the vote.” Her campaign organizational
infrastructure, modeled on Obama’s winning strategy, was also viewed as more
effective; and the polls indicated, by overwhelming margins, Clinton won each
of the three debates. Yet in the end, as one reporter wrote, “few people personify
the political establishment more than Hillary Clinton. During this campaign,
for millions of angry voters, she became the face of America’s broken politics
. seen . . . as an east coast elite that looked down, sneeringly, on working
people. ... even though they happily voted for a property tycoon.””

The Congressional Elections

The 2016 congressional election saw more people of color elected as Democrats.
In the Senate, Kamala Harris (California), the biracial daughter of an African
American father and Indian American mother, became the sixth African
American and first Indian American elected to the Senate, meaning for the first
time in history, three blacks will serve at the same time in that body. In the
House of Representatives, Democrats gained three more African Americans: Lisa
Blunt Rochester (Delaware),’* Valdez Venita “Val” Demings (Florida) and
Donald McEachin (Virginia).’> However, the election of Adriano Espaillat, the
first Dominican elected to Congress, succeeding longtime, retiring Representative
Charles Rangel, signaled a change in historic black Harlem, indicative of changes
taking place in many urban areas, as the population transitions from majority
or plurality African American to Hispanic.’”° The size of the African American
House delegation in the 115th Congress will increase to forty-seven.
Although the Democrats won six House and two Senate seats, both houses
remained firmly under Republican control. This could mean that the Trump
administration may be able to enact much of its policy agenda, beginning with
the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) and other significant
accomplishments”” under President Obama. For African Americans in their
quest for universal freedom, the 2016 election of Donald Trump could be the
most decisive setback since the 1912 election of Woodrow Wilson, arguably the
most racist President of the 20th century.”
214 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom

JOHN MERCER LANGSTON (1829-1897)
John Mercer Langston was the first African American elected to office in the
United States. Born free in Virginia, he was the son of a wealthy white slave
holder and a woman of mixed African and Indian ancestry. When his father
died, he left Langston an inheritance, which he used to get a good education
and accumulate a substantial fortune. After graduating from Oberlin College
in Ohio in 1850, he aspired to become a lawyer. Ohio law prohibited African
Americans from practicing law, but because of his light skin color it was decided
that Langston was entitled to the privileges of a white man. A successful practice
led to his election to the Oberlin town council, making him not only the first
black elected to office but also the first from a majority white constituency
(ironically, blacks were not allowed to vote in Ohio, so a special exception had
to be made in order that Langston could vote for himself). In many ways,
Langston resembles Barack Obama: born to mixed-race parents, highly educated,
and charismatic, he was able to appeal across racial boundaries to establish a
minority—majority coalition. Langston was also mentioned as a possible
Republican vice presidential candidate.
After the Civil War, Langston returned to Virginia where he was elected to
Congress, where he fought for free and fair elections as the indispensable
foundation for universal freedom. (Because of a long dispute about irregularities
in the election, Langston was able to serve only three months of his two-year

John Mercer Langston.

Source: Brady, Mathew. “John Mercer
Langston.” Library of Congress Prints and
Photographs Division. Brady-Handy
Photograph Collection. Retrieved 4 October
2016 from http://hdl.loc.gov
 CHAPTER 9 > Voting Behavior and Elections 215

term.) In addition to holding elective office, Langston organized the National

Equal Rights League (a forerunner to the NAACP) and was the founding dean
of Howard University law school. He was appointed by President Rutherford
B. Hayes as minister to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In 1894, three years
before his death, he wrote his autobiography, From the Virginia Plantation to
the National Capital.*
* William and Aimee Lee Cheek, John Mercer Langston and the Fight for Black Freedom (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1989).

SUMM ary Bee eee eee

Until the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, African Americans were
denied the right to vote even in northern states such as New York. Even after
the adoption of the amendment, it would take passage of the Voting Rights Act
of 1965 before African Americans gained the universal right to vote throughout
the United States. Today, blacks vote at about the same rate as whites when
social class is taken into account. From time to time, the black vote has been
the balance of power in presidential elections, determining the outcome when
the white vote is closely divided. This process is episodic, however, because
generally the black vote is a “captive vote” in national elections, ignored by the
Republicans and taken for granted by the Democrats. In 2008 and 2012,
however, the black vote was in a sense “liberated,” playing a crucial role in the
election and reelection of the first African American president. In 2016, however,
the black vote while cohesive was not able to determine the outcome of the
election because of the larger, more cohesive vote of the white majority.

Critical Thinking Questions

1. Discuss the various factors that prevented African Americans from voting
in U.S. elections until 1968.
2. Explain the significance of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, 1960, 1964, and
the subsequent Voting Rights Act of 1965 legislation on advancing universal
freedom and democratic voting in the United States.
3. Describe the typical African American voter. Explain the significance in the
quest for universal freedom.
4. Discuss the significance of social media integration in the Obama 2008 and
2012 campaigns. How has the use of social media impacted subsequent
presidential campaigns?
5. Discuss the presidential campaigns of 2016. What were the similarities and
differences with the Obama campaigns? What role did race play in these
campaigns?
216 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

Selected Bibliography
Guinier, Lani. The Tyranny of the Majority. New York: Free Press, 1994. President
Clinton’s failed nominee for assistant attorney general for civil rights explains the
limitations of the Voting Rights Act and blacks’ use of the ballot to achieve race reform.
Jarvis, Sonia. “Historical Overview: African Americans and the Evolution of Voting
Rights.” In R. Gomes and L. Williams, eds., From Exclusion to Inclusion: The Long
Struggle for African American Political Power. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992.
A concise overview of the long struggle of blacks to obtain the ballot.
Leighley, Jan, and Jonathan Nagler. Who Votes Now?: Issues, Inequality and Turnout
in the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014. Especially useful
on nonvoters, minorities, and youth, and their potential impact on election outcomes.
Pinderhughes, Dianne. “The Role of African American Political Organizations in the
Mobilization of Voters.” In R. Gomes and L. Williams., eds., From Exclusion to
Inclusion: The Long Struggle for African American Political Power. Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 1992. A study of the role that black political organizations play
in registering and turning out the black vote. ,
Reid, John. “The Voting Behavior of Blacks.” Intercom 9 (1981): 8-11. A brief but very
useful analysis of the factors shaping the black vote.
Tate, Katherine. From Protest to Politics: The New Black Voter. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1994. A sophisticated study of the black vote intention and
the vote itself, focusing on their determinants.
Teixeria, Ray. The Emerging Democratic Majority. New York: Lisa Drew/Scribner, 2002.
An analysis of how demographic changes suggest increasing support for the
Democratic Party.
Walton, Hanes, Jr., ed. “Black Voting Behavior in the Segregationist Era.” In Walton,
Black Politics and Black Political Behavior: A Linkage Analysis. Westport, CT:
Praeger, 1994. An examination of how blacks registered and voted in Georgia during
the era of disenfranchisement.

Notes Muiienniee ee
1 Phyllis Field, The Politics of Race in New York: The Struggle for Black Suffrage in
the Civil War Era (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982): 59, 124-26, 198.
2 On these various schemes used in the South to deprive blacks of the vote, see Hanes
Walton, Jr., Black Politics (Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott, 1992): 33-54.
3 For an engaging memoir of one of these courageous individuals, see John H. Scott
(with Cleo Scott), Witness to the Truth: My Struggle for Human Rights in Louisiana
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003).
4 For citations to and discussions of these cases, see Walton, Black Politics, pp. 33-40.
5 Mary Jordan, “Liberal Hispanic Activists Assail Rubio, Cruz as ‘Traitors’ to Their
Culture,” Washington Post, December 15, 2015.
6 Asma Khalid, “Indian-Americans Feel ‘Disappointed’, ‘Abandoned’ by Bobby Jindal,”
accessed at: www.npr.org/2015/11/181/4565180861unhyphenated-bobby-jindal-
disappointed-indian-americans.
7 Ibid.
8 Julie Zauzmer, “Bernie Sanders is Jewish: Why Isn’t that Convincing Jews to Vote
for Him?” Washington Post, March 8, 2016.
9 Glen Thrush, “Ben Carson: Obama Was Raised White,” Politico, February 23, 2016.
 CHAPTER 9 > Voting Behavior and Elections 217

10 Charles Henry, “Herman Cain and the Rise of the Black Right,” Journal of Black
Studies 44 (2013): 71.
11 Leah Wright Rigueur, “Ben Carson? The Long Tradition of Black Conservatism,”
Washington Post, September 10, 2015.
12 Robert Samuels, “Ben Carson: From Inspiring to Polarizing,” Washington Post,
January 3, 2016.
13 Ashley Parker and Steve Elder, “Inside the Six Weeks Donald Trump was a Birther,”
New York Times, July 2, 2016.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
a Sam Frizell, “One in Five Americans Still Think Obama Is Foreign-Born, According
to Poll,” Time, September 14, 2015.
18 Phillip Bump, “23 Things Donald Trump Said that Would Have Doomed Another
Candidate,” Washington Post, June 17, 2016.
19 Ross Douthat, “Is Donald Trump a Fascist?” New York Times, December 3, 2015;
Pam Grier, “Is Donald Trump Really A Fascist?” Christian Science Monitor,
November 25, 2015; Dana Milibank, “Donald Trump is a Bigot and a Racist,”
Washington Post, December 1, 2015; David Hersey, “Donald Trump’s Fascist
Inclinations Do Not Bother His Fans,” Los Angeles Times, December 14, 2015; “The
New Fuehrer,” Philadelphia Daily News, December 8, 2015; Timothy Egan, “Goose-
Steppers in the GOP,” New York Times, December 12, 2015; Robert Kagan, “This
is How Fascism Comes to America,” Washington Post, May 19, 2016. Also, the
New York Daily News ran several front-page headlines calling Trump a fascist. See,
for example, the issue of December 9, 2015. See also Nicholas Kristof, “Is Donald
Trump a Racist?” New York Times, July 24, 2016.
Interview, CNN with Wolf Blitzer, June 10, 2016.
See www.cnn.com/2016/05/03/politics/donald-trump-rafael-cruz-indiana/.
See www.politico.com/story/20116/01/trump-nationalreview-218079; the New York
Times, “The Party of Trump and the Path Forward for Democrats,” March 3, 2016;
and the Washington Post, “Donald Trump Is a Poison Pill for the Republican Party,”
December 6, 2015.
Susan Hinckley, “Thousands of Writers Pen Letter Denouncing Trump,” Christian
Science Monitor, May 26, 2016.
Phillip Bump, “Donald Trump Was Just Nominated with the Eighth-Lowest Delegate
Percentage in GOP History,” Washington Post, July 20, 2016.
Nicholas Confessore and Karen Yourish, “Measuring Trump’s Big Advantage in Free
Media,” New York Times, March 17, 2016.
Thomas Patterson, Pre-Primary News Coverage of the 2016 Presidential Race:
Trump’s Rise, Sanders’ Emergence, Clinton’s Struggle. See http://shorensteincenter.
org/pre-primary-news-coverage-2016-trump-clinton-sanders/p.5.
Ibid.
Ibid.
See www.cnn.com/election/primaries/polls.
Amanda Taub, “The Rise of American Authoritarianism,” Vox, March 1, 2016. See
www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism. On the increasing
significance of authoritarian tendencies in American politics since the early 1970s,
see Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler, Authoritarianism and Polarization in
American Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Ron Fournier, “The Populist Revolt,” The Atlantic, February 10, 2016.
218 PARTIII > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

32 Adam Enders and Steven Smallpage, “Racial Prejudice, Not Populism or Authori-
tarianism Predicts Trump’s Support,” Washington Post, May 26, 2016.
33 See, as examples, Daniel Marans, “How Trump Is Inspiring a New Generation of
White Nationalists,” Huffington Post, March 3, 2016; Michael Tesler and John Sides,
“How Political Science Helps Explain the Rise of Trump: The Role of White Identity
and Grievances,” Washington Post, March 3, 2016; and Alex Altman, “The
Billionaire and the Bigots: How Trump’s Campaign Brought White Nationalists Out
of the Shadows,” Time, April 25, 2016.
34 Ronald W. Walters, White Nationalism, Black Interests: Conservative Public Policy
and the Black Community (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2003): 27.
35 Ibid., p. 155.
36 See “White Racial Consciousness in the U.S.: 2016 ANES Pilot Study Proposal,” p.
1. On modern white nationalist politics see also Matthew Hughey, White Bound:
Nationalists, Antiracists and the Shared Meanings of Race (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2012).
oy Ibid.
38 Tesler and Sides, “How Political Science Helps Explain the Rise of Trump: The Role
of White Identity and Grievances.”
39 See “White Racial Consciousness in the U.S.: 2016 ANES Pilot Study,” p. 3. See also
Nicholas Confessore, “For Whites Sensing Decline, Donald Trump Unleashes Words
of Resistance,” New York Times, July 13, 2016.
40 Yamiche Alexander and Jeremy Peters, “Black Republicans See a White Convention,
Heavy on Lectures,” New York Times, July 19, 2016.
41 See www.people-press-org/2011/12/2 8/little-change-in-public-response-to-capitalism-
socialism/5/30/16.
42 Phillip Bump, “Bernie Sanders Keeps Saying His Average Donation is $27, but His
Own Numbers Contradict That,” Washington Post, April 18, 2016.
43 Patterson, Pre-Primary News Coverage of the 2016 Presidential Race.
44 Ibid., p. 14.
45 Calculations by the authors from the 27 states where exit polls were conducted.
46 Max Ehrenfrand, “What Didn’t Happen after Sanders Slammed Clinton on Helping
Poor People,” Washington Post, May 10, 2016.
47 See “Numbers Don’t Lie: So We Counted All the Women and People of Color at
the DNC and RNC ...,” Fusion, July 27, 2016. In fact, it was reported that the
DNC was more inclusive than the RNC with women accounting for 2,887 of the
4,766 delegates, while 292 delegates were Asian Americans, 747 were Latinos, 147
were Native Americans, and 633 were LGBTQ-identified persons, respectively,
http://fusion.net/story/330193/dnc-rnc-women-people-of-color-numbers/.
48 See www.presidency.ucsb.edu/papers_pdf/117717.pdf.
49 Harry Enten, “Americans” Dislike of Both Trump and Clinton Is Record-Breaking,”
at http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-distaste-for-both-trump-and-clinton-
is-record-breaking/
50 American Psychological Association, “APA Survey Reveals 2016 Presidential Election
Source of Significant Stress for Half of Americans,” at www.apa.org/news/press/
release/2016/101 presidential-election-stress.aspx
| Gabriel Debenedetti and Louis Nelson, “Trump and Clinton Hurl the R Word,”
Politico, August 25, 2016.
32 By David Filipov and Andrew Roth, “Moscow had contacts with Trump team during
campaign, Russian diplomat says,” Washington Post, November 10, 2016.
aye, Trip Gabriel, “Donald Trump’s Call to Monitor Polls Raises Fears of Intimidation,”
New York Times, October 18, 2016.
 CHAPTER 9 > Voting Behavior and Elections 219

54 Matt Friedman, “Democrats: RNC Violating Anti-Voter Intimidation Agreement,”

Politico, October 27, 2016.
ae) Ibid.
56 On the consistent and overwhelming opposition to affirmative action — when defined
as racial preferences or advantages in employment or university admissions — even
among white liberals see Robert C. Smith and Richard Seltzer, Polarization and the
Presidency: From FDR to Barack Obama (Boulder, CO.: Lynne Rienner, 2015):
passim, p. 278.
37 Danny Vinik, “Donald Trump’s Confused Portrait of Black America,” Politico,
October 21, 2016. Many African Americans found Trump’s description of their
community offensive, crude and insulting, see Richard Fausset and Yamiche Alcindor,
“Donald Trump’s Description of Black America is Offending Those Living in It,”
New York Times, August 25, 2016.
58 Ben Kamisar, “Trump Promises New Deal for Black America,” The Hill, October
26, 2016.
59 Jonathan Mahler and Steve Eder, “How Trump Got His Start, and Was First Accused
of Bias,” New York Times, August 28, 2016.
60 Philip Rucker, Robert Costa and Jenna Johnson, “Inside Donald Trump’s New
Strategy to Counter the View That He is a Racist,” Washington Post, August 23,
2016.
61 Farah Stockman, “The Subtle Phrases Hillary Clinton Uses to Sway Black Voters,”
New York Times, September 29, 2016.
62 Benjamin Appelbaum, “The Millions of Americans Donald Trump and Hillary
Clinton Barely Mention,” New York Times, August 11, 2016.
63 Nick Bryant, “Hillary Clinton and the US election: What Went Wrong for Her?”
BBC News, November 9, 2016 at http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-
BII22IS9
64 Edward Isaae Dorere, “Trump Close to Winning Obama Warns,” Politico, November
5, 2016.
65 National President Election, 2016 Exit Polls at www.cnn.com/election/results/exit-
polls.
66 Ibid.
67 Ibid.
68 Ibid.
69 Nicholas Confessore and Nate Cohn, “A Victory Built on a Unique Coalition of
Whites,” New York Times, November 10, 2016.
70 Matea Gold, Mark Berman and Renae Merle, “‘Not my president’: Thousands
protest Trump in Rallies Across the U.S.,” Washington Post, November 11, 2016.
iA National President Election, 2016 Exit Polls at www.cnn.com/election/results/exit-
olls.
ia es Vogel and Isaac Arnsdory, “Clinton’s Homestretch Advantage: $99 million,”
Politico, October 28, 2016.
73 Bryant, “Hillary Clinton and the US election: What Went Wrong for Her?”
74 Amber Phillips, “One Election Bright Spot for Democrats: Women of Color,”
Washington Posts, November 10, 2016. In fact, Lisa Blunt Rochester will also be the
first woman to serve in Congress from Delaware leaving only two states that have
yet to elect a woman: Mississippi and Vermont.
TS Ibid.
76 Daniel Trotta, “Hispanic claims victory in Harlem race to replace Rangel in U.S.
Congress,” Reuters, June 29, 2016.
220 PART III > Coalitions, Movements, Interest Groups, Parties, and Elections

77 Paul Glastris, Ryan Cooper, and Siyu Hu, “Obama’s Top 50 Accomplishments,”
Washington Monthly, March/April 2012.
78 Zenitha Prince, “Trump Victory: The Plight of African Americans Has Suddenly and
Drastically Changed,” Washington Afro, November 9, 2016.
ee PART We
Institutions
 ie

we

vs
ml CHAPTER 10 lm
The Congress and the
African American Quest
for Universal Freedom

LEARNING OBJECTIVE
Identify the two periods in history when the Congress was most
responsive to the African American quest for freedom.

The framers of the Constitution intended for Congress to be the dominant branch
of the government. Of the legislative power, John Locke had written, it “is not
only the supreme power of the commonwealth, but sacred and unalterable in
the hands where the community have once placed it.”' Following Locke’s logic,
the framers made the Congress the first branch of government (Article I),
preceding the presidency (Article II) and the judiciary (Article III). Article I is
also by far the longest of the three articles, specifying in detail the broad powers
of the U.S. government.
Legislation is understood as a general rule of broad application enacted by
a broadly representative body.* We emphasize the words to make the point that
in democratic societies, legislation and representation are closely connected, such
that a defining property of a legislative institution is the extent to which it fairly
represents the people. The English philosopher John Stuart Mill stated the case
for the necessary relationship between legislation, representation, and democracy
in his 1869 book Considerations on Representative Government.

In a really equal democracy, every or any section would be represented, not

disproportionately, but proportionately. A majority of electors would always
have a majority of the representatives but a minority of electors would
223
224 PART IV > Institutions

always have a minority of representatives, man for man, they would be as

fully represented as the majority; unless they are, there is not equal
government, but government of inequality and privilege: One part of the
people rule over the rest: There is a part whose fair and equal share and
influence in representation is withheld from them contrary to the principle of
democracy, which professes equality as its very root and foundation.’

The Representation of African Americans

in Congress
Given that in a democracy the legislature should represent the people equally,
the first question becomes: How representative of African Americans is the
Congress? Political scientists usually measure the representativeness of a
legislative institution on the basis of three criteria: descriptive, symbolic, and
substantive.* Descriptive representation is the extent to which the legislature
looks like the people in a demographic sense; symbolic representation concerns
the extent to which people have confidence or trust in the legislature; and
substantive representation asks whether the laws passed by the legislature
correspond to the policy interests or preferences of the people. In this section,
we discuss the extent to which Congress represents African Americans
descriptively, symbolically, and substantively.
Historically, the Congress has not been descriptively representative of
African Americans. Of more than 11,000 persons who have served in the House,
only 138 have been black, including the 43 currently serving.* From 1787, the
year of the first Congress, until 1870, no African American served in Congress.
In 1870-1871, six blacks were seated in the House of Representatives. From
the 1870s to 1891, blacks averaged two representatives in the House, and in
the next decade, there was only one black congressman to represent the nation’s
population of more than 8 million blacks. In 1901, George White of South
Carolina became the last Reconstruction Era African American to serve in
Congress. In his farewell speech, White told his white colleagues, “This, Mr.
Chairman, is perhaps the Negroes’ temporary farewell to the American Congress;
but let me say like the Phoenix he will rise again. These parting words are in
behalf of an outraged, heart-broken, bruised and bleeding but God-fearing
people, faithful, industrious loyal, rising people—full of potential force.”®
From 1901 to 1929, no blacks served in the House. In 1929, Oscar DePriest
was elected from Chicago, and in 1944, Adam Clayton Powell was elected from
Harlem. Until the post-civil rights era, only five blacks served in the House.
Then in 1969 and again in 1992, there was a fairly rapid rise in black repre-
sentation in the House, reaching an all-time high of 43 in 2006. The growth in
black representation is a function of several factors: the concentration of blacks
in highly segregated urban neighborhoods, the Supreme Court’s “one person,
 CHAPTER 10 > The Congress 225

one vote” decisions in Baker v. Carr and Wesberry v. Sanders, and the imple-
mentation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.’
Of the more than 2,000 U.S. senators, only nine have been black. Of these
nine, two were appointed by the state legislature of Mississippi during
Reconstruction, and three were appointed by governors to fill vacancies. Thus,
only four blacks have been actually elected to the Senate—Edward Brooke of
Massachusetts in 1966, Carol Mosley-Braun from Illinois in 1992, Barack
Obama from Illinois in 2004, and Cory Booker from New Jersey in 2013. Senators
are elected on a statewide basis, and since no state has a black majority, it has
been very difficult for blacks to win Senate seats. Because of racist and white
supremacist thinking, whites have been reluctant to vote for black candidates.
Although blacks have made substantial progress in achieving fair and
equitable representation in the House, the Congress, as Table 10.1 shows, is

Percentage Demographic House Senate

Population Characteristics (%) (%)

Be Women 19 20
Race/Ethnicity
69.1 White 81 93
12:5 Black 10 2
12.5 Latino 8 4
3.6 Asian American 3 1
07 Native American? 0 @)
Religion
62 Protestant 57 55
ee: Catholic 31 26
pists) Jewish 4 9
Other® 8 10
Education

23 College g4 100
77 Noncollege 6 0

32.8 Average Age f by 61

a There are two Native Americans in the House, both from Oklahoma.

b The other religious faiths are mainly Mormon and Greek Orthodox, but there also were
three Buddhists (one in Senate, two in House), one Hindu, and two Muslim members. Ten
members of the House did not specify a religion. There were also six openly gay and lesbian
members including one member of the Senate.

Source: Membership of 114th Congress: A Profile, Congressional Research Service, 2015.

CLEELER ELLA EA
226 PART IV > Institutions

still best described as a body of middle-age, middle-class white men. In the House
and Senate, Asian Americans are reasonably represented, in part because they
are a voting plurality in Hawaii. However, blacks and Latinos are not equitably
represented; African Americans, for example, are 12 percent of the population
but 2 percent of the Senate and 10 percent in the House. Women, who constitute
more than half the population, are 19 percent of the House and 20 percent of
the Senate. These numbers for women are small, but they are much better than rrr
er
E
re
c
the numbers of a decade ago when there were only one or two female senators
and women constituted only 5 percent of the House. The nation’s major religious
groups—Protestants, Catholics, and Jews—are equitably represented in both the
House and the Senate. In sum, the Congress is not a representative body insofar
as African American, Latino, and female citizeris are concerned.
With respect to symbolic representation, African Americans, like most
Americans, have relatively low levels of trust or confidence in Congress, with
levels falling in 2015 to less than 10 percent.
The most comprehensive, detailed study of the eubeiannive representation
by Congress of the American people generally is Martin Gilens’s 2014 book,
Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America.
Gilens used national surveys of public responses to thousands of questions about
the policy preferences of Americans from 1964 to 2006. He then matched the
public’s policy preferences with the laws passed or not passed by Congress. He
found that in most cases affluent citizens exert substantial influence over policies
adopted by Congress, while poor Americans exert virtually no influence. This
is so for the poor even when Democrats control Congress and the presidency.
About half the policies examined during this period showed little or no
differences in policy preferences between the poor, middle class, and affluent
Americans (i.e., persons who fall in the 10th, 50th and 90th income percentiles,
respectively, for the three groups), but on those issues where there was a
difference the position of wealthy Americans are adopted about half the time,
while the support or opposition of the middle class and the poor had no impact
on policy adoption.®
The differential impact of the wealthy and nonwealthy on public policies
adopted by the federal government, especially economic policy, is substantial.
Gilens concludes that if the poor and middle class had equal substantive
representation with the affluent, the United States would have a higher minimum
wage, more generous unemployment benefits, stricter regulations of corporations,
and a more progressive income tax.” Overall, the research indicates “the majority
does not rule—at least not in the casual sense of determining policy outcomes.
When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized
interests they generally lose.”'° Before we discuss the extent to which Congress
represents the substantive interests of African Americans, particularly, we exam-
ine how congressional elections can impact descriptive, symbolic, and substantive
representation for majority-partisan racial or ethnic districts, generally.
 CHAPTER 10 > The Congress 227

Congressional Elections and African

Americans

Reapportionment and Redistricting

The Constitution requires that every 10 years the government conduct a census,
an “enumeration” of the population. The primary constitutional purpose of the
census is to provide a basis for reapportioning seats in the House. The size of
the House is fixed by law at 435. Reapportionment involves the allocation of
these 435 seats among the 50 states on the basis of changes in population—for
example, the movement of the population in the last four decades from the
“snowbelt” states of the Midwest and Northeast to the “sunbelt” states of the
South and West. After reapportionment, the states then engage in the process
of redistricting, the allocation of seats within a state on the basis of popula-
tions within each congressional district, with each district containing roughly
700,000 persons. The census is, therefore, important as a basis of allocating
political power among and within the states. This has particular implications
for America’s racial minorities since it is well known that the census regularly
undercounts blacks and Latinos, thereby depriving them of a fair share of
political power as well as other social and economic benefits that are allocated
on the basis of population. In the 1990 census, an estimated 4.8 percent of the
black population and 5.2 percent of the Latino population were not counted.'!
Although it is possible for the Census Bureau to “statistically adjust” the census
count to include those left out, the Supreme Court has held that such an
adjustment is not required by the Constitution.'* However, for the 2000 census,
the Census Bureau agreed to employ statistical sampling as a means to count
those persons most often missed by traditional methods of counting. The
Republican leadership in the House blocked this change, saying the plan violated
the Constitution’s requirement that there be an actual “enumeration” of the
population; also, it would likely help Democrats by increasing the number of
minorities and urban dwellers.
In 1999 the Supreme Court ruled that federal law bars the use of statistical
sampling for apportioning seats in the House. Instead, the Court, in a 5-4
decision upholding the ruling of a special three-judge federal district court in
Richmond, Virginia, said that while sampling could be used for other purposes
(such as redistricting state legislatures and allocating federal money to the
states), Congress had mandated that an actual enumeration or “head count” be
used in congressional reapportionment. The decision split the Court on
ideological lines, with the four more liberal justices dissenting, holding that while
sampling could not be a substitute for an enumeration, it was a permissible
“supplement” to “achieve the very accuracy that the census seeks and the
Census Act itself demands.”!%
228 PART IV > Institutions

The 2000 census did include both the actual enumeration and a statistically
adjusted figure based on sampling. Although statistical experts declared that the
2000 census was probably the most accurate ever, there was, nevertheless, an
estimated undercount of 1.2 percent (about 3.3 million persons) of the overall
population compared to 1.6 percent in 1990. It is estimated that 2.1 percent of
blacks and 2.9 percent of Latinos were missed in the 2000 count. In the 2010
census, it is estimated that 2.1 percent of blacks and 1.5 percent of Latinos were
missed.
In 2016, in Evenwel v. Abbot, the Court in a unanimous decision reaffirmed
the principle of one person, one vote, rejecting a claim by Texas eligible voters
that legislative districts should be based on only the population of eligible or
registered voters rather than total population, which includes non-eligible voters
such as children and undocumented immigrants. If the Court had not rejected
the claim, a disproportionate percentage of African American, Latino, and Asian
American persons would not be counted for purposes of legislative reappor-
tionment and redistricting. While the decision was unanimous, Justices Thomas
and Alito wrote separate concurring opinions suggesting while states were not
required to draw legislative districts based only on eligible voters if they wished
to do so they perhaps could without violating the Constitution.

Black Congressional Districts, Campaigns, and

Elections
Of the 43 congressional districts represented by biacks in the House (not
including the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands), 24 are majority black,
10 are majority white, and the rest are majority—minority (African Americans
and Latinos).'* The average black population of the districts is 44 percent,
ranging from 1.8 percent in Congresswoman Mia Love’s Utah district to 65
percent in the Mississippi district of Congressman Bennie Thompson. (One white
congressman represents a majority black district, Steven Cohen of Memphis,
Tennessee.) All of the blacks in the House are Democrats except Congresswoman
Love of Utah and Congressman Will Hurd of Texas. Until 1992, virtually all
the black majority districts were urban, northern, and disproportionately poor.!5
As a result of the 1992 redistricting, the large southern (52 percent of the total)
and rural (25 percent) black population is now represented in the House (all
the southern states except Arkansas send at least one black to the House).
The black districts—often regarded as “safe seats” for their representatives—
are overwhelmingly Democratic in party registration and invariably elect
Democrats. Like most members of the House, once elected, blacks are routinely
reelected. The advantages of incumbency make it virtually impossible to defeat
an incumbent congressperson; more than 90 percent who seek reelection are
reelected.
 CHAPTER 10 > The Congress 229

Finally, except for their race and the greater representation of women, blacks
in Congress are quite similar to whites: well-educated, mostly middle-class men.
Black women, however, are better represented, constituting 45 percent of the
black congressional delegation compared to about 20 percent among white
women.

The Color of Representation: Does Race

Matter?
In 1993, Carol Swain in a controversial book Black Faces, Black Interests: The
Representation of African Americans in Congress argued that white members
of Congress could represent the interests of blacks as well as and, in some cases,
perhaps, better than blacks.'® That is, she argued that taking into account a
representative’s party and region, whites in the House represented the black
community as well as blacks. Swain’s study, however, was limited, based on
the roll-call votes of a limited number of congresspeople (nine blacks and four
whites) during a two-year time frame. More comprehensive and detailed studies
have disproven Swain’s argument. Kenny Whitby in The Color of Repre-
sentation: Congressional Behavior and Black Interests found that racial
differences in congressional voting are more likely to show up when bills are
amended than on the final roll-call votes studied by Swain. Studying con-
gressional voting behavior from 1973 to 1992, Whitby found that race matters
even after controlling for party and region.!” In general, he found that the policy
payoffs in the form of more effective antidiscrimination policies in education,
employment, and housing are more likely to come from black than white
representatives. David Canon in Race, Redistricting and Representation: The
Unintended Consequences of Black Majority Districts found that race matters
in Congress, not just in terms of substantive voting but also in various forms
of symbolic representation. For example, black members of the House are more
likely than whites to make speeches concerning race (50.8 percent of the speeches
by blacks compared to 12.8 percent of whites); more likely to sponsor and
introduce bills dealing with race (42 percent for blacks, 5 percent whites); more
likely to hire blacks for top staff positions (72.3 percent, 6.7 percent); and more
likely to raise race issues in their press releases and newsletters (24.6 percent
compared to 12.6 percent).!8 Finally, Katherine Tate in Black Faces in the Mirror:
African Americans in the U.S. Congress substantiates the work of Whitby and
Canon, finding that black members are the most reliable and consistent
supporters of substantive black interests in Congress. She also found an import-
ant symbolic dimension to this representation in that in general black constituents
feel they are better represented in Congress when their representatives are
black.19 In her most recent work, Concordance: Black Lawmaking in the US
Congress from Carter to Obama, Tate suggests that, partly, as a result of the
230 PART IV > Institutions

increasing incorporation of black representatives into House Democratic

leadership and committee power structures, they have become less representative
of substantive black interests.”°

African American Power in the House

Power or influence in the House of Representatives is best gauged by committee
and subcommittee assignments, seniority, and party leadership positions.*’ In
addition, in the last several decades House members have increasingly attempted
to exercise power outside the formal committee and party leadership positions
by forming caucuses of like-minded members.

The Congressional Black Caucus: Increasing Size,

Declining Solidarity
There are now more than 100 legislative caucuses in the. House. These groups
are organized by members with a common interest or policy agenda so that they
can exchange research and information, develop legislative strategies, and act
as a unified voting bloc to bargain in support of or against particular bills and
amendments.””
The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) is one of the oldest House caucuses,
formed in 1969 as an outgrowth of the black power movement’s call for racial
solidarity and independent black organization. In addition to its role as an
internal House legislative caucus, the CBC also plays an external role by forming
coalitions with interest groups outside the Congress and operating as one of the
two or three major African American interest organizations in Washington.”?
The work of the caucus includes such activities as lobbying the president,
presenting various black legislative agendas and alternative budgets in floor
debates, and holding its annual legislative weekends. The legislative weekends,
held in the fall of each year, usually bring several thousand African American
scholars, elected officials, and civil rights leaders to Washington to participate
in panels and workshops on issues affecting African Americans.
Power in the House is allocated first on the basis of party. The majority
party (the party with one more seat than the other) leads the House and its
committees and establishes its agenda, deciding which bills and which, if any,
amendments will be allowed to come to a vote. Thus, blacks exercise relatively
little power in the House when the Republicans are the majority party. In
addition, with Democrats in the majority, African Americans chair committees
and subcommittees.
However, even with the Democratic majority in the House, the power of
the CBC will depend on its being a unified minority. Although the CBC is still
a relatively cohesive, liberal voting bloc, its unity or solidarity has declined as
it has grown in size. When it was first organized in 1969, it had 13 members,
 CHAPTER 10 > The Congress 231

all of whom represented urban areas generally in the North or West. It operated
during its early history as a small, highly unified group that was a reliable source
of voting cues for its members.*4 Today the CBC has 43 members, and they
represent diverse districts, with many in the rural South and others with
substantial Latino and white populations.
Inevitably, this growth in size results in declining solidarity. Five members
of the CBC (Ford of Tennessee, Davis of Alabama, Scott and Bishop of Georgia,
and Wynn of Maryland) were also members of the conservative Democratic
Leadership Council, or the so-called House “Blue Dogs,” the coalition of
moderate—conservative southern Democrats. On several issues including the Iraq
War, the bankruptcy bill (the credit card industry supported legislation that
makes it virtually impossible for persons to completely liquidate their debts),
and legislation lowering the estate tax, several CBC members voted with the
conservative Republican majority.
The decline in CBC solidarity is not surprising since it is axiomatic in politics
that the larger a group, the greater the likelihood of internal conflicts and
divisions. For a minority group like the CBC, however, any decline in solidarity
represents a potential loss of power.
In the 2006 Democratic congressional primaries, one of the longest serving
of these black “blue dogs”—Albert Wynn of Maryland—was defeated for
renomination. Wynn, who had served in the House for 15 years, was defeated
by Donna Edwards, an African American attorney. National liberal and labor
organizations targeted Wynn and supported Edwards in an effort to send a
message that moderate-conservative Democrats would be held accountable by
their liberal constituents. In 2008 the second Muslim was elected to the Congress.
Andre Carson, an African American, was elected from Indianapolis to complete
the unexpired term of his grandmother, Representative Julia Carson. The Carson
district is 63 percent white, 29 percent black. (The first Muslim elected, Keith
Ellison in 2006, is also an African American, representing a largely white
Minnesota district.)

African Americans in the Congressional

Power Structure
Party Leadership
The principal members of the Democratic Party power structure in the House
are the speaker, majority leader, the majority whip, the deputy whips, the
members of the Steering and Policy Committee (which makes committee
assignments and establishes broad party policy), and the officers of the
Democratic Caucus. From 1989 to 1991, when he resigned to become president
of the United Negro College Fund, Pennsylvania congressman Bill Gray served
232 PARTIV > Institutions

as majority whip, the number three leadership position. In 2004, Congressman

James Clyburn was elected majority whip. After the Democrats lost their majority
in 2010, a new position of assistant democratic leader was created so that
Clyburn could maintain his position as the only African American in the party
leadership.
In 1999, third-term congressman J. C. Watts of Oklahoma was elected
chairperson of the Republican Party Conference, the fourth-ranking position in
the Republican leadership structure in the House. This was widely interpreted
as a move by the party to reach out to black and other minority voters. Watts’s
selection marked the first time an African American had held a leadership
position in the House Republican Party.
In 2002, however, Congressman Watts decided to retire from the Congress.
Watts cited personal reasons for retirement (wanting to spend more time with
family and to pursue business interests), but reportedly he privately complained
that he was not adequately respected by some of his colleagues in the Republican
leadership.”°

Committees and Committee Leadership

In the 111th Congress, blacks served on every standing committee of the House.
In Table 10.2, data are displayed on black membership and seniority on the
major or “power” committees of Congress and on those committees that are
especially important to black interests. The major or power committees are the
ones dealing with money: the Budget Committee, the Committees on Ways and
Means (taxes) and Appropriations (spending), the Rules Committee, the Energy
and Commerce Committee (because of its broad jurisdiction under the commerce
clause), and the Armed Services Committee (because of the importance of
military policy and the size of the military budget). The Judiciary Committee is
important to black interests because of its jurisdiction over civil rights legislation;
the Financial Services Committee because of its jurisdiction over urban and
housing policy; and the Education and Workforce Committee because of its
jurisdiction over education, labor, and parts of welfare and health policy.
Table 10.2 shows that African Americans are represented on each of the
major or power committees, and they are heavily represented on those com-
mittees of special relevance to black interests—Judiciary, Financial Services, and
Education and Workforce. In the 114th Congress, African Americans were
“Ranking Member” (in line to become chair when the Democrats hold the
majority) of seven of 20 House committees, including such important ones as
Judiciary, Financial Services, and Homeland Security. They also served as
ranking member of 17 subcommittees. Because of the operation of the seniority
system and the ability of African Americans to be routinely reelected to the
Congress, black members have gained considerable power in the House (and
see Box 10.1).
 CHAPTER 10 > The Congress 233

TABLE 10.2

Major/Power Committees Democratic Black Members and

Members Ranks?
Appropriations 21 Fattah (9)
Bishop (10)
Lee (11)
Armed Services De Johnson (11)
Budget® 14 Moore (5)
Lee (8)
Energy and Commerce 23 Rush (2)
Butterfield (10)
Clark (19)
Rules 4 Hastings (3).
Ways and Means* 10 Rangel (2)
Lewis (6)
Davis (14)
COMMITTEES OF SPECIAL INTEREST TO BLACKS
Financial Services 26 Waters (1)
Meeks (5)
Clay (8)
Scott (10)
Green (11)
Cleaver (12)
Moore (13)
Ellison (14)
Carson (19)
Beatty (24)
Education and Workforce 16 Payne (1)
Wilson (9)
Fudge (6)
Jeffries (13)
Judiciary 16 Conyers (1)
Jackson-Lee (4)
Johnson (6)
Bass (11)
Richmond (12)
Jeffries (14)

a The number in parentheses represents the member's rank or seniority among Democratic
members of the committee.
b The Budget Committee prepares the annual congressional budget, setting targets for
taxation, spending, and borrowing.
c In addition to its power to impose taxes on personal, corporate, and other income, the
Ways and Means Committee also has responsibility for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,
welfare, and international trade. Congressman Charles Rangel, former chair and ranking
Democrat on Ways and Means, was forced to give up the position in 2010 because of
allegations of violating House ethics rules.

a
234 PART IV > Institutions

eed = m™ BOX 10.1

The Diversifying Black Representative:
A Look at Congresswoman Mia Love of Utah
Reflecting the increasing ethnic diversity
of the African American population, and
the Republican Party’s efforts to
demonstrate racial, ethnic, and gender
diversity in its leadership, Ludmya “Mia”
Bourdeau Love is the first African
American from Utah and first black female
Republican elected to the Congress.
Self-described as a conservative, a
Mormon, and a Tea Party Republican,
Love was born in Brooklyn, New York,
in 1975 to Haitian immigrants. In 1998,
after converting to the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons),
she moved with her husband to Utah
where she became active in community
affairs and local politics. In 2009, she was
elected mayor of the small town of
Saratoga Springs. After losing her first bid
for Congress in 2012, in 2014 she was
narrowly elected in a district less than
2 percent black.
Given her descriptive characteristics Congresswoman Mia Love (R, UT).
as a conservative, black, immigrant Source: Getty Images/CQ Roll Call/Meredith
woman, Love’s candidacy was Dake
enthusiastically embraced by the national
Republican Party establishment, including Texas Will Hurd who declined to join the
Speaker of the House John Boehner, and Congressional Black Caucus, Love
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, the 2012 indicated she intended to join the group.
Republican presidential and vice Describing.the Black Caucus as
presidential nominees. As a young, “demagogic” and “racist,” Love said she
combative, charismatic black woman intended to join the group to “try to take
conservative, Love is poised to the thing apart from the inside out.”
symbolically become a new face and voice
of the Republican Party and the @ Dennis Pomby, “‘Love Would Take Apart’
Conservative Movement. Congressional Black Caucus if Elected in Utah's
As an indicator of her aggressiveness, 4th District," Deseret News, May 11, 2014.
unlike her black Republican colleague from
 CHAPTER 10 > The Congress 235

Congressional Responsiveness to the African

American Quest for Universal Rights and
Freedom
Rights-Based Issues: From Arguing about Slavery to
the Civil Rights Act of 1991
Like each of the major institutions of the American government, the Congress’s
response to the black demand for universal freedom and equality has been
hesitant, tentative, and unstable. Interestingly, the first congressional response
to the African American demand for universal freedom was a debate over
whether the Congress should listen—simply hear—let alone respond to the
demand for African freedom. From 1835 to 1844, Congress debated whether
it should even receive African American petitions for freedom. Until 1836, black
petitions to end slavery were received, printed in the record, and referred to
committee. But in 1836, Congressman James Hammond of South Carolina
demanded that these petitions not even be received by Congress because to do
sO was an unconstitutional infringement on slavery. For nine years, the House
debated this “gag rule,” with the opponents (led by former president John
Quincy Adams, by then a House member) arguing that to ban slave petitions
was a violation of the First Amendment right of petition, which, they claimed,
should be accorded even to slaves. In 1844, the House finally defeated the gag
rule on slave petitions.”°
Before Congress enacted the first wave of civil rights legislation during
Reconstruction, it took three other actions dealing with the issue of slavery.
First, in 1787 in the Northwest Ordinance Act, Congress banned slavery in the
new territories of the upper Midwest, which prevented the spread of slavery
into places like Illinois and Indiana.”’” Second, in 1808 Congress abolished the
slave trade. Although this was an important law, the illegal importation of
additional slaves actually continued until the Civil War.’ Finally, in 1862 in
the middle of the Civil War, Congress abolished slavery in the District of
Columbia.
Congressional responsiveness to the African American agenda of universal
rights and freedom occurred in two periods: the 1860s during Reconstruction
and the 1960s during the civil rights movement. As Table 10.3 shows, from
1866 to 1875 Congress passed six civil rights bills including three civil rights
enforcement acts. Between 1957 and 1968 the Congress passed five civil rights
bills, including the crucially important Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting
Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
In many ways, the civil rights laws of the 1960s simply duplicate those passed
in the 1860s. The Supreme Court invalidated the 1860s laws as unconstitutional
or declined to require their enforcement; thus, the Congress in the 1960s had
236 PART IV > Institutions

Reconstruction Era Civil Rights Era Post-Civil Rights Era

Civil Rights Act, 1866 Civil Rights Act, 1957 Equal Employment
Civil Rights Act, 1870 Civil Rightsmen 1960 PONY ck ie
Civil Rights Act, 1875 Civil Rights Act, 1964 Civil Rights Restoration Act, —
Enforcement Act, 1870 Voting Rights Act, 1965 Woes
Enforcement Act, 1871 Fair Housing Act, 1968 Civil Rights Act, 1991
Enforcement Act, 1875 2
aS TR AN ELSI RIE ISLE SS SEES TILE A EE ETNIES ISELIN DEDEL,

to repass them, which again shows the tenuousness and instability of rights-
based coalitions. Similarly, the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1988 and the
Civil Rights Act of 1991 were passed to overturn Supreme Court decisions that
made parts of the 1964 act difficult to enforce (see Chapter 12). In addition to
these major civil rights laws, Congress in the 1970s passed a series of amend-
ments to the 1964 act allowing the government to engage in affirmative action
to achieve equality in employment for African Americans, other minorities, and
women.”?

The Renewal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are the major
legislative achievements of the 1960s civil rights movement. Unlike the 1964
act, provisions of the Voting Rights Act are temporary, requiring periodic
renewals by the Congress. These provisions were last renewed for 25 years in
1982 and expired in 2007. Of the provisions requiring renewal or “reauthor-
ization,” two are controversial. The first is Section 5, which requires states with
a history of racial discrimination to apply to the U.S. Justice Department or the
U.S. District Court in Washington before making any change in their election
laws or procedures. The second controversial provision is Section 203 (added
when the act was renewed in 1975), requiring jurisdictions with large numbers
of foreign-language-speaking persons to provide multilingual ballots. The so-
called “preclearance” requirements of Section 5 cover most of the southern states
and parts of several northern states, including California and New York.
President George W. Bush and the leaders of both parties in the House and
Senate in 2006 enthusiastically endorsed renewal of the act for 25 more years.
(The House bill to renew the act was “HR9,” indicating it was among the
Republican leaders’ top 10 priorities.) However, some southern conservative
Republicans in the House and Senate objected to the renewal of Section 5,
 CHAPTER 10 > The Congress 237

claiming preclearance is unnecessary because their states no longer engage in

racial discrimination. They also allege that Section 5 is unconstitutional because
it results in the creation of legislative districts based on race and is discriminatory
against the South. Conservative Republicans also objected to Section 203,
arguing, in the words of lowa congressman Steven King, that use of multilingual
ballots “encourages the linguistic division of the nation.”3° African American
and Latino leaders strongly supported renewal of the act, contending that there
is still evidence of racial discrimination at the polls and that the act is responsible
for the steady increase in the number of black and Latino elected officials.
In the summer of 2006, the House approved renewal of the act by 309 to
33 (all negative votes cast by Republicans). An amendment to delete Section 5
was defeated 302 to 18 and an amendment to drop Section 203 was defeated
238 to 185. Two weeks after the House approved the bill, the Senate passed it
98-0. In spite of the enthusiastic support of the President and the overwhelming
congressional vote, the Supreme Court in 2013 effectively gutted the preclearance
requirement of the Act (see Chapter 12).

Restoring Civil Rights

Twice before (in 1988 and 1991), Congress passed civil rights laws designed to
overturn unfavorable Supreme Court decisions: decisions that made it difficult
to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 2008, two similar bills were proposed.
Both were introduced by Senator Edward Kennedy (see Box 10.2).
The first was the Fair Pay Restoration Act. In 2007, in Ledbetter v. Goodyear
Tire the Court in a 5-4 decision ruled that employees complaining of pay
discrimination had to file the charges within 180 days of the initial act of
discrimination. But as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg noted in her dissent, often
an employee would not know it when the initial act of discrimination takes
place, because salaries and raises of employees are often confidential. (Lilly
Ledbetter, the plaintiff in the case, did not learn that she was given smaller raises
than her male counterparts until years later.) The Fair Pay Restoration Act
overturned the Court’s decision by establishing that the 180-day deadline starts
when the employee receives the unequal pay, not when the employer made the
decision to discriminate. The act also requires that the 180 days begin: anew
with each discriminatory paycheck. President Bush threatened to veto the bill
and Republicans in the Senate used a filibuster to keep it from coming to a vote.
The bill was quickly passed in 2009 and became the first act signed by President
Obama.
The second bill, the Civil Rights Act of 2008, was introduced in the House
by Congressman John Lewis. It would reverse the Court’s decision in Alexander
vy. Sandoval and restore to individuals the right to sue in cases of institutional
racism as well as individual discrimination, whether it involves race, age, gender,
ethnicity, or disability. The House easily passed the bill but, like the fair pay
bill, it was blocked in the Senate; no action was taken on this bill during Obama’s
238 PART IV > Institutions

BOX 10.2
Two Massachusetts Senators and the African
American Quest for Universal Freedom

Massachusetts is often referred to as leaders, Sumner’s last words were said to

“freedom’s birthplace” and as the “citadel have been, “Take care of my civil rights
of American liberalism.” Whether this bill—take care of it—you must do it.”
reputation is deserved or not, in Senator One hundred years later, another
Charles Sumner and in Senator Edward senator from Massachusetts took up
“Ted” Kennedy,? Massachusetts has sent Sumner’s cause. Senator Edward Kennedy
to the Senate two men who have was elected to the Senate in 1962 to take
distinguished themselves in the African the seat vacated by his brother when he
American quest for universal freedom. becamé:president. Throughout his more
Frederick Douglass described Senator than four decades in the Senate, Kennedy
Sumner as the greatest friend the Negro was a leader in the passage of every civil
people ever had in public life. Born in rights bill, from the Civil Rights Act of
1811, Sumner served in the Senate from 1964 to the Civil Rights Act of 1991.
1852 until his death in 1874. During his Especially after the murder of his brother
career in the Senate, he was that body's Robert in 1968, Kennedy made the cause
most outspoken champion of the freedom of the poor and racially oppressed his
of the enslaved African. In an 1856 Senate cause. As the senior Democrat on both
speech, he bitterly attacked two of his the Labor and Public Welfare Committee
colleagues for their support of slavery. and the Judiciary Committee, he led the
Two days later, Congressman Preston fight for minimum wage legislation,
Brooks entered the Senate chamber and national health insurance, immigration
nearly beat Sumner to death, arguing that reform, and education and employment
his remarks were a libel on the South. legislation. In 1993, his Labor and Public
After a three-year recovery period, Sumner Welfare Committee was the only
returned to the Senate to continue his committee to report and send to the floor
struggle for black freedom, both rights- national health insurance legislation, largely
based and material-based. due to his leadership as chair. In 1996, he
Sumner made his greatest contribution was the floor leader of the fight to
to the African American freedom struggle increase the minimum wage, to provide
after the Civil War. With Congressman health coverage for laid-off workers, and to
Thaddeus Stevens, he led the fight in ban discrimination against homosexuals in
Congress for civil rights legislation and employment.
passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Perhaps the Senate’s most famous
Amendments. Stevens and Sumner were member, Kennedy was regarded as one
also responsible for the idea of “40 acres of the body’s most passionate and skilled
and a mule,” introducing legislation to legislators on issues of civil rights and
confiscate the slaveholders’ plantations, social justice. In 1980, he challenged
divide them up, and give them to the President Jimmy Carter for renomination,
slaves as compensation or reparation and charging that the president had abandoned
as a means to punish the slaveholders for the liberal cause. After his loss to Carter,
treason. Kennedy returned to the Senate, where
At the time of his death, Sumner was he became a leading opponent of the
fighting for a civil rights bill that would Reagan administration's civil rights and
have banned discrimination and social welfare policies. Although his goal
segregation in every public place in the of succeeding his brother as president
United States—from schools to churches, was not to be, he left his mark, as there is
from cemeteries to hospitals. On his no major piece of civil rights or liberal
deathbed, surrounded by Frederick reform legislation of the last four decades
Douglass and other African American that was not influenced by the senator
 CHAPTER 10 > The Congress 239

from Massachusetts. In 2008, Senator a On Sumner, see Frederick Blue, Charles

Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama for the Sumner and the Conscience of the North (New
Democratic nomination, hailing him as a York: Norton, 1976); and on Kennedy, see Adam
new generation of leadership that recalled ClYmer, Edward M. Kenneay: A Biography (New
his brother. In 2010, he died of York: Morrow, 1999). See also Senator
Kennedy's memoir completed shortly before his
complications from brain cancer.
death, True Compass: A Memoir (New York:
Twelve, 2011).

presidency. However, both the House and Senate did take actions dealing with
the disparity in sentencing for crack and powdered cocaine. The House Judiciary
Committee approved a measure, completely eliminating the disparity; while the
Senate unanimously passed a bill reducing the disparity from 100 to 1 to 18 to
1 (five years mandatory for 28 grams of crack instead of the 5 grams in current
law, while the amount for five years for powdered would remain 500 grams).
The Senate also joined the House in 2009 in unanimously passing a resolution
apologizing for slavery.

Material-Based Rights: From 40 Acres and a

Mule to the Humphrey—Hawkins Full
Employment Act
If Congress has been reluctant and tentative in terms of responsiveness to the
rights-based black agenda, it has been even less responsive to the material-based
agenda. The Constitution, after adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, may
be interpreted to guarantee universal civil and political freedoms; however, many,
perhaps most, Americans tend to think that access to material benefits (land,
health care, jobs) should not be universal but rather individual. That is, in a
free enterprise, capitalist system, it is up to each individual to get his or her own
land, health care, and employment. This view was expressed very clearly by
President Andrew Johnson when he vetoed the Freedmen’s Bureau Act, which,
in addition to granting blacks land, provided other welfare and educational
benefits to the former slaves. In his veto message, the president wrote, “The
idea on which the slaves were assisted to freedom was that on becoming free
they would be a self-sustaining population. Any legislation that shall imply they
are not expected to attain a self-sustaining condition must have a tendency
injurious alike to their character and their prospects.”*! The ideas of President
Andrew Johnson were echoed by Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton, who argued
that welfare is injurious to the character, individual responsibility, and sense of
self-reliance of the African American community.
240 PART IV > Institutions

The Humphrey—Hawkins Act

The 1963 March on Washington during which Dr. King gave his famous “I Have
a Dream” speech was a march for “jobs and freedom.” However, as we pointed
out in Chapter 6, rights-based demands usually take precedence over material-
based ones. Thus, the demand for jobs had to wait for the gaining of freedom in
the form of the 1960s civil rights laws. But the problem of joblessness was clearly
a major problem in the African American community, especially in the cities of
the North, where blacks already had basic civil and political rights. Since the end
of the Depression, African Americans have never experienced full employment
(see Chapter 14). In general, in the post-World War II era, black unemployment
has been twice that of whites, generally at about 10 percent of the adult labor
force. Thus, at the end of the civil rights era, the material-based demand for jobs—
full employment guaranteed by the federal government—became the principal
African American demand, the priority item on the black agenda.
At the time of his death in 1968, Dr. King was planning to lead a multiracial
coalition of poor people to march on Washington, the principal demand of which
was a guaranteed job or income. After Dr. King’s death, this demand for jobs
became the principal priority of African American interest groups. In the late
1960s, the Congressional Black Caucus, under the leadership of California
congressman Augustus Hawkins, developed a broad coalition of blacks, liberal,
labor, and religious groups to try to persuade Congress to pass legislation
“guaranteeing a job to all willing and able to work.” Once before, in 1946, a
broad liberal-labor coalition had sought similar legislation. By the time the bill
was passed as the Employment Act of 1946, however, the job guarantee
provision had been deleted and the act was little more than a policy-planning
mechanism, creating the President’s Council of Economic Advisors and a Joint
Economic Committee in the Congress.**
Critics of the Employment Act of 1946, including business leaders, academic
economists, the mainstream media, and conservative politicians, argued that the
idea of full employment guaranteed by the federal government was “socialistic,”
“anti-free enterprise,” “utopian,” and “un-American” and would result in
“runaway inflation.” Similar criticisms were made of the 1978 legislation intro-
duced by Congressman Hawkins and former vice president and then senator
Hubert Humphrey. The bill, “The Full Employment and Balanced Growth
Act,” as originally introduced provided each American citizen with a legal right
or entitlement to a job and required the Congress, if necessary, to create public-
sector jobs if an individual could not find a job in the private economy. By the
time the bill was passed and signed by President Carter, these provisions, as
was the case in 1946, had been deleted, making the bill little more than a
symbolic statement of principles.*?
In the years since the passage of the Humphrey-Hawkins Act, neither the
president nor the Congress nor the Federal Reserve has sought to use the
 CHAPTER 10 > The Congress 241

planning process established by the act to move toward a 4 percent unemployment

rate. As Congressman Hawkins woefully wrote in a 1986 article, “Since the
passage of the Act, we have yet to see an economic report from the President, a
Federal Reserve report or a Joint Economic Committee report that constructs
the actual programmatic means for achieving full employment.”34 To the
contrary, economic policy makers today generally consider 5—5.5 percent
unemployment as the so-called natural rate of unemployment. This natural rate
of unemployment, which translates into 10-12 percent for blacks, is accepted by
Democrats and Republicans and liberals and conservatives—what one writer calls
“a bipartisan fear of full employment.”%>

Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom

JOHN LEwis (1940- )
John Lewis’s contribution to universal freedom and equality derives from his
leadership of the SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee)
during the civil rights movement and his work in Congress. Born in Troy,
Alabama, Lewis was inspired to join the civil rights movement in 1958 after
meeting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1961, Lewis was among the founding

John Lewis.
Source: AP Photo/Ric Feld
242 PART IV > Institutions

members of the SNCC, a minority-majority coalition of black and white college

students. In 1963, he was elected chairman of the SNCC. SNCC was the most
radical of the civil rights organizations, and the young women and men in the
group displayed extraordinary courage in confronting vicious racists throughout
the South. But of all the brave people in the SNCC, perhaps none was more
courageous than Lewis. In 1961, he was beaten unconscious in Montgomery,
Alabama, on one of the first freedom rides. In 1965, he suffered a similar fate
as he led a march from Selma to Montgomery. Arrested more than 40 times,
Lewis always responded nonviolently and with expressions of Christian love.
Decades later, reflecting on Lewis’s work in the civil rights movement, Time
magazine referred to him as a “living saint.”
In 1986, Lewis was elected to Congress from Atlanta, forging a minority—
majority coalition composed of 90 percent of the white vote and 40 percent of
the black vote. In the House, he continued to emphasize coalition building. His
status as a genuine American hero facilitated his capacity to build multiracial
coalitions. A member of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, Lewis has
devoted much of his time to persuading the Congress to recognize the
contributions of African Americans and the civil rights movement to American
history. Among his achievements are the establishment of a Washington mem-
orial to Dr. King and a national museum of African American history. In 1999,
he wrote a memoir, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement.

Summary Sucamescmeeeea
eer ceemeees
Congress as a legislative body in theory should represent all the people of the
United States. Historically, the American Congress has not represented its black
citizens in a fair and equitable way. Although some progress has been made in
enhancing the representation of blacks in Congress in the last two decades, blacks
are still not equitably represented, especially in the Senate, where two blacks
serve and only seven have been elected in the more than 200-year history of
that body. Although African Americans are not equitably represented in
Congress, because they are routinely reelected through the operation of the
seniority system, blacks in the House have accumulated considerable power in
terms of positions of committee leadership. In two periods—the 1860s and
1960s—Congress has responded to the black quest for universal freedom by
passing several major civil rights bills. However, Congress has been less
responsive to the African American quest for material rights and benefits such
as land in the 1860s and jobs in the 1970s.
 CHAPTER 10 > The Congress 243

Critical Thinking Questions

1. Discuss the representation of African Americans in Congress descriptively
and substantively.
2. Why has the solidarity of the Congressional Black Caucus declined in recent
years?
3. Explain the impact of race with respect to descriptive, substantive, and
symbolic representation in Congress. Which type of representation is most
impacted by the race of the congressional member?
4. Why do African Americans have more power in Congress when the
Democrats are the majority party?
5. Discuss the two periods in history when the Congress has been most
representative of African American interests.

Selected Bibliography DE
Baker, Ross. House and Senate, 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1995. A comparative analysis
of the two houses focusing on how the differences in their sizes affect their operations.
Barone, Michael, and Grant Ujifusa. The Almanac of American Politics 2016.
Washington, DC: National Journal, 2015. The biannual compilation of data on the
districts and members of the House and Senate.
Berg, John. Unequal Struggle: Class, Gender and Race in the U.S. Congress. Boulder,
CO: Westview Press, 1994. A perceptive analysis of how the structure of the capitalist
economy constrains progressive action that would benefit minorities, workers, and
women.
Canon, David. Race, Redistricting and Representation. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press, 1999. A comprehensive analysis of how blacks in Congress more effectively
represent black interests than whites.
Champagne, Richard, and Leroy Rieselbach. “The Evolving Congressional Black Caucus:
The Reagan—Bush Years.” In H. Perry and W. Parant, eds., Blacks and the American
Political System. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995. A historical survey of
the Caucus from its founding in 1969 to the last years of the Bush administration.
Congressional Quarterly. Origins and Development of Congress. Washington, DC:
Congressional Quarterly, 1976. A concise account of the history of Congress.
Congressional Quarterly. Powers of Congress. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly,
1976. A concise overview of the powers of Congress.
Graham, Hugh Davis. The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. A comprehensive study of the passage and
implementation of the 1960s civil rights laws.
Jones, Charles E. “An Overview of the Congressional Black Caucus, 1970-1985.” In F.
Jones et al., eds., Readings in American Political Issues. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt,
1987. An overview of the Caucus’s operations from its founding through the middle
Reagan years.
Loevy, Robert, ed. The Civil Rights Act of 1964: The Passage of the Law that Ended
Racial Segregation. New York: SUNY Press, 1996. Firsthand, behind-the-scenes
accounts of how the Civil Rights Act was passed.
Singh, Robert. The Congressional Black Caucus: Racial Politics in the U.S. Congress.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998. An analysis of the limited effectiveness of the Caucus
as a lobby for black interests in Congress.
244 PARTIV > Institutions

Smith, Robert C. “Financing Black Politics: A Study of Congressional Elections.” Review

of Black Political Economy 17 (1988): 5-30. A study of the role of money in the
election of blacks to Congress.
Swain, Carol. Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African American
Interests in Congress. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. A
controversial analysis suggesting that whites in Congress represent the interests of
blacks as well as blacks do.
Tate, Katherine. Black Faces in the Mirror: African Americans and Their Representatives
in Congress. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. A study of black House
members and the symbolic and substantive impact of their representation.
Tate, Katherine. Concordance: Black Lawmaking in the U.S. Congress from Carter to
Obama. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014. A detailed statistical
examination of the increasing centrism of the Congressional Black Caucus as a result
of the incorporation of its members into the Congressional Democratic Party.
Wilson, Woodrow. Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics. Gloucester,
MA: Peter Smith, 1956. The 28th president’s still-insightful study of how the
organization and procedures of Congress make it an inefficient, irresponsible, and
ineffective legislative institution.

Notes Gea eee

1 John Locke, The Second Treatise of Government, edited by Thomas Peardon
(Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1952): 75.
2 Benjamin Akzin, “Legislation: Nature and Function,” International Encyclopedia of
the Social Sciences (New York: Free Press, 1972): 223.
3 John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government (Indianapolis, IN:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1869, 1952): 146.
4 Hanna Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley: University of California
Press se|9,72) 95
5 For a list and biographical and related information on each person who has served
in the Congress, see Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1996
(Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1998). See also U.S. House, Office of
the Historian, “Members of Congress,” 2015.
6 Quoted in Rayford Logan, The Betrayal of the Negro (New York: Collier Books,
1965): 98.
7 In Baker v. Carr (369 U.S. 186, 1962), the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth
Amendment’s equal protection clause required that state legislative districts be equal
in population, and that each legislator represent roughly the same number of people.
In Wesberry v. Sanders (376 U.S. 1, 1964), the Court applied this equality in
representation principle to congressional districts.
8 Martin Gilens, Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in
America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012).
9 Ibid., p. 6, chap. 3.
10 Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites,
Interest Groups and Average Citizens,” Perspectives on Politics 12 (2014): 876. See
also Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Winner Take All Politics: How Washington
Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class (New York: Simon
& Schuster, 2011).
11 Linda Greenhouse, “Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Case on Government’s Refusal
to Adjust Census,” New York Times, September 28, 1995, p. A14.
 CHAPTER 10 > The Congress 245

12 Wisconsin v. City of New York #94-1614, 1996 (slip opinion).

13 Linda Greenhouse, “In Blow to Democrats, Court Says Census Must Be by Actual
Count,” New York Times on the Web (January 26, 1999).
14 Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, who is black, represents the District of
Columbia. Each of the U.S. territories—Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and
American Samoa—are allowed to send delegates to the House. These delegates are
allowed to vote in committees and participate in floor debates, but they are not
allowed to vote on the floor. The delegate from the Virgin Islands is also black.
a5 Robert C. Smith, “The Black Congressional Delegation,” Western Political Quarterly
34 (June 1981): 204-5.
16 Carol Swain, Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans
in Congress (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).
ly, Kenny Whitby, The Color of Representation: Congressional Behavior and Black
Interests (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998): 110-11.
18 David Canon, Race, Redistricting and Representation: The Unintended Consequences
of Black Majority Districts (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999): 189,
1917209 2and\ 249:
i Katherine Tate, Black Faces in the Mirror: African Americans and Their Repre-
sentatives in the US Congress (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003).
Research also shows that black voters attach less significance to descriptive repre-
sentation but are more likely than whites to contact black members of Congress. See
Claudine Gay, “Spirals of Trust: The Effect of Descriptive Representation on Relation-
ships between Citizens and Their Government,” American Journal of Political Science
46 (2000): 714-32.
20 Katherine Tate, Concordance: Black Lawmaking in the U.S. Congress from Carter
to Obama (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014).
21 Richard Fenno, “The Internal Distribution of Influence: The House,” in D. Truman,
ed., The Congress and America’s Future (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1965):
52:
22, Susan Webb Hammond, Daniel Mulhollan, and Arthur Stevens, “Informal
Congressional Caucuses and Agenda Setting,” Western Political Quarterly 38 (1985):
583-605; and Burdett Loomis, “Congressional Caucuses and the Politics of Repre-
sentation,” in L. Dodd and B. Oppenheimer, eds., Congress Reconsidered
(Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1981): 204-20.
23 On the Congressional Black Caucus’s origins and evolution, see Charles Jones, “An
Overview of the Congressional Black Caucus,” in F. Jones et al., eds., American
Political Issues (Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt 1987): 219-40; Richard Champagne
and Leroy Rieselbach, “The Evolving Congressional Black Caucus,” in H. Perry and
W. Parant, eds., Blacks and the American Political System (Gainesville: University
Press of Florida, 1995): 130-61; and Robert Singh, The Congressional Black Caucus:
Racial Politics in the U.S. Congress (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998).
24 Arthur B. Levy and Susan Stoudinger, “Sources of Voting Cues for the Congressional
Black Caucus,” Journal of Black Studies 7 (1976): 29-46.
25 Juliet Eilperin, “GOP’s J. C. Watts Will Leave Congress,” West County Times, July
222002.
26 The story of the battle to lift the gag rule on slave petitions is told in William Lee
Miller, Arguing about Slavery: The Great Battle in the United States Congress (New
York: Knopf, 1995).
20 William Freehling, “The Founding Fathers and Slavery,” American Historical Review
77 (1972): 87. To get around the law, Illinois and Indiana passed black indentured
servant laws; these, although not law, in effect legalized African slavery.
246 PART IV > Institutions

28 Ibid.
29 Robert C. Smith, We Have No Leaders: African Americans in the Post-Civil Rights
Era (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996): chap. 6. The Senate during the 1970s also
killed in close votes or blocked through filibusters House-passed bills that would
have banned school busing for purposes of school desegregation.
30 Charles Babington, “GOP Rebellion Stops Voting Rights Act,” Washington Post,
June 22, 2007.
oil Veto message of President Andrew Johnson, the Freedmen’s Bureau Act, February
19, 1966, as reprinted in Amilcar Shabazz, ed., The Forty Acres Documents (Baton
Rouge, LA: House of Songhay, 1994): 84.
o2 Stephen K. Bailey, Congress Makes a Law: The Story Behind the Employment Act
of 1946 (New York: Vintage Books, 1964).
=f) For a detailed case study of the Humphrey—Hawkins Act, see Smith, We Have No
Leaders, chap. 7.
34 Augustus Hawkins, “Whatever Happened to Full Employment?” Urban League
Review 10 (1986): 11.
35 F, Thayer, “A Bipartisan Fear of Full Employment,” New York Times, October 12,
1988.
mm CHAPTER 11 Sa
The Presidency,
Bureaucracy, and the
African American Quest
for Universal Freedom

LEARNING OBJECTIVE
Identify the classifications used to explain racial attitudes of American
presidents, and how presidential discretion influences the capacity of
the bureaucracy to advance universal freedom.

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the union, and is not either
to save or destroy slavery—If I could save the union without freeing any
slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do
it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would
also do that—what I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I
believe it helps to save the union—I shall do less whenever I shall believe
what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe
doing more will help the cause—I shall try to correct errors when shown to
be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true
views—I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty;
and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men
everywhere could be free.'
—Abraham Lincoln (1862)

We begin this chapter with the famous quotation from Abraham Lincoln’s
letter to newspaper editor Horace Greeley. We do so initially because Lincoln
247
248 PART IV > Institutions

was the first American president to deal in a positive, antiracist way with the
African American quest for universal freedom. Second, in his timid, cautious,
moderate approach to dealing with the freedom of African Americans, Abraham
Lincoln is the paradigmatic president, setting an example—a pattern or model—
for the handful of other American presidents who have dealt in a positive way
with the African American freedom quest.

Abraham Lincoln: The Paradigmatic President

Horace Greeley, a former congressman and liberal reform leader (best known
for his famous saying, “Go West, young man”), urged President Lincoln to turn
the Civil War into a moral crusade against slavery. Lincoln refused. Writing to
Greeley that while he personally opposed slavery and supported universal
freedom for all men everywhere, his principal objective in the war, according
to his view of “official duty” as president, was to save the Union and that what
he did about slavery was secondary to this “paramount objective.” What
President Lincoln was saying and what all other American presidents from
George Washington to Barack Obama have said is that the problem of African
American freedom must take second place to what is good for the nation—the
Union—as a whole.
Lincoln was a skilled politician, despite his reputation as a backcountry
lawyer from Illinois. Thus, he might also have said that what he did about
slavery was also secondary to what was good for him as a politician in terms
of public opinion (white public opinion) and his chances for reelection. While
American presidents perhaps should attempt to lead public opinion on issues
important to the nation’s well-being—and occasionally some have done so—
most have not, choosing instead to follow rather than lead. This may be an
enduring dilemma of the American democracy on all kinds of issues but especially
on issues of race and racism, where Bryce’s description of presidential leadership
is apt: “timid in advocacy ... infertile in suggestion . . . always listening for the
popular voice, always afraid to commit himself to a point of view which may
turn out unpopular.” Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, published
in 1835, is generally considered the most perceptive and prophetic book ever
written on the subject of America’s democracy. In it, he argued that universal
freedom and equality for blacks and whites were unlikely to occur in any
country, but it was especially unlikely in the United States precisely because of
its democracy. Tocqueville wrote,

I do not imagine that the white and black races will ever live in any country
upon an equal footing. But I believe the difficulty to be still greater in the
United States than elsewhere. ... A despot who should subject the Americans
and their former slaves to the same yoke, might perhaps succeed in
commingling the races, but as long as the American democracy remains at
 CHAPTER 11 > The Presidency and Bureaucracy 249

the head of affairs, no one will undertake so difficult a task; and it may be
foreseen that the freer the white population of the United States becomes, the
more isolated it will remain.4

Nearly 200 years after Tocqueville’s pessimistic assessment, political scientist

Richard Riley writes of the history of the presidency and the African American
struggle for freedom (and see Box 11.1):

These incentive structures made it extremely unlikely that someone fervently

committed to racial equality would rise through the popularly based electoral
process to the presidency in the first place, or that, once there he or she
would feel free (or compelled) to invest presidential power in the
controversial enterprise. ... At bottom, on the question of African American
rights, the presidency became an agency of change only when movements for
equality had successfully reoriented the incumbent’s perception of those role
requirements, by preparing public opinion and illuminating the risks of
inequality in periods of heightened danger to the nation’s peace and security.°

mw BOX 11.1 5
Executive Power, Executive Orders, and Race?

Executive orders have been frequently companies have contracts with the federal
employed by American presidents in the government to deliver products or
development of civil rights policy. Although services).°
the legislative power is vested exclusively Until the 1960s, Congress refused to
in the Congress, presidents since Lincoln legislate in the area of civil rights; thus,
have claimed the right to issue directives presidents, beginning with Franklin D.
of broad and general application that have Roosevelt (FDR), began to use executive
the same legal effect as a law passed by orders as a way to get around
Congress. Presidents trace their authority congressional inaction on civil rights policy.
to engage in this kind of quasi-legislative Here are the most important executive
activity to the general grant of the orders (E.O.s) dealing with civil rights:
“executive power” to the president and to
the command of Article II: “He shall take e Establishes policy of nondiscrimination
care that the laws be faithfully executed.” in employment by companies with
The Supreme Court has upheld this broad defense contracts and creates the
interpretation of presidential power by Committee on Fair Employment
holding that executive orders have the full Practices—Franklin D. Roosevelt
force of law unless they conflict with a & E.0. 9980 (1948): Establishes policy of
specific provision of the Constitution or of <—_nondiscrimination in government
the law. Presidents use executive orders employment. and creates a Fair
to establish policies when Congress Employment Board within the Civil
refuses to do so. For example, when Service Commission—Harry Truman
Congress refused to pass legislation e E.O. 9981 (1948): Establishes policy of
prohibiting businesses from firing workers nondiscrimination in the armed forces
who go on strike, President Clinton issued and creates the President’s Committee
an executive order prohibiting businesses on Equality of Treatment and
with government contracts from doing so Opportunity in Armed Services—Harry
(most large corporations and many small Truman®
250 PART IV > Institutions

E.O. 10479 (1953): Establishes e £E.0. 13583 (2011): Establishes a

Government Contract Committee to coordinated government-wide initiative
ensure that government contractors to promote diversity in the federal
and subcontractors comply with workforce—Barack Obama.
nondiscrimination provisions in Executive orders are an easy way for a
employment—Dwight Eisenhower president to establish public policy;
E.O. 10925 (1961): Establishes however, Congress, if it wishes, may vote
President’s Committee on Equal to overturn such orders. Since they are the
Employment Opportunity and requires
policy decisions of a single individual, what
government contractors to take one president gives, another may take
“affirmative action to ensure that
away by a simple “stroke of his pen.”
applicants are treated equally during
employment, without regard to their @On the use of executive orders to make civil
race, creed, color or national origin”— rights policy from the Roosevelt to the Johnson
John Kennedy administration, see Ruth Morgan, The President
E.O. 11063 (1962): Prohibits and Civil Rights: Policy Making by Executive
discrimination in federally assisted Order (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1970).
housing and creates President's ® A three-judge federal appeals court in
Committee on Equal Housing—John Washington ruled that President Clinton’s striker
replacement order was illegal because it
Kennedy
conflicted with federal labor law. The
E.O. 11246 (1965): Requires administration declinéd to appeal this ruling to
government contractors to take the Supreme Court, fearing the conservative
affirmative action as a prerequisite to court might issue a sweeping ruling
the award of a contract and requires undermining the president's power to issue
the Labor Department to enforce the executive orders. See “Clinton Accepts Defeat
order—Lyndon Johnson on Strikers’ Protection,” San Francisco
E.O. 11246 Revised (1971): Requires Chronicle, September 10, 1996, p. AQ.
government contractors to develop ¢ President Truman based this order on his
authority as commander in chief as well as the
affirmative action plans with goals and
executive power and the “take care” clause.
timetables for hiring, training, and
¢ This order is the basis and model for the
promoting African Americans and other affirmative action programs and policies
minorities—Richard Nixon? discussed in Box 11.3.

Lincoln, Emancipation, and Colonialization

Historian George Fredrickson describes President Lincoln as a “pragmatic white
supremacist.”° Throughout his public career, Lincoln opposed slavery—because
he thought it was morally wrong but also because he thought it was economically
unwise, favoring instead “free labor on free soil.”” But Lincoln also was a white
supremacist, holding that the African people were “inferior in color and perhaps
moral and intellectual endowment.”® While Lincoln was antiracist in his attitudes
toward slavery, he was racist in the sense that he, like the overwhelming majority
of northern whites, opposed social and political equality for blacks. Whether
Lincoln’s views on racial equality were sincere or simply politically expedient
is not known. However, as Frederick Douglass said, “Clearly, if opposition to
black equality constituted a strong and general conviction of the white
community, Lincoln would be prepared to accept it as a fact of life, not readily
altered even if morally wrong.”? (See Box 11.2.)
 CHAPTER 11 > The Presidency and Bureaucracy 251

aT EMS ioe ue et BOX 11.2

The First Thirteenth Amendment?

As the prospects of secession and civil states that had already seceded were not
war increased, the House and Senate present. President Lincoln took the
appointed special committees to extraordinary and completely unnecessary
investigate the situation and make step of personally signing the amendment,
recommendations that might avoid war. the first time a president has signed a
Among the recommendations proposed by constitutional amendment. Three states—
the House committee was an amendment Ohio, Illinois, and Maryland—quickly
to the Constitution that would have ratified the amendment. However, the
prohibited any amendment to the attack one month later on Fort Sumter that
Constitution granting the Congress the brought on the Civil War ended any
power to interfere in any way with slavery prospect of preserving the Union by
in any state. The text of the amendment preserving slavery, and no other state
read as follows: ratified this first Thirteenth Amendment.
Ironically, the second Thirteenth
No amendment shall be made to the
Amendment, adopted four years later,
Constitution which will authorize or
abolished slavery throughout the United
give to Congress the Power to abolish
States. (Lincoln signed this amendment
or interfere, within any state, with the
also.)
domestic institutions thereof,
including that of persons held to labor 8 For a history of the first Thirteenth Amendment
or service by the laws of said state. and an analysis of whether it would have been
constitutional if it had been ratified, see Mark
This extraordinary amendment, intended
Brandon, “The ‘Original’ Thirteenth Amendment
to freeze slavery into the Constitution and the Limits to Formal Constitutional
forever, was adopted on March 2, 1861, Change,” in Sanford Levinson, ed., Responding
by a Congress that was overwhelmingly to Imperfection: The Theory and Practice of
northern, since by that time the senators Constitutional Amendment (Princeton, NJ:
and representatives from seven southern Princeton University Press, 1995).

As Lincoln told Greeley in his letter, if he could save the Union without
freeing any slave, he would do it; if he could do it by freeing some, he would
do it; and if he could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, he would
do that. As the war progressed, Lincoln eventually concluded that to save the
Union, he must promise freedom to some of the slaves. Thus, on January 1,
1863, the president, using his authority as commander in chief of the army and
navy, issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The Proclamation was issued as
a war measure, a measure necessary to win the war. Lincoln called it a “fit and
necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion.”'® The Emancipation
Proclamation applied only to those parts of the country under Confederate
control—“the states and parts of states ... wherein the people are this day in
rebellion.” !! It specifically exempted Union border slave states such as Maryland
and those parts of the South controlled by the Union army (e.g., New Orleans).
Thus, at the time the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, it freed very few
slaves.!2 Rather, it was important as a war measure to encourage blacks in the
252 PART IV > Institutions

South to rise and join the struggle because once the war was won; the
Proclamation promised that they “henceforward shall be free.” In addition to
being a war measure, the Proclamation had a diplomatic purpose, which was
to encourage European support for the Union cause by transforming the war
into a moral crusade against slavery.
Lincoln’s use of the commander-in-chief clause to promise freedom to the
slaves was unprecedented and of questionable constitutionality, since it may have
violated the Fifth Amendment provision against the “taking of private property
without just compensation.”!3The Thirteenth Amendment, however, settled the
question of the constitutionality of the Proclamation. What should be done with
the African Americans, once they were free, became the central question before
the president and the country.
Lincoln’s position was similar to that of Thomas Jefferson, and it was clear
and long-standing: colonialization. Once freed, the Africans should be deported
out of the country. In his first message to Congress, Lincoln urged recognition
of Liberia and Haiti and colonialization of blacks there orin some other places
where the climate was “congenial to them.”!* Why colonialization? Why not
instead integration and universal freedom? Lincoln’s response was public opinion,
telling a delegation of black leaders at the White House that “insurmountable
white prejudice made racial equality impossible in the United States.”!° And “on
this broad continent, not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single
man of ours. Go where you are treated the best and the ban is still on you.”!®
Colonialization was an impractical scheme, costly and complex. Thus, nothing
ever came of it although Lincoln supported it until the day of his death.
Lincoln was the first president to act decisively in favor of African American
freedom, but his actions were partial (promising limited rather than universal
freedom), limited by his own prejudices, by public opinion, and by the exigencies
of winning the war. Lincoln is near universally considered the nation’s greatest
president. Yet, in his approach to the problem of race, he was timid and
cautious, “always listening for the popular voice, always afraid to commit
himself to a point of view that may turn out unpopular.” This is how it has
always been with American presidents and race—and perhaps, as Tocqueville
said, must be. Frederick Douglass summed up the paradigmatic Lincoln in a
speech unveiling a monument to the president on April 14, 1876. He told the
whites in the audience, “You are the children of Lincoln, we are at best his step-
children,” but Douglass said:

Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold,
dull and indifferent, but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a
sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous,
radical and determined.!”

Lincoln himself could not have summed it up better.

 CHAPTER 11 > The Presidency and Bureaucracy 253

The Racial Attitudes and Policies of American

Presidents from George Washington to
Barack Obama
The American presidency is an office of great power and majesty, and there are
a variety of theories, typologies, and apologies in the literature on presidential
leadership.'? Few studies have addressed presidential accountability in the
context of race relations. Yet, it is important to understand how the racial
attitudes and policies of American presidents have been a crucial factor in the
African American quest for universal freedom.
Of the 44 men who have served as president, very few have been allies in
the African American freedom struggle. On the contrary, most have been hostile
or at best neutral or ambivalent. Table 11.1 lists the American presidents in
terms of their racial attitudes and policies. Twenty-three (more than half) were
white supremacists, including, as we have said, Abraham Lincoln. Eighteen have
also been racists, supporting either slavery (including eight slave owners) or
segregation and racial inequality. Thirteen have been neutral or ambivalent in
their attitudes toward African American freedom. Nine—Lincoln, Grant,
Benjamin Harrison, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, and Obama—
have pursued antiracist policies in terms of emancipation of the slaves and their
freedom and equality in the United States. Although we classify Lincoln as an
antiracist president on the basis of the Emancipation Proclamation, as we
indicated, he was ambivalent, favoring freedom for the slaves but not racial
equality and universal rights. Table 11.1 also shows that with the exception of
Lincoln, Grant, and Harrison, all the antiracist presidents served in the mid-
twentieth century, most since the 1960s.!? Of the 10 greatest American presi-
dents, according to the most recent poll of American historians—Lincoln,
Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jefferson, Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt,
Wilson, Truman, Polk, and Eisenhower—eight were white supremacists, six were
racists, and only two—Lincoln and Truman—were antiracists.”°

The Presidency and the African American

Quest for Universal Freedom: From the
Revolutionary Era to the Post—Civil Rights
Era
This section is necessarily brief since, as we indicated in the previous section,
most American presidents have been unresponsive to the African American quest
for universal freedom.
A1aVLLLL

[edI40}S1}Poliag
4 ayy, g§SINeU
= aIdNg
ys1sey Aqjerey jeaynayy
=> Ayeney jugeniquy ysPeanuy
Aseuonnjoaay
e6j0e5 uoyHuiyse\ e610e5 Quo}Bulysen\
(6Z8L-68ZL)
(L) 1) (L6Z1-68Z y
uyor Swepy
(Z)
p (LO8L-86ZL) i
SewoU] UOSJajJer
(€) SeWOY] sUOSIO}HJEr
(6081-LO8L) Hy,
.
sower Uosipey|
(vy) Solwer suOsIpe|\| '
(LL81-608L) /
;
Sewer e0jUop(G) Sower seOJUO\|
(GZ8L-ZL81L)
uyor
‘O swepy
(9)
(6781-SZ81L) | ‘
winjjaqajuy MeipuYy uosyoer(Z) MaipUY quosy;oer
(098L-0€8L) j
(LE81-678L)
Ue UeA UdINg
(g)= UMeY|
ueA ueing
(LV81-ZE8L)
Weijji\y
“H UOSIUeEH
(6) Z
WII
“H UOSIUEH
(Lv8L) :
Uyor 49)A, (OL) uyor Ja|A|
(Gv8l-LvslL)
sower410g (LL) SewerA|Od
1) (6V81-Sr
— 8
AseyoezJojAe)(ZL) Aieyoez JojAe,
L) 1-678(0S8 4
Pseyli\
[14 Q10WW) (EL) |] PJE||I
||! SJOUU
1) (€G8L—-0S8
UNPjUeLYODJ0Ig (PL) UIUBL4 9018lq
(£G81-€481)
sewer ueueyong
(GL) sewer ueueyong
L) (L98L-ZS8
:
 q
WweyeigyUjoour]
uononsjsu0.8Yy (QL)
(LL8L-€98L) (G981-L98L)
Maipuy Uosuyor (LL) MapUY/ ,UOSUYOr

ujOOUTT
L) (6981-G98 SesshifQ
“Ss }UeID(SL)

WeUeiqy
(ZL81-698L)
psopeyiny
“g sekey
(6L) (L881-ZZ81)
-}s0d sower pleyeg (02)
uononiysuos8y (L881)
(O€6L-088L) Je1seyDny (LZ)
(G881-L88L)
JEAOIN pueRjeAs|D

8
ZZ)
(v2
(€Z)
uosieH
uiwwelueg

J9A0j15
(€681-688L)

pue|erg|9
Wey]! Aajujow
(GZ) WEI AQ|UOW
(LO61-Z681L)

‘6881-G88L)
|

1(Z681-€68
siopoeu eAeSOOY
(9Z) BOPOSU| JJOASSOOY
(6061—-L06L) WEIL
“H Yel (22)
(EL6L-606L)
MO1POO/\\
UOS|I\V\
(8%)
= MOJPOOMA
UOS|IM\
(LZ6L-EL6L)
Use\y
“5 Suipuey
(6Z)
(€Z61-LZ6L)
BuipjeyH “5 user,
(0€) e6pljoo5 ulnjed
jag
_(6Z61-€Z6L)
siy6ry
(OZ6L-O0€6L)
(LE) JBAOOH equa}
(C€61-6Z61L)
JJOASSOOY
Ul|jUeIY
°q
(GY6L-€€6L) (ZE)
Auey
~S veins]
(€€)
(€S6L-GV6L)
uewni| *S Auey

1YbiImq Jomouyuasiy
(pe) jUubIMG Jemouuesiy
(L961-€S6L) UYyor
“4 Apouuey
(GE)
*g
(9€)
L)
UOPUA
UOSUYOF
(S961L-LO6L)
(6961-€96
 A1aViLLL

[ed1J0}SI}Ppolsiag
j ayy, g3sIoew
= asdns
ys19ey Ayjerey jeajnayy Ayjeney qugjeaiquiy yspeunuy
jIAIQ-1s0g
szYyBIy PueyoiyUOXIN(ZE)
(Pseansoj-0/6L) (VL61-696L) :
PJeYoIYUOXIN
: pjeiayPsoy (SE)
(L/61-VZfe
6L)
y Awwir JeLIeD(6€)
i) (L861-ZZ61)
pjeuoy uebeay
(Ov) ;
(6861-1861) a
e610e5“\\“H USNg (Lv)
L) (661-686
Weil UOLU|D
(2p)
1) (000Z-€66
ebi0ey
“jy usng (€v)
(6002-1002)
E yoeIeg CEwego
(vr)
(LL0@-6002)
o SNA AjISSE|O
e JUEPISEid
Se :SMOI|O}
(|)e SUYM ‘IsIOeWIaId
4! aU} Ns jeoLOYSIYpsodeL SejeoIpU!
JeUI9Y Pjay & J91/9q
U! SUL AUOuayUI
yo ou) ueouyy ‘e\doed
© jsiI0e
S| euUO OoUM PeLOddns
84} SUO!INISU!
JO (Z)
Aane|spue ‘uoeHesBa
(¢)e sjeldel jeujneu
si e juapiseid8SOYM P10eI SMOUS
(+) SjIUM
e jeI0eJ OU SUOIISOd
UO JeIDe1 “SONSSI
JUS/EAIQUe
S| e jUAapisesd
esoyM SUO!]Oe UO 80e) sanss!Alen WO} isloesue
0} jeIDe) ‘je;INaU
PUe (Gg) Ue js!9esJUe JUSplseid
S! 9UO SSOUM
PJOD8s
SI pezuajoere
Aq yosuoNoe
0} efjueWSIP
Je }se9| sued JO BU} We}sAs
yo |eIDe: ‘“UONeUIPJO
|\¥ GNS SJUSPISaJd
jUN UJOOU!T818M S191 BOUIS AQ}
pepusjep
ay) UOINNINSU!
$O ‘AUSAe|S
se peuoloues
Aq eyi ‘UONNISUO
JEL D ‘uUjOoUTT am Op JOU Ajissejo sjuapisaid
se sjsioe1
JO s}yM S]sioeWaidSS9|UN
ns
819U}
SI SOUAPIAa
UI ey} jedUOISIYPsode1Jey} Au} PersijaqS19e|G aiaue sousjui ajdoed
Jo Asu} peyoddns
jee uonebai6es
pue “Aujenbeul
8194]
S!
Ajqepioneu
awosn Ain6ique
ul asaul ‘suoneoyiss
Jo4 ejo ‘ajdwexe
se ‘juspiseid
uYyor‘OD Swepy400}OU Jsi9eUe
JO Alenesijue‘suo}oe
Inq ay SEM JOU
A\jeuosied
‘si0e! 1eye Hulneg|
ay} ‘Aduepiseid
‘suepy
se e ‘UeLUSSsaJH
SeM
e UOD SNOJOBIA JUaUOddO
Jo AJaAe{S
PUe OY]
SARIS ‘eped}puy
aliym isioewaJdn
puee s pejse—jsid
se UOCOS
eJSse EU} Aleajo—uos
2 ia}jjer
UONNISUODpe}}iWued
0} YSI|Oge
OY} BAL|S “SPed
G UOITeWWOJU]
UO ay} sepnynie
pue jeioes Seloijod
JO 84} sjuapisesd
o1am peuleygo
Woy snouen leolydes6oi
seoinos
q BuIpNjoU!
ayy asus
Sesuey Ueda AQuapiselg
Salaspue 9} AlISIOAIUA
SSOlq
JO
AsewNS syiom
jo 861095 'JO\AUIS [EIIEY SEPM0 UBOLIAWIYY :S]UapISely
anasooyUspseD) ‘AllD :AN WOl4 WeYeIgYUjODUIT
O} | S1OPOaY
‘Aepaignog‘(L761 YLouUEY *A\ll9Y,Q S,UOXIN “OUR SIUSPISAlq
pue jeley SoNOYWOY
‘SSaig ‘(GEELPUB UOJHulyses
0} yUOJUID MON) OA 9814
PIEYDIY*AS|I4YEY) AdUApISeld
puke OY} SOO4o jeley :Ayjenbeu| Buideey-uo
Woy yeNn
LEB,O} GOEL MEN) >4OA BIQUIN|OD AUSIOAIUN)
‘SSO “(6GEL SIeESaA
Ul seseyjUsJedSjediIpul GINUS}
Ul ‘991JJ0
5 SO}EDIPU]
SABES “SIBUMO
é
 CHAPTER 11 > The Presidency and Bureaucracy 257

The Revolutionary Era

Perhaps all the early American presidents supported the institution of slavery
because they thought it was economically necessary or because doing so was
politically expedient. O’Reilly in his book on the racial attitudes of American
presidents indicates that several Revolutionary Era presidents (Washington,
Jefferson, Madison, and John Q. Adams) saw slavery as morally wrong and
hoped that it would wither away.?! Yet, none of these early presidents favored
universal freedom for blacks; rather, they, like Lincoln, tended to favor
colonialization.** The only action against slavery by an American president
during this period was Jefferson’s decision to stop the slave trade as soon as the
Constitution permitted. In fact, he proposed to end slavery in 1807, one year
before the constitutionally permissible year of 1808. In his annual message to
Congress on December 2, 1806, Jefferson wrote,

I congratulate you fellow citizens on the approach of the period when you
may interpose your authority constitutionally [to stop Americans] from
further participation in those violations of natural rights which have been so
long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the
morality, reputation and best interests of our country have long been eager
to proscribe.??

The Antebellum Era

None of the nine presidents who served during the Antebellum Era (1830-1860)
took any action in response to the African American quest for universal freedom,
ignoring or attempting to repress the increasingly militant demands for freedom
coming from the abolitionist movement.

The Reconstruction Era

Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln after his murder, was one of the more
racist of American presidents in his attitudes and policies. A white supremacist
and racist slave owner from Tennessee, Johnson vetoed civil rights legislation
and the Freedmen’s Bureau Act. When Congress overrode his vetoes, he refused
to faithfully carry out the law as required by the Constitution—one of the factors
that led to his impeachment by the House (he came within one vote of being
convicted in the Senate and removed from office). By contrast, Ulysses S. Grant,
Johnson’s successor, was one of the most antiracist presidents in American history.
Although he owned one slave, Grant freed him early, and once Grant became
president, he attempted to enforce the civil rights laws vigorously, urging his white
countrymen to grant African Americans universal suffrage and equality under
the law. Grant also appointed blacks to federal office for the first time. Frederick
Douglass said of Grant that he never exhibited “vulgar prejudices of any color.”
Even so, when Grant left office, most of the southern states were under the control
258 PART IV > Institutions

of white racists and the tide of public opinion in the North was shifting against
his policies.
Grant was followed in office by Rutherford B. Hayes. While antiracist in
his personal convictions, Hayes, to win the presidency, agreed in the famous
“Compromise of 1877” to withdraw federal troops from the South, effectively
bringing the brief era of Reconstruction to an end.”

The Post-Reconstruction Era

Most presidents after Hayes ignored the problems of race and racism. White
public opinion was indifferent or hostile to the African American quest for
freedom, and American presidents, whatever their personal attitudes, followed
rather than led during this period: 1880s-1930s. Presidents Grover Cleveland
and Theodore Roosevelt were attacked because they had eaten dinner with
blacks. Cleveland denied it and Roosevelt, who invited Booker T. Washington
to the White House for dinner, promised never to do it again. Woodrow Wilson,
the first Democratic candidate for president to receive significant black support,
nevertheless once in office immediately sought to impose racial segregation
throughout the federal workplace in Washington.
Benjamin Harrison was the first antiracist president since Grant and the last
before Truman. Among his antiracist policies was a proposed constitutional
amendment to overturn the Supreme Court decision invalidating the Civil Rights
Act of 1875, legislation to allow the federal government to enforce African
American voting rights in the South, and antilynching legislation.” Harrison
also responded to the material-based interests of blacks by supporting
legislation—the Blair Act—that would have provided large sums of federal
money to improve southern schools.
From Benjamin Harrison to Franklin D. Roosevelt, American presidents
were largely silent on the issues of race and racism. Roosevelt, the first
Democratic president to receive a majority of the black vote, is typical of the
political expediency of American presidents on issues of race and racism. In
more than 13 years in office, Roosevelt never took any stand on issues of racial
discrimination, refusing, despite the urging of his wife Eleanor, even to speak
out against lynchings. Like President Kennedy a generation later, Roosevelt’s
response was always, “I can’t take the risk.”?” That is, the president argued that
he could not risk losing the support of the powerful white supremacist southern
Democrats for his New Deal economic program. Thus, he was willing to sacrifice
or trade off the civil rights of blacks to obtain material benefits for all Americans.
Blacks benefited from Roosevelt’s material-based reforms—public works,
housing, and agricultural programs—although the programs were administered
on a racially discriminatory basis.
Roosevelt was also concerned that support for civil rights would jeopardize
his renomination and reelection, since southern whites controlled an important
bloc of votes at the Democratic convention and in the Electoral College.
 CHAPTER 11 > The Presidency and Bureaucracy 25Y

Roosevelt did respond to one black demand during his term in office. This
was the material-based demand for jobs in the war industries, but he did so
only after the threat of a massive march on Washington by African American
workers. Charging that there was widespread discrimination in the growing war
industries, A. Phillip Randolph, the African American head of the Brotherhood
of Sleeping Car Porters, threatened to bring hundreds of thousands of blacks
to Washington in a massive protest demonstration. To convince Randolph to
call off the march, Roosevelt in June 1941 issued Executive Order 8802 that
prohibited discrimination in employment of workers in industries with govern-
ment contracts. The order also created a committee on Fair Employment
Practices; however, it was poorly funded and staffed and was not very effective
in ending employment discrimination.?8

The Civil Rights Era

Although President Truman shared the same white supremacist views of his
native Missouri, as president he took a strong antiracist position. He did so for
two reasons. First, faced with a third-party challenge from the liberal, progressive
Henry Wallace, Truman judged that a strong civil rights program would help
him rally the black vote in the big cities of the electoral-vote-rich northeastern
and Midwestern states. Second, Truman judged that support for civil rights was
a cold war imperative. That is, as the leader of the “free world,” the United
States would be embarrassed and ridiculed by the Soviet Union if it continued
to adhere to racism as a national policy.’
Thus, President Truman became the first Democratic president in history
to propose a civil rights reform agenda to the Congress, including a ban on
employment discrimination, antilynching legislation, and a proposal to end the
poll tax. President Truman also issued Executive Order 9981 banning dis-
crimination in the armed services, ordered an end to discrimination in federal
employment, was the first president to address an NAACP convention, and
directed the Justice Department to file a brief in support of school desegregation
cases then pending before the Supreme Court. Although the Congress did not
pass Truman’s civil rights proposals, his administration was the first in 50 years
to place the issue of civil rights on the national agenda.*°
Two minor civil rights bills were passed during the administration of
President Eisenhower (the first since Reconstruction); however, his support for
them was reluctant. Eisenhower was a white supremacist and a race ambivalent,
preferring to avoid taking any action on civil rights or race-related issues if at
\
all possible. He did issue executive orders prohibiting discrimination in
government employment and by companies with government contracts, and he
appointed a few blacks to minor positions in his administration. The major civil
rights issue during the Eisenhower administration was the Supreme Court’s
Brown desegregation decision. Eisenhower opposed the Court’s decision and
was reluctant to enforce it. However, when Arkansas governor Orval Faubus
260 PART IV > Institutions

used the state’s National Guard to block the admission of nine black
schoolchildren to Little Rock’s Central High School, Eisenhower felt he had no
choice as president but to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Thus,
he reluctantly dispatched the U.S. Army to enforce the Court’s order that the
children be admitted.
John F. Kennedy would not have won one of the closest elections in
American history without the support of black voters. But, like Franklin D.
Roosevelt, he was reluctant to risk losing the support of white southerners by
introducing civil rights legislation. Only after the civil rights demonstrations led
by Dr. King created a national crisis did Kennedy finally propose civil rights
legislation. In his 1963 speech proposing what was to become the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, Kennedy became the first American president to declare that
racism was morally wrong.
President Kennedy also appointed a number of blacks to high-level posts in
his administration and was the first president to openly entertain blacks at the
White House. He also reluctantly issued Executive Order 11063 banning
discrimination in federally assisted housing. During the 1960 campaign, Kennedy
had promised with a “stroke of the pen” to end discrimination in the sale and
rental of housing. Yet, he delayed, and blacks sent hundreds of pens to the
president in case he had misplaced his. Finally, in late 1962, he signed the order,
but it was limited, excluding all existing housing and covering only housing

President Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Source: Cecil Stoughton/LBJ Library Collection
 CHAPTER 11 > The Presidency and Bureaucracy 261

owned or directly financed by the federal government. Also, President Kennedy,

like President Eisenhower, reluctantly sent the army into Mississippi to enforce
a court order desegregating the state’s university.
Unlike Presidents Kennedy and Roosevelt, President Johnson was willing
“to take the risk” of losing the support of white southern Democrats by
enthusiastically and unequivocally supporting civil rights legislation (when he
signed the 1964 Act, he told his aides, “We have just lost the South for a
generation”). In addition to signing three major civil rights bills, Johnson also
initiated the Great Society and the “war on poverty” designed to deal with the
material-based needs of urban and rural poor people, many of whom were
African Americans. Johnson also made a number of historic appointments,
placing the first black in the cabinet and the first black on the Supreme Court.

The Post-Civil Rights Era

Although Richard Nixon was a white supremacist and his 1968 campaign was
based on a strategy of attracting the white racist vote in the South,*! as the first
post-civil rights era president he presided over the successful desegregation of
southern schools, the renewal of the Voting Rights Act in 1970, implementation
of Executive Order 11246 establishing affirmative action, and the appointment
of scores of blacks to high-level positions in the government. In addition, Nixon
proposed a far-reaching material-based reform—the Family Assistance Plan—
that would have guaranteed an income to all families with children. Although
this reform was defeated by an odd coalition of blacks and liberals (who thought
the income guarantee was too low) and conservatives (who wanted no guarantee
at all), if it had passed, it would have substantially raised the income of poor
families, many of whom were black.** (Nixon also proposed a comprehensive
national health insurance program.) Historians are unclear as to why Nixon
took such a strong civil rights policy stance (especially on affirmative action),°°
but the political climate in the late 1960s probably made such positions seem
politically expedient.
In his nearly two and a half years in office, President Gerald Ford dis-
tinguished himself on race by appointing the second black to the cabinet and
by waging a year-long campaign to get the courts and the Congress to end busing
for purposes of school desegregation.
Jimmy Carter appointed a number of blacks to high-level positions in his
administration and to the federal courts,*4 supported affirmative action in the
form of the Bakke case (see Box 11.3), and reorganized the civil rights enforce-
ment bureaucracy.?> However, he rejected an ambitious proposal by his African
American housing secretary Patricia Roberts Harris for a new urban antipoverty
program and supported only a watered-down version of the Humphrey-
Hawkins full employment bill.
Ronald Reagan’s two terms in office were characterized by ambivalence
on race. He came into office determined to dismantle the Great Society and
262 PART IV > Institutions

BOX 11.3
African Americans and Presidential Policy Making:
A History of the Role African Americans Played in
Affirmative Action Policy Making

Affirmative action—a variety of programs two African Americans set about to revive
and policies designed to enhance the Sylvester's plan. Using Philadelphia as the
access of historically marginalized racial model city, the “Philadelphia Plan”
and ethnic groups and women to required government contractors to set
education, employment, and government specific numerical goals for the
contracts—is one of the most employment of workers from historically
controversial civil rights policies of the day, marginalized backgrounds. Unlike
as it has been since it was created by Sylvester's Cleveland Plan, the
African American policy makers in the Philadelphia Plan complied with standard
Johnson and Nixon administrations. contracting procedures, but the
Although affirmative action as national comptroller general again ‘ruled it was
policy was developed by African illegal, this time because it used race as a
Americans and is widely supported by factor in determining employment.
African Americans and their leaders, in the President Nixon, however, rejected the
Carter administration African American comptroller general's ruling, arguing that
policy makers sought to abolish such as president he had the inherent
programs. “executive power” to implement the
Late in the Johnson administration, Philadelphia Plan by executive order (E.O.
Edward Sylvester, an African American 11246). The Senate later passed an
who headed the Labor Department's amendment upholding the comptroller
Office of Federal Contract Compliance, general's decision, but after intense
developed the “Cleveland Plan” designed lobbying by President Nixon and his
to assure equal employment opportunity secretary of labor, George Shultz, the
for blacks in the Cleveland, Ohio, House by a vote of 208 to 156 rejected
construction industry. The Cleveland Plan the Senate’s amendment, and affirmative
required that construction companies with action effectively became the law of the
government contracts develop detailed land. Ironically, given Democratic support
plans specifying the precise number of for affirmative action and Republican
blacks they planned to hire in all phases of opposition to it today, in 1971, a majority
their work. This plan brought protests from of Democrats in Congress voted against
labor unions, business groups, affirmative action while it was supported
conservatives, and liberals who argued by a majority of Republicans.
that it established racial hiring quotas. The Philadelphia Plan became the model
Eventually, the comptroller general (head for affirmative action throughout American
of the General Accounting Office, the society, including admission to colleges
congressional watchdog agency) ruled that and universities. In the late 1970s, the
the plan was illegal, not because it University of California at Davis
required quotas but because it violated established an affirmative action program
standard contract bidding procedures. at its medical school in order to increase
Sylvester's plan was dropped; however, to the number of historically marginalized
the surprise of most observers, it was racial and ethnic students enrolled there.
resurrected in the conservative, business- Under its plan, 16 of its 100 openings
oriented Nixon administration, again under were set aside for minorities only. Allan
the policy leadership of African Americans. Bakke, a white applicant who was rejected
President Nixon appointed Arthur Fletcher for admission, sued the university, arguing
as an assistant secretary of labor and John that for a university to consider race in
Wilks as director of the Office of Federal making its admission decisions was a
Contract Compliance. Immediately these violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
 CHAPTER 11 > The Presidency and Bureaucracy 263

and the Fourteenth Amendment's equal Republican administration was almost

protection clause. The California Supreme eliminated by black men serving in a liberal
Court in the case of Regents of the Democratic administration.
University of California v. Bakke (1978) Several decades after the Philadelphia
declared the Davis plan unconstitutional. Plan and after Bakke, affirmative action is
The university appealed this decision to still under attack. President Reagan
the U.S. Supreme Court. implied during the 1980 campaign that he
A sharply divided Supreme Court upheld would abolish affirmative action in the
the university's right to use race in making federal government by revoking Nixon's
admission decisions but agreed that 1971 order. But he backed off at the
setting a quota of 16 slots for minorities urging of former Nixon administration labor
only was unconstitutional. We discuss the secretary George Shultz (then Reagan’s
details of the Court's opinion in Bakke and secretary of state) and Samuel Pierce, the
other affirmative action cases in Chapter secretary of housing and urban
12; here we focus on the role of African development and the only African
American policy makers. In important American in his cabinet. In his review of
cases, the Supreme Court will “invite” the affirmative action policy—a review led by
administration to submit an amicus curiae Christopher Edley, an African American
(“friend of the court”) brief explaining how White House staff assistant—President
it thinks the case should be decided. In Clinton concluded that while some
the Carter administration, the two policy reforms might be appropriate, affirmative
makers responsible for preparing the action programs were still necessary to
administration brief were Wade McCree, assure equal opportunities for minorities
who was solicitor general, and Drew Days, and women. Thus, his formulation: “mend
lll, assistant attorney general for civil rights it, don't end it,” via a 1995 policy
(and later solicitor general in the Clinton directive—the most explicit statement on
administration). In the first draft of the the policy to date—outlined specific
brief prepared by the solicitor general, the criteria for affirmative action policy stating,
very principle of affirmative action—that “any program must be eliminated or
race could be considered in admissions or reformed if it creates a quota, creates a
employment decisions—was rejected as a preference for unqualified individuals,
violation of the equal protection clause. It creates reverse discrimination, and
read, “we doubt that it is ever proper to continues even after its equal opportunity
use race to close any portion of the class purposes have been achieved.”®
for competition by members of all races” Despite the policy directive, Republican
and that “racial classifications favorable to congressional leaders were opposed to
minority groups are presumptively affirmative action; the 1996 Republican
unconstitutional.” If this position had presidential nominee Bob Dole also
been adopted by the Court, affirmative opposed affirmative action; the Supreme
action would have been eliminated, not Court in a series of cases has been edging
just in university admissions but in away from the principle of affirmative
employment and government contracting. action (led by African American Justice
McCree’s brief, however, was leaked to Clarence Thomas); and in 1996, the voters
the press, and after intense lobbying by of California—by 56 to 44 percent—
the NAACP, the Congressional Black approved Proposition 209, the ballot
Caucus, and others, President Carter initiative ending affirmative action in that
instructed the attorney general to request state’s education, employment, and
the solicitor general to rewrite the brief. contracting.° A leader of the California
Although McCree was reportedly outraged antiaffirmative action initiative was Ward
by what he considered unseemly political Connerly, an African American.
pressure, the brief was rewritten to uphold In the George W. Bush administration,
the right of the university to use race in its the Supreme Court took up the issue of
admissions decisions. Again, the irony affirmative action in university admissions
here is that affirmative action created by for the first time since the Bakke case,
black men serving in a conservative involving two cases from the University
mt PART IV > Institutions

of Michigan. Seeking to dismantie @ Quoted in Robert C. Smith, We Have No

affmmnative action, the Bush administration Leaders: African Americans in the Post-Civil
Rights Ere (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996):
filed, to no avail, hwo amicus cunae brefs
149-50. For a detailed analysis of the evolution
of affirmative
action from the Kennedy
to the
of race im admissions im the two cases. Nixon administrations, see Hugh Davis Graham,
Black annoinises in the adminisiration The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development
of National Policy (New York: Oxford, 1990):
administration bref to the Supreme Court chaps. 10-13; on policy developments from the
Nixon to the Bush administrations, see Smith,
We Have No Leaders, chap. 5.
Raloh Boyd, the assistant attomey general
*See “Remarks by the President on Affirmative
Action,” The White House, Office of the Press
assistant secretary of education for civil Secretary, July 19, 1995. The Clinton
nghts; and Bnan Jones, the general administration's detailed review of affirmative
counse! in the Department of Education— action is Affirmative Action Review: Report to
all arqued that Bakke should be reversed President Clinton (Washington, DC: Bureau of
and any consideration of race in university Netione!l Affairs, 1995). This report was prepared
by White House advisors George
admission should be unconsiitutional* Stephanopoulos and Christopher Edley, Jr.
Afncan Amencen Secretary of Education * Several days after Proposition 209 was
Rodney Paige, African American Deputy aporoved, Federal District Court judge Thelton
Attomey General Larry Thompson, and Henderson suspended its implementation
because he said it probably violated the
Rice supported the position eventually Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection
adopted by Bush, which sidestepped the clause. Judge Henderson's order was later
reversed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals,
constitutional question but argued that the
and the proposition took effect in the late
Michigan programs in question were racial summer of 1997. See John Bourdeau, “Appeals
quotes end therefere prohibited by Bakke. Court Upholds Support for Prop. 209,“ West
Rice, a former professor and Provost at County Times, August 22, 1997, p. A1.
Stanford, reportedly helped Bush to make * “Black Lawyer Behind Bush's Affirmative
the decision and write his speech on the Action Stance,“ The Crisis (March/April 2003),
p. 9.
cases.* Finally, Secretary of State Powell
* Mike Allen and Charles Lane, “Rice Helped
firmly and publicly opposed the president's
Shape Bush Decision on Admissions,”
position, saying he fully supported Washington Post, January 17, 2003.
affirmative action in principle as well as * Scott Lindiow, “Powell Backs Affirmative
the specific Michigan programs‘ Action,“ West County Times, January 20, 2003.

affirmative action programs. Several Great Society programs were eliminated

and the budgets for others were substantially cut. But Reagan also signed a 25-
year extension of the Voting Rights Act, strengthened the Fair Housing Act,
and (reluctantly) signed the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday bill. He also refused
to issue an executive order eliminating affirmative action, as he had implied he
would during the 1980 campaign (see Box 11.3).
George H. W. Bush’s administration was also characterized by ambivalence
on civil rights. In 1990, he vetoed the Civil Rights Act (designed to overturn
several Supreme Court decisions that made it difficult to enforce employment
discrimination laws), calling it a “quota bill,” but in 1991, he signed essentially
the same bill he had vetoed a year earlier.>” Bush also appointed the second
black to the Supreme Court, but the appointee (Clarence Thomas) was a man
 CHAPTER 11 > The Presidency and Bureaucracy 265

described by most black leaders as an “Uncle Tom” and a “traitor to the race.”38
Justice Thomas was also accused by Anita Hill, a former black female em-
ployee, of sexual harassment. Additionally, Bush rejected proposals by his aides
for new antipoverty programs, arguing that they were too expensive and too
liberal.°?
Bill Clinton was arguably the first authentically nonracist, non-white
supremacist president in American history. American presidents are a product
of the culture and socialization process of their time, and Bill Clinton was the
first president to come of age in the nominally nonracist, non-white supremacist
post-civil rights era. By all accounts, Clinton was as free of racist and white
supremacist thinking as any white person can be.*° Yet, to win the presidency,
Clinton ran on a strategy of deliberately distancing himself from black voters
in order to win over the so-called Reagan Democrats who had voted Republican
because of the Democrats’ close identification with African Americans.*!
In his first term in office, Clinton appointed a large number of blacks to
high-level positions in the administration (one-fourth of the cabinet) and to the
courts. He also refused to support proposals to eliminate affirmative action (see
Box 11.3) and was responsive to black concerns to use military force to restore
the democratically elected president to office in Haiti (see Chapter 15) and
became the first U.S. president to make state visits to several African countries.
On material-based issues, Clinton proposed a complicated yet comprehensive
plan to guarantee health care to all Americans. Clinton’s major initiative on
race during his second term was to propose a dialogue on race.**
However, if Clinton sought to universalize health care and establish it as a
right for all citizens, he did the exact opposite with respect to welfare. During
the 1992 election, Clinton campaigned on the pledge, “End Welfare as We Know
It,” by imposing a time limit on eligibility for Aid to Families with Dependent
Children.
In addition, in spite of the opposition of the Black Caucus and most civil
rights and civil liberties groups, Clinton signed a harshly punitive anticrime bill
that included mandatory sentencing for a variety of crimes including first-time
drug offenses, the punishment of juveniles as adults, life in prison for persons
convicted of three felonies (the so-called “three strikes and you’re out”), and
expansion of the death penalty to cover more than 50 federal crimes. (The three-
strikes law is widely viewed as responsible in part for the growing incarceration
of young black men, discussed in Chapter 14.)
On the Clinton administration and race, Steven Shull concludes,

Bill Clinton was the most rhetorical but also most symbolic and least
supportive Democrat in his public statements. ... Even such long-accepted
remedies as affirmative action based on race alone were challenged, with
Clinton suggesting that women and even economically disadvantaged white
men should be eligible for government remedies.
266 PARTIV > Institutions

In spite of these policy differences between blacks and Clinton, when he

left office and in his post-presidency, he remained extraordinarily popular
among African American leaders and ordinary people. (Clinton located his
post-presidential office in Harlem.) In a series of interviews with prominent
blacks after Clinton left office, journalist Dewayne Wickham found that Clinton
was viewed as among the best, if not the best, president in terms of African
American interests.44 Black public opinion was also highly favorable toward
Clinton throughout his tenure, and especially during the investigations leading
up to his impeachment, trial, and acquittal. By contrast, when Jimmy Carter,
the last Democratic president, left office, his performance was approved of by
only 30 percent of blacks compared to 70 percent approval of Clinton during
his last year.
Since many of Clinton’s policies were conservative, how can one account
for his popularity among blacks? How did he capture the imagination of blacks,
such that Nobel laureate Toni Morrison could call him the first black president
and the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame could make him its first white member?
Although scholars disagree on the sources of Clinton’s popularity, many attribute
it to the prosperous economy (which led to a substantial reduction in black
unemployment), his appointments, various symbolic gestures, his obvious
familiarity with and comfort among blacks, and to the fact that he became
president after 12 years of Reagan and Bush, who were viewed as overtly hostile
to black interests.
President George W. Bush entered the presidency with less support from
African Americans than any president of the post-civil rights era, with black
leaders and voters questioning the very legitimacy of his election. Partly as a
result, Bush attempted to reach out to the black community with appointments,
symbolic gestures, and substantive policies. Appointments are discussed below;
among the symbolic gestures was a visit to several African countries. Among
other symbolic gestures, Bush hung a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. in the
White House, laid a wreath at King’s tomb, hosted Thomas Jefferson’s black
relatives at the White House, and signed legislation creating a National Museum
of African American History and Culture.
In terms of policy, the Bush record, like Clinton’s, is mixed. He issued broad
guidelines prohibiting racial profiling by federal law enforcement agencies (except
for cases involving terrorism and national security), proposed to Congress a
program to increase low-income and home ownership for historically
marginalized citizens, pushed through the No Child Left Behind Act designed
to raise the performance of low-income and historically marginalized racial and
ethnic students, and proposed the “Faith Based Initiative” to allow churches to
provide social services to the poor. In foreign policy, he dispatched a special
envoy to mediate the Sudanese civil war, sent a small U.S. peacekeeping force
to Liberia, and proposed substantial increases in funds to combat AIDS in Africa. —
However, over the vigorous objections of the Congressional Black Caucus and
 CHAPTER 11 > The Presidency and Bureaucracy 267

other African American leaders, Bush brought about the removal of Jean Claude
Aristide, the democratically elected president of Haiti. African American leaders
also objected to the centerpiece of Bush’s domestic policy agenda—his tax
cuts—and of his foreign policy, the war on Iraq.
However, the most controversial race issue of the Bush administration was
its decision on what kind of brief to file in the cases challenging the University
of Michigan affirmative action programs. These two cases were the most
important on the issue since the Supreme Court’s landmark 1978 ruling in
Regents of University of California v. Bakke, in which it banned quotas but
held that race could be taken into consideration as a “plus factor” in university
admissions in order to achieve diversity. The Bush administration was divided
on what position it should argue before the Court (we discuss the Supreme
Court’s decision in the case in Chapter 12, and the role of black administration
officials in the decision is discussed in Box 11.3). Conservatives in the
administration led by the attorney general and the solicitor general argued that
the administration should ask the Court to overrule Bakke and declare that the
Fourteenth Amendment prohibited any consideration of race in university
admissions. Moderates in the administration including Alberto Gonzalez, the
president’s Hispanic general counsel, urged President Bush to avoid the
constitutional question of whether race could ever be used in admission decisions.
Instead, they said the administration should simply ask the Court to declare the
Michigan programs unconstitutional because they constituted racial quotas. Bush
adopted the position of Gonzalez and the other moderates, saying that while
he supported “diversity of all kinds,” the Michigan programs were “funda-
mentally flawed” because they constituted “racial quotas,” which are divisive,
unfair, and impossible to square with the Constitution.”*
Finally, the seeming indifference and the obvious incompetence of the
administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina, however, probably did more
to damage the credibility of the administration among blacks than did any other
single event. In one poll, Bush’s approval rating after Katrina fell to a mere 2
percent, the lowest ever seen in presidential approval ratings.*¢

The Obama Administration

President Obama entered office at a time when the country faced serious
problems. Abroad, the country was engaged in two wars plus a so-called war
on terror. In addition, there was the ever-present fear of another 9/11-type
catastrophic attack. At home, the country was in the midst of financial crises
that led some to raise the specter of another Great Depression. At a minimum,
the nation was in a deep recession with the unemployment rate at 7.7 percent,
and rising. In this atmosphere, Obama was elected on a platform promising
sweeping liberal reform at home and dramatic changes in the way the nation
conducted its affairs in the world.
268 PARTIV > Institutions

At home (we consider Obama’s foreign policy in Chapter 15), Norman

Ornstein, a political scientist at Washington’s conservative American Enterprise
Institute, writing at the end of Obama’s first year, concluded that he “already
has the most legislative success of any modern president—and that includes
Ronald Reagan and Lyndon Johnson,” and the Congressional Quarterly
reported that Obama in his first year had the highest presidential success score
with Congress since it began keeping records in 1953.47 Obama had four
legislative priorities—must pass bills—an economic recovery/stimulus program,
financial regulatory reform, national health insurance, and climate/energy
legislation. The Democratically controlled Congress (256 Democrats in the
House to 179 Republicans; 60 Democratic senators) enacted some version of
each of these priorities except energy/climate change legislation, which passed
the House but never came up for a Senate vote. In addition, major reforms were
enacted in the student loan program (providing for direct loans by the
government), health information technology, children’s health insurance,
broadband and wireless Internet access, as well as a credit cardholders’ bill of
rights. The stimulus program included one of the largest tax cuts in history,
increased funding for elementary and secondary education, home buying and
college tuition, and tax credits for energy conservation and renewable “green”
energy production.** These achievements are all the more remarkable because
they were accomplished in spite of near-unified Republican opposition. Ornstein
attributes these “astonishing” successes to Obama’s “strategy—applying pressure
quietly while letting congressional leaders find ways to build coalitions.”*?
Obama came to the presidency wishing to be a transformative, “recon-
structive” president like Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. He was
committed to reversing the conservative reconstruction inaugurated by Reagan
by raising taxes on the wealthy and increasing spending on programs to help
ordinary Americans, especially on health and education. This was a politically
risky and courageous effort (on health reform he acted against the advice of the
vice president and virtually all of his senior staff) to create a more egalitarian
society. Many of his egalitarian policies and programs were compromised during
congressional consideration, but nevertheless taken as a whole they constitute
the most ambitious and successful period of liberal reform since Lyndon
Johnson’s Great Society. Skocpol and Jacobs describe Obama’s first two years
as “reaching for a New Deal,” with health reform enacting legislation
“comparable to Social Security, Medicare and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”5°
In previous editions of this text, we classified the first black president as a
“neutral” on issues related specifically to race. This classification is not surprising
as Smith demonstrates in The Politics of Ethnic Incorporation and Avoidance:
A Comparison of the Elections and Presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Barack
Obama.*' As the first of their ethnic groups to reach the presidency, both
Kennedy and Obama felt compelled to practice the “politics of ethnic avoidance”
on issues relating to Catholics and African Americans. Of Kennedy’s avoidance
 CHAPTER 11 > The Presidency and Bureaucracy 269

of Catholic issues, Garry Wills writes, “It is the old story: for ‘one of your own’
to get elected, he must go out of his way to prove he is not just one of your
own. The first Catholic President had to be secular to the point (as we used to
say in Catholic schools) of supererogation.”>? In Obama’s case, unlike previous
presidential administrations that routinely worked behind the scenes to “keep
black grievances off the agenda,”*?“supererogation” would require him—more
so than Kennedy—to lean over backward so as not to appear to be doing
anything “for his own people.” As Bob Herbert, an African American columnist
at the New York Times, put it, “President Obama would rather walk through
hell than spend his time dealing with America’s racial problems.”%4
As with Kennedy and the Catholics, African American intellectual and
political leaders pressed the president to develop specific, race-targeted policies
(mainly to address the double-digit unemployment rate of 16 percent among
blacks),°> and like Kennedy, Obama steadfastly refused (the main Catholic issue
for Kennedy in the 1960s was federal aid to church schools). In December 2009,
Obama told April Ryan of American Urban Radio, “The only thing I cannot
do is, by law I can’t pass laws that say I’m just helping black folks. ’'m the
President of the United States.”°* To this, some black intellectuals responded
scornfully. For example, University of Michigan political scientist Vincent
Hutchings wrote,

Black America is in a depression. And we have a black president. Isn’t that

terrific. Well, it would be more terrific if he was doing something about it.
And he doesn’t appear to be doing so. I don’t want to congratulate. I don’t
want to celebrate and I don’t want to coronate a president black or
otherwise who sits in office while African Americans are suffering at the level
that we are throughout this country in terms of joblessness, in terms of
health disparities, in terms of wealth disparities.°”

At his 100th day in office press conference responding to a question from

the correspondent for BET, raising concerns similar to those of Hutchings, the
president said,

So, my general approach is that if the economy is strong, that will lift all
boats as long as it is supported by, for example, strategies around college
affordability and job training; tax cuts for working families as opposed to
the wealthiest, that level the playing field and ensure bottom-up growth. And
I’m confident it will help the African American community live out the
American dream at the same time it is helping communities all across the
country.°°

In this edition of the text, we reclassify Obama from a racial neutral to an

“antiracist,” because in his last two years in office, he became somewhat more
outspoken in discussing institutional racism and proposed some modest policy
270 PART IV > Institutions

initiatives to dismantle parts of the system of racial subordination. Obama and

some scholars of his presidency, however, claim that he embraced antiracist
policies and programs during his first term. Obama advances this claim, in
particular, with respect to national health insurance. Since the end of the civil
rights era, after full employment, national health insurance has been the priority
item on the black agenda. President Obama claims that he understood the
importance of health insurance to the black community, given the significant
gaps and disparities in health and mortality between blacks and whites, and the
fact that blacks were much more likely to be uninsured than whites (see Box
14.3). Thus, in responding to critics who accused him of avoiding the problems
of blacks he said, “Spending on health care legislation [will] have a direct impact
on African Americans who struggle to afford health insurance. People need to
understand that one out of every five African Americans do not have health
care. Nobody stands to gain more from this health care bill passing.”*?
Undoubtedly, as discussed in Chapter 14, the persistently high rate of
poverty is the major problem confronting the post-civil rights era black
community. As a result of the Great Recession, the already high rate of black
poverty saw its highest single-year increase since the government began
measuring poverty in 1959, increasing to 24.4 percent compared to 10.5 percent
among whites. Yet Obama appeared to ignore the problem, rarely invoking the
word poverty or discussing problems of poor people while constantly talking
about the middle class, the middle class. As Obama was aware, in the “Dog
Whistle” politics of the post-civil rights era middle class has been conflated with
white identity, while poverty is conflated with blackness.*° As Walters writes,
this is a “subtle but nonetheless meaningful construction in which the middle
class symbolizes whites.”*! Aware of this construction, part of Obama’s politics
of ethnic or race avoidance was to avoid the words poverty and poor people,
yet work covertly to address the issue.
Consequently, as Michael Grunwald in The New New Deal: The Hidden
Story of Change in the Obama Era asserts, Obama presided over the “biggest
expansion of poverty initiatives since Lyndon Johnson.”® Looking at the
percentages Obama proposed to spend on poverty (in inflation-adjusted
numbers) in his budgets, Mendelberg and Butler concur, writing that Obama
proposed to spend more on “means tested,” antipoverty programs than any first-
term Democratic president since Johnson.*? Spending on such programs
constituted 8 percent of Carter’s proposed budgets, 12 percent of Clinton’s but
17 percent of Obama’s.** Obama’s first-term spending proposals per poor
person was $13,731 compared to Clinton’s $8,310 and Carter’s $4,431 (in 2014
dollars).°° Overall, they conclude that Obama’s tax and transfer policies lowered
the poverty rate in 2012 by 13 points compared to one point during the Johnson
administration, adjusted for the larger number of poor as a result of the Great
Recession.®°
 CHAPTER 11 > The Presidency and Bureaucracy 271

So, Mendelberg and Butler ask, “Why does he get so little credit?” They
point to his rhetoric, writing “Listeners had to hunt for words like ‘poor’ in his
speeches.” Mendelberg and Butler compared words in the State of the Union
addresses of Carter, Clinton, and Obama, finding the word poverty was used
an average of 7 times by Obama, 9 by Carter, and 23 by Clinton.®” Overall,
the ratio of middle class to poverty words was 3:1. They conclude Obama
“nearly gave up the ‘bully pulpit,’ but despite his ‘pallid rhetoric’ he has ‘on the
poor’ been spending without saying.”®8
Rhetoric, of course, is an important part of presidential power, as the often-
used “bully pulpit” phrase suggests. Presidents, with relatively few formal
powers, have to persuade: persuade the Congress, the media, interest groups,
and ultimately the American people. That Obama, a rhetorically gifted president,
failed to employ this power on issues of race and poverty reflects his view of
the imperative of the politics of ethnic avoidance. It may also reflect what Wilbur
Rich refers to as “Depletion Theory,” the view that “exposing the presidency
to the conundrum of race relations could potentially squander a considerable
amount of political capital with no assurance of results.”©? Thus, Obama, like
his paradigmatic predecessor Lincoln and the few other presidents who have
addressed the issue of race did so by “reassur[ing] whites that racial boundaries
will remain intact and ... that they have little to fear from conceding privileges
to blacks or that racial progress will not take place at their expense. The
rhetorical reassurances define racial etiquette and political correctness in
discussions of the race problem.””°
Most established black leaders—the Congressional Black Caucus and the
heads of the major civil rights organizations—seemed to acquiesce or accept
this notion of depletion theory as it related to Obama and race. For example,
Wade Henderson, the head of the broad-based Leadership Conference on Civil
and Human Rights, remarked, “I think the first half of Obama’s tenure has
many examples of significant civil rights accomplishments that are worth noting.
I don’t join those who criticize him for not talking about issues of race and
poverty. I think that in the current atmosphere, those statements and well-
intentioned efforts would be used against him in a highly politicized way.””!
The “current atmosphere” Henderson was referring to was the Republican con-
servatives and Tea Party campaign of all-out opposition to the Obama agenda,
and the “otherization” of Obama in the conservative media (see Box 11.4).
As we indicated, in his last two years in office, Obama embraced several
explicitly antiracist policies, and his rhetoric, while not embracing poverty and
poor people, did become less racially condescending. Starting during the 2008
campaign, when Obama addressed a black audience he would usually simul-
taneously condemn racism and black people, arguing that while racism, historic
and institutional, was a barrier to black progress so was black culture. Thus,
he would inveigh in moral language against personal irresponsibility in terms
of teenage pregnancy, fathers not taking responsibility for their children, drug
272 PART IV > Institutions

BOX 11.4 2s Sees

The “Otherized,” Polarized Obama Presidency
During the 2008 campaign, some found that 62 percent of whites believed
conservative elites attempted to Obama's policies were “moving the
“otherize” Obama, framing him as a country toward socialism” (35 percent of
radical, an Islamic extremist, and a blacks) but this was believed by 85 and
socialist. George Edward concludes, 86 percent of white Republicans and
“The polarization of the 2008 campaign conservatives. These data suggest that
and the nature of the opposition to Obama Edwards is correct; among a large
laid the groundwork for the intense segment of the population, there is not
aversion to Obama and his policies shortly just the normal partisan and ideological
after he took office.”* Edwards also opposition to Obama but also fear and
contends that Obama’s race, his Ivy loathing.
League education, his “somewhat The result is that the Obama presidency
detached manner,” and his Islamic middle is the most politically, ideologically, and
name caused many Republicans and racially polarized in the history of modern
conservatives not simply to oppose polling. Polarization is measured by
Obama but to “despise and fear” him.° difference in Gallup approval ratings of a
After Obama assumed office, what president between blacks and whites,
Skocpol and Jacobs call the “right wing white Democrats and Republicans, and
noise and echo machine” “continued this white liberals and conservatives.’ Obama's
otherization and polarization” with “wildly racial polarization score at the end of his
false ideas and information."° Indeed, third year was 45, which is five points
there is what Gary Dorrien describes as a higher than the score for Ronald Reagan,
“oaranoid literature on Obama."? In a who previously held the record for a
series of very popular books among racially polarized presidency. Obama's
conservatives, writers like Jerome Corsi, partisan polarization score (the differences
Brad O'Leary, Aaron Klein, Jack Cashill, in approval between white Democrats and
Michelle Malkin, and Dinesh D'Souza Republicans) was 69, which is eight points
portray Obama as a native-born Kenyan higher than George W. Bush's score of 61
(whose mother forged his birth certificate), for his eight years in office. Obama's
“who imbibed socialism and anti-colonial, ideological polarization score of 59 also
anti-western attitudes from his father."® exceeds George W. Bush's previous high
This portrayal is manifestly false; however, of 50.
it is believed by a substantial number of Why did the Obama presidency become
white Republicans and conservatives. so polarized so quickly? First, he entered
An April 2010 Gallup poll found that office in an era of intense partisan,
while 74 percent of whites believe Obama ideological, and racial polarization which
was born in the United States (a started with the Reagan presidency.9
constitutional requirement to hold the Second, the systematic otherization of the
presidential office), it was believed by only president by the right-wing noise machine
57 percent of white Republicans and 56 played a role. Third, while a pragmatic
percent of white conservatives (80 percent centrist well within the tradition of
of blacks). An August 2010 Pew poll found post-FDR liberalism," Obama is a liberal—
21 percent of whites believed Obama was a northern liberal—the first elected since
a Muslim, including 31 percent of white John F. Kennedy in 1960. Fourth, he was
Republicans (10 percent of white an ambitious liberal, determined to enact
Democrats) and 34 percent of white as much of the unfinished liberal agenda
conservatives compared to 6 percent of as the political time and his legislative
white liberals and 7 percent of blacks. An majorities would allow. Finally, Obama is
April 2010 New York Times/CBS news poll black. The first black elected to lead a
 CHAPTER 11 > The Presidency and Bureaucracy 273

country where historically race has been Obama’s First Two Years (New York: Russell
the great polarizer, where at the time of Sage Foundation, 2012): 29.
his election the country was still deeply “Gary Dorrien, The Obama Question: A
divided by color, and where many whites Progressive Perspective (Lanham, MD: Rowman
felt uncomfortable with the idea of a black caer ARES)
man ie me, as one southern wie f Robert C. Smith and Richard Seltzer,
woman told the New York Times. Polarization and the Presidency from FDR to
Obama (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2015).
® George Edwards, “Strategic Assessments: 8 Pietro Nivola and David Brady, eds., Red and
Evaluating Opportunities and Strategies in the Blue Nation: Characteristics and Causes of
Obama Presidency,” in Bert Rockman, Andrew America’s Polarized Politics, Vol. 1 (Washington,
Rudalevige, and Colin Campbell, eds., The DC: Brookings Institution, 2006).
Obama Presidency: Appraisals and Prospects "Norman Ornstein, “Obama, A Pragmatic
(Washington: CO Press, 2012): 48. Moderate Faces the Socialist Smear,”
> Ibid. Washington Post, April 14, 2010.
° Theda Skocpol and Lawrence Jacobs, Reaching ‘Adam Nossiter, “For South, A Waning Hold on
for a New Deal: Ambitious Governance, National Politics,” New York Times, November
Economic Meltdown, and Polarized Politics in 10, 2008.

abuse, violence, and even how black boys needed to pull up their pants and
speak correctly. Many blacks found this frequent litany by the president con-
descending and demeaning (Jesse Jackson was so offended that he was
unknowingly recorded using crude language suggesting he wanted to castrate
Obama for “talking down to black people”). Of this kind of rhetoric Walters
in 2008 wrote:

Barack Obama is running for president of the U.S., not the moral arbiter of
the black community and rather than giving blacks an empowering message,
he seems to be talking through blacks to someone else. Of course, we asked
for it to some extent because black people are unique in America in that they
conduct a public dialogue about their problems and invite everyone to give
their views—on an equal footing with their own. On the other hand, you
seldom hear whites commiserate about the people in jail, the poor or who
has responsibility for these issues as culturally their own ... even though this
is the discussion we have on a regular basis in black barbershops, we should
not legitimize this deflection of the way politicians come into our community
and join in a community discussion rather than try to explain what they
would do if they had the power to make the difference.”

In 2015 in speeches before black audiences this kind of rhetoric somewhat

abated. As the Christian Science Monitor noted about his 2015 address at the
NAACP, “Obama’s rhetoric has also changed. In a fiery speech to the [NAACP]
in July he made the case for societal racism without calling on ‘brothers’ to ‘pull
up their pants’ or making other so-called personal responsibility arguments.”
Antiracist policies in the second term included proposals to address mass
incarceration and suburban segregation in the housing market. In 2015, the
274 PART IV > Institutions

Department of Housing and Urban Development issued the final rules for
“Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.” This rule, long sought by civil rights
and fair housing advocates and bitterly opposed by conservatives, requires cities
to analyze housing patterns to identify institutional racism and then develop
goals and timetables to reduce racial segregation or face a cutoff of federal
funding. But perhaps the most aggressive antiracism proposals were in the area
of criminal justice. Coming in the wake of several incidents of well-publicized
killings of unarmed black men by the police and the protests by the Black
Lives Matter Movement, Obama proposed several reforms to improve police—
community relations including providing federal funds for police body cameras
(refer to Chapter 6 for discussion on the Black Lives Matter Movement). He
also urged Congress to change the mandatory minimums for drug crimes,
pardoned a number of first-time drug offenders, prohibited in federal prisons
the solitary confinement of juveniles, and ordered federal agencies to “Ban
the Box” by not asking prospective job applicants about their criminal records
at the initial application process (law enforcement, intelligence, and national
security agencies were exempted). The president considered issuing an executive
order requiring federal contractors to ban the box, but instead opted to send
legislation to Congress. The administration established an experimental program
to provide Pell Grants to inmates in federal and state prisons to pursue college
degrees. Finally, to highlight his interest in the issue, in July 1915, Obama became
the first sitting president to visit a federal prison to hold conversations with
inmates. With funding from private sources, the president established “My
Brother’s Keeper,” a program to provide assistance to young “boys of color”
to improve their educational and employment opportunities so they might avoid
the “school to prison” pipeline. (Obama pledged to continue this work in his
post-presidency.) As a result of these initiatives, the Christian Science Monitor
wrote the “Obama era may mark a turning point in the way the federal
government approaches crime and incarceration” (see Chapter 14).”
Many in the black intellectual community viewed these policy initiatives
and the change in presidential rhetoric as “too little, and too late.” Meanwhile,
the mainstream media celebrated these developments with headlines reading
“The Black President Some Worried about Has Arrived” and “Obama Finds a
Bolder Voice on Race Issues.”’*> How, black scholars and political leaders
ultimately will assess the record of the first black president on race is problematic.
However, the verdict of the black public is clear. From the beginning of his
tenure to the end of the second year of his second term, Obama has been
phenomenally popular in the African American community. In no year during
his first term did his Gallup approval rating among blacks fall below 86 percent
(among whites his approval fell to 36 percent in 2011), averaging 90 percent
for the first term compared to 42 percent among whites, and between 2012 and
2014 his approval among blacks averaged 88 percent compared to 37 percent
 CHAPTER 11 > The Presidency and Bureaucracy 275

among whites.’ Obama’s politics of ethnic avoidance does not appear to have
undermined the widespread support he enjoyed in the black community, based
on ties of ethnic kinship and solidarity.

Presidential Power and the Federal

Bureaucracy
In previous editions, we discussed the federal bureaucracy in a separate chapter.
However, given that one of the expressed powers granted by the Constitution
to the president (see Article II, Sections 2 and 3) is to head the nation’s
bureaucracy, it perhaps necessarily should be included in this chapter on the
presidency. Historically, presidents prefer to be seen as being forced to act on
issues of race and civil rights.””

The Nature of the Federal Bureaucracy

In his classic studies, Max Weber defined bureaucracy as a form of power based
on knowledge—rationally and hierarchically organized. In other words, a
bureaucracy is the multiple bureaus and agencies that implement or carry out
laws and policies on a routine, day-to-day basis, using hierarchy, standardized
procedures, knowledge, and a specialization of duties.”
Figure 11.1 shows the structure, organization, and types of federal agencies
and bureaucracies. Basically, the bureaucracy can be grouped into five major
categories. First are the agencies within the Executive Office of the President,
such as the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the National Security
Council. Second are the 15 cabinet departments. There are also numerous
independent agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Social Security Administration.
In addition to these administrative units, there are government corporations,
which can function like private corporations. Examples are the United States
Postal Service and Amtrak.
Finally, there are the independent regulatory commissions, which are
supposed to be beyond direct presidential and congressional influence. Members
of these commissions serve for fixed terms and therefore may not be fired by the
president, so these commissions may in theory act in the public interest without
political pressure. Figure 11.1 shows that only two of the numerous independent
commissions and government corporations deal explicitly with issues of race or
civil rights: the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission (EEOC). They represent 3.3 percent of the total
commissions and corporations.
 AHL LNAWNYSAO
AO SHL D GALINN S3LVLS

SALLNDAYaHONVUS | Twioianr HONWue

SHL SSSYODNOD SHL LNAGISaYd SHL SWSudNSLYNOD
40 SHL
SHE SDA ANAGISSud G3LINN SALVLS
S1LVN3S SSNOH
SALLND3Xa
391440
40 3HL ANAGISSYd SALWHLSININGY
391450
40 AHL
HOW LOS 4O SHI ‘TOLdWS GALINA SALWLS S1YNOD
IWNOISSSYODNOO
13DGN8 491440 Wass TWIdIGAr YSLN39
TONNOD
30 OINONODA SYASIAGY 40/30I440 WNOLLWN
DNYG TOBLNODAOMNOd
INANNYSAOD ALMIEVINNODOV
9150 WINO.UEYALSLYNOOD
TIONNOD
NO IWLNASWNOUIANS
ALIMWND
— 3O0IS4O.
40 SONFIOS
GNV ADOTONHOAL
AOMOd
LNAWNYSAOD
ONILNIYd30/440 GALINA S3IVLS 'SLUNOD 40 STWaddV
TWNOLLWN ALYNDIS TMONNOS 391540. SHL40 GALINA SSIWLS ACV GALINA S3IVIS 1LNNOD
AHVYE!]
40 SS3YDNOO 40 STWaddW
HOS SH GSWYV S4A9HO4
301440
40. NOLIWHLSININGY SAUWLNASSYd34 GALINN SSLWLS _LHNOOD
GS.LINN. SSIWLS SINVLOS N3GHVD 4O STVaddV
HOS SNVUALIA
SWIV1D
301440
40 GNV_LNSWSDYNVW
—-1GN 30Id3O
IO SOIASHL ANAGISAYd GSLINA SALVIS LOIISIG SLHNOD
SLIM ASNOH 391440 GALINN SSIVLS 1HNOD 40 WWU3034 SWIW19
GALINA S3IWLS JHNOO 30 IWNOLIVNHSLNI
AGVEL
GALINA SSIVLS ONIONALNAS NOISSINWOS
G3LINN SALWILS
XWL LHNOD

30
LNAWLVdad

aunLiNoIDy
INAGNAdJGNI LN3WHSIISVLSa
GNV INSWNH3A05 SNOLWHOdHOS
SALIWELSININGYJONSYS4ANO9
40 SHL GALINN SAIWLS TWH30s4 DNISNOH JONVNIS XONADV TVWNOLLIVN
LIGAHO NOINN NOLLVULSININGY 30Vad *SdHOO
NVOISV LNAWdOTSA3RGNOLIWGNNO4 WHsaGs4HOE SNOLIW1SY ALYOHLNVY WNOLLWN NOLIVGNNO4
JO SHL SLYV GNV JH SALUINVINNHNOISN3d LI4ANSE ALNVEWND NOLWHOdYOO
DNLLSVOGVOHa
GYVOE
JO SYONHSAOD Wws033 SILLY NOISSININOD IVNOLLYNHOSV1 SNOLIV1SY
GuVOS WLSOd AHOIWINDSY NOISSINNOO
WHLNIO JONIOITTSLNI
XONFDV WwH3ds4 NOLLWIGSW
GNV NOLIVTIIONOD
ASINYAS TWNOLLVN NOLIVIGSW QYVOE VOTIVE LNSWSHILSY
GYVO8
ALGOWNOO SAYNLN4S ONIGVEL NOISSINWOO Wwu3Gs4
SNIW AISSVS
GNV HITVSH M3IASY NOISSININOSTWNOLLWN GVOUTIVY
Vd HIONASS NOLIWHOdYOO
OIVELLINV)
— SSILUMOSS
GNV FONVHOXG NOISSININO9
HSWNSNOO, IWIONVNIS NOLLOALOYd
Q8VOE WH3034 SAH3S34 WALSAS TWNOLLWN SJON3IOS NOLMWGNNO SANLOFT1ASSOIANAS WALSAS
HAWNSNOO LONGO"dALASVS NOISSINWOD Wass INSW3Y1SY
I4ISHL INSWLSSANI
GYVO8 TWNOLIVN NOLIWLHOdSNVYL
ALFSVS GYVOE TIVWS SSSNISNE NOLWWHLSININGY
NOLIWHOdHOO
HO4 TWNOLIVN
GNV ALINAWINOD
AOIANAS TWH30344GVuL NOISSINWOD YWSTONN AHOLV1NDSY NOISSINWOO TWIDOS ALINOAS NOLIWELSININGY
SSN34IG HVITIONN SALLITMOV4 AL34VS GYVOE WYSNID SSOIAUSS NOLIVELSININGY IWNOLIWdNODO
ALS4VSGNV HITWAH MSIASY ~NOISSINWOO SSSSANNAL AATIVA ALOHA
TWLNSWNOYIANS NOLLOALOYd
AONIOV NVOISWV-Y3_LNINOLWGNNOS 301440
JO SHL HOLOSIUIG
JO TWNOMWN SONSSMALNISGVeLLGNV LNAWdOTSARG
XONSDV
TWNd3 LNAWAO1dWS ALINALHOddO NOISSINIWOD LIYSW SWALSAS NOLLOSLOUd
GYVOS 301550
40 LNSIINNYAAOD
SOIH13 " GALINA. SIIVIS AONSDV
HOS TWNOLIWNYSINI ANAWdOTSASG
LHOdWI-LHOdxa
MNVE40 SHL GALINN SS1WLS TVNOLLVN SOLLAWNOHSV
GNV 30VdS NOLLWHLSININGY
30140
40 TANNOSH3d ANSWSSVNVA GALINA SALWLS NOISSININOD
NO MAIO SLHSIY
Wu LIGSHD NOUVELSININGY TWNOLIVN SSAIHOUV
GNV SGHOO3Y NOLWHLSININGY3O\44O
JO WwildadS TASNNOD GALINA SAVES TVNOLIVNYSINI
30VHL NOISSINNNO9
Wusds3 SNOLLWOINNWIWOO
NOISSINNODS TWNOLLWNTWLUdVO
1d ONINNV NOISSINWOO SVISUSAO.SLWAlud LNAWLSSANI NOLWYOdHOO GSLINA SALVLS W1SOd SDIAYAS
TwH3a0s4 LSOd3G JONVENSNI NOIiVHOdHOO ¢
Iwu3d33 NOILO313 NOISSINWOO

AYNDI4
LLL
aunjonsys
Jo ay} jeJapa4 Adesoneeing
:eoINDS
ey) pallu) sajelg JUaWLAAOD
Jenueypy
LOZ ‘UO\buIyseM)
:Oq *S'f JUBUIBADD
Bung ‘(e0130
-d “ZZ mmwy//:sdyy/Noh-odb-
LOZ-NVINAOD/Sd/sA
L-€ spy LOZ-NVINAOD/JPG/90
L-E “$P0°90-L-L
 CHAPTER 11 > The Presidency and Bureaucracy 277

Bureaucracies with Race Missions: A Brief

History
In 1865, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, better
known as the Freedmen’s Bureau, was established. The Bureau was the first
federal agency with a race mission. Its purposes were to address problems of
the refugees displaced by the Civil War; to provide social, educational, and
medical benefits to the newly freed slaves; to provide for the cultivation of
abandoned lands; and to make sure the freed slaves received fair wages for their
labor. However, because of the opposition of conservatives and white
supremacists, Congress dissolved the Bureau in 1872.
In 1939, Attorney General Frank Murphy issued an order establishing a
civil liberties unit within the Justice Department. The purpose of this unit was
to put the federal government on the side of those fighting for civil liberties and
civil rights, especially African Americans.
Then, in the 1957 Civil Rights Act, Congress created the Commission on
Civil Rights—a fact-finding agency that makes recommendations to the president
and Congress. In addition, this new law upgraded the civil liberties unit in the
Justice Department to a full-fledged Civil Rights Division (CRD).
Congress followed up with the 1960 Civil Rights Act, which expanded the
power of the CRD of the Justice Department. The Civil Rights Act of 1964
created three new race-oriented federal bureaucratic units, although with
different structural arrangements. Title VI created inside all federal agencies,
departments, and commissions an Office of Civil Rights Compliance (OCRC),
which monitors state and local governments to ensure that they do not spend
federal funds in a racially discriminatory fashion. The Office of Federal Contract
Compliance (OFCC) was also created in the Department of Labor to assure
nondiscrimination and affirmative action by employers with government
contracts.
Title VII created the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission)
to ensure nondiscrimination in employment. In 1972, legislation sponsored by
African American congressman Augustus Hawkins made the EEOC an
independent commission.
Title X of the 1964 act created the Community Relations Agency, a federal
office designed to improve race relations in communities having racial conflicts.
The agency was empowered to use the carrot-and-stick approach: provide
money and assistance and also use legal recourse to minimize racial conflict.
Eventually, this agency was reduced in size and shifted to unit status within the
Justice Department.
The 1965 Voting Rights Act created a unit inside the Justice Department’s
CRD to handle matters of racial discrimination in voter registration and voting,
particularly in the southern states where efforts had been persistent in denying
African Americans their voting rights.
278 PART IV > Institutions

BOX 11.5
The Bureaucracy at Work:
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the FBI

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), of desperation, the FBI sent a letter to Dr.
a part of the Justice Department, is the King urging him to commit suicide or face
nation’s principal law enforcement and exposure as a “liar” and “pervert,” leading
investigative agency, made famous in Dr. King to exclaim that the FBI, the
scores of television programs and movies. nation’s chief law enforcement
This agency, charged with enforcing the bureaucracy, was “out to break me.”
civil and constitutional rights of citizens, To his eternal credit, Dr. King did not
consistently failed to provide protection to yield to the efforts of the FBI. However,
civil rights workers in the South during the for a time the FBI's dirty tricks caused
1960s, claiming, in the words of its deep distress for Dr. King, his family, and
director, J. Edgar Hoover, that it was not a his associates. The FBI's attempt to
police force and therefore could not destroy Dr. King is thoroughly documented
protect the civil rights of southern blacks. in the Senate's investigation and in David
Yet the FBI and Hoover set about to Garrow's The FBI and Martin Luther King,
systematically harass, discredit, and Jr.” Many critics of the FBI’s campaign
destroy America’s preeminent civil rights against Dr. King contend that it was a
leader. product of J. Edgar Hoover's paranoia and
From 1963 until Martin Luther King Jr.'s a bureaucracy gone amok; however,
death in 1968, the FBI in its COINTELPRO Garrow, a political scientist, argues that
program systematically attempted to this view is not correct. Granted, the FBI
destroy his effectiveness as the leader of under Hoover had unprecedented power
the civil rights movement. According to and autonomy; even so, the presidents
the FBI agent in charge, “No holds were and members of Congress in Hoover's
barred. We have used [similar] techniques time were mostly white men of narrow
against Soviet agents. [The same methods conservative views,° and Garrow contends
were] brought home against any that the FBI faithfully represented these
organization which we targeted. We did same American values and was not an
not differentiate. This is a rough, tough out-of-control bureaucracy. Garrow
business.”? Among the many “rough, concludes, “The Bureau was not a
tough” tactics used against Dr. King were renegade institution secretly operating
efforts to prove that he was a communist outside the parameters of American
or that he was being manipulated by values, but a virtually representative
communists; wiretaps and microphone bureaucracy that loyally served ‘to protect
surveillance of his home, office, and hotel the established order against adversary
rooms; attempts to prove he had secret challenges.’"¢
foreign bank accounts; attempts to prove
that he had numerous affairs with women; @ Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on
and attempts to prevent him from Intelligence Activities and the Rights of
publishing his books and from receiving Americans, Book III. Final Report of the Select
Committee to Study Government Operations
the Nobel Peace Prize. Derogatory
with Respect to Intelligence Activities, United
information about Dr. King’s private life
States Senate, 94th Congress, April 1976, p. 81.
was given to members of Congress, the ° David Garrow, The FBI and Martin Luther King,
press, university and church leaders Jr. (New York: Penguin Books, 1983).
(including the Pope), and other leaders of C|bid., pp. 224-25.
the civil rights movement. Finally, in an act 9 |bid., p. 213.
 CHAPTER 11 > The Presidency and Bureaucracy 279

Last, in 1984 Congress created the Martin Luther King Jr., Federal Holiday
Commission and eventually provided some small funding, empowering it to help
in the celebration and promotion of the national holiday.
Overall, there are four federal bureaus devoted to an explicitly racial mission:
(1) the Commission on Civil Rights, (2) the EEOC, (3) the Martin Luther King
Jr., Federal Holiday Commission, and (4) the Civil Rights and Voting Rights
units in the Justice Department. Each of these bodies is subject to political
influences and pressures (as well as budgeting ones) that can reduce their enforce-
ment effectiveness. Thus, the federal bureaucracy has not been a consistently
useful tool in the African American quest for universal freedom, and occasionally
it has been hostile to that quest (see Box 11.5).

Running the Bureaucracy: African American

Political Appointees
When one analyzes and evaluates the federal bureaucracy, however, the entire
story is not captured by focusing on federal agencies designed to deal with race
and race relations. An important part was played by African Americans who
obtained leadership roles in the federal bureaucracy in general.
During the New Deal, Mary McLeod Bethune announced, “My people will
not be satisfied until they see some black faces in high places.””? When she uttered
these words, no African American had ever headed a federal agency or bureau.
More than three decades after her comment, there had still been no African
American in such a capacity (although Roosevelt did appoint Bethune director
of the Division of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration).
Although President Eisenhower made a couple of token appointments, this
situation would not change in a major way until the administration of President
Kennedy in 1961. Thus, for the greater part of America’s history, African
Americans, though subject to the federal bureaucracy, were outside it. Therefore,
the first quest of African Americans in terms of the bureaucracy was to make
it representative of all the people.
President Grant began the initial process of appointing African American
Republican leaders to minor federal posts in Washington, DC, and in the
southern states, and to diplomatic posts in African and Caribbean nations. Posts
such as custom collector and minister to foreign countries became the manner
in which the Republican Party enhanced and enlarged its alliance with the
African American electorate.
The first Democratic president to deal with black appointments was Grover
Cleveland, who took office in 1885 and appointed blacks as ministers to Haiti
and Liberia and a Recorder of Deeds in Washington, DC.*°
But no matter whether the appointments were by the Democratic or the
Republican parties, they were based on a single reality: “to identify and then
280 PART IV > Institutions

latch onto a black leader who could coalesce a potentially powerful black
vote.”8! As one white politician wrote President Grant, urging the appointment
of an African American state leader to an ambassadorial post, “If [James Milton
Turner] can go to Liberia for two years he will gain a national reputation which
will make him the universally trusted leader of the colored men in the campaign
of [18]72. ... He can come back in ’72 and take his place as the chosen leader
of his race and whose [sic] claims to leadership will not be disputed.”*?
However, in the midst of such political appointments, white supremacists
took over the southern governments and displaced most African American state
and local appointive officials by violence, fraud, and corruption. These displaced
officials then turned to Presidents Grant, Arthur, and Harrison as a source of
federal appointments and patronage positions.®’ Thus, what started out as a
trickle of federal jobs emerged into a full-fledged effort to find employment for
black party loyalists.
In sum, the Republican Party’s need for the black vote launched African
Americans into the federal bureaucracy. Eventually this trend, coupled with the
need for political jobs for the African American community, made federal
patronage appointments all the more important and useful for the African
American community. Thus, political patronage became a way in which blacks
could gain access to the federal bureaucracy. These two links—the party’s need

Mary MacLeod Bethune, the informal leader of Franklin D. Roosevelt's black cabinet.
Source: Gordon Parks/Getty Images
 CHAPTER 11 > The Presidency and Bureaucracy 281

for votes and the community’s need for employment—continued and expanded.
The period of greatest expansion came in the New Deal Era, 1933-1945, as
President Roosevelt appointed a significant number of African American advisors
who became known informally as “the black cabinet.”
The New Deal formalized the role of African American advisors to
presidents, which had started with Frederick Douglass, who advised Presidents
Lincoln and Grant, and continued with Booker T. Washington, who advised
Cleveland, Harrison, Theodore Roosevelt, and Taft. These individuals, however,
served in informal, nebulous, and unofficial positions. Roosevelt was the first
to give his political appointees and advisors institutional positions in the
bureaucracy.
Following the New Deal, the next great step came with Presidents Kennedy
and Johnson, who appointed a number of blacks to high-level positions. In 1966,
President Johnson became the first president to appoint an African American
to cabinet rank, as Robert Weaver became secretary of the Housing and Urban
Development (HUD) Department. President Gerald Ford appointed William
Coleman secretary of Transportation. President Carter placed Patricia Harris
first at HUD and then at Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) and appointed
Andrew Young and later Donald McHenry as UN ambassadors; Reagan named
Samuel Pierce secretary of HUD.
In 1993, President Clinton broke new ground. Usually African Americans
were given one cabinet position, frequently at HUD or HEW (now Health and
Human Services—HHS). Clinton placed four blacks in his cabinet—at Energy,
Agriculture, Veterans Affairs, and Commerce—and named numerous others to
subcabinet positions. Between 1966, when one black was appointed, and 1993,
when four were appointed, Democratic presidents made the largest number of
political appointments. Toward the end of his first term, Clinton named an
African American—Franklin Raines—to head (with cabinet rank) the powerful
OMB. Clinton also appointed blacks to head two important regulatory com-
missions: the National Labor Relations Board and the Federal Communications
Commission.
President George W. Bush’s record on the appointment of blacks and other
minorities to high-level positions in the bureaucracy resembles more the record
of his Democratic predecessors than it does his father’s or Ronald Reagan’s.
As Table 11.2 on the appointment patterns of recent American presidents
shows, about 10 percent of his appointments were black compared to 5 and 6
percent, respectively, for the Reagan and first Bush administrations. In the
Clinton administration, 13 percent of the appointments were black. Not only
did the second Bush appoint a relatively large number of blacks compared to
prior Republican presidents, his overall appointments were the most ethnically
diverse in history, including 6 percent Latino and 3 percent Asian American
(compared to Clinton’s 4 percent Latino and 1 percent Asian American). Like
282 PARTIV > Institutions

Clinton, Bush appointed blacks to many high-visibility and powerful positions

throughout the government, including three cabinet positions: secretary of state
(the senior cabinet post), secretary of Education, and secretary of HUD.
Condoleezza Rice, an African American political scientist, became the first
woman and the second black (after Colin Powell in the Reagan administration)
to serve as national security advisor. (The vice president, the secretaries of state
and defense, the heads of the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the national
security advisor constitute the principal national security decision makers in
government. Thus, under Bush, blacks held one-third of these positions.) Bush
also appointed blacks to the number-two positions in the departments of Health
and Human Services, Justice, and HUD, as head of the CRD in the Justice
Department, as vice chair of the Federal Reserve Board, as chair of the Federal
Communications Commission (Michael Powell, the son of the secretary of
state), and as assistant secretary of commerce in charge of postwar Iraqi
reconstruction. In his second administration, Bush promoted Rice from national
security advisor to secretary of state.
As of 2016, President Obama had appointed about the same percentage of
blacks to senior positions in his administration as his immediate Democratic
predecessors, 14 percent compared to 12 and 13 percent in the Carter and
Clinton administrations (see Table 11.2). But in his first term he appointed only
one black to the statutory cabinet (Eric Holder as attorney general), compared

TABLE 11.2

Administration => -__- Percentage®

Kennedy-Johnson 2 ;
NIXONSR OR 275 4
Carter 12
Reagan 3 5
Bush | . 6
Clinton 13
George W. Bush : 10
Obama ‘ 14

® The Kennedy-Johnson administrations were pied as one for purposes of data collection,
as were the Nixon-Ford administrations.
> Percentage is based on all presidential appointments, excluding judges and military officers.
Sources: The data on appointees from Kennedy-Johnson to Bush are from Robert C. Smith,
We Have No Leaders: African Americans in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Albany, NY: SUNY
Press, 1996): 131. The data on the George W. Bush and Obama Ee ist 00S were
collected by the authors.
 CHAPTER 11 > The Presidency and Bureaucracy 283

to Clinton’s four and George W. Bush’s two in their first terms. Although he
did grant his African American UN ambassador and special trade representative
“cabinet rank,” it is noteworthy that the first black president put fewer blacks
in the cabinet than his white, conservative Republican predecessor. Further
evidence of his first term practice of the politics of ethnic avoidance—he
appointed three Latinos and two Asian Americans to the cabinet. Obama
appointed a relatively larger number of blacks to the White House staff, includ-
ing Valerie Jarrett as a senior advisor, and she was “one of the four or five
* people in the room with him when decisions get made.”8+ However, in his second
term, as perhaps evidence of his embracing blackness, Obama appointed three
blacks to the cabinet as secretaries of Transportation, Homeland Security, and
Education. He also named UN ambassador Susan Rice as National Security
Advisor. It is also noteworthy that when Attorney General Holder resigned, he
named another African American—Loretta Lynch—as his replacement.
Overall, the Obama administration’s appointments were the most demo-
graphically diverse in history, with a majority of “top” appointments held by
individuals from racial and ethnic backgrounds and women for the first time.
Of the 80 top positions in the executive branch, Professor Anne Cooper found
that Obama’s diversity appointments were 54 percent, compared to 26 percent
for George W. Bush and 38 percent for Bill Clinton.®* In addition, he appointed
more than a dozen openly gay persons (including a gay secretary of the army
and a transgender member of the White House staff).

Staffing the Bureaucracy: African American

Civil Servants
African American political appointees cannot, in and of themselves, do the job
alone.®” All political appointees are transients. The average length of service is
22 months out of a four-year cycle. Thus, to influence and impact bureaucratic
rule making and policy, any group needs a continuing presence and permanency
inside the bureaucracy, a day-to-day involvement. This means African Americans
had to become permanent bureaucrats through the civil service process. After
a brief probationary period, individuals hired through this process—civil
servants—may not be fired. They become part of the permanent government.
(See Box 11.6.)
When political scientists treat the federal bureaucracy and the question of
race, their focus is usually on African American employment in this permanent
bureaucracy. Although black employees were appointed after the Civil War, by
the time of the passage of the Pendleton Act (which created the civil service),
there were only 620 black civil servants in the federal government. By 1893,
the report of the Civil Service Commission indicated that the number had risen
to 2,393, but this 74 percent increase was to run headlong into southern
284 PARTIV > Institutions

The Bureaucracy and Your Race

In the United States—and only in the agencies that collect statistical data. Such
United States—a person of any known data are used to determine the racial
African ancestry is defined as black or composition of the country, to redistrict
African American. This peculiar definition the House and state and local legislative
of one’s race was established early by the bodies, to monitor enforcement of civil
U.S. Bureau of the Census, which rights and affirmative action laws, and for
declared, other purposes.
In recent years, however, this
A person of mixed white and Negro
bureaucratic definition of race has been
blood should be returned as a Negro,
challenged by many Americans, especially
no matter how small the percentage
the growing number of biracial or mixed-
of Negro blood. Both black and
race couples. In 1967, the Supreme Court
mulatto persons are to be returned as
declared in Loving v. Virginia that a state
Negroes, without distinction. A
was in violation of the Fourteenth
person of mixed Indian and Negro
Amendment's equal-protection clause if it
blood should be returned as a Negro.
prohibited interracial or mixed marriages.®
... Mixtures of non-white races
Since that time the number of mixed
should be reported according to the
black-white marriages has increased
race of the father, except that Negro
dramatically—from 149,000 to 964,000.°
Indian should be reported as Negro.’
Increasingly, some of these mixed
At the founding of the Republic, the couples, their offspring, and others are
Census Bureau recognized three races: demanding that the OMB change its 1977
black, white, and red. However, as the directive to include the category “mixed
nation became more ethnically diverse or race” or “multiracial.”¢ According to a
multicultural, this definition became 1995 Newsweek poll, 49 percent of blacks
inadequate. Thus, in 1977 the bureaucracy but only 36 percent of whites support
changed the definition or meaning of race. adding this new category.® However, most
The bureaucracy responsible for defining African American leaders and civil rights
race is not the Census Bureau (an agency organizations have opposed the change,
within the cabinet-level Department of arguing that the new category will result in
Commerce) but the OMB, an agency a loss of black political power, undermine
within the Executive Office of the affirmative action, and lead to increased
President, whose principal responsibility is discrimination and stigmatization of African
to prepare the annual budget the president Americans.
submits to Congress. In addition to its In 1993, the OMB agreed to consider
budget responsibilities, the OMB also has adding the multiracial category in time for
overall management or oversight use in the 2000 census. However, a task
responsibility for the federal bureaucracy. force appointed to study the issue
In this latter role, in 1977 it issued recommended that instead of a new
Statistical Policy Directive #15 defining the multiracial category, people be allowed to
meaning of race for purposes of federal check more than one race on the census
policy. According to this definition, there questionnaire. The task force contended
are four “races” in the United States: that a new multiracial category would “add
black, white, American Indian or Alaskan to racial tensions and further
native, and Asian or Pacific Islander. To fragmentation of our population.”9
determine ethnic identification, black and The 2000 census allowed individuals for
white respondents are asked to check the first time to check more than one race
“Hispanic origin” or “not of Hispanic on the census questionnaire. Therefore, it
origin,” in effect creating a fifth “race.” included the traditional definition of who is
The five categories are used by the black, as well as those persons who
Census Bureau and all other government elected to select any other racial
 CHAPTER 11 > The Presidency and Bureaucracy 285

categories. Ninety-eight percent of 2000 census, 3.1 percent of whites

Americans selected a single race and 2 indicated they had a spouse of a different
percent—6.8 million persons—selected a race, 5.7 percent of blacks, 16.3 percent
second race, including 1.7 million blacks of Asian Americans, and 16.3 percent of
(about half the blacks who selected a Latinos.) But one thing is clear—the
second race reported they were white). meaning of race in America will continue
This 1.7 million (25 percent of those who to be determined more by bureaucracy
selected multiple categories) represents 4 than by biology.
percent of the “all-inclusive” black
population or the population combining ® This definition from the first census is quoted
single- and mixed-race blacks. The all- in Langston Hughes and Milton Meltzer, A
inclusive figure is about 5 percent higher Pictorial History of the Negro in America (New
York: Crown, 1964): 2. On the historical origins
than the black figure, and adding the two
of America’s definition of race, see F. James
together increases the black population Davis, Who Is Black: One Nation’s Definition
percentage from 12.3 to 13.9 percent of (University Park: Pennsylvania State University
the nation’s population (from 34,658,190 Press, 1991). See also Melissa Nobles, Shades
to 36,419,434). The OMB decided that of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern
those blacks (and other racial and ethnic Politics (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press,
groups) who selected white would be 2000).
assigned—following the practice of the >380 U.S. 1 (1967).
first census—to the black category. © See Michael Frisby, “Black, White or Other,”
Emerge (December/January 1996): 49.
However, It left ambiguous how those
4 Jon Michael Spencer, The New Colored
blacks who selected another racial and People: The Mixed Race Movement in America
ethnic group would be categorized. Thus, (New York: New York University Press, 1997).
the compromise on meaning of race for © Tom Morganthau, “What Color Is Black?”
the 2000 census likely creates as many Newsweek, February 13, 1995, p. 65.
problems as it resolves and is likely to be f Frisby, “Black, White or Other,” p. 51.
revisited, especially as the number of 9 Steven Holmes, “Panel Balks at a Multiracial
mixed-race marriages or relationships Census Category,” New York Times, July 9,
1997, p. A8.
increases and as the nation becomes
more ethnically diverse. (According to the

opposition and the ideology of white supremacy and its emerging social and
political context of segregation.*®
Segregation occurred in federal government departments before 1913, but
it was limited, received little White House consideration, depended largely on
individual administrations, and did not prevent some black Americans from
gaining promotions.8? However, the rising federal acceptance of the southern
system of segregation started slowly and gradually to have an impact in the federal
bureaucracy despite the civil service merit system. For instance, the percentage
of black employees fell from 6 percent in 1910 to 4.9 percent in 1918.” But the
influence of the gradual and evolving southern forces of white supremacy and
segregation coalesced into a tidal wave with the election of a Democratic
Congress and a southern Democratic president, Woodrow Wilson, in 19137"
Southern forces started to work on President Wilson from the first day of
his administration. Thomas Dixon was the southern novelist who wrote the racist
The Clansman, which became D. W. Griffith’s racist film The Birth of a Nation.
(President Woodrow Wilson saw this film at the White House and endorsed it,
saying it was “history written with lightning.”)?” Dixon wrote President Wilson
286 PART IV > Institutions

on his nomination of a black American to a post in the Treasury: “I am heartsick

over the announcement that you have appointed a Negro to boss white girls as
Register of the Treasury.”*? With these types of pleas pouring in, President
Wilson permitted most federal bureaucracies in 1913 to segregate African
Americans from whites; even the toilets and restrooms were segregated.
In May 1914, the U.S. Civil Service Commission, finding itself in a changed
political context and environment, made photographs mandatory with all
applications as means to further racial discrimination. With the president and
the Commission supporting the segregation of the federal bureaucracy, in 1913
and 1914 Congress joined the process with calls for segregation of the workforce.
Overall, the federal government’s embrace of segregation outlasted the Wilson
administration, since the succeeding Republican presidencies continued Wilson’s
policies.** Thus, the federal government’s acceptance of the policies of white
supremacy and segregation “determined the relationship between Black
Americans and the federal government for the ensuing fifty years.”?> Desmond
King concludes, “After 1913 Black American employees in Federal Agencies were
disproportionately concentrated in custodial, menial and junior clerical positions
and were frequently passed over for appointment at all.”?° The federal
bureaucracy became a pillar of segregated race relations.
African Americans, through the NAACP and other African American groups,
fought this trend; and while some of the worst features, such as photographs
on applications, were removed in 1940, the final dismantling did not occur until
the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Since the first appointment in 1881, African Americans
have slowly risen in the staffing of the federal bureaucracy, but their presence
has not yet made the federal bureaucracy representative of the nation’s
population,” at the current estimate of roughly 11 percent.%8
For example, during Obama’s presidency, the African American rates of
federal employment slightly increased to 8.4 percent of senior-level positions,
8.3 percent of professional workers, 12.6 percent of technicians, 11.9 percent
of sales workers, 11.3 percent of administrative support workers, 6.6 percent
of craft workers, 13 percent of operatives, 10.7 percent of laborers and helpers,
and 16.7 percent of service workers in the bureaucracy.” To improve this
situation, in August 2011, the president issued Executive Order 13583,
“Establishing a Coordinated Government-Wide initiative to Promote Diversity
in the Federal Workforce.” This order directs all federal agencies to develop
specific plans to diversify the federal bureaucracy.

Civil Rights Enforcement in the Obama

Administration
The George W. Bush administration was widely criticized for slowing down the
enforcement of race-related civil rights law, cutting the budgets of the civil rights
 CHAPTER 11 > The Presidency and Bureaucracy 287

enforcement agencies, and using ideology rather than merit in hiring career civil
servants.'°? One of the few race-specific pledges Obama made during the
presidential campaign was to strengthen the enforcement of civil rights law,
particularly in the areas of race discrimination in employment, housing, credit,
and voting rights. In its first year under the leadership of the first African American
attorney general, the administration took steps designed to keep the president’s
promise.'°! In its first budget, the administration proposed an 18 percent increase
in the budget of the Justice Department’s CRD.!% It also proposed hiring
additional staff, and in July 2009, CRD’s acting head sent a memorandum to
every federal agency “Urging more aggressive enforcement of regulations that
forbid recipients of taxpayer money from policies that have a disparate impact
on minorities.”!°° The attorney general also urged Congress to eliminate the
sentencing disparity between crack and powdered cocaine. In a 2013 speech before
the American Bar Association, Holder announced that he was ordering federal
prosecutors to stop seeking mandatory sentences for nonviolent drug offenders,
and instead promote drug-treatment programs. Calling the racial disparities in
sentencing between white and black males “unacceptable” and “shameful,”
Holder directed a panel of U.S. attorneys to study and suggest solutions to the
problem. The Justice Department also sued Texas and North Carolina, charging
that their newly enacted election laws would suppress the turnout of citizens of
historically marginalized racial and ethnic backgrounds and low-income voters.
In filing the suits, the attorney general emphasized that because of the Supreme
Court’s adverse ruling on Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, he intended to
vigorously use Section 2 to enforce the rights of minorities to vote. Overall, the
Obama administration’s civil rights record, even in the first term, reflected ethnic
engagement rather than ethnic avoidance, reflecting to a considerable extent the
aggressive and outspoken leadership of Attorney General Holder.

Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom

ARTHUR FLETCHER (1924-2005)
Arthur Fletcher’s contribution to universal freedom and equality is controversial.
In 1969 as an assistant secretary of labor in the Nixon administration, Fletcher
was principally responsible for the design and implementation of affirmative
action as the policy of the U.S. government. (Refer to Box 11.3.) As he told one
of the authors of this text in a 1971 interview, “affirmative action was my baby.”
In fathering affirmative action, Fletcher used his position to advance the cause
of racial equality more effectively than any other African American who has
served in the bureaucracy. As one of the highest-ranking blacks in the bureau-
288 PART IV > Institutions

cracy during the Nixon administration,

he was a leader in organizing other
blacks in the administration to advocate
for the interests of African Americans.
Born in Phoenix, Arizona, the son
of a career military man, Fletcher was
raised in Kansas. A star football player
at Washburn University in Topeka, in
1954 he became the first African Ameri-
can player for the Baltimore Colts. After
graduation, he became active in Kansas
Republican politics and was one of
the individuals who helped to finance
the Brown v. Board of Education
lawsuit. In the 1960s he moved to the
West Coast, eventually settling in the
state of Washington, where he ran
successfully for lieutenant governor. Arthur Fletcher.
Fletcher’s Republican Party activism led Source: Michael Bryant/MCT/Newscom
to his appointment by Nixon, and
subsequently, as one of the most visible black Republicans in the nation, he served
as an advisor to Presidents Ford and Reagan, and under the first President Bush,
he was named chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Although
Fletcher considered himself a loyal Republican, he did not hesitate to criticize
Republican presidents and policies, describing President Reagan, for example,
as “the worst president for civil rights in the twentieth century.”
As affirmative action became increasingly controversial after the Republican
Party dropped its support for it in the 1980s, Fletcher briefly considered running
for the party’s presidential nomination in 1996 in order to defend “his baby.”
However, he ultimately declined to run, recognizing that as a liberal in a party
that now stood strongly for conservatism, he would get little support in terms
of money or votes.

Summary S@aea ee
In a historical review of American presidents, most have been white supremacists,
and many have been racists. And of those who have been neither, they have
generally been reluctant to act decisively against racism and in favor of universal
freedom unless forced to do so during times of crisis. Abraham Lincoln
established the pattern, the paradigm for how American presidents would deal
with the African American freedom quest, when he said he would only grant
 CHAPTER 11 > The Presidency and Bureaucracy 289

blacks’ freedom if it would help save the union—that is nation-maintaining.

Otherwise, he said he would practice “benign neglect” and do nothing despite
his personal antislavery convictions. Despite the great power and majesty vested
in the office of the presidency, the 44 men who have held the office have been
reluctant (with the exception of Lyndon Johnson) to use that power and majesty
to further African American freedom, preferring “not to take the risk” of
alienating white public opinion, jeopardizing other policy priorities, or damaging
their chances for election and reelection. In this regard, even the first black
president in his first term in office was no different than his predecessors. .
Relatedly, the bureaucracy—the hundreds of departments, agencies, bureaus,
and commissions that enforce the law and implement public policies—is integral
to the African American quest for universal freedom and equality. Yet, the federal
bureaucracy has not always been a consistently useful tool in the quest for
universal freedom, and occasionally it has been hostile to it. That is, a law
enacted by Congress or a decision by the Supreme Court is mere words on paper
unless the bureaucracy acts to enforce or implement them. Although black
inclusion in the bureaucracy started after the Civil War, effective representation
did not begin to occur until the 1960s. Thus, bureaucratic rules and regulations
to enforce and implement civil rights laws since the 1960s have depended on
the policy priorities of the president.

Critical Thinking Questions

1. Why is Abraham Lincoln paradigmatic for how American presidents have
dealt with issues of race in the United States?
2. Explain why American presidents have had to use executive orders to
advance policies that promote racial equality and universal freedom. Be sure
to discuss specific policies in your answer.
3. Discuss the concept of “ethnic avoidance” used to describe the behavior of
President Obama as the first black president. How did his first and second
terms differ? How did President Obama’s cabinet appointments highlight
his practice of politics? Give specific examples.
4. Discuss the role of African Americans in affirmative action policy making.
What roles have specific presidential appointees played in shaping and
enforcing affirmative action?
5. Discuss the history of the bureaucracy’s definition of race in America. Do
you believe that current racial classifications help or hinder the quest for
universal freedom? How so? Give examples to support your claims.

Selected Bibliography ©
Altshuler, Alan, and Norman C. Thomas, eds. The Politics of the Federal Bureaucracy.
New York: Harper & Row, 1977. A good collection of papers examining the structure
and operation of the federal bureaucracy and its place in the political system.
290 PART IV > Institutions

Bennett, Lerone. Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream. Chicago, IL:
Johnson Publishing, 2000. A highly critical assessment of Lincoln, by one of the
nation’s leading African American historians.
Donald, David. Lincoln. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. One of the best biographies
of the 16th president.
Fehrenbacher, Don. “Only His Stepchildren: Lincoln and the Negro.” Civil War History
12 (1974): 293-309. A generally favorable analysis of the president’s posture toward
African Americans.
Fredrickson, George. “A Man Not a Brother: Abraham Lincoln and the Negro.” Journal
of Southern History 41 (1975): 39-58. A balanced assessment of the subject.
Harris, Fredrick. The Price of the Ticket: Barack Obama and the Rise and Decline of
Black Politics. New York: Oxford, 2012. A cogent analysis of how the election of
Obama contributed to a broader pattern of declining concern by black politicians
with the problems of the black poor.
Hayes, L. J. The Negro Federal Government Worker. Washington, DC: Howard
University Press, 1941. A pioneering work on the subject.
Kennedy, Randall. The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics.and the Obama
Presidency. New York: Pantheon, 2011. An analysis of how the persistence of racism
prevented Obama from dealing with the problems of African Americans.
King, Desmond. Separate and Unequal: Black Americans and the U.S. Federal
Government. London: Oxford University Press, 1995. A historical account of African
Americans in the federal bureaucracy.
Krislov, Samuel. The Negro in Federal Employment: The Quest for Equal Opportunity.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1967. Generally considered the standard
work on the subject.
Morgan, Ruth. The President and Civil Rights: Policy Making by Executive Order. New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1970. A study of presidential use of executive orders to
advance civil rights.
Naff, Katherine. To Look Like America: Dismantling Barriers for Women and Minorities
in Government. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001. An examination of the barriers
to full inclusion of minorities and women in the bureaucracy.
O’Reilly, Kenneth. Nixon’s Piano: Presidents and Racial Politics from Washington to
Clinton. New York: Free Press, 1995. A useful study of the subject.
Osgood, Kenneth, and Derrick White, eds. Winning while Losing: Civil Rights, the
Conservative Movement and the Presidency from Nixon to Obama. Gainesville:
University Press of Florida, 2014. A collection of papers assessing the impact of the
conservative movement on the presidency and the quest for universal freedom in the
post-civil rights era.
Quarles, Benjamin. Lincoln and the Negro. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962.
The definitive study of the subject.
Riley, Richard. The Presidency and the Politics of Racial Inequality: Nation-Keeping
from 1831 to 1965. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. The most recent
book-length study of the subject.
Rossiter, Clinton. The American Presidency, rev. ed. New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1960, The standard study of the role of the president and the presidency’s
central role in American politics.
Shull, Steven. American Civil Rights Policy from Truman to Clinton. Armonk, NY: M.
E. Sharpe, 1999. A detailed empirical study, focusing mainly on the Reagan, George
H. W. Bush, and Clinton administrations.
Sinkler, George. The Racial Attitudes of American Presidents: From Abraham Lincoln
to Theodore Roosevelt. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971. A comprehensive analysis
of the subject.
 CHAPTER 11 > The Presidency and Bureaucracy 291

Skocpol, Theda, and Lawrence Jacobs, eds. Reaching for a New Deal: Ambitious
Governance, Economic Meltdown, and Polarized Politics in Obama’s First Two
Years. New York: Russell Sage, 2012. A collection of papers on Obama’s progressive
legislative agenda during his first two years, focusing on successes and failures.
Smith, Robert C. “Black Appointed Officials: A Neglected Category of Political
Participation Research.” Journal of Black Studies 14 (March 1984): 369-88. A study
of African American presidential appointees from the Kennedy to the Carter
administrations.
Smith, Robert C. “Blacks and Presidential Policy Making: Neglect, Policy Symbols and
Cooptation.” In Robert C. Smith, We Have No Leaders: African Americans in the
Post—Civil Rights Era (chap. 5). Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996. A study of the policy-
making roles of black presidential appointees from the Nixon to the first Bush
administrations.
Smith, Robert C. The Politics of Ethnic Incorporation and Avoidance: The Elections
and Presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama. Albany, NY: SUNY Press,
2014. A comparison of the first two “ethnic” presidents.
Smith, Robert C., and Richard Seltzer. Polarization and the Presidency from FDR to
Obama. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2015. Includes an extended chapter on the
hyperpolarized Obama presidency.
Walton, Hanes, Jr. When the Marching Stopped: The Politics of Civil Rights Regulatory
Agencies. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1988. A comprehensive study of the ups and
downs of the implementation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, from the Johnson to the
Reagan administrations.
Walton, Hanes, Jr. African American Power and Politics: The Political Context Variable.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. A detailed study of how the Reagan
and Bush presidencies changed the political context of discussions on race.

Notes eee
22ueii a
1 Letter to Horace Greeley, Abraham Lincoln: Collected Works, vol. V, pp. 388-89.
2 David Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).
3 As quoted in George Sinkler, The Racial Attitudes of American Presidents: From
Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971):
iG
4 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, edited by Phillips Bradley (Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, 1848, 1969): 356.
5 Richard Riley, The Presidency and the Politics of Racial Inequality: Nation-Keeping
from 1831-1965 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999): 18-19.
6 On Lincoln’s racial attitudes, see Benjamin Quarles, Lincoln and the Negro (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1962); George Fredrickson, “A Man Not a Brother:
Lincoln and the Negro,” Journal of Southern History 41 (1975): 39-58; and Don
Fehrenbacher, “Only His Stepchildren: Lincoln and the Negro,” Civil War History
12 (1974): 293-309.
7 Lincoln did not favor the abolition of slavery (frequently calling abolitionism
“dangerous radical utopianism”) but rather opposed its extension beyond the South
to the Midwest and the West because he wanted these lands preserved for free
(white) labor on free land. See Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor: The Ideology of
the Republican Party Before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press,
1970).
8 Fredrickson, “A Man Not a Brother,” p. 46.
292 PARTIV > Institutions

9 Quoted in ibid., p. 45.

10 Abraham Lincoln, “The Emancipation Proclamation,” in K. Hall, W. Wiecek, and
P. Finkelman, eds., American Legal History: Cases and Materials (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1991): 224.
dt Ibid.
12 A standard study of the Emancipation Proclamation is John Hope Franklin, The
Emancipation Proclamation (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963).
id The commander-in-chief clause was used by Franklin Roosevelt to incarcerate
Japanese Americans as a World War II measure, which at the time was held to be
constitutional by the Supreme Court although it was a clear violation of the Fifth
Amendment prohibition on the deprivation of liberty without a trial.
Fredrickson, “A Man Not a Brother,” p. 45.
Ibid., p. 48.
Fehrenbacher, “Only His Stepchildren,” p. 307.
The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass Written by Himself, introduction by
Rayford Logan (London: Collier Books, 1892, 1962): 489.
Wilbur Rich, “Presidential Leadership and the Politics of Race: Stereotypes, Symbols
and Scholarship,” in Rich, ed., African American Perspectives on Political Science
(Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2007): 232.
19 Matthew Holden, Jr., “Race and Constitutional Change in the Twentieth Century:
The Role of the Executive,” in J. H. Franklin and G. R. MacNeil, eds., African
Americans and the Living Constitution (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1995): 117-43.
20 Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., “Rating the Presidents: From Washington to Clinton,”
Political Science Quarterly 112 (1997): 179-90.
ya| Kenneth O’Reilly, Nixon’s Piano: Presidents and Racial Politics from Washington
to Clinton (New York: Free Press, 1995). O’Reilly argues that Andrew Jackson
was the “first (and arguably the only) chief executive in American history not to
consider slavery a moral evil,” p. 31.
Ibid., chap. 1.
Quoted in William Freehling, “The Founding Fathers and Slavery,” American
Historical Review 77 (1972): 396.
24 O’Reilly, Nixon’s Piano, p. 135.
25 Samuel Tilden, governor of New York, apparently won a majority of the vote for
president, but the Republicans controlled enough southern electoral votes to give
the presidency to Hayes in exchange for his promise to withdraw federal troops
and leave the South alone with respect to the treatment of blacks. See C. Vann
Woodward, Reunion and Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of
Reconstruction (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956).
26 Harrison’s support for antilynching legislation came about not as a result of the
lynching of blacks but rather after 11 Italian citizens were lynched in New Orleans.
The Italian government filed a strong protest, and Harrison responded with his
proposed legislation. See O’Reilly’s Nixon’s Piano, p. 59.
27 Ibid., p. 111. Roosevelt was even reluctant to send a written message to the annual
NAACP convention.
28 Louis Ruchames, Race, Jobs and Politics: The Story of FEPC (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1953).
py) See Mary Dudziak, “Desegregation as a Cold War Imperative,” Stanford Law
Review 41 (1988): 1147-75.
30 As Franklin Roosevelt had feared, Truman’s support did cost him the support of
white southern Democrats, who walked out of the 1948 convention, formed a third
 CHAPTER 11 > The Presidency and Bureaucracy 293

party, and ran Strom Thurmond for president. Thurmond carried four southern
states.
31 See John Ehrlichman, Witness to Power (New York: Auburn House, 1982): 222-23;
and O’Reilly, Nixon’s Piano, chap. 7.
32 Daniel P. Moynihan, The Politics of a Guaranteed Income: The Nixon
Administration and the Family Assistance Plan (New York: Vintage Books, 1973).
33 O’Reilly, Nixon’s Piano, chap. 7; and Hugh Davis Graham, The Civil Rights Era:
Origin and Development of National Policy (New York: Oxford University Press,
1990): chaps. 12-14.
34 Robert C. Smith, “Black Appointed Officials: A Neglected Category of Political
Participation Research,” Journal of Black Studies 14 (March 1984): 369-88.
ake) Eleanor Holmes Norton, “The Role of Black Presidential Appointees,” Urban
League Review 9 (Summer 1985): 108-9.
36 Harold Wolman and Astrid A. E. Merget, “The President and Policy Formulation:
President Carter and Urban Policy,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 10 (1980):
402-15; and Robert C. Smith, We Have No Leaders: African Americans in the
Post—Civil Rights Era (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996): 149-51.
37 On Bush’s flip-flop on the 1990 and 1991 civil rights bills, see Smith’s We Have
No Leaders, pp. 170-82.
38 Arch Parsons, “Thomas Nomination Divides the Black Community,” West County
Times, July 28, 1991.
5? Robert Pear, “Administration Rejects Proposals for New Anti-Poverty Programs,”
New York Times, July 6, 1990.
40 O’Reilly, Nixon’s Piano, chap. 9.
41 See O’Reilly, Nixon’s Piano; and Smith, We Have No Leaders, chap. 9, for
discussion of Clinton’s electoral strategy.
42 Adolph Reed, Jr., “America Becoming—What Exactly?: Social Policy Research as
the Fruit of Bill Clinton’s Race Initiative” (Unpublished Manuscript, 2006); See
also “President Clinton Journeys to Africa,” Jet, April 20, 1998.
43 Steven Shull, American Civil Rights Policy from Truman to Clinton (Armonk, NY:
M. E. Sharpe, 1999): 80, 93. On Clinton’s relative conservative postures on race-
related issues see also Robert C. Smith, “Civil Rights Policy Making in the Clinton
Administration: In Reagan’s Shadow,” in Kenneth Osgood and Derrick White, eds.,
Winning While Losing: Civil Rights, the Conservative Movement and the Presidency
from Nixon to Obama (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014).
44 Dewayne Wickham, Bill Clinton and Black America (New York: Ballantine Books,
2002).
45 Amy Goldstein and Dana Milibank, “Bush Joins Admission Case Fight,”
Washington Post, January 16, 2003. See also Dana Milibank, “Bush Aides Split
on Bias Case at U. Mich,” Washington Post, December 18, 2002.
46 Dan Froomking, “A Polling Free-Fall among Blacks,” Washington Post, October
13, 2005.
47 Norman Ornstein, “A Very Productive Congress, Despite What the Approval
Ratings Say,” Washington Post, January 31, 2010; “2009 Was the Most Partisan
Year Ever,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, January 11, 2010.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid.
50 Theda Skocpol and Lawrence R. Jacobs, eds., Reaching for a New Deal: Ambitious
Governance, Economic Meltdown and Polarized Politics in Obama’s First Two
Years (New York: Russell Sage, 2011): 8, 54.
294 PART IV > Institutions

51 Robert C. Smith, The Politics of Ethnic Incorporation and Avoidance: The Elections
and Presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama (Albany, NY: SUNY Press,
2013).
52 Gary Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power (New York: Pocket
Books, 1982): 61.
Do Rich, “Presidential Leadership and the Politics of Race: Stereotypes, Symbols and
Scholarship,” p. 246.
54 Bob Herbert, “Anger Has Its Place,” New York Times, August 1, 2009.
55 Michael Shear and Perry Bacon, “Black Lawmakers Call on Obama to Do More
on Behalf of Blacks,” Washington Post, December 9, 2009; and Steven Greenhouse
“NAACP Prods Obama on Job Losses,” New York Times, November 17, 2009.
56 Howard Kurz, “Color of Change,” Washington Post, December 23, 2009.
oy Vincent Hutchings, “Obama’s Report Card: One Year Later,” Black Enterprises.
www.blackenterprise.com/business/2010/01/20/obamas-report-card-one-year-
later/pr.
58 Presidential Press Conference, “Transcript,” New York Times, April 30, 2009.
59 Sheldon Alberts, “Obama Rejects Claim He Is Ignoring Black People,” Canada.com.
www.canada.com/business/story/html?id=2371848.
60 Ian Haney Lopez, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have
Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class (New York: Oxford, 2010):
71-74.
61 Ronald Walters, White Nationalism, Black Interests: Conservative Public Policy
and the Black Community (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2003): 61.
62 Michael Grunwald, The New New Deal: The Hidden Stery of Change in the Obama
Era (New York: Simon & Shuster, 2012): 11.
63 Tali Mendelberg and Bennett Butler, “Obama Cares: Look at the Numbers,” New
York Times, August 21, 2014.
64 Ibid.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid.
67 Ibid.
68 Ibid.
69 Rich, “Presidential Leadership and the Politics of Race: Stereotypes, Symbols and
Scholarship,” p. 235.
70 Ibid., p. 233.
PA Quoted in Kenneth Cooper, “The President’s Report Card: One Year Later,” The
Crisis (Fall 2012): 6.
3 Ronald Walters, “The Obama Message: Empowering?” in Walters, Calling the
Shots: Barack Obama and African American Politics from the Campaign to the
First 100 Days (unpublished manuscript, 2010): 41.
73 Linda Feldman, “Obama’s Quest to Leave a Lasting Mark on Race,” Christian
Science Monitor Weekly, September 7, 2015, p. 29.
74 Harry Bruinius, “Criminal Justice: Obama’s Push to Address Race, Quietly,”
Christian Science Monitor, November 3, 2015.
ue Janell Ross, “The Black President Some Worried about Has Arrived,” Washington
Post, July 15, 2015; and Peter Baker, “Obama Finds a Bolder Voice on Race Issues,”
New York Times, May 7, 2015.
76 Gallup News Service Polls, Roper Center.
Tai Rich, “Presidential Leadership and the Politics of Race: Stereotypes, Symbols and
Scholarship,” p. 234.
 CHAPTER 11 > The Presidency and Bureaucracy 295

78 See Max Weber, “Bureaucracy,” in H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills, eds., From Max
Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969).
72 Quoted in Hanes Walton, Jr., Invisible Politics (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1985):
262. See also Mary McLeod Bethune, “Certain Unalienable Rights,” in R. Logan,
ed., What the Negro Wants (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944):
248-58.
80 Lawrence Grossman, “Democrats and Blacks in the Gilded Age,” in P. Kolver, ed.,
Democrats and the American Idea (Washington, DC: Center for National Policy
Press, 1992): 149-61.
Gary Kremer, James Milton Turner and the Promise of America: The Public Life
of a Post-Civil War Black Leader (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991):
40.
Ibid., p. 53.
Ibid., p. 50.
Jodi Cantor, “An Old Hometown Mentor, Still at Obama’s Side,” New York Times,
November 24, 2008.
Juliet Eilperin, “Obama Has Vastly Changed the Face of the Federal Bureaucracy,”
Washington Post, September 20, 2015.
Ibid.
For analysis of policy roles of black presidential appointees from the Nixon to the
Bush administrations, see Robert C. Smith, We Have No Leaders: African Americans
in the Post—Civil Rights Era (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996): chap. 5.
John Hope Franklin and Alfred Moss, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of
Africans (New York: Knopf, 2000): 336.
Ibid., p. 9.
Ibid., p. 49.
Ibid., p. 9.
Thomas Cripps, “The Reaction of the Negro to the Motion Picture, the Birth of a
Nation,” Historian 25 (May 1963): 224-62.
Desmond King, Separate and Unequal: Black Americans and the U.S. Federal
Government (London: Oxford University Press, 1995): 5.
Ibid., pp. 20, 49.
Ibid., p. 20.
Ibid., p. 4.
See Katherine Naff, To Look Like America: Dismantling Barriers for Women and
Minorities in Government (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001).
U.S. Census Bureau, 2006-2010 American Community Survey (5-year ACS data)—
Table Set 5, Federal Sector Jobs by Sex and Race/Ethnicity by Citizenship Status.
Ibid.
See Associated Press, “Enforcement of Civil Rights Law Declined since 1999, Study
Finds,” New York Times, November 11, 2004; Dan Eggen, “Civil Rights
Enforcement Roils Staff,” Washington Post, November 13, 2005; and Charlie
Savage, “Civil Rights Hiring Shifted in Bush Era,” Boston Globe, July 23, 2006.
Charlie Savage, “Justice Department to Recharge Enforcement of Civil Rights,”
New York Times, September 1, 2009.
102 Ibid.
103 Ibid.
8 CHAPTER 12
The Supreme Court and
the African American
Quest for Universal
Freedom

LEARNING OBJECTIVE
Identify the time period in history when the Supreme Court was the
most pro-universal freedom.

The question is simply this: can a Negro, whose ancestors were imported
into this country, and sold as slaves, become a member of the political
community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the
United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges,
and immunities, granted by that instrument to the citizens. ... We think they
are not, and they are not included, were not intended to be included, under
the word “citizen” in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the
rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to
citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time [1787]
considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been
subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet
remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but
such as those who held the power and the government might choose to
grant them.
—Chief Justice Roger B. Taney!
 CHAPTER 12 > The Supreme Court 297

We begin this chapter with an excerpt from Chief Justice Taney’s remarkable
opinion in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857). The Dred Scott decision is historically
important because the case marks the first time in the then 70-year history of
the Court that it squarely addressed the rights of the African people in the United
States, holding that they had no rights—none whatsoever—except those that
white people might choose to give them.” For the next 70 years of its history,
the Court ignored the rights and freedoms of Africans, in spite of the adoption
of the Civil War amendments to the Constitution, which granted citizenship to
blacks and guaranteed universal rights and freedoms.? Then, beginning in the
1940s and lasting until the 1980s, the Supreme Court in a series of cases began
slowly to enforce the Constitution’s guarantees of universal rights and freedoms.
Except for this remarkable 40-year period—1940s to 1980s—the Supreme
Court historically has been a racist institution, refusing to support universal
freedom for African Americans. On the contrary, as in the Dred Scott case, for
much of its more than 200 years, the Court has taken the position that the
rights of African Americans were not universal but rather existed only as whites
might “choose to grant them.” It now appears, in its third century, that the
Court may once again be reverting to its racist past.*
The Supreme Court of the United States is a political institution. That is,
unlike the courts in most nations, the courts in the United States are not simply
legal institutions deciding questions of innocence or guilt in criminal cases or
liability in civil cases. Rather, as Professor Robert Dahl writes, “To consider
the Supreme Court of the United States strictly as a legal institution is to
underestimate its significance in the American political system. For it is also a
political institution, an institution, that is to say, for arriving at decisions on
controversial questions of national policy.”* In its decisions on controversial
issues of national policy, the Court responds slowly but surely to public opinion
and the fundamental currents of national election majorities. Thus, if the
Supreme Court is reverting to racism, it may reflect its understanding of public
opinion and the outcome of recent presidential elections, which were often won
by candidates perceived by blacks as hostile to their quest for universal freedom.
Or in the famous words of humorist Finley Peter Dunne’s “Mr. Dooley,” “The
Supreme Court follows the election returns.”

Judicial Appointments and African Americans

One hundred and thirteen persons have served as Supreme Court justices. Two
have been African Americans. The first was Thurgood Marshall, the legendary
chief lawyer for the NAACP and one of the greatest African American leaders
of all time.6 Appointed by President Johnson in 1967, Marshall’s confirmation
was held up for several months by racists and white supremacists, but he was
eventually approved and went on to serve on the Court for more than two
298 PARTIV > Institutions

decades until he retired in 1991. When Marshall retired, President George H.

W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, then a judge on the District of Columbia
Court of Appeals, to replace him. Thomas was bitterly opposed by African
American leaders because of his opposition to affirmative action and his
conservative ideology generally. This opposition was reinforced by the last-
minute allegations of sexual harassment by Anita Hill, an African American
lawyer and former assistant to Thomas. Although black leaders opposed
Thomas’s nomination, he was supported by black public opinion, and this
support continued after the Hill allegation.” However, in several southern states,
this support was diminished to some extent, especially among black women.‘
And in an interesting example of how events can shape the socialization process,
African Americans were more informed about the issue (particularly their
senator’s vote) than whites, closing the traditional gap in political information
between the races.° .
Justice Marshall in his years on the Court became one of the most liberal
justices in the Court’s history, forging a jurisprudence of activism in which the
Court would seek to resolve racial and other social problems.'® Thomas in his
years on the Court has been its most conservative member, forging a
jurisprudence of “strict constructionism,” which rejects the idea that the Court
should attempt to resolve societal problems.'! Perhaps the most striking
difference in their jurisprudence on race is affirmative action. Justice Marshall
wrote some of the earliest opinions in favor of affirmative action while Justice
Thomas is categorically opposed to any considerations of race in government
allocative decisions.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first president to appoint a black
person to the federal courts, naming William Hastie as a judge in the Virgin
Islands. President Kennedy appointed three black-judges to the federal courts;
President Johnson nominated 10 and named seven; and President Nixon,
nominated six and named three. Generally, appointments to the courts are based
on party and ideology. That is, American presidents and senators tend to select
judges from their party, who share their ideology, whether liberal or conservative.
For example, African Americans who tend to be liberal Democrats are more
likely to receive judicial appointments from Democratic presidents. This trend
is shown in Table 12.1. In the Carter administration, 14.2 percent of all judicial
appointments were black, and in the Clinton administration the figure was 16.6
percent. In the Reagan administration, however, 1.9 percent of the appointees
were black, while in the first Bush administration, the total was 5.8 and 7.4
percent in the second. The first African American president far exceeded the
record of his predecessors, by appointing 18.8 percent of African American
judges to federal courts. President Obama also appointed a record number of
women and other underrepresented social groups—Hispanics, Asian Americans
and gays and lesbians—to the bench.
 CHAPTER 12 > The Supreme Court 299

TABLE 12.1

President Percentage Total of Total of All

of Black? Black Appointments to
Appointees Appointees Federal Courts

Carter
(1977-1981) 42 37 260
Reagan
(1981-1989) 1.9 7 360
George H. W. Bush
(1989-1993) 5.8 11 188
Clinton
(1993-2000) 16.6 61 367
George W. Bush
(2001-2009) 74 24 323
Obama
(2009-201 7) 18.8 60 318
® For detailed data on presidential appointments of African American judges to the federal
courts by court type (circuit and district), race and sex, see Barry J. McMillion, U.S. Circuit
and District Court Judges: Profile of Select Characteristics, Congressional Research Service
Report, Series R43426 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2014); 14-24.
© Total number of African American judges on the federal courts = 213, see “Diversity of the
Bench,” www.fjc.gov/servlet/nDsearch?race=African+American (accessed March 8, 2016).
Source: “African American Judges on the Federal Courts,” Federal Judicial Center,
www.fic.gov/history/home.nsf/page/judges_diversity.html (accessed March 8, 2016).

How Should the Constitution Be Interpreted?

Judicial Restraint versus Judicial Activism
and the Implications for Universal Freedom
Throughout the Court’s history, but especially in the twentieth century, there
has been a debate among scholars, politicians, and judges over how the
Constitution should be interpreted. Conservative scholars and jurists tend to
favor judicial self-restraint, or “strict constructionism.” That is, they argue that
justices and judges should look to the intent of the framers of the Constitution
and precedents in interpreting the Constitution rather than applying their own
political values or changing the Constitution to fit the needs of a changing society.
By contrast, liberal scholars and jurists tend to favor judicial activism, or “loose
constructionism.” That is, they argue that the intent of the framers on many
issues is vague and unclear and that the framers designed the Constitution as a
“living” document to be interpreted broadly to fit the needs of a changing
society. !2
300 PARTIV > Institutions

Although an important legal and political debate, it is in some ways

misleading, since at times liberals have favored judicial restraint and
conservatives have favored activism. For example, an important principle of
conservative jurisprudence is that the courts should adhere to precedent (stare
decisis) and not overturn the decisions of democratically elected legislative
bodies unless they clearly violate the Constitution. Yet, the current conservative
majority on the Supreme Court has in recent years been active in overturning
precedents and congressional and state legislative acts in the areas of commerce,
affirmative action, campaign finance, and voting rights. The liberal bloc led by
Justice John Paul Stevens, on the other hand, in its dissents has called for
restraint, adherence to precedents, and deference to legislative majorities. Thus,
whether one is for “strict” or “loose” interpretation depends, as the saying goes,
“on whose ox is gored.”
Table 12.2 lists the number of federal and state “aws declared
unconstitutional from 1800 to 2014. The data in the table show that there have
been two periods of sustained judicial activism: from 1910 to 1949, and from
1950 to 1999. In the first period, a conservative Supreme Court declared
unconstitutional 34 federal laws and 350 state laws. This represents 19 percent
of all the federal laws and 26 percent of all the state laws declared uncon-
stitutional in the entire history of the Court. This spate of judicial activism
involved a conservative Court overturning a series of progressive reforms
regulating private property and the industrial economy. The second period of
judicial activism involved a liberal Supreme Court overturning state and federal
laws that restricted civil rights, liberties, and freedoms. In this period, 81 federal
laws and 638 state laws were declared unconstitutional, representing more
than 45 and 48 percent, respectively, of all federal and state laws declared
unconstitutional by the Court.
For African Americans and their quest for universal freedom, the debate on
how the Constitution should be interpreted depends on the context and the times.
In the post-Reconstruction Era, when the Court ignored the intent of the
framers of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and declared uncon-
stitutional several civil rights laws, black interests would have been served by
judicial self-restraint. But in the 1960s and 1970s, black interests were served
when the Court for the first time began to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments by declaring state laws unconstitutional and upholding federal civil
rights laws. In the current period of judicial activism (1990-until today), African
American interests are adversely affected by the conservative Court’s state-
centered federalism, which limits the authority of the federal government to
expand and extend universal rights and freedom (see Chapter 2).
As a result of the activism of the Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren’s
leadership, liberals and progressives came to view the Court as a defender of
minority rights. Historically, however, the Warren Court is an anomaly since
for much of the Court’s history it has been a racist, antifreedom institution.
a
_

CHAPTER 12 > The Supreme Court 301

Years Federal Laws State and Local Laws

1800-1809 1 1
1810-1819 0 if
1820-1829 0 8
1830-1839 0 S
1840-1849 0 10
1850-1859 1 7
1860-1869 4 24
1870-1879 7 36
1880-1889 4 46
1890-1899 5 36
1900-1909 ) 40
1910-1919? 6 119
1920-1929 15 139
1930-1939 13 92
1940-1949 2 61
1950-19592 4 66
1960-1969 18 151
1970-1979 19 195
1980-1989 16 164
1990-1999 24 62
2000-2009 16 38
2010-2014 13 16
TOTAL 177 1,321
2 Periods of judicial activism: 1910-1949 and 1950-1999.
Source: Lawrence Baum, The Supreme Court, 12th ed. (Washington, DC: Congressional
Quarterly Press, 2001): 160. Data from 1990 to 2014 taken from Table 5-2 in Baum, who
updated the data from the Congressional Research Service, The Constitution of the United
States of America: Analysis and Interpretation (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office,
2014).

Legal scholar Girardeau Spann argues that this racist, antiminority stance of
the Court is “structurally” inevitable. He writes,

My argument is that, for structural reasons, the institutional role that the
Court is destined to play within our constitutional scheme of government is
the role of assuring the continued subordination of racial minority interests.
302 PART IV > Institutions

I believe that this subordination function is inevitable; that it will be served

irrespective of the Court’s composition at any particular point in time; and
that it will persist irrespective of the conscious motives of the individual
justices.'>

The Supreme Court and African Americans:

Rights- and Material-Based Cases
The Supreme Court was transformed into a liberal institution beginning with
the New Deal. President Roosevelt appointed nine justices to the Court and his
successor, President Truman, appointed four. Most of the Roosevelt and Truman
appointees were more or less liberal, as were the four appointees made by
President Eisenhower, including Chief Justice Warren. This liberal tendency of
the Court was consolidated by the four appointments made by Presidents
Kennedy and Johnson. Among the leading liberal jurists appointed to the Court
from the 1930s to the 1960s were Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, William
Brennan, Arthur Goldberg, Thurgood Marshall, and Abe Fortas. As a result,
by the late 1940s the Court was in the process of shifting its jurisprudence from
a focus on protecting property rights and business interests toward a concern
with individual civil liberties and the civil rights of minorities.'4
Simultaneous with this transformation of the Court, the NAACP trans-
formed its approach to civil rights from lobbying to litigation. In 1939 the
NAACP Legal Defense Fund was created, and under the leadership of Thurgood
Marshall, it developed a systematic strategy of using the courts to achieve social
change and racial justice, a strategy later employed by many other American
groups (see Box 12.1). This strategy was enormously successful as, during the
1960s and early 1970s, the Court issued a number of landmark rulings
expanding the rights of blacks, other ethnic minorities, women, atheists,
communists, and persons accused of crimes.
These successes, however, brought reactions from conservative and racist
forces (during the 1950s and 1960s there were billboards throughout the South
reading “Impeach Earl Warren”), and conservative Republican presidents began
to campaign against the Court’s “liberal activism” and promise to appoint “strict
constructionists” as justices. Between 1969 and 1991, Presidents Nixon, Ford,
Reagan, and Bush one and two appointed 13 justices to the Court. By the late
1980s, as a result of these appointments, the Supreme Court had a narrow five-
person conservative majority (see Table 12.3). Immediately, this majority, led
by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, began to retreat from the civil rights reforms
of the 1960s and 1970s. We examine this retreat on rights- and material-based
cases in an analysis of the last three decades of Supreme Court decision making
on school desegregation, voting rights, and affirmative action (for the Court’s
own record on affirmative action see Box 12.2). But first we examine President
Obama’s first two appointments to the Court.
 CHAPTER 12 > The Supreme Court 303

BOX 12.1 Fe
Litigation and Social Change: The Legacy of Brown

In Chapter 6, we discussed how the to an expansion of women’s rights and

African American civil rights and black freedoms, including the critical right of
power movements of the 1960s and a woman to choose an abortion. As a
1970s sparked and served as a model for result of the litigation, new rights have
social movements among women, gays, been established for the elderly, the
and other minorities. The success of the poor, language minorities, immigrants,
NAACP Legal Defense Fund's litigation environmentalists, and the handicapped.
strategy in the Brown v. Board of The NAACP turned to the courts in the
Education case also led other groups in 1930s to pursue its civil rights agenda
the United States to create organizations because its leaders felt relatively
and develop strategies using litigation to powerless in the ordinary politics of
bring about social change.?
lobbying Congress and the president.
Following the NAACP model, in the late
Other groups, also feeling powerless and
1960s scores of groups organized legal
seeing the success of the NAACP in
defense funds—women, Mexican
Brown, also turned to the Courts, and the
Americans, Puerto Ricans, Asian
process significantly expanded the idea of
Americans, gays and lesbians, and
universal freedom.®
evangelical Christians. Once organized,
these groups followed the strategy
pioneered by Thurgood Marshall of a See Clement Vose, “Litigation as a Form of
bringing a series of well-researched, Pressure Group Activity,” Annals of the
American Academy of Social and Political
strategically selected “test cases” before
Science 319 (September 1958): 20-31; and
the Court to force it to establish new
Karen O'Connor, Women’s Organizations’ Use
rights and expand the idea of freedom. of the Courts (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books,
Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader 1980).
Ginsberg is sometimes referred to as the b In recent years, right-wing conservative and
“Thurgood Marshall of the women’s religious groups have also adopted the NAACP
movement” for her work as an attorney approach to litigation, filing strategic test cases,
on women’s legal projects in the 1960s for example, on voting rights, affirmative action,
and 1970s; these were projects that led and campaign finance.

Thurgood Marshall,
George Hayes, and
James Nabrit outside the
Supreme Court after it
announced its landmark
decision in Brown v.
Board of Education.
Source: Bettmann/Corbis

ESNEA E ie yh sy eaten a oa A CDFotis Stu ar ae ee

304 PARTIV > Institutions

_ Justices of th

Justice* Year Born Appointed By Appointed Ideological

Inclination

Samuel Alito 1950 George W. Bush 2005 Strict

Constructivism
John Roberts® _1955 George W. Bush 2005 Strict
(Chief Justice) Constructivism
Antonin Scalia 1936-2016 Reagan ee OO Strict
Constructivism
Clarence Thomas 1948 George H.W. Bush 1991 Strict
Constructivism
Anthony Kennedy’ 1936 Reagan 1988 Mederate to
Strict
- Constructivism
Sonia Sotomayor 1954 Obame 2009 Liberal
Activism?
Elena Kagan 1960 Obama 2010 Liberal
Activism
Ruth Bader
Ginsberg 1933 Clinton 1993 Liberal
Activism
Stephen Breyer 1938 Clinton 1994 Liberal
Activism
@ The current appointees have all been federal judges with the exception of Justice Kagan,
who served as solicitor general.
© Chief Justice Roberts is characterized as “strict constructivist,” notwithstanding his decision
on upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (see Box 12.3).
¢ Justice Anthony Kennedy is now considered the swing vote on the court after the
retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
9 Liberal Activism is often associated with loose constructivism.

President Obama in the first two years in office had the opportunity to
appoint two of the nine justices. Although African American leaders lauded
Obama for his record number of appointees to the lower courts, some were
critical because no blacks were among the half dozen or so names on the highly
publicized short lists for the two Supreme Court appointments. To replace Justice
David Souter, Obama appointed the first Latino to the Court, Third Circuit
Court judge Sonia Sotomayor. For his second appointment, he named Elena
Kagan, his solicitor general and the former dean of Harvard Law School. After
the naming of Kagan, Melanie Campbell of the Black Women’s Roundtable and
Elsie Scott, the president of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, wrote
 CHAPTER 12 > The Supreme Court 305

ma BOX 12.2
To Be Young, White, and Male: The Supreme
Court Record on Equal Employment Opportunity

A principal responsibility of the Supreme Each year, each of the nine justices is
Court in the post-civil rights era is to allowed to select up to four clerks to serve
decide cases involving implementation of for a one-year term. These young
the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s prohibition on persons—usually selected from among the
employment discrimination. In its best students at the nation’s elite law
affirmative action jurisprudence, the Court schools—play an influential role in
has to deal with issues of “diversity”—the screening cases the Court will hear, in
extent to which universities and employers doing research, and in writing draft
may take race and gender into account in opinions for the justices. Thus, these
creating a workplace and university class clerks play powerful behind-the-scenes
that reflects the diverse racial and ethnic roles in shaping the kinds of cases the
makeup of the nation. Court will hear and the legal rationales and
Although the Supreme Court is the scope of its opinions.?
ultimate judge of equal employment and In 1998, Tony Mauro and USA Today
affirmative action for the nation, its own conducted the first-ever demographic
record on these matters is itself suspect. study of Supreme Court law clerks.° (See
Indeed, under ordinary circumstances, Table 12.4.) The study found that this elite
the Court’s record might lead to its being of the Court's workforce was largely
sued for violations of the Civil Rights Act composed of young white males.
and for failure to achieve a diverse Specifically, the study found that of the
workplace (the Court is, of course, exempt 394 clerks hired during the tenure of the
from such suits). justices from 1972 to 1998, 1.8 percent

TABLE 12.4

Justice Number of Clerks Percentage White

| Rehnquist 79 99
Stevens 58 86
O'Connor 68 91 Gorse
Scalia : 48 100
Kennedy 45 91
Souter 34 94
Thomas 29 86
Ginsberg 20 90
Breyer 16 80
2 These data are reported in Tony Mauro, “Schools Urged to Press for Diversity in Court
Clerkships,” USA Today, May 8-10, 1998, p. 4A. Unfortunately, Mauro (2014) reports that
there has been little measurable progress to date (see citation below).

> The justices are listed by length of service on the Court.

EI IS SS TES TELESIS
sn SSS:
306 PARTIV > Institutions

were black, 1 percent were Latino, and 4.5 individual justices. The results of the USA Today
percent were Asian Americans.° Four of study are reported in Tony Mauro, “Court
Faulted on Diversity,” USA Today, May 8-10,
the nine justices (including the chief
1998, p. A1. Data on clerks is still difficult to
justice, who had served on the Court for
obtain; neither the Clerk nor the justices provide
more than a quarter of a century) had
demographic data. However, since the Court
never hired a black clerk. publishes the names of each clerk annually,
In 2008, Mauro revisited the progress gender diversity often can be discerned. But for
since 1998. Tracking the demographics for racial or ethnic groups, it is still very difficult to
several more years, he found there were determine. Mauro continues to update his 1998
occasional spikes in the number of non- study. Preliminary findings since 2008 indicate
white law clerks, but not really a that on the current Court the percentage of
consistent trend. There were still years women increased from a quarter to about a
when the number of African American third (because 57 percent of clerks were hired
clerks was one or zero. Table 12.4 shows by the female justices). Data are not available
the percentage of white clerks appointed for blacks but Mauro observes, “The number of
by the justices. racial and ethnic clerks, especially those who
are not Asian heritage, still appears to be low.”
@ The screening of cases is an especially See Tony Mauro, “Diversity and Supreme Court
important role. For example, typically more than Law Clerks,” Marquette Law Review, 98 (2014):
5,000 cases are appealed to the Court annually, 361-66, http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/
but it usually hears fewer than a hundred. mulr/vol98/iss1/17/.
5|n 1996, as part of the research for this book, ¢ Seventy-five percent of the clerks during this
we tried unsuccessfully to obtain data on the period were men. On the role of the clerks, see
racial composition of the Court's clerks. We Artemus Ward and David Weiden, Sorcerers
were told by the Office of the Clerk of the Court Apprentices: 100 Years of Law Clerks at the
that such information was not available either United States Supreme Court (New York: New
from the Clerk's office or the chambers of the York University Press, 2006).

a letter to Obama expressing disappointment that African American women were

not considered for the nomination. Obama’s first two appointments did not alter
the ideological makeup of the Court (see Table 12.3), since they replaced two
of the four members of the Court’s liberal bloc. In 2016, however, Justice Scalia,
the long-serving leader of the Court’s conservative bloc died, giving the president
the opportunity to change the Court’s ideological balance. The Republican
Majority Leader of the Senate, however, indicated the Senate would not approve
any nominee until a new president was elected. Apparently in an effort to get
Senate approval, President Obama nominated Merrick Garland, a white, 63-
year-old, moderate judge on the District of Columbia Appeals Court.

Rights-Based Cases
School Desegregation
In 1954 the Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision written by Chief Justice
Warren, in effect overruled its decision in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case by
declaring that, at least in the area of public education, the principle of “separate
but equal” violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.»
“Separate educational facilities,” Chief Justice Warren wrote, are “inherently
 CHAPTER 12 > The Supreme Court 307

unequal” (emphasis added). The Plessy decision dealt with segregation on

railroad cars, but thereafter it was applied to all areas of southern life, including
public schools.
Although, according to the Court, separate was constitutionally permissible
only if facilities for blacks and whites were equal, the equality part of the
principle was never enforced. Three years after Plessy, in Cummings v. Richmond
County Board of Education, the Court held that it was permissible to provide
a high school for whites but not for blacks.!* Thus, the doctrine of equality in
Plessy was a lie. African Americans in violation of the Court’s own decision
were relegated to separate and unequal schools and other facilities. The initial
strategy of the NAACP, therefore, was to attack not the practice of segregation
itself but rather the absence of equality in the education of blacks.
This attack on unequal educational opportunities began at the graduate and
professional levels. In 1938 in Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, the Court
invalidated Missouri’s policy of excluding blacks from its law school and instead
offering to pay for their attendance at out-of-state law schools.!” In Sweatt v.
Painter (1950), the Court found that Texas’s all-black law school was “inherently
inferior” to its school for whites and ordered the admission of blacks to the
white school.'8 In McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, the Court ruled that
Oklahoma State University’s practice of segregating black students in its graduate
school was unconstitutional.!? After these victories at the graduate level, the
NAACP, after extensive research and debate, changed its strategy and decided
to launch a direct attack on the doctrine of separate but equal.?° The result was
the Court’s 1954 Brown decision.
When the Court declared that segregated schools were unconstitutional,
it did not order the schools to be integrated. Rather, a year later, in what is
called Brown II, the Court ordered the states practicing segregation in public
education to “desegregate” with “all deliberate speed.”?! In other words, the
states were told to take their time—to desegregate the schools, but slowly.
It was not until 1969 in Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education that
the Court ordered the states to desegregate the schools “at once.” Only after
this decision—some 15 years after Brown—did most southern states begin to
desegregate their separate and unequal schools. In addition to the Court’s
unequivocal order in this case, southern school districts began to rapidly
desegregate because the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provided that districts practicing
segregation could not receive federal financial aid. In 1969 the Nixon
administration began to vigorously enforce this provision.
In 1971, in Swann v. Charlotte Mecklenburg, the Court ordered school
districts to use busing to achieve racial balance or quotas so that “pupils of all
grades are assigned in such a way that as nearly as practicable the various schools
at various grade levels have about the same proportion of black and white
students.”23 The principles of the Swann case were soon applied nationwide,
308 PART IV > Institutions

leading to an enormous political controversy and eventually a decision by the

Court to reverse its position and put an end to school busing.”
Busing for purposes of school desegregation was overwhelmingly opposed
by white Americans (in the range of 75-80 percent); African American opinion
was about equally divided, with polls showing about half supporting busing. In
many cities, court-ordered busing led to mass protests by whites, boycotts,
violence, and “white flight” to private or suburban schools.
In Milliken v. Bradley, the Supreme Court began the process of dismantling
busing for purposes of desegregation. Specifically, the Court overturned a lower
court order that required busing between largely black Detroit and the largely
white surrounding suburbs. The Court majority agreed that Detroit’s schools
were unconstitutionally segregated but held that cross-district busing between
city and suburbs was not required to comply with Brown.*> In an angry
dissenting opinion, Justice Thurgood Marshall accused his colleagues of bowing
to political pressure and of being unwilling to enforce school busing because it
was unpopular with the white majority. Since Milliken, the court has continued
to retreat from busing as a device to desegregate the schools.
Because of white flight to the suburbs, America’s urban school systems
cannot be desegregated unless there is cross-district busing between city and
suburbs. The Supreme Court, however, will not permit this. Thus, 50 years after
Brown, most African American school children remain in schools that are
separate and unequal—inequalities that are so great that one observer describes
them as “savage.””°
In 2004, there were numerous conferences, special classes, and seminars at
colleges and universities, several books, and scores of newspaper articles and
television stories commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the May 17, 1954,
Brown decision. Virtually all commentators celebrated the courage and skill of
the individuals who brought the cases and the wisdom of the justices in their
decision. Brown was also celebrated as the most important Court decision of
the twentieth century, and one of the two or three most important in the history
of the Court. The historical significance of the case, however, was not in terms
of school integration but rather in terms of its symbolism—its symbolism in
striking down the constitutional foundations and legitimacy of racism and white
supremacy. In terms of school integration, most commentators agreed that
Brown had been a failure. That is, 50 years after Brown, most black (and Latino)
children in the North and South attend schools that are separate and unequal.?”
The separateness is a function of the segregated housing patterns that characterize
most urban areas of the United States, where blacks live mostly in central city
ghettos and whites mainly in affluent urban enclaves or suburbia. Thus, in 2000,
40 percent of all public schools were almost all African American, Hispanic, or
both. The inequality flows from the fact that states generally rely on the local
property tax to finance schools. This means that affluent, high-property value
 CHAPTER 12 > The Supreme Court 309

school districts are able to provide much more in per pupil spending than poor
districts. And since whites live disproportionately in affluent districts and blacks
disproportionately in poor districts, the effect is to create school systems
throughout the nation that in some ways are as separate and unequal as they
were prior to Brown.

Voting Rights and Racial Representation

Prior to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, very few African
Americans were elected to office in the United States. In that year, approximately
280 blacks held elected offices in this country, including six members of
Congress. Today there are more than 8,000 black elected officeholders, including
43 members of Congress.?® Thus, blacks in the last 25 years have made
considerable progress in their quest for public office; however, 8,000 offices
constitute a minuscule 1.5 percent of the more than 500,000 elective offices in
the United States. Even this tiny number of blacks holding elected office may
be in jeopardy as a result of recent Supreme Court interpretations of the Voting
Rights Act. |
When the Voting Rights Act was passed, it was initially used to guarantee
southern blacks the simple right to cast a vote. However, in the late 1960s, the
Supreme Court issued a series of decisions interpreting various provisions of the
act as guaranteeing not just the simple right to vote but also the right to cast
an effective vote—a vote that would allow African Americans to choose
candidates of their choice, presumably one of their own race.’? The key case in
this regard is United Jewish Organizations v. Carey.°°
In 1972, the New York State Legislature redrew Brooklyn’s state senate
and assembly districts so that several would have black and Puerto Rican
majorities ranging from 65 to 90 percent. In doing this, the Legislature divided
a cohesive community of Hasidic Jews between separate assembly and senate
districts in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, where previously they had
been located within single districts. The Hasidic Jews alleged that the creation
of the majority-minority districts was “reverse discrimination” against whites,
and the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg filed suit, claiming that
the New York Legislature’s actions violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal
protection clause.
In a 7-1 decision, the Supreme Court rejected the claims of the Hasidic
Jews, holding that deliberate creation of majority-minority legislative districts
was not reverse discrimination and therefore did not violate the equal rights of
Brooklyn’s white voters. Writing for the majority, Justice White noted that whites
made up 65 percent of Brooklyn’s population and were majorities in 70 percent
of its senate and assembly districts. Therefore, “as long as whites, as a group,
were provided with fair representation, we cannot conclude that there was a
cognizable discrimination against whites or an abridgment of their right to
vote.”2! In 1993 in Shaw v. Reno, the Supreme Court in effect reversed its
310 PART IV > Institutions

holding in Carey, deciding that the deliberate creation of majority black districts
might indeed violate the equal protection rights of white voters.**
After the 1990 census, most of the southern states, following the precedent
established in Carey, created new majority black congressional districts. These
districts in turn elected 12 new black congresspersons. In several states (North
Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, and Virginia), this was the first
time a black had been elected to Congress since Reconstruction. In North
Carolina, several white voters sued, alleging, as did the Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn
two decades earlier, that the creation of the black districts was “reverse
discrimination” and a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection
clause. .
In Shaw, a narrow 5-4 majority of the Court agreed with North Carolina’s
white voters. Writing for the majority, Justice O’Connor held that the North
Carolina districts were unconstitutional because they were irregularly shaped.
(The 12th district in North Carolina stretched approximately 160 miles along
Interstate 85 and for much of its length is no wider than the I-85 corridor.)
Justice O’Connor said the districts were “so extremely irregular on [their] face
... that they rationally can be viewed as an effort to segregate the races for
purposes of voting.” Such segregation, Justice O’Connor wrote, “reinforces the
perception that members of the same racial group—regardless of their age,
education, economic status or the community in which they live—think alike,
share the same political interests and will prefer the same candidate. We have
rejected such perceptions elsewhere as impermissible racial stereotyping.”*?
In his dissent, Justice Stevens pointed out the irony and perversity of the
situation in which the Fourteenth Amendment, which was enacted to protect
the rights of African Americans, was being used in this case to deny them rights
and representation. He wrote,

If it is permissible to draw boundaries to provide adequate representation for

rural voters, for union members, for Hasidic Jews, for Polish Americans or
for Republicans, it necessarily follows that it is permissible to do the same
thing for members of the very minority group whose history in the United
States gave birth to the Equal Protection Clause. A contrary conclusion could
only be described as perverse.*4

After eight years of litigation and more than a dozen cases in several states,
the Supreme Court in 2001 in Easley v. Cromartie to some extent clarified the
principles of Shaw in a way that permits some use of race as a factor in
legislative redistricting.°° This case once again involved the drawing of the lines
in North Carolina’s 12th congressional district, which was the district in dispute
in the original case. After the Court declared the majority black 12th district
unconstitutional, the North Carolina legislature redrew the lines of the district
to create a 41 percent majority black district. The three-judge federal district
 CHAPTER 12 > The Supreme Court 311

court in North Carolina ruled this new district unconstitutional because it had
used race as the “predominant factor” in redrawing the lines. In Easley a 5-4
majority reversed the district court, holding that the district court’s conclusion
that race was the predominant factor in drawing the lines was “clearly
erroneous.” Rather, Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the majority (which
included Justice O’Connor), concluded that the district lines were based on party
affiliation rather than race, and since there is a high correlation between race
and party (95 percent of black voters in North Carolina typically vote for
Democratic candidates), it was appropriate for the legislature to take race into
account as a surrogate for party. Thus, Breyer concluded that race was not an
illegitimate consideration in redistricting as long as it was not the “dominant
and controlling” one. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for himself and the other
dissenting justices, argued that the majority should not have second-guessed the
conclusions of the district court but that even if the majority was correct that
party rather than race was the predominant factor, the lines were still
unconstitutional because “it is not a defense that the Legislature merely may
have drawn the district based on the stereotype that blacks are reliable
Democratic voters.” While the Court’s narrow decision suggested to state
legislatures that race could be used in the redistricting process, it still left the
situation muddled in terms of the factual determination of when the use of race
was “predominant,” “dominant,” or “controlling.”

Gutting the Voting Rights Act: The Case of Shelby

County Alabama v. Holder
In Chapter 9, we discussed the “amazingly effective devices” employed by the
southern states after Reconstruction to keep African Americans from voting.
We also discussed in the chapter a series of Supreme Court decisions and
congressional laws culminating with the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) that in
an uneven and painfully slow process restored the African American vote in the
South. Ultimately, the key to this restoration was the VRA, enacted after the
brutal police attack on black citizens in Selma, Alabama, on “bloody Sunday”
as they peacefully marched for the ballot. In Chapter 10, we discussed the
renewal of the VRA in 2006, noting its overwhelming approval in both houses
of Congress with the enthusiastic support of congressional leaders and President
Bush. Yet, in spite of the widely recognized significance of the VRA in securing
and protecting the right of southern blacks to vote and have their votes count,
the Supreme Court’s five-man conservative majority in 2013 in Shelby County
Alabama v. Holder effectively rendered one of its most effective provisions null
and void.
The Court accomplished this by declaring Section 4 of the Act uncon-
stitutional. Section 4 establishes the formula for Section 5 “preclearance” (see
Chapter 10 on Section 5 and preclearance). The formula, adopted initially in
312 PARTIV > Institutions

1965, is based on (1) whether a state at that time used literacy or other tests to
disqualify voters and (2) whether it had low voter registration and turnout.
Writing for the majority in Shelby County, Chief Justice Roberts declared this
formula was “Unconstitutional in light of current conditions”:

Coverage today is based on decades-old data and eradicated practices.

The formula captures states by reference to literacy tests and low voter
registration and turnout in the 1960s and 1970s. But such tests have been
banned for over forty years. And voter registration and turnout in covered
states have risen dramatically. In 1965, the states could be divided into those
with a recent history of voting tests and low voter registration and turnout
and those without those characteristics. Congress based its coverage formula
on that distinction. Today the nation is no longer divided along those lines,
yet the Voting Rights Act continues to treat it as if it were. .. . Congress—if
it is to divide the states—must identify those jurisdictions to be singled out
on a basis that makes sense in light of current conditions.*®

In a lengthy and spirited dissent, Justice Ginsberg, writing for the four-person
liberal minority, declared the Constitution gives Congress the authority to
enforce the right to vote and,

After exhaustive evidence-gathering and deliberative process, Congress

reauthorized the VRA, including the coverage provision, with overwhelming
bipartisan support. It was the judgment of Congress that 40 years has not
been sufficient time to eliminate the vestiges of discrimination following
nearly 100 years of disregard for the dictates of the 15th Amendment and to
ensure that the right of citizens to vote is protected as guaranteed by the
Constitution. That determination of the body empowered to enforce the Civil
War Amendments “by appropriate legislation” merits this Court’s utmost
respect. In my judgment, the Court errs egregiously by overriding Congress’
decision.”

Justice Ginsberg also cited evidence that racial discrimination in voting was
still more pervasive in the South than elsewhere in the nation. For example, she
wrote that while the covered (southern) states accounted for only 25 percent of
the population, since 1982, 56 percent of the successful race discrimination cases
in voting (under Section 2 of the VRA) were from the South, nearly four times
more than from noncovered northern states.°* Noting that during that time
Alabama, after Mississippi, had the second highest number of such cases,
Ginsberg wrote its “sorry history of Section 2 violations alone provides sufficient
justification for Congress’ determination in 2006 that it should remain under
Section 5’s preclearance.”*?
We should note that while Justice Thomas joined the majority opinion,
he wrote separately to indicate he would have declared Section 5 itself
unconstitutional.
 CHAPTER 12 > The Supreme Court 313

As the Roberts opinion stands, Congress could update the Section 4 formula
or apply Section S to all of the states. Neither is likely to happen (in 2006
congressional committees considered reworking the formula but could not come
up with a workable alternative), which means blacks in Alabama and other parts
of the South will likely have their voting rights manipulated and abridged until
they can go into Court and prove racism after the fact. (After the fact, in.
egregious cases Section 3 of the VRA allows states to be temporally brought
back under the preclearance requirement.) This is precisely the situation Section
5 was designed to prevent. As Justice Ginsberg put it, concerning black voting
rights in the South “What’s past is prologue.”?°
As to Justice Ginsberg’s prologue, shortly after Shelby went into effect
Alabama made it more difficult to obtain voter identifications by closing 31
Department of Motor Vehicle Offices (where the identifications are obtained),
mostly in majority black counties. These are precisely the kinds of changes that
likely would have been stopped by Section 5, since approximately 250,000
Alabama residents do not have driver’s licenses or other acceptable forms of
identification.

Material-Based Cases: Affirmative Action

Affirmative action, initiated in the late 1960s to early 1970s, consists of a broad
collection of executive orders, bureaucratic decisions, court cases, and state
legislation designed to eliminate unlawful discrimination of applicants and
ensure access to educational programs, employment, and government contracts
for one or more of the following reasons: (1) to remedy or compensate
historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups for past discrimination; (2)
to enforce or implement provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act; and (3) to
create diversity in education, employment, and government contracting. These
programs and policies were designed to assure universal freedom via access to
material benefits or rights for protected classes in the areas of education,
employment, and government contracts. Targeted legislation has expanded
protections beyond underrepresented racial and ethnic groups in education and
employment to include women, people of a certain age, people with disabilities,
and veterans; yet, affirmative action is often portrayed or perceived by opponents
as a policy for “blacks only,” which distorts the policy directive.*! As a result,
these programs and policies are now under attack by black conservatives as well
as conservative Republicans in Congress and at the state and local levels (see
Box 11.3). Leading this attack is the Supreme Court’s five-person conservative
majority. Next, we review the history of Supreme Court decision making on
affirmative action in cases dealing with education, employment, and government
contracting.
314 PARTIV > Institutions

Education
In 1978 in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Supreme Court
in a split decision upheld the constitutionality of affirmative action.** The case
involved two issues: first, whether it was constitutionally permissible for a state
to take race into account in allocating material benefits—in this specific case,
access to medical school; second, if the use of race was deemed permissible,
whether the state could use a numerical racial quota to allocate these benefits
(in Bakke this involved setting aside 16 of 100 slots for students from racial
and ethnic backgrounds only). In deciding the case, the Court was deeply
divided, issuing six separate opinions. Four conservative justices led by Justice
Rehnquist argued that the University of California program violated Title VII
of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (which prohibits discrimination by institutions
receiving federal funds) as well as the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment. In the view of these four justices, taking race into consideration
in allocating material benefits was never permissible. Four liberal justices led by
Justices Brennan and Marshall held that a state, in order to remedy past
discrimination or create ethnic diversity, could take race into consideration in
allocating benefits and could, if it wished, use a fixed quota. Justice Lewis Powell,
the Court’s only southerner, split the difference between his liberal and
conservative colleagues by holding that a state could use race for purposes of
diversity but that a fixed quota was illegal and unconstitutional.
In the 25 years since Bakke, the country and the courts became increasingly
divided about affirmative action in higher education. Of the 12 circuit courts
of appeal, four issued different opinions on the issue. The Fifth and Eleventh
Circuits (covering six southern states) overruled Bakke and banned affirmative
action, and the Sixth and Ninth Circuits (covering several Midwestern and nine
western states) upheld Bakke. Because of these conflicts between the circuits
(which meant the Constitution and the law had different meanings depending
on what part of the country one lived in), the Supreme Court in 2003 decided
to revisit Bakke.
The Court considered two cases from the University of Michigan. The first
involved the university’s undergraduate admissions program, in which African
American, Hispanic, and Native American applicants were automatically
awarded 20 points of the 100 needed to guarantee admission. The second dealt
with the university’s law school admission program, which was designed to
achieve a “critical mass” of students from historically marginalized racial and
ethnic backgrounds by requiring admission officials to consider all aspects of
an applicant’s record (including his or her ethnicity) in an “individualized
assessment” of the extent to which the applicant contributed to the university’s
goal of a well-qualified and diverse law school class. Both programs were
challenged by white applicants who had been denied admission. They alleged
that the university’s use of race as a factor in its admissions decisions violated
 CHAPTER 12 > The Supreme Court 315

the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment. The Sixth Circuit rejected the challenge to the law school’s
program, and its decision on the undergraduate program was pending when the
Supreme Court decided to take both cases. These two cases, Gratz et al. v.
Bollinger et al. and Grutter v. Bollinger et al., were argued before the Court on
April 1 and decided on June 29, 2003.
In its decision, the Court upheld the law school program but declared the
undergraduate program unconstitutional. Writing for a 5—4 majority in Grutter,
Justice O’Connor reaffirmed Bakke, writing, “Today we endorse Justice Powell’s
view that student body diversity is a compelling state interest that can
justify the use of race in university admissions.”*? The chief justice and Justices
Kennedy, Thomas, and Scalia dissented, concluding that the law school
admission program operated as a racial quota system. As Justice Scalia wrote,
the program was little more than “a sham to cover a scheme of racially
proportionate admissions.”**
In Gratz, however, Justice O’Connor joined the other side, voting to strike
down the undergraduate program with its automatic 20 points for minorities
as a quota system. In his opinion for the majority, the chief justice held that the
20 points awarded to “every single ‘underrepresented minority’ applicant because
of race was not narrowly tailored to achieve educational diversity.”* In his
concurring opinion, Justice Thomas went beyond the chief justice to declare
that even if the program was narrowly tailored it would still be unconstitutional
because the use of race in admissions decisions is “categorically prohibited by
the Fourteenth Amendment.”**
In her dissent, Justice Ginsberg suggested that affirmative action was a
compelling interest of states not only to achieve diversity in their universities but
also to remedy past and ongoing racism. She wrote, “The racial and ethnic groups
to which the College accords special consideration (African Americans, Hispanics
and Native Americans) historically have been relegated to inferior status by law
and social practice; their members continue to face class based discrimination to
this day.”4” She also suggested that Justice O’Connor was somewhat disingenuous
in approving the law school program that indirectly took race into consideration,
while disapproving the undergraduate program because it did so openly. She
wrote, “If honesty is the best policy, surely Michigan’s accurately described, fully
disclosed college affirmative action program is preferable to achieving similar
numbers through winks, nods and disguises.”*°
While the Court in Grutter narrowly upheld the use of race to achieve
diversity in higher education, in 2008 in two related cases it held that race could
not be used to achieve diversity in elementary and secondary education. The
two cases, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District
and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, involved the use of race
as one factor in assigning students to schools in order to maintain diversity or
racial integration. White parents sued claiming that the assignment of pupils by
316 PARTIV > Institutions

race violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. A bitterly

divided Court, in a 5-4 decision, agreed. Writing for the majority, the chief
justice invoked the famous Brown decision, declaring that the Constitution
forbids the classification of students on the basis of race, whether for purposes
of integration or segregation. In his dissent, Justice Breyer wrote that use of
Brown in these cases was a “cruel distortion of history” because the “lesson of
history is not that efforts to continue racial segregation is constitutionally
indistinguishable from efforts to achieve racial integration.” Although Justice
Kennedy joined the majority, he was unwilling to conclude that the Constitution
prevented any consideration of race in order to achieve racial integration.
Describing the chief justice’s opinion as “all-too unyielding” in its insistence
that race can never be a factor in pupil assignments, Kennedy wrote that in
some instances race might be used to reach Brown’s objective of ending “de
facto re-segregation in schooling.”
Meanwhile, in Michigan in 2006, the voters approved Proposition 2,
prohibiting the use of racial preferences by any state agency including colleges
and universities. The proposition was approved by a margin of 58 to 42 percent.
While only 14 percent of blacks voted yes, the proposition was approved by 62
percent of whites, including 68 percent of white men and 57 percent of white
women. In 2008, a similar proposition was defeated in Colorado and approved
in Nebraska.
In 2007, the Sixth Circuit overturned Michigan’s Proposition 2, ruling that
banning the use of race in university admissions imposed an “impermissible
burden on minorities.”4? However, in 2014 in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend
Affirmative Action the Supreme Court reversed the Sixth Circuit and upheld the
right of Michigan voters to ban affirmative action.
In December 2011, the Obama administration issued “Guidelines on the
Voluntary Use of Race to Achieve Diversity in Post-Secondary Education.” Issued
jointly by the Departments of Education and Justice, the guidelines effectively
revoked Bush administration guidelines which had discouraged universities from
using race in admission decisions. Instead, the Obama guidelines declare that
race can be used to achieve ethnic diversity, and in some cases “race can be the
outcome determinative.”*° The Obama administration earlier (in July 2011) also
announced the “White House Initiatives on Educational Excellence for African
Americans.” This initiative creates an office in the Department of Education,
and a 25-person advisory commission “to expand educational opportunities and
outcomes for blacks at all levels of education.”5!
This initiative, the guidelines on the use of race in university admissions,
and the Executive Order on diversity in the bureaucracy, discussed in the last
chapter, are further evidence, not widely publicized and little noted, of targeted,
race-specific policies adopted by the Obama administration.
Meanwhile, in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin et al., the Court in
a compromise 7-1 decision upheld Grutter, while directing the lower courts to
 CHAPTER 12 > The Supreme Court 317

more strictly examine (“strict scrutiny”) whether the university’s use of race
was “narrowly tailored,” and that there was no workable race—neutral
alternatives to the use of race to achieve a diverse student body.°? Justice
Ginsberg dissented, reiterating her view that given the “lingering effects” of
“centuries of law sanctioned inequality,” it was constitutionally permissible for
the university to openly and candidly use race in the admission process.5> Again,
Justice Thomas, while joining the majority, wrote separately a long concurring
opinion to reiterate his long-held view that it was never permissible to use race
in admissions decisions.*4
In its 2016 reexamination of Fisher (Fisher v. University of Texas, #14-981)
the eight-person court in a 4-3 vote (Justice Kagan recused herself because she
had worked on the case while Solicitor General in the Obama administration)
upheld the university’s affirmative action program. Justice Kennedy, who voted
in favor of affirmative action for the first time in his 28 years on the court, in
his majority opinion reaffirmed Grutter v. Michigan et al., holding that the Texas
admission program was “narrowly tailored” in its use of race as one factor to
achieve a diverse student body. Justice Thomas, Chief Justice Roberts, and Justice
Alito dissented, with the latter declaring from the bench: “This is affirmative
action gone berserk.”»*°

Employment
The equivalent to the Bakke case in the area of employment is Griggs et al. v.
Duke Power Company, decided in 1971.°° In this case, a unanimous Supreme
Court struck down educational and test requirements that had a discriminatory
impact on blacks seeking employment, unless such requirements could be shown
to be necessary to the performance of the job. In Wards Cove v. Atonio, decided
in 1989, the Supreme Court by a 5—4 vote in effect overruled Griggs, holding
that a business could engage in racially discriminatory hiring practices if they
served “legitimate employment goals.” Unlike the Court’s decisions in the areas
of affirmative action involving education and government contracts, which
involved interpreting the Constitution, the employment cases involve interpreting
a statute or law (specifically Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act). Thus, the
Congress could change the Court’s decision by simply passing a new law. This
it did in the 1991 Civil Rights Act. Specifically, with respect to Wards Cove,
the Congress reinstated the principles of Griggs by requiring that employee
qualifications be nondiscriminatory and “job related for the position in question
and consistent with business necessity.”*”
In its 2009-2010 term, the Court rendered two decisions that appeared to
undermine and then reinforce Griggs. In Ricci v. DeStefano, the Court ruled
against the City of New Haven, Connecticut, for abandoning a 2003 fire
department promotional examination that appeared to discriminate against
blacks and Hispanics (no blacks scored high enough on the test to be promoted).
Writing for the 5-4 majority, Justice Kennedy agreed that the test had a
318 PART IV >institutions

“disparate impact” on minor but that the city’s use of“express, race-based
ities
decision-making” to set aside the test results could not be used to remedy a
“stat istic
disparity al
based on race” because it discriminated against those
individual whites who scored well on the exam. In her dissent, Justice Ginsberg
wrote that the majority's opinion broke the promise of Griggs “that group's
long denied equal opportunity would not be held back by tests fair inform but
discriminatory in action.”S Later, however, the Court ruled unanimously in
Lewis v. City of Cricago that black firefighters may sue the city if it uses tests
that exclude disproportionate numbers of racial and ethnic groups.> Ried and
Lewis appear tocreate a catch-22 siuation foremployers—damned if you use
discr imina
tests and damned tory
if you don’t. ..

Government Contracts
In 1977, to increase historically marginalized groups’ access to government
contracts, Congress added a provision to the Public Works Act requiring that at
least 10 percent of federal funds granted for local projects be awarded to
minority-owned businesses. White businesspeople challenged this 10 percent set-
aside as an unconstitutional racial quota, but the Court in Fullilove v. Klutznik
rejected their claims.™ In Fullilove, the Court held that Congress, to remedy past
discrimination, had the authority to establish the 10 percent set-aside as a
reasonable method to assure historically marginalized groups’ access to contracts.
In 1989 in Metro Broadcasting v. Federal Communications Commission, the
Court upheld similar minority set-aside programs in the allocation of broadcast
licenses.*! Both these decisions were overruled by the conservative Court majority.
In 1983, Richmond, Virginia, established a minority set-aside program for
its contracts modeled on the plan passed by Congress and approved by the
Supreme Court in Fullilove. In J. A. Croson v. City of Richmond, the Court in
a 5-4 decision declared the Richmond plan unconstitutional.“ Writing for the
majority, Justice O°Connor declared that Congress as a coequal branch of
government had the authority to establish such set-asides, but the states and —
localities were prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection
clause from doing so unless the plans were “narrowly tailored” to meet identified
discriminatory practices. In one of his many angry dissents during his last years
on the Court, Justice Marshall described his colleagues’ overturning of
Richmond's set-aside program as a “deliberate and giant step backward in this
Court’s affirmative action jurisprudence” that assumes “racial discrimination is
largely a phenomenon of the past, and that governmental bodies need no longer
preoccupy themselves with rectifying racial injustice.“S
In Croson, Justice O’Connor implied that Congress had the authority to do
what the city of Richmond could not do in remedying racial discrimination. Six
years later, in Adarand Constructors v. Pena, she rejected this view and ruled
that Congress had to follow the same strict standards as the states.“ In Adarand,
the Court, again by 5—4, overturned the Fullilove and Metro Broadcasting
 em
CHAPTER 12 > The Supreme Court 319

BD 12.3
Material-Based Rights: The Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act of 2010 (aka “Obamacare”)

Although there was an overwhelming to extend universal rights and freedoms

consensus among constitutional scholars (see Chapter 2). Further, Roberts joined
that under precedents established during with the conservatives and two of the
the New Deal, Congress clearly had the liberal justices in striking down the
authority to enact Obama’s health reforms provision in the Patient Protection and
pursuant to its power to regulate Affordable Care Act—the formal title of
commerce, the five conservative justices the Obama health reforms—requiring the
on the Supreme Court rejected this states to expand coverage of their
consensus. However, Chief Justice Medicaid program for low-income persons
Roberts broke with his conservative or lose all of their Medicaid funds. This too
colleagues and joined with the liberals to is consistent with the Rehnquist Court's
uphold the requirement that individuals emphasis on state-centered federalism
purchase health insurance or pay a penalty rather than universal freedom.
as a valid exercise of the Congress's Thus, although Obama’s health reforms
power to tax. Although the Obama survived the most serious challenge to
administration had argued that the penalty Congress's authority to enact universal
could be interpreted as a tax, its principal rights and freedoms since the New Deal,
contention was that persons opting not to the narrow basis of the chief justice's
purchase insurance were engaged in and opinion suggests that the tide in American
affecting the delivery of health care in jurisprudence is toward limited rather than
interstate commerce. In using the taxing universal freedom. (In 2015 in King v.
power rather than the commerce clause, Burwell in a technical decision involving
the chief justice in National Federation of implementation the Court in a 6-3 decision
Independent Business v. Sebelius was reaffirmed the legality of the Affordable
adhering to the Rehnquist Court's Care Act.)
precedents limiting the power of Congress

DIET EES SI a

precedents. As a result of the Croson decision, there was a dramatic decline in

historically marginalized groups’ access to contracts in Richmond and other
states and localities.®° A similar result may follow in the wake of Adarand. For
example, after Adarand, President Clinton suspended most federal affirmative
action programs that reserved contracts exclusively for minorities and women.%

Civil Rights without Remedies: Institutional

Racism v. Individual Racism
In its 2000-2001 term, the Court went out of its way to take a case in civil
rights law that dealt a death blow to the right of individuals to challenge
practices of institutional racism by the states. In doing so, it overruled the
decisions of 9 of the 12 circuit courts that had ruled on the issue in more than
two decades of litigation.
320 PART IV > Institutions

Institutional racism (which the Court refers to as “disparate impact”) deals

with policies or programs that have a racially discriminatory impact or effect.
By contrast, individual racism (which the Court refers to as “disparate
treatment”) deals with intentional acts of discrimination. Since the adoption of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964, individuals have had the right to sue states for
both types of discrimination. But in a 5-4 decision, the Court’s conservatives
in Alexander v. Sandoval (#99-1908, 2000) took away the individual right to
sue states practicing institutional racism. The case involved a challenge to an
Alabama law requiring all applicants to take the state’s written driver’s license
examination in English. The suit alleged that in its impact or effect, the
requirement discriminated on the basis of language or ethnic origin. The district
court and the Eleventh Circuit agreed. But in Sandoval, the Court, without
reaching the merits of the case as to whether the requirement was discriminatory,
held that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 allowed individuals to sue only in
disparate treatment cases. In another one of his unusually harsh dissents (parts
of which he read, a step a justice takes to signal the importance or significance
of a decision), Justice Stevens condemned his colleagues for reaching out to take
the case when there was no conflict between the circuits and for overturning
two decades of precedent and concluded that “it makes no sense” to distinguish
between types of discrimination in terms of an individual’s right to sue. Sandoval
is a potentially far-reaching decision since disparate treatment cases are difficult
to prove (it is not likely, for example, that the authorities in Alabama openly
discussed their intent to use the English requirement as a means to discriminate
on the basis of ethnic origins), which is why individuals in the post-civil rights
era resorted to disparate impact suits in the first place.
In 2015, in Texas Department of Housing and Community Development,
et al. v. Inclusive Communities Project Inc. et al., the Court appeared to break
with the Sandoval precedent. The 5—4 decision in this case held that individual
or intentional racism was not necessary to establish proof of discrimination in
housing cases. Rather, it was only necessary to show institutional racism—that
the policies of the Department had a “disparate” negative or harmful effect on
protected racial or ethnic groups. While the majority opinion did not directly
address the issue raised in Sandoval, it limited its potential far-reaching
consequences.

Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom

EARL WARREN (1891-1974)
As the 14th chief justice of the United States, Earl Warren did more to address
the cause of equality and universal freedom than all of his predecessors combined.
 CHAPTER 12 > The Supreme Court 321

Indeed, Chief Justice Warren is one of

the best friends of freedom ever to hold
a high position in the U.S. government.
Warren was appointed to the
Court by President Eisenhower in 1953
as a political favor because as governor
of California he had helped Eisenhower
win the Republican nomination (Eisen-
hower later said Warren’s appointment
was one of the worst mistakes he made
as president). Although a popular and
progressive governor, Warren had no
experience as a judge and his record
had not shown any particular concern
for civil rights or civil liberties. (For
example, he had strongly supported the
incarceration of Japanese Americans
during World War II.) Once on the Ear Warren.
Court, however, he showed remarkable Source: Collection of the Supreme Court of the
skills in leading the most pro-universal United States
freedom court in the history of the
United States.
Warren is most famous for the Brown v. Board of Education school
desegregation decision. Although his opinion in Brown was narrowly focused
on education, Warren used it as a precedent to end segregation in all govern-
ment-operated institutions. In 1967 in Loving v. Virginia, in the name of
freedom and equality, the Court declared state bans on interracial marriage
unconstitutional.
Although best known for Brown and related civil rights cases, the Warren
Court extended universal freedom and equality to many other oppressed and
stigmatized minorities, including persons accused of crimes, atheists, religious
minorities, communists, and women. Warren said he was most proud of the
Court’s decision in Baker v. Carr, which established the principle of “one man,
one vote.” This decision was important, he said, because it helped to make
democracy a reality for all Americans.?

Bernard Schwarz, Super Chief: Earl Warren and His Supreme Court (New York: New York
University Press, 1983).
322 PARTIV > Institutions

Summary 22a See eee

For much of its history, the Supreme Court has been a racist institution. From
its 1857 decision in Dred Scott, declaring that African Americans had no rights
whatsoever, until the remarkable period of the Warren Court in the 1960s, the
Court generally ruled against the freedom interests of blacks. In its decisions on
race, as with most other cases, the Court tends to reflect the opinions of the white
majority and to follow the ideological directions established by the electorate.
In his last year on the Court, Justice Thurgood Marshall in a 1989 speech
characterized the Court’s 1988-1989 term by stating, “It is difficult to
characterize [the] last term’s decisions as the product of anything other than a
deliberate retrenching of the civil rights agenda. ... [We have] put at risk not
only the civil rights of minorities but the civil rights of all citizens. ... We have
come full circle.” Marshall then suggested that in order to protect their rights
and freedoms blacks should look to Congress, not the courts. Blacks did turn
to the Congress after the 1988-1989 term, and the result was the Civil Rights
Act of 1991. However, since 1989 other major civil rights laws have been
targeted for review by the Court. Therefore, ultimately, the African American
quest for freedom still can be profoundly shaped by five people.

Critical Thinking Questions

1. Explain why the “Warren Court” is viewed as the most pro—universal

freedom Supreme Court in the history of the United States.
2. Explain the symbolic significance of the Supreme Court’s famous Brown v.
Board of Education decision. Discuss, giving examples, why most
commentators consider it to be a substantive failure.
3. Discuss the concepts of judicial restraint and judicial activism in relation to
African Americans and the quest of universal freedom. Which concept
historically has proven to be more advantageous?
4. The conservative majority on the Supreme Court has tended in recent years
to retrench in enforcement of civil rights in education, employment, and
voting rights. Discuss a case from each of these areas that show this
retrenchment.
5. Define institutional racism and individual racism. Discuss the difference
between using “disparate impact” v. “disparate treatment” as the burden
of proof in relation to African Americans and the quest for universal
freedom. What are the effects on civil rights?

Selected Bibliography Es
Abraham, Henry. The Judicial Process, 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
A general overview of the judicial process in the United States, including local, state,
and federal courts.
 CHAPTER 12 > The Supreme Court 323

Burns, James MacGregor. Packing the Court: The Rise of Judicial Power and the Coming
Crisis of the Supreme Court. New York: Penguin, 2009. The renowned liberal
historian argues that the current conservative court may precipitate a crisis of
democratic legitimacy.
Dahl, Robert. “Decision Making in a Democracy: The Supreme Court as a National
Policy Maker.” Journal of Public Law 6 (Fall 1957): 257-88. A classic analysis of
the Court’s role in the political process.
Hall, Kermit, William Wiecek, and Paul Finkelman. American Legal History: Cases and
Materials. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. A nearlycomprehensive
collection of cases and commentary on the development of law in the United States,
focusing on all areas of law including race and civil rights.
Howard, John R. The Shifting Wind: The Supreme Court and Civil Rights from
Reconstruction to Brown. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1999. A sprightly and often
moving analysis of the Court’s role in pushing and subverting the African American
quest for freedom. Especially valuable for its insights into the internal dynamics of
Supreme Court decision making.
Leuctenburg, William. The Supreme Court Reborn: The Constitutional Revolution in
the Age of Roosevelt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. A lucid account of
the transformation of the Supreme Court into a liberal reform institution beginning
with the New Deal and ending with the Warren Court.
Rosenberg, Gerald. The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996. An analysis of the limited capacity of the courts
to foster social change, including detailed study of school desegregation.
Spann, Girardeau. Race against the Court: The Supreme Court and Minorities in America.
New York: New York University Press, 1993. An argument that the Supreme Court
will enforce minority rights only to the extent that whites are not disadvantaged.
Vose, Clement. “Litigation as a Form of Pressure Group Activity.” Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science 319 (September 1958): 20-31. The
classic analysis of the use of litigation as a means of influencing the making of public
policy.
Walton, Eugene. “Will the Supreme Court Revert to Racism?” Black World 21 (1972):
46-48. A cogent analysis of the racist history of the Court.

Notes Go
Siigiec ee es
1 Dred Scott v. Sanford, 19 Howard, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), as cited in Kermit Hall,
William Wiecek, and Paul Finkelman, eds., American Legal History: Cases and
Materials (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991): 208.
2 Dred Scott was a slave residing in Illinois, a free state. When his owner returned to
Missouri, a slave state, Scott argued that as a result of living in Illinois, he had become
free and remained free even in Missouri. The Supreme Court of Missouri rejected Scott’s
claims, and he appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, which upheld the
decision of the Missouri court. Historians contend that this decision (described by
Horace Greeley at the time as “wicked,” “atrocious,” “abominable,” and “detestable
hypocrisy”) was one of the factors that helped to cause the Civil War. Greeley is quoted
in Hall, Wiecek, and Finkelman, American Legal History, p. 213.
3 J. Morgan Kouser, Dead End: The Development of Nineteenth Century Litigation
on Racial Discrimination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
4 Eugene Walton, “Will the Supreme Court Revert to Racism?” Black World 21
(1972): 46-48.
324 PARTIV > Institutions

5) Robert Dahl, “Decision Making in a Democracy: The Supreme Court as a National

Policy-Maker,” Journal of Public Law 6 (Fall 1957): 281. In his analysis of the Court,
Dahl concluded that its main function is to confer legitimacy on decisions taken by
the political branches.
Robert C. Smith, “Rating Black Leaders,” National Political Science Review 8
(2001): 124-38. In a list of the 12 greatest African American leaders of all time
selected by a panel of black political scientists Marshall ranked sixth.
See Robert C. Smith and Richard Seltzer, Contemporary Controversies and the
American Racial Divide (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000): 68-72.
Vincent Hutchings, “Political Context, Issue Salience and Selective Attentiveness:
Constituent Knowledge of the Clarence Thomas Confirmation Vote,” Journal of
Politics 63 (2002): 846-68.
Ibid.
See J. Clay Smith, Jr., Supreme Justice: The Speeches and Writings of Thurgood
Marshall (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003).
Scott Gerber, First Principles: The Jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas (New York:
New York University Press, 1999).
On this debate, see Edwin Meese (Reagan’s attorney general, for the judicial self-
restraint view), The Great Debate: Interpreting Our Written Constitution
(Washington, DC: Federalist Society, 1986); and William Brennan (the former justice,
for the activism view), The Great Debate: Interpreting Our Written Constitution
(Washington, DC: Federalist Society, 1986).
Girardeau Spann, Race against the Court: The Supreme Court and Minorities in
Contemporary America (New York: New York University Press, 1993).
William Leuchtenburg, The Supreme Court Reborn: The Constitutional Revolution
in the Age of Roosevelt (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
175 U.S. 528 (1899).
305 U.S. 337 (1938).
38h) WEY OH) (IEE)
IWS ow (SO)
For detailed analysis of this strategy shift, see Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The
History of Brown v. Board of Education (New York: Vintage Books, 1977).
Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U.S. 294 (1955).
392 U.S. 430 (1969).
402 U.S. 1 (1971).
See Nicholas Mills, ed., The Great School Bus Controversy (New York: Teachers’
College Press, 1973).
Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974).
Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools (New York:
Crown, 1991).
See Charles Ogletree, All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half Century of
Brown v. Board of Education (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004); and Sheryl Cashin,
The Failure of Integration: How Race and Class Are Undermining the American
Dream (New York: Public Affairs Press, 2004).
28 On the growth of black elected officials since the Voting Rights Act, see Theresa
Chambliss, “The Growth and Significance of African American Elected Officials,”
in R. Gomes and L. Williams, eds., From Exclusion to Inclusion (Westport, CT:
Praeger, 1992): 53-70.
29 For a review of these cases, see Robert C. Smith, “Liberal Jurisprudence and the Quest
eecre Representation,” Southern University Law Review 15 (Spring 1988):
 CHAPTER 12 > The Supreme Court 325

430 U.S. 144 (1977).

Ibid.
Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 690 (1993).
Ibid.
Ibid.
Easley v. Cromartie (#99-1864, 2001). The case was originally Hunt v. Cromartie
(after James Hunt, the governor of the state at the time of the appeal); however, the
Court renamed the case to reflect the name of the new governor, Michael Easley.
Ee County, Alabama v. Holder, Attorney General et al. (slip opinion) #12-96

Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
See Sherri L. Wallace and Marcus D. Allen, “Affirmative Action Debates in American
Government Introductory Textbooks,” Journal of Black Studies 47 (7) (2016): 1-23.
438 U.S. 265 (1978).
Grutter v. Bollinger et al. (slip opinion) #0-241 (2003).
Ibid.
Gratz et al. v. Bollinger et al. (slip opinion) #02-516 (2003).
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Tamar Lewin, “Court Overturns Michigan Affirmative Action Ban,” New York
Times, July 2, 2011.
Sam Dillon, “US Urges Creativity by Colleges to Gain Diversity,” New York Times,
December 3, 2011.
The White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans
(Washington, DC: The White House, 2011).
Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin et al. (slip opinion) #11-345 (2013).
Ibid.
Ibid.
Quoted in Adam Liptak, “Supreme Court Upholds Affirmative Action at the
University of Texas,” New York Times, June 23, 2016.
401 U.S. 424 (1971).
“The Compromise on Civil Rights,” New York Times, December 12, 1991.
Ricci v. DeStefano, 557—-US.
Lewis v. Chicago (slip opinion) #08-974 (2010).
448 U.S. 448 (1980).
10d OPS}CE22997, (1990).
488 U.S. 469 (1989).
Ibid.
(Slip opinion) 903-1841 (1995). This case involved a suit by white contractors
challenging a minority set-aside in federal highway construction.
Augustus Jones and Clyde Brown, “State Responses to Richmond v. Croson: A Survey
of Equal Employment Opportunity Officers,” National Political Science Review 3
(1992): 40-61. See also W. Avon Drake and Robert Holsworth, Affirmative Action
and the Stalled Quest for Racial Progress (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996):
chap. 7.
66 Save Holmes, “White House to Suspend a Program for Minorities,” New York
Times, March 8, 1996, p. A1; and Steven Holmes, “Administration Cuts Affirmative
Action While Defending It,” New York Times, March 16, 1998, p. A17.
mm CHAPTER 13
State and Local Politics
and the African
American Quest for
Universal Freedom

LEARNING OBJECTIVE
Explain devolution in the states and how it impacts political
representation and policy responsiveness to the African American
electorate.

Reconstruction: The Brief Era of Universal

Freedom in State Politics
In Chapter 2, we showed that the brief Reconstruction era, 1863-1877, was
the first period of national-centered power. This period also saw the first era of
progressive, pro—universal freedom government in the United States, as many
of the southern states were governed by minority—majority coalitions that
adopted rights and material-based policies that expanded freedom for all
Americans. W. E. B. Du Bois described the Reconstruction era state and local
governments as “the finest efforts to achieve democracy for the working millions
which this world had ever seen.”! And, in a recent history of the era, Douglas
Egerton calls it “the most progressive period” in American history.?
The most basic rights-based reforms initiated by the Reconstruction
governments were the extension of the right to vote to all men, without regard
to race, literacy, or property ownership. These voters then formed biracial
 CHAPTER 13 > State and Local Politics 327

Republican minority—majority coalitions of blacks and whites that elected

African Americans to state and local offices for the first time in U.S. history.
Once in office, this Republican Party coalition enacted a series of social and
economic reforms, including free public schools, asylums, property rights for
married women, reductions in the number of crimes, legislation regulating
private markets and insurance companies. At the local level, streets were paved,
boards of health and sanitation were established and police forces and public
transportation were integrated. These programs were financed by increased
taxation, especially on the wealthy planters.*
These progressive, universal freedom governments within a decade were
overthrown through terrorism and massacres by groups like the Ku Klux Klan;
the most infamous of the massacres took place in Colfax, Louisiana, in 1873
when perhaps as many as 100 black men were slaughtered.* These terror
campaigns were successful because northern whites agreed to withdraw the U.S.
Army (which had provided security and protection to African Americans) from
the southern states. Without the protection of the army, these progressive,
democratic governments could not survive.
One of the reasons northern whites turned against the Reconstruction era
governments was racism, but as Heather Cox Richardson shows it was more
than racism. It was also because of their progressive tax and welfare policies.
Wealthy and powerful whites, Cox writes, turned against Reconstruction because
they

increasingly perceived the mass of African Americans as adherents of a

theory of political economy in which labor and capital were at odds and in
which a growing government would be used to advance laborers at the
expense of capitalists. For these northerners, the majority of ex-slaves became
the face of “communism” or “socialism” as opponents dubbed their views. . .
. Northerners turned against freed people after the Civil War because African
Americans came to represent a concept of society and government that would
destroy the “free labor world,” that is a view that labor and capital had
mutually compatible interests. Black citizens, it seemed threatened the core of
American society.°

After the Reconstruction governments were overthrown, many of the

progressive reforms were repealed but many were not and constitute a part of
the legacy of progressivism in southern politics.

Constitutionalism and Federalism in the States

As we have discussed, the separation of powers and federalism were two
major contributions of the framers of the Constitution to the art and practice
of government. Both allowed coexisting sovereigns—national and the state
governments—to share power and authority over their jurisdictions and citizens.
328 PART IV > Institutions

In Chapter 2, the impact of national-centered federalism was discussed. In this

chapter, we focus on the impact of state-centered federalism.
The Tenth Amendment states, “The powers not delegated to the United
States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the
states respectively, or to the people.” These “reserved” powers include the power
to make laws that promote and protect the health, safety, and morals of citizens,
including creating and granting powers to local governments, counties, cities,
and school districts. The powers of these local governments, indeed their very
existence—unlike the states in the federal system—are determined by the states.
The complete dependency of local governments on their states for their powers
was unambiguously stated by Judge John Dillion in 1898 in the case of City of
Clinton v. Missouri R.R. In what has come to be known as “Dillion’s Rule,”
the judge said local governments “owe their origins to, and derive their powers
and rights wholly from, the legislature. It breathes into them the breath of life,
without which they cannot exist. As it creates, it may destroy. ...{local
governments] are, so to phrase it, the mere tenants at willof the legislature.”®
Given their unique institutional structures, laws and regulations, political
cultures, histories, demographics, economies, and geographies,’ states and their
local governments rely on their own capacities and utilize resources within their
respective boundaries to respond to the challenges and choices facing their
citizens.’ The various ways by which states manage conflict over politics, policy,
and public services determines “who gets what and how.”? States vary in the
powers given to governors, the structure of their legislatures, their judicial
review and selection processes, the strength of the party system, the roles of
interest groups and the media, and taxing and spending policies.'° A state’s level
of social diversity—racial and ethnic composition—also shape its political
processes and influence its policy tendencies.!! Thus, generalizations are difficult;
however, similarities emanate from the political histories and cultures that define
the state.
The political culture of the southern states is defined by its historical
association with the American institution of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and
racial discrimination. As W. E. B. Du Bois wrote, “freedom and citizenship were
primarily a matter of state legislation.”’? Thus, “states’ rights” was used by
southern states to defend slavery, define rights and freedoms for their citizens,
and, subsequently, impede universal freedom for racial and ethnic groups.
Tensions over federalism and state autonomy and power came in direct response
to the federal government and judicial protections for (and interventions on the
behalf) of African American citizens,!> particularly in the South where racial
conflict has characterized much of its history.!4 Menifield and Shaffer surmise:

V.O. Key (1949), in Southern Politics in State and Nation, demonstrated

how white citizens employed their one-party Democratic monopoly to
maintain white supremacy by disenfranchising African Americans through
 CHAPTER 13 > State and Local Politics 329

numerous voting devices. Even as late as 1960s and 1970s, white legislators
in states such as Mississippi employed multi-member districts to dilute the
black vote in state legislative districts, and gerrymandered congressional
districts to ensure white majorities in each district. ... As white Southerners
began to realize the futility of continued resistance to integration, and during
the stagflation of the 1970s became more concerned over economic issues
that united the races, biracial coalitions within Democratic parties emerged
and usually fended off challenges from the increasingly strong Republican
Party. ... By the turn of the century, however, “white flight” among
conservatives to the Republican Party yielded a Southern landscape where a
very competitive, two-party system had finally been established. ... With
Southern legislatures polarized between liberal African American Democrats
and [tea-party] Republicans.!5

Thus, federal-state relations would become a tug-of-war known as

“devolution,” the process of taking power and responsibility away from the
federal government and giving it to state and local governments.!° By the early
1980s, King-Meadows and Schaller wrote “devolutionary sentiments had gained
wider currency. National solutions were depicted as not merely infringing on
state’s rights, but as inadequate for dealing with the specific needs of individual
states.”!” In this regard, federal legislation prevented states from experimenting
in their “laboratories” to find innovative solutions suitable to particular
programmatic preferences for their citizens. Although, devolution may, in part,
have been initially intended by states’ rights advocates to disenfranchise African
Americans, it actually to some extent expanded opportunities for political
participation for the African American electorate. African Americans could now
elect, mobilize, and retain black state elected officials to actively promote and
protect African American interests,!® which led to a political backlash from
majority Republican state legislatures.

Black Political Representation and Policy

Responsiveness in State Legislatures
Many of the early studies on African American legislative behavior were limited,
partly because of the absence of data but mostly due to the small numbers of
African Americans serving in state legislatures.!? The number of African
American state lawmakers increased significantly after the passage of the Voting
Rights Act in 1965 and the states’ redrawing of state legislative and congressional
districts in the 1970s. As a result, by the 1980s, southern legislative districts
over 65 percent black population were electing African American legislators
almost 90 percent of the time, with the greatest increase in black representation
in states covered by the Section 5 preclearance provision of the Voting Rights
Act, and in states shifting from multi-member to single-member districts.” In
330 PART IV > Institutions

Chapter 10, we used three criteria to measure representativeness of African

Americans in Congress: descriptive, symbolic, and substantive. In this chapter,
descriptive and substantive criteria are used to discuss the extent to which state
legislatures represent African Americans.

Descriptive Representation in State Legislatures

Between 1971 and 2009, the percentage of African American state lawmakers
rose from 2 percent to 9 percent. Likewise, the number of women state
lawmakers jumped from 4 percent in 1971 to nearly 25 percent in 2009.*!
(Unfortunately, because of the lack of intersectionality in the recent data, it is
difficult to determine the percentage of state lawmakers by race and gender.)
Both increases had a significant impact on descriptive representation for the
African American electorate. In general, state legislators, like their congressional
counterparts, tend to be male, white, and well educated, often with business
backgrounds. (See Box 13.1.)

BOX 13.1 |
Descriptive and Substantive Representation:
Does Race and Gender Matter?

The few studies on intersectionality in their views that “states need to focus
state legislatures have proven the their attention on reforming education and
importance of examining the race and the healthcare system, stimulating
gender of state lawmakers with respect to economic development, and reducing
descriptive and substantive representation. unemployment.”? Also, African American
Early studies on African Americans and women state lawmakers differed from
women state lawmakers revealed their black male colleagues who are more
distinctive findings for the various likely to perceive racial gaps as more
subgroups: black men, black women, important than gender gaps and from
white men, and white women. For white women who are more likely to
example, studies of African American state perceive the opposite of this view.®
lawmakers found ambivalence among Indeed, Bratton, Haynie, and Reingold
black women toward the women’s found that the legislative activity of African
liberation movement in the 1970s; while American women is a “particularly
later studies found that African American interesting avenue through which to
women tended to “prioritize one explore the intersections of race, gender
identification over the other,” making race and political representation” due to the
issues the primary concern.® findings that when controlling for
Edith Barrett found that African partisanship and district demographics,
American and women legislators, all of African American women are more likely
whom tend to name education, health to focus on both women’s interests and
care reform, unemployment, and black interests, giving credence to Evelyn
economic development as top issues, Simien’s! finding that, in the mass public,
were more liberal than white male racial identification enhances rather than
legislators, generally.° Yet, when asked to detracts from gender identification.2 Given
list their three greatest concerns, black that choices made by individual legislators
women appeared to be the most united in are influenced by the institutional context
 CHAPTER 13 > State and Local Politics 331

in which they work, black women intersectionality enhances political

lawmakers will sponsor women’s interests representation as well.‘
bills, as necessary, if there are relatively
few women legislators; however, their @ Jewell Prestage, “Black Women State
Legislators," In Marianne Githens and Jewell
decisions regarding the sponsorship of
Prestage, eds., A Portrait of Marginality: the
black interests measures “are impervious
Political Behavior of the American Women (New
to the racial composition of the York: David McKay, 1977).
chamber.”" Meaning, African American ® Robert Darcy and Charles D. Hadley, “Black
female state lawmakers use their Women in Politics: The Puzzle of Success,"
affiliations with both the women’s caucus Social Science Quarterly 69(30) (1988):
and the black caucus to leverage their 629-45.
influence “by positioning themselves as a ° Edith J. Barrett, “The Policy Priorities of African
bridge” on issues that both caucuses American Women in State Legislatures, ”
Legislative Studies Quarterly 20(2) (1995): 242.
consider important.'
9 |bid., p. 242.
Further, not only are African American ® Quoted in Kathleen A. Bratton, Kerry L.
women state lawmakers distinct from Haynie, and Beth Reingold, “Agenda Setting and
their black male and white female African American Women in State Legislatures,”
counterparts in their legislative activity, Journal of Women, Politics & Policy 28(3-4)
they also tend to be better educated than (2006): 74. See also, Edith J. Barrett, “Gender
their colleagues, many coming from and Race in the State House: The Legislative
professional backgrounds. Their unity Power,” Social Science Journal 34(2) (1997):
131-44.
among themselves, with the support from
flbid., p. 73. See also, Evelyn Simien, “Race,
African American males and white women Gender, and Linked Fate,” Journal of Black
peers, highlights their public visibility, and Studies 35(5) (2005): 529-50.
affords them some freedom to “hold a 9 |bid., p. 91.
particular policy niche” less “beholden to " Ibid., p. 91.
white male constituents,” while increasing 'See Wendy Smooth, “A Case of Access
the likelihood of their successfully pushing Denied? Gender, Race and Legislative
bills through the legislature. Finally, Nadia Influence,” National Symposium Series: Women
Brown has discovered in her examination in Politics: Seeking Office and Making Policy
(Institute of Governmental Studies, UC Berkeley,
of how identity informs black women
2006).
legislators’ descriptive and substantive i Barrett, “The Policy Priorities of African
representation, that this group’s unique American Women in State Legislatures,” p. 243.
experiences with racism and sexism k See Nadia E. Brown, Sisters in the Statehouse:
influences their legislative decision-making Black Women and Legislative Decision Making
and policy preferences, underscoring how (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

Like their counterparts in Congress, blacks in state legislatures are elected

from majority black places or majority—minority districts where most of the
voters are Democrats.2* Based on the latest data available in 2009, Table 13.1
shows there are roughly 7,382 state elected officials; African American state
lawmakers constitute 628 or 9 percent. Of the total 1,971 seats in state Senates,
African Americans hold 161 or 8 percent, and 467 or 9 percent of the total
5,411 seats in state Houses. The five states with the largest black delegations
are located in the South: Georgia, with 53 legislators; Mississippi, with 50;
Maryland, 43; South Carolina, 37; and Alabama with 35. There are nine
states—Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota,
Utah, and Wisconsin—with no African American state legislators.”
 31SVLbel

3}81S [e301 % JO e230] jo% j8}0,

+ 1230] % J0 jejyoL
= [230] % JO /sapun
9AI}e|SIbe7
UBD uedLyy je}O].
= a}eYS
=e ss BJEUBG
- BJEIG
= URI asnoy J2AQ
s}eas SUueIEWY UeaWYsjeag1 91eU9G HaWYy
ue sjeag asnoH uedeWysjeag Pejueseid
UI 9323S 8121S s}eas
= $i0}8UsS sj}eas asnoH ul 9321S
$10}e|s16a7 SIOQUIDIA] sainjejsib
eweqely Or ITC %G GE %SGC Ge 8 %ET GOL LE %ITE l- %G
eysely 09 %LV L %C 0d ol HG OV 0 %O C- %G
euozHy 06 \ MOV; G =e OC) L %E 09 L %C L—- %B
- SESUBEIY Gel SL %E vl %OlL Ge v %Li 00L Ol %OL %V'G-
e1usopyey OcL %LYO EL Bib2 On 9 %G 08 ie %6 %L'V
opeiojoD O01 EV C NC GE. L %E G9 L %C Cx DG
3NIH}I9UUODZ81 EOL Gl %8 9e v %8 LGL LL %L C- KE
aieMmejaqd C9 %6'0C G %8 LZ L %G LV v ON Gi sh
epHol|4
. O91 GL wE 9C %IL OV i MEL OL 6L %IL %V'O
2161085 lee, %0'O0€ €S %CC 9S cl %1LE O81 Lv NES %QL—-
HemMey QL VEC 0 %O GC 0) %0 LG Or %0 C- RE
oyep| SOL 0 %6 0 %O0 Ge 07) %0 OL 0 %0 %6—
sioull|] THEY %O'GL LE %8L 6S OL MLA Alaa) %81L GE
euelpul OSL %0'6 Ghy, %8 OS v %8 OOL 8 %8« WOW
eMo| OSL VIC 0 %O0 0S 0 %O 001 0) %0 VoOG
SPSUB)| GOL %19 L %V OV C %G GCL G %V L— %8
AyonjUe»| 8E1L LL Ls %G 8e L %E OOL =o %I (ios OS)
euelsinoy] vvl LE VES 9C %E1L 6E 9 %€Z GOL 0G WEL el HS
sulelAl 981 %O'L 0 %O0 Ge 0 (9% LSL 0 %O %O'L-
puejAseyy 881 EC %G eV %ET LV OL MLL LVL €€ NET %I'9-
SHesnysessesj]
00¢ %69 6. %G OV 0 %E O91 6 %YI C— KV
uebiyoiy 8vl NEVA GG %GL 8€ G YL OLL ZL US %GS'O
BjOSaUuUl|/] LOC GV C %1L L9 0 %O0 VEL G ee VOL Vositoae
iddississiiql vLL %ELE 0s %BT= CG El GLE CCl LE %0E %G8-
 Ossi
: %OL es wae e9l QL Fa
poe
%G°LL 5 %0 Gi
OSL 66 0) %0 %9
Onl hal 00). = 6 2 @ '0-
eysed 6r Z Z 0 0
rien 00 L %bL 1c ROL €g cee
.. %0'8 : 8
Men MTL
=—%0 v2
6 | %0 Bao
MON auysda
wesy g
sel Ob esis
Ae et El %G : 2%
osie %S'tL q
ce OF. OL 4
%9 OZ e 0 wih
sewiihets eZe HE'ZL %9 Ap
men Z ve %9L Ol OSL Z
|( %E
9,0 )
yon
EM Oy ae as %6—L 0S 6 L a OZ %BL
oo —%0 eZ %EZ-
uuOeqN eemthe LV
L 0 Ly ; %0 6 0 %0 ae
ol
Ce Ba 6L 0% Be! %GL vl ~YT
: Gp 8s % %VL
6rL ee va St %Z v %EE-
a ba
ue Z ee z2 %OL 0 %E0
ae= %8 ge 60 ol
0S a s E a
%E'E-
ouyap pueys] LL (KES (0)
%0 ae %L
%CE = Vel, O69 e'Ee-
nosUY} euljoseDOLL LR%Z%T © : %0
GOL LL % 0 a Co)
%lLI-
YINOS ej09
7%0 0 Cx.
eg cel : 81 YL Bem € ee
aassouua] a OL 6% Z 2 %9 OSL vl %6
sexo] L8L
\ le %E we
yeIn vOL ee 0) e 67 GL 0 POLE 1 %E
cet 0 %0 po
081 L %l= O& %0 0 ok
JUOUWII/A os ; nel % 0 ol %E'0
lL OV vl %0L Ov MEL 6 %66-
e1ulbs,, GL 2 ae - L -
uoybury Lvl Z L %Z e os
WET
wee ZC %0 €
€ ve
uoBuryseyvE,L
s%eG'E 0
OL 0 % %E'L-
0 & ee %O 0a %0G-
UISUODSI/\\ %%0 6 66 ie
06 0€ 0 %0 L
SPe nd Lov AS p-
e370] 8z9 %8 ‘Gg LL b’s %o
os
oS
jeuonenyoelg s pue84aun [RaUOREN 8008 -UR OUY
S U E D uedvew
697y-
e60
s10}e|S16»02
-se
: ouni }
si9}em ounje|si6 e7 J0146 00aqe9 1S au'Sme|si6e7
UR ! Y,, Ul ue d!
3} pue
07 eooR Orae
u-U 1e|
tS16a
9|- e t c of OL : UROL OU} 21S e01ed
MMM o4je8se/ -jnoge/y
U aPOuL8 We
leePD -U r|aC, ued ! ae b
i
un/JSAO
610"|SOU:
le} ee}
Woy ssdyy 9yjo||e//:S sM
rPeHe
or91/70/600 NE ; e
usseiduoei ap
TN OS I So LE SA SR
ST
334 PART IV > Institutions

Research on state legislatures has shown the importance of seniority and

holding leadership positions as committee chairs and party leaders in successfully
getting bills or amendments introduced and enacted for any lawmaker, whatever
their race or party membership. In 2009, the year Barack Obama first took
the oath of office as President, Colorado—where African Americans comprise
only 4.2 percent of the state population—became the first state with an African
American president (or presiding officer) of the Senate and Speaker of the
House, simultaneously. The same year, New York had its first African American
president of the Senate, and Nevada had its first African American Senate
majority leader.”5 In both states, the population percentage of African Americans
constitutes roughly 17.3 and 8 percent, respectively.
With regards to committee assignments, black legislators were over-
represented on “black interests” committees—where black interests is defined
as health, education, welfare, economic redistribution, and civil rights issues—
yet had increased their representation on “prestige” committees (e.g. Rules,
Budget, Appropriations) the longer they served, suggesting a broadening of their
influence.** Kerry Haynie concluded, “The presence and growth of African
American representation in government has indeed had noticeable and
meaningful policy consequences.”?’ Thus, the racial and ethnic composition of
state legislatures is a difference that makes a difference.*®
Table 13.1 shows the states for which the African American population
percentage exceeds the legislature’s African American percentage causing African
Americans to be “underrepresented” are primarily located in the South or black-
belt region: Louisiana, Delaware, Virginia, Mississippi, Georgia, and South
Carolina. The states for which the legislature’s African American percentage
exceeds the state’s African American population percentage causing African
Americans to be “overrepresented” are located in the western and Midwest
regions: California, Nevada, Illinois, and Ohio.?? The underrepresentation of
African American lawmakers in the southern ‘state legislatures indicates
challenges remain in the South in terms of African Americans getting descriptive
representation in state legislatures.

Substantive Representation in State Legislatures

In the summer of 2000, the Journal of Black Studies released a special issue
devoted to examining African American politics at the state level.2° All studies
in the volume supported the notion that African American state lawmakers
served as “the primary mouthpiece for African American citizens in the respective
states and were the most likely to pursue legislation that would have direct
benefits to African Americans.”>! The findings from the collective studies also
concluded, “On questions of public policy, ideology, and candidate choice,
African Americans have been the most cohesive and consistent policy subgroup
in United States politics.”3?
 CHAPTER 13 > State and Local Politics 335

As a group, African American legislators are more likely to sponsor bills

(independently or jointly) that address black interests, particularly when the
percentage of registered voters in a district is majority African American.*4
Studies have found, by contrast, white legislators almost never introduce such
legislation.>> In fact, King-Meadows and Schaller found that, as discretionary
power and decisions about issues important to the black electorate devolved
from the federal level to the states, African Americans were the most cohesive
among groups in the states, often using political strategies—from group caucus
to biracial coalitions—to secure legislation beneficial to their African American
constituents. Indeed, “cohesiveness [among black state legislators] facilitates the
effective and strategic allocation of resources dedicated toward building biracial
coalitions.”%° It also allows African American lawmakers to be responsive to
black interests, despite the states’ varied political cultures and devolutionary
sentiments.°”
However, the protection and promotion of black state interests are
conditioned not only by what ideas and policies black state lawmakers represent,
but their degree of political incorporation and the legislative environment within
which they attempt to advance those interests.** In the era of devolution, the
danger for African American lawmakers is that it presents a “constituency—
institutional” dilemma. On one hand, African American state legislators risk
repudiation from entrenched, state-level (increasingly Republican) conservatives,
who prefer to retain policy control for themselves. On the other hand, African
American state lawmakers risk condemnation from national and local liberal
interest groups that favor national-centered federalism as the primary mechanism
to protect minority and underserved interests. Consequently, African American
proponents of increased discretionary power may lose campaign contributions,
endorsements, face media attacks, and suffer political scorn from political allies.
Yet, always seeking national intervention may only strengthen perceptions that
black interests are synonymous with increased federal oversight of state practices
and support the perception that black state legislators are “mere proxies for
federal elites.”3? Nevertheless, effective representation of black interests may
require that African American citizens and black state officials recognize and
exploit their newfound power to give voice to underrepresented interests,*° even
as conservative Republicans take control of state legislatures, seeking to repeal
laws that promoted universal freedom (more discussion below).

African American Representation in Statewide

Offices: Challenges and Opportunities
In the history of the nation, very few African Americans have been elected to
statewide offices or the United States Senate. At the state level, only two African
Americans—Douglas Wilder of Virginia in 1979 and Deval Patrick of
336 PARTIV > Institutions

Massachusetts in 2006—have been elected as governors. In 1873, Pinckney

Benton Stewart (P.B.S.) Pinchback, the African American Lieutenant Governor
of Louisiana, served as acting governor for 43 days, but was never elected. In
2008, Basil Patterson, New York’s Lieutenant Governor, succeeded to the
governorship after Elliot Spitzer resigned due to a sex scandal, but did not run
for election. Legally blind, he was also the nation’s first disabled person to serve
as governor. There are few data on African Americans who have been elected
to other executive positions. As of 2016, only four African Americans were
elected at the executive level: Secretary of State, Jesse White (D-IL), elected in
1999; State Treasurer, Denise L. Nappier (D-CT), elected in 1999; Attorney
General, Kamala Harris (D-CA), elected in 2011; and Lieutenant Governor,
Jenean Hampton (R-KY), elected in 2016. Interestingly, these executive-level
officials were elected in states, save Illinois, where the percentage of the African
American population is less than the national average at 13 percent. If the
numbers of statewide officeholders were in line with this percentage, there
would be at least 12 African American senators and six governors.
Since the people began to directly elect U.S. senators in 1914, only five
African Americans have been elected: Edward Brooke (R-MA), Carol Mosley
Braun (D-IL), Barack Obama (D-IL), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Kamala Harris
(D-CA). Two African Americans have been appointed: Roland Burris (D-IL) to
replace Obama; and Tim Scott (R-SC) to fill the seat vacated by Jim DeMint
(R-SC). Scott later won the senate seat in a special election. With the exception
of Massachusetts, these senators emerged from just two states—lIllinois and
South Carolina—where the percentage of the African American population is
greater than the national average at 15 percent and 29 percent, respectively.
These states have significant local black majorities; however, this alone is not
enough to win statewide offices. In general, enough white voters have been
unwilling to vote for an African American candidate—whatever his or her
ideology or qualifications—to make such candidacies politically realistic. Racism
or subconscious bias is part of the explanation for this unwillingness, as is the
perception among some whites that African Americans are too liberal for their
moderate, independent, or conservative ideological inclinations.
Given this political reality, only two African American members of the
Congress have left the House to seek statewide office, which is frequently the
career path of White House members. Alan Gerber summarizes the situation as
follows:

African American members of Congress rarely seek higher office. Prospects

for winning statewide are discouraging. No African American has moved
from the House to the Senate or to the governor’s mansion. The liberal
voting record that African American representatives typically compile does
not provide a strong foundation for winning statewide elections and there
remains some resistance to voting for African Americans for higher office.*1
 CHAPTER 13 > State and Local Politics 337

Recent studies have identified other explanations. Despite the significant

gains made for other political offices, including city councils, mayors, state
legislatures, and various statewide offices that provide “professional training”
and serve as “stepping stones” to higher office, African Americans face a glass
ceiling in winning U.S. Senate seats due to structural and contextual hurdles
such as state size and lack of sufficient campaign funds.42 We know that
majority—minority districts, coupled with the Supreme Court protection against
unfavorable gerrymandering, significantly improved prospects for African
Americans, allowing these state lawmakers and congressional representatives
to overcome the competitive electoral disadvantages locally and district-wide.*
However, given that African American state lawmakers and house members
typically represent disproportionately less-affluent, majority-minority districts
in larger states, raising initial funds for expensive statewide campaigns is
more difficult because they are less likely to be recruited as candidates by party
agents and more likely to be encouraged to run by people from their churches,
their neighborhoods and families.44 As Carol Mosely Braun, the first African
American woman elected to the Senate surmised, “If a person does not have
access to very deep pockets, they really don’t have a chance.”* Relatedly, the
geographic concentration of majority-minority districts—shaped by historic
housing patterns—limits “name recognition” for African Americans among
a larger pool of competitors in the statewide electorate of Senate seats.
Interestingly, because the few black Republicans in Congress usually represent
largely white districts, their political ideologies are viewed as more “mainstream”
and less liberal than black Democrats. This affords them access to important
donors and party activists, and opportunities to increase their name recognition
in the state while building their reputation in the Republican Party. However,
it also raises the question of which is most important: racial diversity in the
overall political system or effective representation of minority interests?
Historically, African American lawmakers who represent white constituencies
have little history of supporting policies that promote universal freedom for
African Americans.*
Racism alone isn’t the barrier, rather it’s the “accumulated effects of long-
term racial discrimination—the limitations associated with representing heavily
black House districts or leading majority black cities—that block further
advancement” to statewide position.*”? Nevertheless, the success of Obama,
Governor Patrick in Massachusetts and Senator Booker in New Jersey (the
former mayor of heavily black Newark), suggests that a new structure of
ambition is emerging in black politics, where a new generation of politicians
perceive that the white electorate in the twenty-first century is willing to vote
for an ideologically and culturally mainstream African American candidate for
any office.*®
338 PARTIV > Institutions

State Courts: Who Judges?

State courts handle more than 90 percent of the criminal and civil cases in the
United States. In most cases, if one obtains justice, one does so in the trial and
appellate courts of the states, since very few of these cases are successfully
appealed in the federal courts. Thus, the racial, ethnic, and gender composition
of the state courts is important in the African American quest for a universal
freedom and social justice.
In 2016 the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy developed
for the first time a database of more than 10,000 judges on state trial and appeals
courts, and compared the racial, ethnic, and gender composition of the courts
with state populations. The results are stated simply: “We find the courts are
not representative of the people they serve. That is, a gap exists between the
bench and the citizens.”4? Table 13.2 displays the results.
While white women do not have proportionate representation, they are
much better represented than women and men of color on state benches. There
is little regional variation in the representation of white women, but the South
and West have less representation of racial and ethnic groups than the Northeast
and Midwest.*° States vary in the methods of selecting judges; appointment by
governors and legislatures, merit selection (requiring the governor to select from
a merit selected panel), and partisan and nonpartisan elections. No data are
available on the impact of these different selection methods on the representation
of people of color and white women.
The underrepresentation of blacks on state courts, the report concludes, may
have an impact on judicial outcomes: “For example, while African Americans

State Judges by Percentage on Percentage on

Category Trial Courts Appeals Courts

Womer? of color 8 8
Men? of color 9 12
White men 57 58
White women 26 22
@VWomen of color constitute 20 percent of state populations and white women 31
percent.
° Men of color constitute 19 percent of state populations and white men 30
percent.
Source: Tracy George and Albert Yoon, The Gavel Gap: Who Sits in Judgment on State
Courts? (Washington, DC: American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, 2016).
 CHAPTER 13 > State and Local Politics 339

constitute 44 percent of defendants in criminal cases, only 7 percent of the

persons who judge them are black.”5!

The Republican Dominance of State Politics

in the Obama Era
It is well known that the Democratic Party suffered what President Obama in
2010 called a “Shellacking” in congressional elections during his terms in office,
losing control of both the House and Senate. Under Obama the Democrats lost
a net 13 Senate and 69 House seats, more than any other two-term president
since Eisenhower.°” What is less discussed is the shellacking the Democrats
suffered in state politics, losing 30 state legislative chambers, near 1,000 net
legislative seats, and 11 governorships.** As a result, at the end of Obama’s
presidency, Republicans held 32 governors offices, majorities in both houses of
30 of the 50 state legislatures and at least one house in eight other states.
Control by conservative Republicans of state governments impacts both
rights- and material-based freedoms. In terms of rights-based freedoms, in 2011
the gerrymandering of state legislative and congressional districts decreased the
opportunities for African Americans, Latinos, and liberal whites sympathetic to
minority interests to win office. These gerrymanders also helped Republicans to
win legislative majorities without winning majorities of the votes of the people.
For example, in 2012 Democrats won 1.4 million more votes in the congressional
elections, but in part because of gerrymandering the Republicans won a 33-seat
majority in the House.
Another rights-based freedom impacted by Republican control of state
governments is the right to vote. In 2008 when Obama was elected, no state
required photo identification (Voter ID) in order to vote. Since then, 19 states,
all controlled in whole or part by Republicans, have passed some kind of photo
ID law as a requisite to vote. The conclusion of the most comprehensive study
of the effects of these laws on voting is unambiguous: “Requiring identification
of any sort appears to have real effects on who votes and who does not. These
laws hurt the minority community and help to give whites an oversized voice
in American politics.”**
The most consequential effect of Republican dominance of state politics on
material-based rights of African Americans is in the area of health insurance.
In its decision upholding President Obama’s health insurance law, the Supreme
Court invoked principles of states’ rights and declared the provision of the law
requiring the states to expand their Medicaid program to cover more of the
uninsured unconstitutional. As a result of this decision, two-thirds of poor blacks
and single mothers, and more than half of all low-wage workers without health
insurance are denied coverage, because their state governments, largely controlled
by Republicans, refused to expand Medicaid.*°
340 PARTIV > Institutions

States have also used their “Dillion’s Rule” prerogatives to prohibit their
city governments, which tend to have African American or liberal minority—
majority coalition governments, from enacting material-based reforms, such as
increasing the minimum wage, affordable housing, tenant rights, or mass transit
projects that improve the life chances of the poor and working class.°°
Republican dominance of state politics is not by chance; to the contrary it
is partly the result of a deliberate, well-financed campaign by the American
Legislative Exchange and other conservative organizations linked to the
billionaire, ultra-conservative Koch brothers—Charles and David—who fund a
variety of conservative candidates, causes, and movements.°’ Belatedly,
recognizing the impact of these conservative groups on state politics, liberals
and progressives in 2014 created the “State Innovation Exchange” (SIX),
formerly American Legislative and Issue Campaign (ALICE), to counteract the
influence of the conservative “American Legislative Exchange Council” (ALEC)
and its allied groups.*®

Local Representation: “Black Regime” Cities

and “Black-Belt” Counties
Carl Stokes in Cleveland, Ohio, and Richard Hatcher in Gary, Indiana, became
the first blacks to be elected mayors of major cities in 1967. By 2014, African
Americans were mayors of more than 700 cities and towns across the nation,
including and increasingly majority white, large cities like Chicago, Los Angeles,
New York, and Philadelphia. By 2006, African Americans had been elected to
an estimated 5,446 positions nationwide as county officials, municipal officials,
and school board officials.°?
Chapter 2 briefly highlights the major exodus of blacks leaving the South.
Many of the major cities that would become the “receiving stations of the Great
Migration,”® also became the most economically, politically, and racially
segregated—due to government-sanctioned, discriminatory housing policies—
by the time the migration reached its conclusion in the late 1970s (see Chapter
14). Consequently, these cities and local communities that would eventually
result in black majority-rule often shared a similar characteristic—poverty—that
yields a “hollow prize” for the black electorate.
Poverty among African Americans is especially concentrated in what political
scientists refer to as “black regime” cities, cities with majority or near-majority
black populations and where blacks control the government—the mayor’s office,
the city council, the school board, and most of the senior positions in the
bureaucracy.°! By the late 1970s, there were nine such cities: Atlanta; Baltimore;
Detroit; Gary, Indiana; Newark, New Jersey; Richmond, Virginia; Washington,
DC; Birmingham, Alabama; and New Orleans. At the time of the election of
 CHAPTER 13 > State and Local Politics 341

the black regimes, the poverty rate in these cities averaged 16 percent, ranging
from 12.3 percent in Gary to 22 percent in New Orleans. By 1990, the average
poverty rate had increased to 28 percent, ranging from 16.9 percent in
Washington to 32.4 percent in Detroit (New Orleans had the second highest
poverty rate at 31.6 percent).®* A 2015 study by the Brookings Institute identified
the cities with greatest “levels of inequality,” defined as the measure by a “95/20
ratio,” where the figure represents the income at which a household earns more
than 95 percent of all other households, divided by the income at which a
household earns more than 20 percent of all other households; simply, the
distance between the richest and poorest households.®? Although 31 of the 50
largest U.S. cities exhibited a higher level of income inequality than the national
average, among those characterized as “black regime” cities, high extreme levels
of inequality were more frequent. For example, in Atlanta, the richest 5 percent
of households earned more than $280,000, while the poorest 20 percent earned
less than $15,000. In two other black regime cities, Washington, DC, and
Baltimore, the 95/20 ratio was exceeded by 12,%* despite evidence, according to
the 2016 State of Black America Report by the National Urban League, that
the Washington—Arlington—Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WYV area had the highest
median household income for both blacks ($66,151) and whites ($109,460).*°>
A similar situation exists in the rural South where high rates of concentrated
poverty and social isolation pervade black-belt counties given “their large
populations of disproportionately poor, uneducated, unemployed, and politically
powerless residents.”°° In fact, the states with the most black mayors have been
in the black-belt or “plantation counties,” characterized as a southern area with
a sizable African American population in parts of Virginia, North and South
Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas,
and Tennessee.®” Although empirical studies of the rural South are limited,
Sharon Wright Austin writes, “In rural towns and counties and to some extent
urban cities, African American politicians have found it impossible to reduce
economic disparities among the privileged and the powerful. ... The poverty
rates in all the Delta’s predominantly African American communities, however,
including those with high amounts of black political power, usually doubled
and tripled state and national averages.”®* The problem of concentrated,
racialized poverty—whether urban or rural—is beyond the resources and legal
authority of local governments to address. And, as power has devolved from
the federal government to the states, cities and towns have had to cope using
the limited resources available.
342 PART IV > Institutions

Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom

UNITA BLACKWELL (1933- )
Unita Blackwell is the first African American woman elected mayor of a
Mississippi town. Moreover, she was more than mayor of Mayersville; as a civil
rights activist, she was also principally responsible for organizing the struggle
that in 1976 established Mayersville as an incorporated, legally recognized
town. Before incorporation in Mayersville, Blackwell said “There wasn’t no
nothing, no city hall, there wasn’t no telephone, no nothing.”? As a result of
her leadership, the desperately poor town of 500, not only built a “city” hall
but obtained federal funds to pave streets, establish police and fire services, a
clean water system, and public housing.
Blackwell was born in 1933 to a family of poor tenant farmers. In the eighth
grade, she dropped out of schcol to work in the fields hoeing and picking cotton.
In 1964, she tried to register to vote; she and her husband were fired. This
changed her life because, as a result, she became a full-time worker in the civil
rights movement. Like Fannie Lou Hamer (see Box 8.2), Blackwell was a leader
of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, serving as one of its delegates to
the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City. In 1980, she was elected
cochair of the Party and later a member of the Democratic National Committee.
From 1990 to 1992, she was elected president of the National Conference of
Black Mayors and was cofounder and president of the Women’s Conference of
Black Mayors in 1991.
In addition to her work as a civil rights activist, party leader, and mayor, for
many years she was president of the U.S.-China Friendship Association, traveling
to China on numerous occasions promoting cultural exchanges. Although she

The Honorable
Unita Blackwell.
Source: Undated Photo “Mayor Unita Blackwell” Retrieved
4 October 2016 from www.fannielouhamer.info/
blackwell.html
 CHAPTER 13 > State and Local Politics 343

had only an eighth-grade education, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst,

admitted her on the basis of life experiences, and in 1982 she earned a master’s
degree in regional planning.
In 1992, Blackwell was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” grant;
in 2016 she published her memoir, Barefootin: Life and Lessons on the Road
to Freedom. The political scientist, Minion K. C. Morrison, describes Blackwell
as the “Heroine of Mayersville” for “she was the spark of a major transformation
in the thinking and behavior of blacks in Mayersville and the surrounding area.”®
a Minion K. C. Morrison, Black Political Mobilization: Leadership, Power and Mass Society (Albany,
NY: SUNY Press, 1987): 110.
b Ibid., p.108.
See also Unita Blackwell with JoAnne Prichard Morris, Barefootin: Life and Lessons on the Road to
Freedom (Portland, OR: Powell’s Books, 1992).

Summary ee
eae as
The first era of progressive, pro—-universal freedom government in the United
States was the Reconstruction era, when many southern states were governed
by minority—majority coalitions that adopted rights- and material-based policies
that expanded freedom for all Americans. The political culture of the southern
states—strong advocates of states’ rights under the Tenth Amendment—is
defined by its historical association with the institution of slavery, Jim Crow
segregation, and racial discrimination that impeded universal freedom for African
Americans for centuries. The recent era of devolution may, in part, have been
initially intended by states’ rights advocates to disenfranchise African Americans,
but it actually, to some extent, expanded opportunities for political participation
for the African American electorate, resulting in an increase in the numbers of
black and women state lawmakers.
Nevertheless, African American state lawmakers are still underrepresented
in the southern state legislatures. As a result, these lawmakers rely on political
strategies—from group caucus to biracial coalitions—to secure legislation
beneficial to their African American constituents. In terms of winning statewide
offices, racism alone isn’t the barrier; rather it’s the accumulated effects of long-
term racial discrimination that block further advancement. Finally, evidence from
the limited research available on black regime cities and black-belt counties
reveals a similar characteristic—poverty—that yields a “hollow prize” for the
black electorate, generally.

Critical Thinking Questions

1. Discuss the brief period of universal freedom during the Reconstruction

era. What were some of the rights gained and lost for all Americans?
344 PARTIV > Institutions

Give examples of universal rights lost to African Americans that were not
regained until after the Civil Rights era.
2. Discuss the Tenth Amendment and Dillion’s Rule. What impact does the
Tenth Amendment have on specific local government ordinances? Using a
modern example, how might universal freedom for citizens at the local level
be subject to state government?
3. Discuss the Tenth Amendment, Devolution, and the southern state
governments. How does the Tenth Amendment legally empower southern
states to limit the freedom of African Americans? How has the period of
devolution aided the limiting of freedom of African Americans?
4. Compare descriptive and substantive representation of African Americans
in state legislatures and Congress. What are some similarities and differences?
What impact has devolution had on representation of the black electorate?
Give examples to support your argument.
5. Discuss the challenges to winning statewide offices for African Americans.
What would you propose as a plausible solution? Give specific examples to
support your argument. :

Selected Bibliography aN
Austin, Sharon Wright. The Transformation of Plantation Politics: Black Politics,
Concentrated Poverty, and Social Capital in the Mississippi Delta. Albany, NY:
SUNY Press, 2006. A study that examines the political and economic changes of recent
decades in the Mississippi Delta.
Brown, Nadia. Sisters in the Statehouse: Black Women and Legislative Decision Making.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. A study on the connection between
descriptive and substantive representation of black women legislators.
Du Bois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction: An Essay toward a History of the Part which
Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America. New York:
Athenaeum, 1935, 1969. A classic, in-depth study of the role of black Americans
during the period after the Civil War known as Reconstruction.
Egerton, Douglas. Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America’s Most
Progressive Era. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2014. A study on Reconstruction that
places emphasis on the active role that African Americans played in this crucial period.
Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1886-1877. New York:
Harper & Row, 1988. A classic study on the post—Civil War period that shaped
modern America, and the evolution of racial attitudes and patterns of race relations.
Haynie, Kerry L. African American Legislators in the American States. New York:
Columbia University Press, 2001. One of the first studies to analyze the behavior of
African American state legislators in multiple legislative sessions across five states to
reveal the dynamics and effectiveness of black participation in the legislative process.
Hero, Rodney. Faces of Inequality: Social Diversity in American Politics. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2000. A study of the ways in which a state’s racial and ethnic
composition, as much as any other factor, shapes its political processes and policies.
Keith, Lee Anna. The Colfax Massacre: The Untold Story of Black Power, White Terror
and the Death of Reconstruction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. An in-
depth study on the most deadly incident of racial violence of the Reconstruction
 CHAPTER 13 > State and Local Politics 345

era—the Colfax Massacre—that unleashed a reign of terror that all but extinguished
the campaign for racial equality in 1873.
King-Meadows, Tyson, and Thomas F. Schaller. Devolution and Black State Legislators:
Challenges and Choices in the Twenty-first Century. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2006.
A comprehensive study of the position of black state legislative politics.
Menifield, Charles E., and Stephen D. Shaffer. Politics in the New South: Representation
of African Americans in Southern State Legislatures. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2005.
A collection of empirical studies that document political advances made by African
Americans in the South over the last 25 years.
Morrison, Minion K. C. Black Political Mobilization: Leadership, Power and Mass
Society. Albany: SUNY Press, 1987. A detailed study on the political success of African
Americans in the South from the political activism of the 1960s to the 1980s.
Richardson, Heather Cox. The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor and Politics in
the Post-Civil War North. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. A unique
investigation of how class, along with race, was critical to Reconstruction’s end,
particularly among the northern elite.

Notes ee
az e
1 W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction: An Essay toward a History of the Part
which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America
(New York: Athenaeum, 1935, 1969): 14.
2 Douglas Egerton, Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America’s
Most Progressive Era (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2014).
3 Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New
York: Harper & Row, 1988): 305.
4 LeeAnna Keith, The Colfax Massacre: The Untold Story of Black Power, White Terror
and the Death of Reconstruction (New York: Oxford, 2009).
5 Heather Cox Richardson, The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor and Politics in
the Post-Civil War North (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2001): 244-45.
6 Quoted in Anwar Hussain Syed, The Political Theory of American Local Government
(New York: Random House, 1969): 68.
7 Kevin B. Smith and Alan Greenblatt, Governing States and Localities, Sth ed.
(Washington, DC: CQ Press): xxii.
8 Ann O’M. Bowman and Richard C. Kearney, State and Local Government, 10th ed.
(Boston, MA: Cengage, 2017): xi.
9 Thomas R. Dye and Susan A. MacManus, Politics in States and Communities, 14th
ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2012): xiii.
10 David Magleby, Paul C. Light, and Christine L. Nemacheck, State and Local
Government by the People, 16th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2014): viii.
11 Rodney Hero, Faces of Inequality: Social Diversity in American Politics (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000).
12 W. E. B. Du Bois, The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America
(New York: Square One Publishers, 2009): 109.
13 Tyson King-Meadows and Thomas F. Schaller, Devolution and Black State
Legislators: Challenges and Choices in the Twenty-first Century (Albany, NY: SUNY
Press, 2006): 219.
14 Charles E. Menifield and Stephen D. Shaffer, Politics in the New South: Representation
of African Americans in Southern State Legislatures (Albany, NY: SUNY Press,
2005S): 1.
346 PARTIV > Institutions

Ibid., pp. 1-2.

Smith and Greenblatt, Governing States and Localities, p. 18.
King-Meadows and Schaller, Devolution, p. 219.
Ibid.
Menifield and Schaffer, Politics in the New South, p. 1.
Ibid.
Karl Kurtz, “Who We Elect: The Demographics of State Legislatures,” National
Council of State Legislatures and the Pew Charitable Trusts, Report (December 2015):
21, www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/who-we-elect.aspx.
David Bositis, “Blacks & The 2008 Democratic National Convention,” Washington,
DC: Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies Report (2008): 7, http://oint
center.org/sites/default/fil es/Dem
% 20guide. pdf.
23 Blog posted by “AllOtherPersons,” “Factoid: Black Legislators in 2009,” April 16,
2009, https://allotherpersons.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/factoid-black-state-legisla
tors-in-2009/. This report is based on a reexamination of the National Black Caucus
of State Legislatures and the National Conference of State Legislatures, “African-
American Legislators 2009,” www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/african-
american-legislators-in-2009.aspx.
Menifield and Schaffer, Politics in the New South, p. 10.
Smith and Greenblatt, Governing States and Localities, pp. 222-23.
Menifield and Schaffer, Politics in the New South, p. 13.
Kerry L. Haynie, African American Legislators in the American States (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2001): 107.
Ibid., Rodney Hero, Faces of Inequality: Social Diversity in American Politics.
Ibid., “AllOtherPersons” Report.
Menifield and Schaffer, Politics in the New South, p. 12.
Ibid., p.12.
Haynie, African American Legislators in the American States, p. 19.
Ibid., p. 25.
Ibid., Menifield and Schaffer, Politics in the New South, p. 10.
Ibid.
King-Meadows and Schaller, Devolution, p. 182.
Menifield and Schaffer, Politics in the New South, p. 10.
King-Meadows and Schaller, Devolution, p. 218.
Ibid., p. 220.
Ibid., p. 222.
Alan Gerber, “African Americans’ Congressional Careers and the Democratic House
Delegation,” Journal of Politics 58 (1996): 831-45.
Gbemende Johnson, Bruce I. Oppenheimer, and Jennifer L. Selin, “The House as a
Stepping Stone to the Senate: Why Do So Few African American House Members
Run?” (Manuscript, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, 2009): 26.
43 Gary Copeland and Cynthia Opheim, “Multi-Level Political Careers in the USA: The
Cases of African Americans and Women,” Regional and Federal Studies 21(2) (2011):
141-64. j
44 Ibid., Copeland and Opheim, p. 150.
45 Jamelle Bouie, “The Other Glass Ceiling,” American Prospect, March 14, 2012.
46 Jamelle Bouie, “What about Black Republicans?” American Prospect, March £5;
2012.
47 Ibid., Jamelle Bouie, “The Other Glass Ceiling.”
48 Andra Gillespie, The New Black Politician: Cory Booker, Newark and Post-racial
America (New York: NYU Press, 2012).
 CHAPTER 13 > State and Local Politics 347

49 Tracy George and Albert Yoon, The Gavel Gap: Who Sits in Judgment on State
Courts? (American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, 2016): 3, http://gavelgap.
org/pdf/gavel-gap-report. pdf.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid., p. 12.
52 Chris Cillizza, “The 2015 Election Tightened the Republican Stranglehold on State
Government,” Washington Post, November 4, 2015.
53 Ibid.
54 Zultan Hajnal, Nazita Laijevardi, and Lindsay Nelson, “Voter Identification Laws
and the Suppression of Minority Votes” (Manuscript, Department of Political Science,
University of California, San Diego, 2016): 25.
55 Sabrina Tavernise and Robert Gebeloff, “Millions of Poor are Left Uncovered by
Health Law,” New York Times, October 2, 2013.
56 Ben Adler, “State Legislatures are Undercutting Their Liberal Cities—and Unlikely
to Stop,” Washington Post, March 30, 2016.
57 Alexander Hertel-Fernandez and Theda Skocpol, “How the Right Trounced Liberals
in the States,” Democracy 39 (Winter) 2016.
58 David Lieb, “Partisans Set Sights on State Legislative Races,” West County Times,
November 8, 2015.
59 The Gender and Multi-Cultural Leadership Project, 2006, http://gmcl.org/maps/
national/state.htm.
60 Isabel Washington, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great
Migration (New York: Vintage, 2011): 398.
61 Adolph Reed, “The Black Urban Regime: Structural Origins and Constraint,” in P.
Orleans, ed., Power, Community and the City: Comparative Urban Research (New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1988).
62 Robert C. Smith, “Urban Politics,” Encyclopedia of African American Politics (New
York: Facts on File, 2003): 360-63.
63 Alan Berube, “All Cities Are Not Created Equal,” Brookings Report: Metropolitan
Opportunity Series, February 20, 2014.
64 Ibid.
65 For more discussion and to see the full list of Black-White 2016 Metro Income
Inequality Index rankings, see the National Urban League, “Locked Out: Education,
Jobs & Justice,” 2016 State of Black America Report (New York, 2016): 10,
http://soba.iamempowered.com/.
66 Sharon D. Wright Austin, Sekou M. Franklin, and Angela K. Lewis, “The Effects of
Concentrated Poverty on Black and White Participation in the Southern Black Belt,”
National Political Science Review, 15 (2013): 57-69.
67 Ibid., p.57.
68 Sharon Wright Austin, The Transformation of Plantation Politics: Black Politics,
Concentrated Poverty, and Social Capital in the Mississippi Delta (Albany, NY: SUNY
Press, 2006): 173.
69 Paul Peterson, City Limits (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1981).
 sig es

~
Public Policy
mm CHAPTER 14 St
Domestic Policy and
the African American
Quest for Social and
Economic Justice

LEARNING OBJECTIVE
Explain why material-based rights are central to domestic policy
concerns for African Americans.

“The only time we had full employment was during slavery.” The tragic irony
of this often-heard lament among African Americans reflects the centrality of
the problem of unemployment and underemployment in explaining the social
and economic problems confronting African American communities. In their
struggle for freedom, African Americans had to secure their basic civil rights
(i.e., rights-based policies) before pursuing material-based policies that would
improve their quality of life. As we know, the history of white supremacy and
institutional racism targeted at African Americans banned them from full labor
market participation and marginalized them in the housing market, leading to
the high levels of racial segregation in housing, its consequent social ills, and a
widening wealth gap. Economic and racial segregation resulting from historic,
persistent, chronic, long-term unemployment and underemployment, coupled
with decades of discrimination, are primary explanations for the severe
conditions of concentrated, racialized poverty, low-performing schools, low-
income and single-parent households, crime and mass incarceration, ill-health,
ool
352 PARTV > Public Policy

substance abuse, and low homeownership that disproportionately impact African

American communities nationwide.
In 1984 Harvey Brenner, a sociologist, prepared a report for the Joint
Economic Committee of Congress. In it, he showed that for every 1 percent
increase in the rate of unemployment there is an associated increase of 5.7 percent
in murders, 4.1 percent in suicides, 1.9 percent in mortality, 3.3 percent in mental
institutionalization, and a 4.7 percent increase in divorce and separation.’ A
similar study found correlations between increases in unemployment and
increases in child abuse, alcoholism, wife battering, and other individual and
community pathologies.? Multiply Brenner’s 1 percent increase by a factor of
10 over multiple generations to get a sense of the damaging consequences of
long-term unemployment and underemployment on African American citizens,
which impacts the less educated to even college graduates.?
It was because of the centrality of unemployment among the multifaceted
issues in the black community that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made full
employment the focus of his work in his last years, and why black leaders have
made full employment (a job for all willing and able to work) the number one
priority on the black agenda (see Chapters 7 and 10). This chapter will focus
on domestic policies that can address and improve the economic well-being of
African Americans. The problem is treated here as one of race and racism;
however, it could also be treated as a problem of class in a capitalist economy.
As Ralph Bunche wrote during the New Deal era:

there is an economic system, as well as a race problem in America and that

when a Negro is unemployed, it is not just because he is a Negro, but more
seriously, because of the defective operation of the economy under which we
live—an economy that finds it impossible to provide an adequate number of
jobs and economic security for the population.*

In other words, in the U.S. political economy, the race problem is invariably
and inextricably a class problem. Before discussing the significance of broad
material-based domestic policies, it is important to offer a brief explanation for
describing the material basis for black politics.
In his early critique of the historical colonial model—where blacks are
viewed as a racially segregated, spatially separated underclass of workers not
integral to or within the U.S. capitalist system—economist Donald Harris
countered that African Americans—despite being spatially separated and racially
segregated in U.S. society—are and “have always been, organically linked with
American capitalism from [the] very beginning,”> and their persistence in unequal
status and condition is explained by understanding how the basic structure of
the American political economy and the essential laws of American capitalist
development are conditioned by the ideology of white supremacy to determine
the position of blacks in the economy. In addition to the structure, laws, and
 CHAPTER 14 > Domestic Policy and Social and Economic Justice 353

role of white supremacy, the enduring unequal economic conditions of African

Americans also are affected by the American economy’s division into two
distinct sectors: the corporate capitalist class (i.e., the upper-middle class to the
top 1 percent) and the petty capitalist class (i.e., working poor to lower-middle
class). In addition there is a fluctuating number of potential workers (surplus
of labor), who are unable to find work in either sector. The unequal distribution
of African American workers within these sectors, particularly the dispropor-
tionate clustering of blacks in the least rewarding petty capitalist sector of the
economy, is said to be the result of the laws of American economic development
conditioned by racism. Racism—institutional and individual—ensures that
African Americans remain in “subordinate” positions. Harris posits that
educational, social, political, and cultural institutions evolve as part of a social
whole that routinely recreates and sustains conditions that ensure whites’ access
to favored positions and relegates African Americans to the least desired ones.°
Given this logic, long-term unemployment and underemployment,
particularly for African Americans, are best understood as systemic conditions
the economy produces and reproduces. Thus, socioeconomic justice for African
Americans is best achieved by the implementation of race-specific or targeted
material-based policies.

Black Unemployment and Underemployment

in Historical and Systemic Context
In the Jim Crow South after the end of slavery, black workers were in general
relegated to joblessness or menial, low-paid work, mainly as field workers and
domestics. This is well known. Less well known is that these same processes
took place in cities of the North as well. Modern historical research, however,
amply documents this manufacturing of black joblessness and subsequent
economic dislocation in the North.” In a longitudinal study that is a model of
historically informed social science research, Theodore Hershberg and his
colleagues at the Philadelphia Social History Project at the University of
Pennsylvania innovatively demonstrate the role of racism historically in creating
black unemployment. Whites often ask if the Irish, the Italians, Jews, and Poles
were able to work their way up out of poverty, why have not the blacks?
Hershberg’s study provides an answer by analyzing the experiences of separate
waves of immigrants to Philadelphia during three historical periods*—first,
the Irish and Germans who settled in the “industrializing city” at the turn of
the nineteenth century; then the Poles, Italians, and Russian Jews who settled
in Philadelphia at the turn of the twentieth century; and African Americans who,
although present throughout, arrived in their greatest numbers in the
“post-industrial city” after World War II. In both the industrializing and the
industrial city, immigrant whites found employment in the manufacturing sector
354 PARTV > Public Policy

throughout the occupational hierarchy, laying the foundation for the upwardly
mobile status of their grandchildren and children after World War II. African
Americans, however, were virtually excluded from these jobs, relegated instead,
as in the South, to the low-paying domestic and laborer jobs at the bottom of
the occupational hierarchy.
Of the industrial city, Hershberg and his colleagues write, “Although 80
percent of the blacks lived in the city within one mile of 5,000 industrial jobs,
less than 13 percent of the black workforce found gainful employment in
manufacturing.”® Earlier in the industrializing city, “blacks were not only
excluded from the new and well-paying positions, they were uprooted as well
from many of their traditional unskilled jobs, denied apprenticeship for their
sons and prevented from practicing the skills they already possessed.”!°
This situation did not begin to change in a major way in Philadelphia and
elsewhere in the country until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed and
affirmative action was implemented. Yet at almost the same time as employment
became somewhat free of overt, blatant racism, manufacturing jobs in and around
America’s cities began to disappear. (Between 1930 and 1970, Philadelphia lost
75,000 manufacturing jobs; and of every 10 jobs in the three-mile ring around
the city in 1930, there were only 4 in 1970.) In other words, when blacks began
to be allowed to equally compete for the good manufacturing work, the work
disappeared."! As a result, in nineteenth-century Philadelphia, Hershberg and his
colleagues write, “Blacks occupied the worst housing in the. . . slums and suffered
from the greatest degree of impoverishment. Their mortality rate was roughly
twice that of whites, and the death of black men early in their adult lives was
the major reason that blacks were forced to raise their children in fatherless
families.”!? Unfortunately, in the new millennium, this historic and systemic
relationship between high unemployment and community well-being persists.

Understanding Unemployment and

Underemployment in Post-Industrial America
In perfect market competition with perfectly rational players, virtually all
economists assume that some level of unemployment (anywhere from 4 to 6
percent) is necessary for the proper functioning of capitalism in the United States.
If this necessary level of unemployment is distributed on the basis of race, then
high rates of black unemployment (as compared to other social groups) are a
necessary, logical result. Market forces do not account for racism, the preference
for the use of ethnic networks, the impact of undocumented workers on wages
and employment,'* and other factors that can affect who gets hired for jobs
that results in the disproportionate higher levels of unemployment for African
Americans (on the contemporary role of racism in manufacturing black
unemployment, see Box 14.1).
 CHAPTER 14 > Domestic Policy and Social and Economic Justice 355

BOX 14.1
Race, Racism, and African American
Unemployment and Underemployment

Until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of with African Americans, the other whites.
1964, it was perfectly legal for white The names were randomly assigned so
employers to post signs or simply say to that applicants with black and white
black job seekers, “We don't hire identified names applied for the same set
coloreds.” Since the passage and of jobs with the same résumés. Applicants
implementation of the 1964 act and the with white-sounding names were 50
development of affirmative action policies, percent more likely to be called for
racism has declined in the employment of interviews than those with black-sounding
blacks. However, studies still show names.° In a similar experiment, Dorvah
continuing discrimination as African Pager, a graduate student at the University
Americans seek work. of Wisconsin, found that a white man with
In 1991, the Urban Institute conducted a a criminal record had a better chance to
“hiring audit” to determine the degree of get a job than an identically qualified black
racial discrimination in entry-level man without a record. For her dissertation
employment in Washington, DC, and research, Pager sent teams of black and
Chicago. The research used selected black white young men—well groomed, well
and white “job testers” carefully matched spoken, college educated, and with
in age, physical size, education (all were identical résumés—to seek entry-level
college educated), and experience, as well jobs. The only difference was that some
as such intangible factors as poise, indicated they had an 18-month prison
openness, and articulateness. They were sentence for cocaine possession. She
then sent to apply for entry-level jobs found that the employer call-back rate for
advertised in Washington and Chicago a black with this criminal record was 5
area newspapers. The study found what percent and 14 percent without a record.
the authors call “entrenched and But for whites the rate was 17 percent
widespread” discrimination at every step with the record and 34 percent without
in the hiring process, with whites three the record.4
times as likely to advance to the point of More recently, in yet another example
being offered a job.® of the apparent pervasiveness of racism
Similarly, a study by Kirschenman and by employers, a 2015 study found that a
Neckerman, titled “VWe'd Love to Hire degree from an elite university (e.g.,
Them But,.... “ found that Chicago Harvard, Stanford, or Duke) does result in
area white employers were extremely more job opportunities for both black and
reluctant to hire blacks, especially black white job applicants. But black graduates
men. Speaking of potentia! black workers, from elite universities did only as well as
these employers told the researchers, white applicants from nonelite state
“They are lazy; they steal; they lack universities.° Moreover “race results in a
motivation; they don’t have a work ethic.” double penalty: when employers respond
Or, “| need someone who will fit in”; to black candidates from elite institutions,
“my customers are 95 percent white . . | it is for jobs with lower salaries and lower
wouldn't last very long if | had a black”; prestige than those of their white peers,
and “my guys don’t want to work with supporting evidence that college-educated
blacks.” blacks are more likely to be
In an experimental study of racism in underemployed. In fact, a Georgetown
employment between 2001 and 2002, University Study reported that the 2015
researchers sent 5,000 applications to underemployment rates for college-
prospective employers in Boston and educated blacks was 9 percentage points
Chicago. The applications were identical higher at 16.8 percent compared to 7.9
except one group had names identified percent for whites.9
356 PARTV > Public Policy

@ Margery Turner, M. Fix, and R. Struyk, © S Michael Gaddis, “Discrimination in the

Opportunities Denied, Opportunities Diminished: Credential Society: An Audit Study of Race and
Discrimination in Hiring (Washington, DC: Urban College Selectivity in the Job Market,” Social
Institute, 1991). Forces 93 (2015): 1445-479.
5 Joleen Kirschenman and Kathryn Neckerman, f |bid., p. 1476..
“We'd Love to Hire Them But... The Meaning 9 Anthony P. Carnevale and Nicole Smith,
of Race for Employers,” in C. Jencks and P. “Sharp Declines in Underemployment for
Peterson, eds., The Urban Underclass College Graduates,” Georgetown University
(Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 1991). Center on Education and the Workforce
°M. Bertrand and S. Mullainathan, “Are Emily (analysis of U.S. Census Bureau, American
and Brendan More Employable than Lakisha and Community Survey micro data, 2010-2014)
Jamal?: A Field Experiment on Labor Market Report, November 2015, https://cew.
Discrimination,” http://gsb.uchicago.edu/pdf/ georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/
bertrand.pdf (November 8, 2002). Underemployment-Declines.pdf.
4 Brooke Koreger, “When a Dissertation Makes
a Difference,” New York Times, April 20, 2004.

Since the 1970s, globalization has resulted in the deindustrialization of the

economy, as good manufacturing jobs are increasingly “outsourced” to other
parts of the world.14 Related to this, an inevitable result of globalization of the
economy is the loss of U.S. economic hegemony and the rise of competitive
economies in China, India, and Brazil. These processes of globalization and
deindustrialization have been facilitated by the adoption of neoliberal trade
policies such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
These global processes have created two interrelated problems that
disproportionately impact African Americans seeking work. The first is the “skills
mismatch,” where the available jobs require increasing levels of education and
skills that African Americans disproportionately tend not to possess when
compared to whites. Second is the “spatial mismatch,” where because of racial
residential segregation, the available entry-level jobs tend to be located outside
the largely black-concentrated central city despite studies that reveal a trend in
job growth and business expansion in central cities, particularly for the higher-
skilled, higher-paying jobs while entry-level to working-class jobs largely remain
in the suburbs.'° Thus, the result of these two “mismatches” is the kind of
concentrated, racialized poverty that leads to isolation from positive social
networks, and continues to impact the economic well-being of black communities
during times of both economic growth and recession.

Economic Well-Being in the African American

Community: Material-Based Challenges
In their quest for universal freedom, African Americans have made significant
social and economic progress since the passage of seminal civil rights legislation
of the 1960s. However, as a recent report on the economic well-being in all
 CHAPTER 14 > Domestic Policy and Social and Economic Justice 357

50 states by United States Congress Joint Economic Committee (JEC) reveals,

by most important measures of economic well-being, they continue to lag behind
white Americans in rates of unemployment, poverty, incarceration, education,
and wealth (Table 14.1). At the release of the report, the Congressional Black
Caucus (CBC) Chairman, Representative G. K. Butterfield and JEC ranking
Democrat Representative Carolyn B. Maloney wrote in a joint statement, “We'll
never eliminate economic disparities based on race if Congress continues to
ignore the issues facing the black community.”!6

African Americans and Unemployment

As indicated previously, unemployment, as expected on the basis of historical
and systemic patterns, was more devastating in the black community as a result
of the Great Recession. In January 2007, when the recession started, the
unemployment rate in the black community was 7.9 percent compared to
4.2 percent among whites (interestingly, the smallest difference on record at 3.4
percentage points). By January 2009, as President Obama was taking office, it
had climbed to 12.7 percent among blacks, while among whites it climbed to
7.1 percent. At its peak in the black community in August 2011, the
unemployment rate was 16.8 percent; at its peak among whites in October 2009,
it was 9.3 percent, which is the largest gap since 1986.'” Blacks also remained
unemployed longer than whites, with a median duration of 27 weeks compared
to 19 for whites.!8 In response, the Obama administration implemented the

TABLE 14.1

Economic Index | Blacks Whites

U.S. Population Total Soe 64%
Unemployment , 8.8% 4.3%
Poverty 26.2% IZM
Incarceration? ee AO 39% ;
Education? - 522% 36%
Median Net Worth $11,000 — $141,900
2 This percentage is for total U.S. prison and jail population by race. See Peter Wagner and
Bernadette Rabuy, “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2016," March 14, 2016.
© This percentage is for African Americans and white college graduates who are at least 25
years old with a Bachelor's degree or higher.
Source: United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics Report, February 2016
(Seasonally adjusted data). The United States Congress Joint Economic Committee (JEC) and
the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), “The American Dream on Hold: Economic Challenges
in the African American Community”, National Fact Sheet (2016).
358 PARTV > Public Policy

broad, material-based American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

(ARRA), commonly referred to as “the stimulus,” which was expected to save
and create jobs by providing job training and infrastructure improvement. The
ARRA was successful in stimulating the economy and increasing access to
capital for business, but fell short in creating more economic opportunities for
African Americans due to the large volume of those who lost jobs or remained
unemployed due to the recession.
By 2015 during the economic recovery, evidence revealed that the underem-
ployment rate for African Americans still far exceeded whites'” (see discussion
below). In 2016, rates declined further; however, the rate of unemployment for
African Americans at 8.8 percent is more than twice the rate of white Americans
at 4.3 percent (see Table 14.1).

African Americans and Concentrated Poverty:

Economic and Environmental Effects
The historic and systemic consequences of unemployment on the African
American family have been nearly disastrous. As noted in Chapter 11, during
the Obama administration’s first year, the persistently high poverty rate among
blacks saw its highest single-year increase since the government began measuring
poverty in 1959.?° Using the government’s official definition of poverty—about
$21,000 for a family of four—roughly a quarter of the African American
community is poor. Only about 11 percent of all Americans fit this definition.
While there are more poor whites than blacks (about 12.7 percent or 20 million
whites compared to 26.2 percent or 9 million blacks), poverty has a more
devastating impact on the African American community than on the white (see
Table 14.1). For example, according to the 2014 U.S. Census Bureau American
Community Statistics (ACS), 38 percent of black children live in poverty
compared to 22 percent of all children in America. Poverty rates for African
American families vary based on the family type. While 23 percent of all black
families live below the poverty level, only 8 percent of black families with married
couples live in poverty. This is considerably lower than the 23 percent of black
families headed by single men and 37 percent of black families headed by single
women, who live below the poverty line. The highest poverty rates (46 percent)
are for African American families with children headed by single women, which
constitutes about 56.3 percent of all African American families. Despite the
economic recovery, the poverty rate of African American families has remained
relatively unchanged from 2010 to 2014 (dropping slightly from 24.1 percent
to 22.9 percent).?#
Persistently high unemployment is one significant contributing factor to the
high rate of divorce, separation, and children born to single mothers in the black
community, who rely on some form of public assistance. Evidence that the
decision by President Clinton and the Congress to abolish the Aid to Families
 CHAPTER 14 > Domestic Policy and Social and Economic Justice 359

with Dependent Children (AFDC) federal benefit and replace it with the
Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) shows that former AFDC
recipients could find and keep jobs.?* For example, the average monthly
participation rates of African Americans who received public assistance varied
greatly by benefit type, with 42 percent of African Americans—largely children—
who participated in at least one program receiving the most aid for Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food assistance (30 percent), Medicaid
health insurance (29 percent), Section 8 housing assistance (14.5 percent),
Supplemental Security (7 percent) to the least for TANF cash assistance (2.5
percent).*? More importantly, the type of benefits received support findings that
show poverty in black families is not only affected by black male joblessness,
but is heavily impacted by the disparities in wages earned by African American
women.
On average, women who work full-time, year round in the United States
are paid roughly 79 cents for every dollar paid to men. For African American
women, the average is only about 60 cents for every dollar paid to white men,
which negatively impacts their economic security, their families and their
communities. Pay for black women working full-time, year round can range
from 48 to 69 cents depending on the industry and state. Black women,
nationally, are more likely to be employed in the lowest-paying occupations and
live in the South where wages are lower.”* The first legislation signed by President
Obama was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which was designed to
narrow the gender gap in wages by extending the time to file discrimination
claims. In addition, elected officials and policy advocates continue to push for
specific material-based policy, such as the adoption of the Paycheck Fairness
Act to combat wage discrimination and strengthening the Equal Pay Act 1993
as well as for a higher national minimum wage and paid family leave.”> Closing
the pay gap for African American women is fundamental to the economic
stability of black communities.
Finally, concentrated poverty among African Americans is not only the result
of high unemployment, underemployment, and the female wage gap, but also
is due to decades of discriminatory practices in unbalanced, postwar suburban
development—white flight and urban blight—that has perpetuated inequality
via entrenched residential segregation.*® As a result, low-income African
American communities are afflicted by “environmental racism”—defined as the
existence of racial and socioeconomic disparities in the distribution of a wide
variety of pollution and environmental hazards—that negatively impact health
in these communities (see Box 14.2). An example is the 2016 public health
crisis due to contaminated water in Flint, Michigan, where large numbers of
children (majority African American) were exposed to high levels of lead
poisoning that will cause neurological damage for the rest of their lives. The
health effects caused by placement of the majority of hazardous sites, municipal
landfills, incinerators, and other facilities disproportionally in poor, black
360 PARTV > Public Policy

African American Health, Mortality,

and Voting Power

Since the 1970s, national health insurance qualify for some form of coverage. In
has, after full employment, been the addition, the ACA has increased funding
priority on the black policy agenda. This is for community health centers (about $11
because African Americans face not only billion) that serve nearly 25 percent of
individual but also social determinants of African American patients. More
health—shaped by political, social, and importantly, with an infant mortality rate at
economic forces—that influence their 2.3 times higher and a life expectancy rate
quality of care. A key social determinant of lower than whites, having access to
health is the level of poverty. However, a preventive care at no additional costs,
growing body of epidemiological evidence under the ACA, will help to reduce these
shows strong associations between self- disparities.®
reported racism and poor health outcomes Historic and systemic ill-health and
across diverse racial and ethnic groups in mortality of African Americans has political
developed countries,? resulting in the consequences. It is estimated that the
current public health initiatives by the U.S. mortality rate significantly reduces voting
Department of Health and Human Services power. Specifically, Javier Rodriquez and
(DHHS) aimed at reducing racial and ethnic his colleagues estimate that “excess”
health care disparities and accelerating black deaths between 1970 and 2004
health equity “from the cradle to the totaled 2.7 million, at which 1.7 million
grave.”° Two measures frequently serve would have been voting age and 1 million
as Summary measures of a people’s would have voted in 2004. Calculating
health—the infant mortality rate and life these deaths along with felon
expectancy. The black infant mortality rate disenfranchisement, they concluded 15
(the number of deaths per 1,000 live births percent of blacks who otherwise would
before a child reaches 1 year of age) is have voted did not have the opportunity to
11.0, nearly twice that of whites, which is do so in 2004. While this would not likely
5.1. The black life expectancy rate is 74.6 have affected the outcome of the 2004
compared to 78.9 for whites.° Why this presidential election, they estimate
enormous gap between the races in between 1970 and 2004 the Democrats
health? The most basic explanation is the would have won seven additional Senate
lack of quality care and health insurance seats and eleven additional governors.’
among African Americans stemming from Thus, the Affordable Health Care Act, if
historic and systemic disadvantage in fully implemented, may not only improve
accessing medical care. the health and mortality of African
As discussed in Chapter 12, the Patient Americans, it will also improve their power
Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) at the ballot box.
(“Obamacare”) has helped millions of
° Y. Paradies, N. Priest, J. Ben, M. Truong, A.
Americans—especially African
Gupta, A. Pieterse, et al., “Racism as a
Americans—gain access to affordable, Determinant of Health: A Protocol for
high quality health care coverage.® Conducting A Systemic Review and Meta-
Between 2013 and 2014, under the ACA Analysis,” PubMed.gov Systemic Reviews,
the percentage of uninsured blacks September 23, 2013,
dropped from 24.1 percent to 16.1 www.ncbi.nim.nih.gov/pubmed/24059279. See
percent. In 2015, as a result of also, “Closing the Gap in a Generation: Health
“Obamacare,” nearly 6.8 million of African Equity through Action on the Social
Determinants of Health,” World Health
Americans have become eligible for health
Organization, Commission on Social
coverage. The DHHS estimates if all the Determinants of Health (2008): 3,
states would expand Medicaid, as the law http://apps.who. int/iris/bitstream/10665/43943/1/
allows, 95 percent of eligible blacks would 9789241563703_eng.pdf.
 CHAPTER 14 > Domestic Policy and Social and Economic Justice 361

° U.S. Department of Health and Human ° Emmanuel Hurtado, “5 Key Facts about the
Services, Office of the Secretary, Office of the Affordable Care Act for African Americans,”
Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, Center for American Progress, January 20,
and Office of Minority Health. HHS Action Plan 2015.
to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities: httops://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/n
Implementation Progress Report. Washington, ews/2015/01/20/104494/5-key-facts-about-the-
DC: Office of the Assistant Secretary for atfordable-care-act-for-african-americans/. See
Planning and Evaluation, 2015. also, “The Affordable Care Act is Working for
http://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/assets/pdf/FINAL_H the African American Community,” Department
HS_Action_Plan_Progress_Report_11_2_2015.pd of Health and Human Services, September,
f. See also Dayna Matthew, Just Medicine: A 2015.
Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health ® Ibid.
Care (New York: New York University Press, f Javier Rodriquez, Arline Geronmus, John
2016). Matthew estimates that 84,000 non- Bound, and Danny Darling, “Black Lives Matter,
whites die annually due to racism in health Black Mortality and Elections: Differential
delivery systems. Mortality and the Racial Composition of the U.S.
° T. J. Matthews, Marian F. MacDorman, and Electorate, 1970-2004," Social Science and
Marie E. Thomas, “Infant Mortality Statistics Medicine, www.stieredirect.com/science/
from the 2013 Period: Linked Birth/Infant Death article/pic/5027795361/5002439.
Data Set,” National Vital Statistics Reports 64 (9)
(August 6, 2015): 1-30. www.cdc.gov/nchs/
data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_09.pdf.

Ei =o esa)
EROS AES

communities dates from W. E. B. Du Bois’s pioneering study on “The Phila-

delphia Negro” (1899) to the environmental justice research by Robert Bullard
that well documents the links between concentrated poverty and racial and ethnic
disparities in health.?”

African Americans and the Criminal Justice System

In her widely discussed 2010 book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in
the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander describes the relationship of
blacks to the criminal justice system as a twenty-first-century version of the old
South system of Jim Crow segregation and exploitation.** The U.S. criminal
justice system holds more than 2.3 million people. There is a historic and
systemic pattern embedded in the system. African Americans at 13 percent of
the U.S. population are overrepresented at 40 percent; while whites at 64 percent
of total population are underrepresented at 39 percent (see Table 14.1). Although
white females comprise 49 percent of the prison population compared to 22
percent for black females, the rate of imprisonment for black females (113 per
100,000) is twice the rate of white females (51 per 100,000).”? Comprising only
16 percent of the U.S. youth population, African American youth have higher
rates of juvenile arrests (28 percent), incarceration (37 percent), residential
treatment (38 percent), and are more likely to be sentenced to adult prison (58
percent).2° Relatedly, African American students are 3.5 times more likely to
face harsher discipline in school-related suspensions, arrests, or referrals to law
enforcement compared to their white peers which places them in contact with
the juvenile justice system at an earlier age.*!
362 PARTV > Public Policy

A partial explanation of this disproportionately high rate of black

incarceration is the relationship between employment and crime. We know that
poor and unemployed people tend to commit more crime, and young blacks
who are poor tend to reside in concentrated, racialized neighborhoods that
are “over policed” (see Chapter 6, “#BlackLivesMatter” discussion). Given the
disproportionate number of encounters with law enforcement, a report by
the Department of Justice concluded that one in three black men can expect to
go to prison in their lifetime®? due in part to race bias or “racial profiling” (the
practice by police of stopping drivers of certain racial groups because they believe
these groups are more likely to commit certain types of crimes).
Another explanation of the racial and ethnic disparity in the criminal justice
system is unfairness in the enforcement of drug laws. This has been shown in
numerous studies on the use of illegal drugs and the war on drugs. Although
African Americans are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites,
they receive higher rates of arrests for these offenses.*? Relatedly, black offenders
receive longer sentences, about 10 percent longer compared to white offenders,
and African Americans are more likely to receive a mandatory-minimum sentence
and are sent to prison at a rate of 20 percent higher than whites.** Disparities
in the criminal justice system also result in disparities in voting (see Box 2.2).
There is also evidence that spending time incarcerated affects wage trajectories
which disproportionately impacts African Americans, resulting in wage growth
at a 21 percent slower rate for black former inmates as compared to whites.*»
Finally, these post-incarceration consequences significantly impact the access to
other material benefits that can enhance economic well-being.

African Americans and Education

Unemployment and underemployment are strongly associated with education.
As Table 14.1 shows, among Americans at least 25 years old, African Americans
are significantly less likely than whites to have a Bachelor’s degree or higher (22
percent versus 36 percent). Similarly, about 22 percent of African Americans
ages 25-29 have a Bachelor’s degree or higher compared to the nearly 41 percent
of whites of the same age. In the same age group, black women earned their
Bachelor’s degree at twice the rate of black men (21 percent versus 12 percent).°6
Although unemployment and underemployment levels are lower for those with
more education—with underemployment levels on the decline for all college
graduates—the rate for African Americans remain consistently higher than
whites (16.8 percent versus 7.9 percent).°” In addition, African Americans
gaining a college degree tend to be concentrated in low-paying majors.
A recent study revealed two key findings about African American college
majors and earnings. The first is that black college students are concentrated in
open-access four-year institutions that offer limited choices for majors. The
second, and perhaps most critical, is that black college students are under-
represented in the number of degree holders associated with the fastest-growing,
 CHAPTER 14 > Domestic Policy and Social and Economic Justice 363

highest-paying occupations—in science, technology, engineering, and mathe-

matics (STEM), health and business—and overrepresented in low-earning majors
such as health and medical administration services (21 percent), human services
and community organization (20 percent), and social work (19 percent), with
median earnings of $46,000, $39,000, and $41,000 respectively. Holding a
college degree is crucial to avoiding debt, unemployment and underemployment;
however, economic success is also closely associated with college majors and
earnings, and translates into greater lifetime wealth.°8

African Americans and Median Net Worth

Although the Great Recession had a devastating impact on the economic well-
being of all Americans, its impact on the African American community was
worse, particularly on the black middle class, wiping out decades of accumulated
wealth.
In 2004, aggregate black wealth or median net worth (assets minus liabilities)
was already miniscule in relationship to the median wealth of whites, $13,450
for blacks compared to $134,280 for whites. During the Great Recession from
2007 to 2010, the median net worth of all American families decreased by 39.4
percent, from $135,000 to $82,300. In the economic recovery between 2010
and 2013, the median wealth of white households increased by 2.4 percent,
from $138,600 to $141,900. In the same period, the median wealth of black
households fell 33.7 percent, from $16,600 to $11,000, resulting in the median
household wealth of white households being 13 times higher than the median
wealth of black households (see Table 14.1). In an Institute on Assets and Social
Policy (IASP) study tracing the household wealth between white and African
American families over 25 years, researchers determined the biggest drivers of
the growing racial wealth gap were explained by years of homeownership,
household income, unemployment, college education, and inheritance. For
reasons stated above, blacks are much more likely to be single and less likely
to be married compared to other race or ethnic groups,*? when measuring the
impact of marriage, the study revealed that marriage among African Americans—
which typically combines two comparatively low-level wealth portfolios—did
not significantly elevate the family’s wealth.*? The relative decline in black
wealth is due to what has been called the “Black Tax”—the inflated property
assessments and predatory tax-liens targeted at black homeowners*’—coupled
with the recent collapse of the housing market and the disproportionate rate of
foreclosures in the African American community.
Of African Americans who bought homes between 2005 and 2008, 8
percent lost them in foreclosures compared to 4.5 percent of whites.** This higher
rate of foreclosures is partly due to “reverse redlining” as black neighborhoods
are often the target of subprime lenders; while African American borrowers face
“subtle” racial bias in mortgage lending.4? For example, “in neighborhoods
where at least 80 percent of the population is black, those obtaining refinance
364 PARTV > Public Policy

loans were 2.2 times more likely to get a subprime loan than the national average.
Mote striking is the fact that upper income borrowers living in predominantly
black communities received subprime loans at twice the rate of low income white
borrowers.”44 Another study found that black borrowers are rejected for
mortgage loans at a substantially higher rate than whites, mainly due to racial
characteristics more so than income or creditworthiness.*> Housing is the primary
means by which Americans build their wealth. The material benefits earned from
homeownership is the basis for political, social, and economic power and
stability within the community.
In 2013, with substantial evidence on the stark differences and outcomes
in the housing market, the Obama administration codified the legal standard of
“disparate impact” (see Chapter 12) to enforce fair housing laws and hold banks
accountable for their role in the foreclosure crisis. With the disparate impact
standard, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development
(HUD) was able to argue that “disproportionate harm to communities of color
put predatory lenders in violation of the Fair Housing Act and Equal Credit
Opportunity Act.” Seven cases against major lenders resulted in settlements of
nearly $594 million.** In the appeal of the cases, the Supreme Court, in a 5—4
ruling, upheld the disparate impact approach. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote
for the majority that “Recognition of disparate impact claims is consistent with
FHA’s [Federal Housing Administration] central purpose, [which was] enacted
to eradicate discriminatory practices within a sector of our nation’s economy.”4”

African Americans and Affluence

Crucial to the African American quest for universal freedom is addressing
wealth inequality. During its protests, the Occupy Wall Street movement called
attention to the inequality between the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans and
the 99 percent of the rest of the population, with the largest growth in America’s
income and wealth flowing to the top one-tenth (0.1) of the richest 1 percent.*8
Relatively few African Americans participated in the occupy protests on Wall
Street or elsewhere in the country. Doing so would have been consistent with
their material conditions since virtually all blacks are 99 percenters. African
American total wealth accounts for only 2.5 percent of the total wealth of
American households.*?
A recent study observed that “the level of U.S. wealth inequality has grown
so lopsided that our classic wealth distributional pyramid now more resembles
the shape of Seattle’s iconic Space Needle,”5° The top one-thousandth of the
U.S. population (about 115,000 households) have a net worth starting at $20
million and owns more than 20 percent of U.S. household wealth. The small
cohort who made the Forbes 400 all possess fortunes worth at least $1.7 billion,
which is more than 61 percent of the total U.S. population wealth.
Persistent racial and ethnic wealth divides result from multigenerational
discrimination that stymied asset building for African Americans, which affect
 CHAPTER 14 > Domestic Policy and Social and Economic Justice 365

both economic stability and social mobility. As a result, a 2015 Brookings

Institute report observed that about half of African Americans born poor remain
poor, and that there is a downward intergenerational social mobility for black
middle-class children due to the Great Recession and subsequent loss of
household wealth.*! To eliminate this social and economic racial inequality, the
Forbes 400 study argues that it is necessary to close “wealth escape routes” that
allow wealthy individuals and companies to shift wealth into offshore tax
havens or bury it in private trusts to avoid taxation.°?
President Obama posited that legal loopholes in the tax code “come at the
expense of middle class families,” meaning “we’re not investing as much as we
should in schools, in making college more affordable, in putting people back to
work, in rebuilding our roads, our bridges, our infrastructure, creating more
opportunities for our children.”°3 This proposed broad, universal material-
based tax reform policy, designed to increase benefits to all Americans, will also
specifically help African Americans.

Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom

JOHNNIE TILLMON (1926-1995)
Johnnie Tillmon contributed to universal freedom and equality by attempting
to make the welfare of all children a universally accepted right in the United
States. In contrast to the United States, where welfare polices stigmatize children
born out of wedlock and are used to encourage marriage, in much of Western
Europe welfare policies are designed to support all children equally, whatever
the marital status of their parents. As founding chair and later executive director
of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), Tillmon worked to
achieve these kinds of reforms for American children. Born in Scott, Arkansas,
to impoverished sharecroppers, Tillmon moved to Los Angeles to escape Jim
Crow segregation and poverty. The mother of six children, she was disabled as
a result of diabetes and other illnesses and began to receive welfare assistance.
While living in a Los Angeles housing project, Tillmon—after a series of
degrading encounters with welfare officials in 1962—organized Aid to Needy
Children and Mothers Anonymously. This support network for women on
welfare eventually led to her leadership of NWRO, the first national organization
in African American politics devoted exclusively to the interests of poor black
women and their children.
Between 1967 and 1975 (when NWRO ceased operations), NWRO
under Tillmon’s leadership mobilized a national grassroots network of over 100
local chapters and more than 10,000 members who filed lawsuits and engaged
366 PARTV > Public Policy

in numerous protest demonstrations

at welfare offices, state legislatures, and
in Washington. Although NWRO did
not achieve its ultimate objective of
transforming welfare policies in the
United States, it was effective in increas-
ing the number of children receiving
assistance and in expanding benefits. It
also enhanced the image of welfare
mothers among themselves and was
responsible for helping to establish a
right of privacy for welfare recipients.
NWRO also helped to eliminate state
residency requirements and establish
due process procedures for the termin-
ation of benefits. Ironically, perhaps its
greatest achievement was its role in the
defeat of the Nixon administration’s Johnnie Tillmon, Welfare Rights
Family Assistance Plan, which would Bones
: : : Source: 1972 Photo “Johnnie Tillmon,” Ms.
have established universal assistance for Maaazines Calkacalar Stata Lnarsinlena
all children. NWRO opposed the plan Beach University Library, Digital Repository.
: : Retrieved 4 October 2016 from
because it believed the benefit levels http://symposia. library.csulb.edu/iii/cpro/Collecti
were too low and the work require- — onViewPage.external:jsessionid=02D6733D0B0
ments for mothers too harsh and ©07699931838383D1C94E?lang=&sp=1000076
ee &suite=def
punitive.
Although Tillmon had little formal education, her 1972 Ms. magazine essay
“Welfare Is a Women’s Issue” is a sharp analysis of the intersection between
gender, race, and poverty in the United States and is widely read in women’s
studies courses.

Summary [aa ee eee

In the U.S. political economy, the race problem is invariably and inextricably a
class problem. Since the federal government assumed responsibility for
management of the economy, to assure economic growth, employment, and price
stability, full employment has been the top priority of African Americans and
their leaders. It appears, however, that the American economy cannot be made
to operate at full employment (without risking high inflation). Rather, today
most economists seem to assume that an unemployment rate of 5—5.5 percent
is the “natural rate” of unemployment. Long-term unemployment and under-
employment, particularly for African Americans, are best understood a pattern
 CHAPTER 14 > Domestic Policy and Social and Economic Justice 367

of historic, systemic conditions—based on a socioeconomic system that locks

in the racial inequality—that the economy produces and reproduces. Generations
of recession-level unemployment and underemployment at 10 percent or more
have had devastating consequences for the African American family and
community, resulting in a racial wealth divide related to concentrated poverty,
disparities in health, inequalities in criminal justice and education and wealth
asset-building.
This chapter has focused on the African American quest for universal
freedom in terms of access to material-based benefits. This quest has met with
limited success. African Americans are not likely to be satisfied with this limited
success. Policy aimed at ending racial inequality while promoting wealth equity
is crucial to the future of the African American freedom struggle. It will require
minority—majority coalitions and broad material-based policies that address
entrenched racial disparities. This, too, is a matter of universal freedom.

Critical Thinking Questions

1. Why has full employment been the priority item on the black agenda since
the end of the civil rights movement?
2. Discuss the multiple consequences of historic, long-term, persistent
unemployment on the African American community and its overall economic
well-being.
3. Discuss the differential impact of the “Great Recession” on the African
American community.
4. Discuss how material-based policies are necessary to end the black-white
economic divide. Which material-based policies would you propose?
5. Why have Congress and the president been more likely to enact rights-based
than material-based reforms?

Selected Bibliography D2»

Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness. New York: New Press, 2012. A study of how the largely drug-driven
mass incarceration of blacks is impacting the African American community.
Bullard, Robert. Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality. Boulder,
CO: Westview Press, 2000. The standard empirical study on environmental racism
in the field.
Cole, David. No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System.
New York: Free Press, 1999. A study documenting the systematic nature of racism
in the criminal justice system.
Du Bois, W. E. B. The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. New York: Schocken Books,
1967. Originally published 1899. Historic empirical research—analyzing social and
economic conditions of African Americans in Philadelphia—that challenged prevailing
assumptions about inherent racial differences to reveal the systemic relationship
between racism and class.
368 PARTV > Public Policy

Edelman, Peter. “Clinton’s Worst Mistake.” Atlantic Monthly (May 1997). An incisive
critique of the welfare reform bill signed by President Clinton.
Hancock, Lynneil. Hands to Work: The Stories of Three Families Facing the Welfare
Clock. New York: William Morrow, 2002. A fascinating ethnographic study of how
the reform of welfare impacts the lives of poor women and their children.
Harvey, Phillip. Securing the Right to Employment: Social Welfare Policy and the
Unemployed in the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.
An analysis with recommendations on how to achieve full employment.
Hershberg, Theodore. “A Tale of Three Cities: Blacks and Immigrants in Philadelphia,
1850-1880, 1930 and 1970.”Annals of the American Academy ofPolitical and Social
Science 441 (1979): 55-81. An innovative, multidisciplinary historical case study of
how racism in housing and employment created what is today referred to as the black
underclass.
Kirshernman, J., and K. Neckerman. “We’d Love to-Hire Them But ... The Meaning
of Race for Employers.” In C. Jencks, ed., The Urban Underclass. Washington, DC:
Brookings Institution, 1992. A study of the role of race and racism in the employment
decisions of white employers.
Shapiro, Thomas. The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates
Inequality. New York: Oxford, 2004. A study of how the lack of wealth—inheritance,
saving accounts, stocks, bonds, home equity—sustains racial inequality in the U.S.
Sugure, Thomas. Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the
North. New York: Random House, 2008. The fight against Jim Crow in the North,
focusing especially on housing and employment.
Williams, Linda. The Constraint of Race: Legacies of White Skin Privilege and Politics
of American Social Policy. College Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003.
An illuminating study of racism’s impact on the development of social welfare policies
from Reconstruction to the Clinton administration.
Wilson, William J. When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. New
York: Vintage, 1997. The nation’s leading authority on race and poverty discusses
the impact of deindustrialization and globalization on the work prospects of the urban
poor.
Wilson, William. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass and Public
Policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987. A very influential study that
focuses on the loss of industrial jobs as the key factor in the rise and growth of the
underclass.

Notes ie
ee a
1 Harvey M. Brenner, “Estimating the Effects of Economic Change on National Health
and Social Well Being,” Paper prepared for the Subcommittee on Economic Goals
and Intergovernmental Policy, Joint Economic Committee, July 15, 1984.
2 Jeanne Prial Gordus and Sean McAliden, “Economic Change, Physical Illness and
Social Deviance,” Paper prepared for the Subcommittee on Economic Goals and
Intergovernmental Relations, Joint Economic Committee, July 14, 1984.
3 Anthony P. Carnevale and Nicole Smith, “Sharp Declines in Underemployment for
College Graduates,” Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce
(analysis of U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey micro data,
2010-2014) Report, November 2015, https://cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/
uploads/Underemployment-Declines.pdf.
 CHAPTER 14 > Domestic Policy and Social and Economic Justice 369

4 Ralph Bunche, “The Programs of Organizations Devoted to the Improvement of the

Negro,” Journal of Negro Education 8 (1939): 542-43. Bunche developed this point
more extensively in his “Critique of New Deal Planning as it Affects the Negro,”
Journal of Negro Education 5 (1936): 59-65. See more generally Stanley Greenberg,
Race and State in Capitalist Development (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1980).
Donald Harris, “The Black Ghetto as Colony: A Theoretical Critique and Alternative
Se Hae Review of Black Political Economy (Summer 1972): 30.
Ibid.
Thomas Sugure, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in
the North (New York: Random House, 2008); and Matthew Countryman, Up
South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia (College Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 2005).
Theodore Hershberg et al., “A Tale of Three Cities: Blacks and Immigrants in
Philadelphia, 1850-1880, 1930 and 1970,” Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science 441 (1979): 55-81.
Ibid., p. 75.
Ibid., p. 66.
William J. Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor
(New York: Vintage, 1997).
F. F. Furstenberg, T. Hershberg, and J. Model, “The Origins of Female-Headed
Households: The Impact of the Urban Experience,” Journal of Interdisciplinary
History 6 (1975): 65-78. See also W. E. B. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro: A
Social Study (New York: Schocken, 1899, 1965).
13 Gerald Reynolds, “The Impact of Illegal Immigration on the Wages and Employment
Opportunities of Black Workers,” Briefing Report to the United States Commission
on Civil Rights (2010), https://www.law.umaryland.edu/marshall/usccr/documents/
cr12im2010.pdf.
14 Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America: Plant
Closings, Community Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry (New
York: Basic Books, 1982).
15 Joe Cortright, “Surging City Center Job Growth,” City Observatory Report, February
2015: 1-39, http://cityobservatory.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Surging-City-
Center-Jobs.pdf. See also, Claire Cain Miller, “More New Jobs Are in City Centers,
While Employment Growth Shrinks in the Suburbs,” New York Times, February 24,
2015, www.nytimes.com/201 5/02/24/upshot/more-new-jobs-are-in-city-centers-while-
employment-growth-shrinks-in-the-suburbs.html.
16 The United States Congress Joint Economic Committee (JEC) and the Congressional
Black Caucus (CBC), “The American Dream on Hold: Economic Challenges-in the
African American Community,” National Fact Sheet (2016), www.jec.senate.gov/
public/_cache/files/1 8a8£306-f6ff-4d2c-9814-73151731926b/national-fact-sheet.pdf.
Also for a similar perspective over the last 40 years (1976-2016), see the National
Urban League, “Locked Out: Education, Jobs & Justice,” 2016 State of Black
America Report (New York, 2016): 10, http://soba.iamempowered.com/.
17 “The African-American Labor Force in the Recovery,” Department of Labor, Special
Reports, www.dol.gov/_sec/media/reports/blacklaborforce/.
18 Ibid.
19 Carnevale and Smith, “Sharp Declines in Underemployment for College Graduates,”
Report.
20 Hope Yen and Liz Sidoti, “Figures Expected to Show Record Rise in U.S. Poverty,”
Contra Costra Times, September 12, 2010.
370 PARTV > Public Policy

21 U.S. Census Bureau, Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and
“Dynamics of Economic Well-Being: Participation in Government Programs,
2009-2012: Who Gets Assistance?” http://blackdemographics.com/households/
poverty/.
22 Elizabeth Shogren, “New Welfare System Seen As Recession Proof,” Los Angeles
Times, April 24, 2003.
23 U.S. Census Bureau, “Who Gets Assistance?” Report.
24 African American Women and the Wage Gap Fact Sheet, The National Partnership
for Women & Families (December 2015), www.nationalpartnership.org/research-
library/workplace-fairness/fair-pay/african-american-women-wage-gap.pdf.
2S. Ibid.
26 Leif Frederickson, “The Surprising Link between Postwar Suburban Development
and Today’s Inner-City Lead Poisoning,” The Conversation, February 25, 2016,
https://theconversation.com/the-surprising-link-between-postwar-suburban-
development-and-todays-inner-city-lead-poisoning-54453.
iy! Ibid.
28 Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2012).
29 E. Ann Carson, “Prisoners in 2013,” U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice
Statistics, September 2014, NCJ 247282, www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p13.pdf.
30 “Criminal Justice Primer: Policy Priorities for the 111th Congress,” The Sentencing
Project, 2009, www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/cjprimer2009.pdf.
31 Caralee J. Adams, Erik W. Robelen, and Nirvi Shah, “Civil Rights Data Show
Retention Disparities,” Education Week, March 6, 2012; see also Sophia Kerby, “The
Top 10 Most Startling Facts about People of Color and Criminal Justice in the United
States: A Look at the Racial Disparities Inherent in our Nation’s Criminal-Justice
System,” March 13, 2012, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/news/2012/
03/13/1135 1/the-top-10-most-startling-facts-about-people-of-color-and-criminal-
justice-in-the-united-states/.
a2 Christopher Lyons and Becky Pettit, “Compounded Disadvantage: Race, Incarceration
and Wage Growth,” Social Problems, 58 (2) (May 2011): 257-80.
33 “U.S.: Drug Arrests Skewed by Race: National Data on 1980-2007 Cases Show Huge
Disparities,” Human Rights Watch, March 2, 2009, https://www.hrw.org/news/2009/
03/02/us-drug-arrests-skewed-race.
34 Kerby, “The Top 10 Most Startling Facts about People of Color and Criminal Justice
in the United States.”
35 Lyons and Pettit, “Compounded Disadvantage: Race, Incarceration and Wage
Growth.”
36 Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, “Labor Market Activity,
Education, and Partner Status among America’s Young Adults at 29: Results from
a Longitudinal Study,” Report USDL-16-0700, Washington, DC, 2016: 2,
www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/nlsyth. pdf.
37 Anthony P. Carnevale, Megan L. Fasules, Andrea Porter, and Jennifer Landis-Santos,
“African Americans: College Majors and Earnings,” Georgetown University Center
on Education and the Workforce (analysis of U.S. Census Bureau, American
Community Survey micro data, 2010-2014) Fact Sheet, 2016. https://cew.georgetown.
edu/cew-reports/african-american-majors/.
38 Ibid.
39 See Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, “Labor Market Activity,
Education, and Partner Status among America’s Young Adults at 29: Results from
a Longitudinal Study,” p. 6. This recent study revealed that partner status varied
 CHAPTER 14 > Domestic Policy and Social and Economic Justice 371

greatly by race and ethnicity. Blacks were much more likely to be single than whites.
At 29 years of age, 60 percent of blacks were single compared to 34 percent of whites,
Blacks were also significantly less likely to be married than whites (22 percent versus
46 percent).
40 Thomas Shapiro, Tatjana Meschede, and Sam Osoro, “The Roots of the Widening
Racial Wealth Gap: Explaining the Black-White Economic Divide,” Institute on
Assets and Social Policy, Research and Policy Brief, February 2013, p. 6.
41 Kriston Capps, “How the ‘Black Tax’ Destroyed African American Homeownership
in Chicago,” The Atlantic: City Lab, June 11, 2015, www.citylab.com/housing/
2015/06/how-the-black-tax-destroyed-african-american-homeownership-in-
chicago/395426/; see also Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations,” The
Atlantic, June 2014, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-
reparations/361631/.
42 Jesse Washington, “Blacks’ Economic Gains Wiped Out in Downtown: A Generation
That Played by the Rules and Saw Progress Falls Out of the Middle Class,”
NBCNews.com, AP, July 12, 2011, accessed at www.nbcnews.com/id/43645168/
ns/business-eye_on_the_economy/t/blacks-economic-gains-wiped-out-downturn/
#.V_Z-18nXAUc.
43 Peter Eavis, “Study Strongly Links Baltimore Mortgage Denials to Race,” New York
Times, November 16, 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/11/17/business/dealbook/study-
strongly-links-baltimore-mortgage-denials-to-race.html.
Ruby Mendenhall, “The Political Economy of Black Housing: From the Housing
Crisis of the Great Migration to the Subprime Mortgage Crisis,” Black Scholar 40
(2010): 31.
Eavis, “Study Strongly Links Baltimore Mortgage Denials to Race.”
Christie Thompson, “Disparate Impact and Fair Housing: Seven Cases You Should
Know,” ProPublica, February 12, 2013, https://www.propublica.org/article/disparate-
impact-and-fair-housing-seven-cases-you-should-know.
47 Greg Stohr and David McLaughlin, “Supreme Court Backs Housing Discrimination
Lawsuits,” Bloomberg, June 25, 2015, www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-
25/housing-discrimination-lawsuits-backed-by-u-s-supreme-court.
48 Chuck Collins and Josh Hoxie, “Billionaire Bonanza Report: The Forbes 400 and
the Rest of Us,” Institute of Policy Studies, Table 2, December 2015, p. 2, www.ips-
dc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Billionaire-Bonanza-The-Forbes-400-and-the-Res
t-of-Us-Dec1.pdf.
Ibid., p. 6.
ibid:, pe 2:
Richard V. Reeves and Edward Rodrigue, “Five Bleak Facts on Black Opportunity,”
Brookings Social Mobility Memo, January 15, 2015, www.brookings.edu/blogs/
social-mobility-memos/posts/2015/01/15-mlk-black-opportunity-reeves.
Ibid., p. 1.
Michael J. de la Merced and Leslie Picker, “Pfizer and Allergan Are Said to End
Merger as Tax Rules Tighten,” New York Times, April 5, 2016, www.nytimes.com/
2016/04/06/business/dealbook/tax-inversion-obama-treasury.html?_r=0.
ms CHAPTER 15
The African American
Ouest for Universal
Freedom and U.S.
Foreign Policy

LEARNING OBJECTIVE
Identify the various roles African Americans have assumed in their
efforts to influence U.S. foreign policy.

In the 1940s, Edith Sampson, Chicago attorney, was appointed by President

Truman as a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. Over the years
she has been followed by Pearl Bailey, Zelma George, Marian Anderson, Coretta
Scott King, and a host of others. Sampson became the first African American,
male or female, to represent the United States at the United Nations.!
African Americans have served as consuls, ministers, and ambassadors to
foreign capitals as well as to the United Nations. African Americans have been
employed as foreign service officers and career officials at the Department of
State. Outside the bureaucracy, African Americans have served the nation in an
ad hoc fashion. For example, in 1889, upon learning that historian—lawyer
George Washington Williams would be making a visit to the Congo, President
Benjamin Harrison asked him to gather information and submit a report on
his return, which could be used in determining the nation’s policy toward the
Congo.” President Jimmy Carter sent Muhammad Ali on a goodwill tour
of Africa, and President Clinton, during his first term, sent Jesse Jackson as a
special representative to Nigeria and William Gray, a former congressman, as
372
 CHAPTER 15 > U.S. Foreign Policy 373

special envoy to Haiti. In addition to performing these brief diplomatic functions,

African Americans have been selected to serve and represent the nation on
international commissions and tribunals. Fisk University president and
sociologist Charles S$. Johnson was appointed by President Herbert Hoover in
1929 to serve on the International Commission to Investigate Slavery and Forced
Labor in Liberia.’
Although they have played numerous roles in implementing and managing
American foreign policies, African Americans have also served as creators in
foreign matters, particularly as America’s policy has related to the Third World
and Africa. In their role as creators, African Americans have been critics, as was
the NAACP after its investigation of the U.S. Marine occupation of Haiti
(1915-1934). African Americans have been innovators, as were Sylvester
Williams and W. E. B. Du Bois in organizing the Pan-African Congresses; or
William Monroe Trotter and Du Bois at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919;
or Mary McCleod Bethune, Walter White, and Du Bois at the founding
conference of the United Nations. William Patterson and Malcolm X presented
petitions to the United Nations on human rights.
Thus, in their quest for universal freedom, African Americans, who were
born in foreign affairs through African slavery and the slave trade, have turned
to America’s foreign policy to support ideals of human rights and humani-
tarianism. Any appreciation of the universal freedom thrust of African American
politics must include an understanding of African Americans’ role in foreign
affairs.

African Americans as Foreign Policy

Implementers/Managers: The Search for
“Black Nationality”
In his study of African Americans in the foreign policy apparatus, Jake Miller
made the following comments: “When one considers the input of Blacks into
the foreign policy-making machinery, the State Department immediately becomes
the major part of the focus, since it is in this governmental department that
foreign policy is traditionally formulated.”* But looking at the State Department
as late as 1998, only 2.7 percent of the entire Foreign Service Corps was African
American. In 2005, the figure was 6.5 percent and by 2008, of the approximately
11,471 members of the U.S. Foreign Service, African Americans comprised some
5.6 percent, including 36 African American women serving as U.S. Ambassador
to date.5 In recent years, African Americans have held the top foreign policy
posts of National Security Advisor and Secretary of State; however these posts
did not alter the minor role of blacks in the overall conduct of foreign policy.
Given this basic reality, Miller concluded that decision-making powers in
the State Department reside in a very limited number of officers, relatively few
374 PARTV > Public Policy

of whom are blacks. African Americans have not had the key positions in the
bureaucracy, yet as an interest group they have had a recognizable and
continuing role throughout their sojourn in America. And they have had to
fashion this role inside the bureaucracy in a different manner from that used
by other pressure groups.
Inside the bureaucracy, African Americans had to fashion their role from
positions as ministers and ambassadors to small African nations. Elliot P.
Skinner, African American scholar, former ambassador to the Republic of Upper
Volta, and student of these early African American diplomats, notes that this
collective role could be encapsulated in the concept of black nationality.’ Skinner
writes, “Diplomats such as J. Milton Turner, Henry H. Smyth and Ernest Lyon
were openly confrontational with the State Department to achieve their
objectives. They endeavored to prove that they could serve faithfully as American
foreign service officers even while protecting the black nationality.”® Many of
these African American implementers of American foreign policy believed that
by helping to create a strong and developed Africa, they would contribute to
the solution of its people’s problems the world over. They would also be helping
to preserve the already existing nation-states of Liberia and Haiti. This was their
expression of “black nationality,” which is understood as an effort to advance
the idea of universal freedom for all African peoples. Black nationality is an
expression of the idea of Pan Africanism: the historical, cultural, and political
movement that asserts common bonds—a black nationality—that unites all
peoples of African descent. At a minimum these Pan African bonds require
Africans everywhere to resist racism, racial subordination, and the ideology of
white supremacy.
An example of black nationality or Pan African consciousness began with
Abraham Lincoln’s annual message to Congress in December 1861. President
Lincoln announced, “If any good reason exists why we should persevere longer
in withholding our recognition of the independence and sovereignty of Haiti
and Liberia, I am unable to discern it.”? At a National Convention meeting in
Syracuse, New York, African Americans passed a resolution praising Congress
for honoring Lincoln’s request.!° Senator Charles Summer of Massachusetts
introduced the bill, which authorized the president to appoint diplomatic
representatives to Haiti and Liberia. The bill was attacked but eventually passed
by 32 to 7 in the Senate and 86 to 37 in the House. For decades southerners
had blocked the formal recognition of Haiti and Liberia, but even with this
action the United States was the last Western nation to open normal diplomatic
relations with Haiti and Liberia.!!
After recognition of the two countries, the first African American diplomats
to these nations began to use their influence in the State Department on their
behalf. Miller writes that an analysis of the diplomatic correspondence of the
black ministers accredited to Port-au-Prince revealed that no issue tended to be
more dominant than those involving the granting of asylum to Haitians and the
 CHAPTER 15 > U.S. Foreign Policy 375

protection of Americans and their interests in the “black republic.” Clearly

related to this issue was the question of political instability in the country.!%
In Liberia, black ministers were preoccupied with the attempts by European
powers to encroach on the territorial sovereignty of the young black republic.
Their notes to the State Department reflected their concern with such matters
as Liberian border frictions with England and France.
In pressing the concerns of Haiti and Liberia, diplomats in both these
nations found themselves in conflictual and confrontational stances with the
State Department. Here is an example of bureaucrats opposing their own
bureaucracy. As Miller writes, “The structural challenge for African Americans
chosen as envoys (diplomats) was that they also had to serve a nation that
denigrated them and Africa itself.”'4 The first African American diplomat to
Liberia, J. Milton Turner (1871-1878), realized that these black diplomats had
to use “extreme prudence”; he designed his dispatches “as much... to educate
the officials in the State Department about the realities of Liberia as to enlist
the help of his government for the Liberians.”!5
However, not all the black diplomats took such a frontal and conflictual
approach with the State Department. Some moved in fugitive, back-channel,
and secretive manners, acting on their own beyond the normal diplomatic
channels. Of this tactic, Miller writes that while most black ministers participated
in the drive for greater Liberian security in a noncontroversial manner, the State
Department has felt compelled to chastise some for overstepping guidelines.
An example was diplomat Ernest Lyon. Lyon, a protégé of Booker T.
Washington, became adept at “back-channel” manipulation, establishing
important contacts outside the State Department in order to affect policy. Lyon
knew how to exploit Booker T. Washington’s strong support among both
northern and southern African Americans and his accommodationist attitude
toward the white power structure to accomplish his goals.!* To achieve their
aims and objectives, these back-channel diplomats used symbolic structures as
a means of seeking to influence U.S. policy toward Africa and its people. These
“symbolic structures” were conferences and hortatory rhetoric, newspaper
coverage, lectures, letters, and contact with interested and powerful white
individuals and groups.!” Symbolic structures were devices to mobilize’ public
opinion and mass interest in both African American and white communities.
In sum, African American ministers, envoys, and ambassadors found in their
own individual manner three discernible ways to articulate their concern for
universal freedom and respect. First, they could be conflictual and confronta-
tional with the State Department. This tactic was an effort to move the
department toward a more positive policy in maintaining and enhancing the
independence of these new black republics. The second technique was individual
initiatives. Here, they took matters in their own hands, devising solutions
independent of the State Department. The third and final tactic was the back-
channel technique. Here insiders passed vital information to elites inside the
376 PART V > Public Policy

black community. This procedure, unlike the others, forged a link between the
diplomats and the African American community, as well as with key individuals
in the white community.
These strategies may not have been influential, but they perpetuated a legacy
for the future. For instance, when African Americans served as delegates to the
United Nations General Assembly, they continued the tradition taken by the
early diplomats. In 1960, alternate delegate Zelma George displayed contempt
for the position taken by the United States when she stood and joined African
and Asian representatives in applauding the adoption of the resolution calling
for an end of colonialism—a resolution on which the United States had
abstained.'®
In 1971, UN delegate Congressman Charles Diggs of Michigan sent a
telegram to Secretary of State William Rogers expressing his opposition to the
U.S. position on apartheid and resigned from the delegation.

African Americans as Foreign Policy

Dissenters
Black diplomats were not solely concerned with black nations. Because of their
posting to these nations, they could speak to only this one aspect. But the
limitations of federal bureaucrats are not the limitations of the entire black
community. Elites, organizations, and institutions inside the community also
helped shape responses to a wider array of issues and concerns.
Paul Cuffe began an aspect of black nationality when in 1815 he took 38
blacks to Africa at a personal expense of $3,000 or $4,000.!% His African
colonization plan was a critique of the possibilities of African American universal
freedom in the United States. His critique was a harbinger of a new American
policy of colonization, as well as an African American policy of emigration.
Cuffe’s initial articulation through activism was taken up by Martin Delany
and Robert Campbell when they launched a trip to explore the Niger River area
as a site for emigration. On their return to America, Delany and Campbell had
to face the reality that it was not easy for African Americans to go to Africa.?°
After the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, colonialism arrived in full force in
Africa, and the visions created by Cuffe, Delany, and Campbell went sour under
the terror brought on by some of the colonial powers. At the 1884-1885 Berlin
Conference, the Congo was “given” to King Leopold of Belgium, and he
“instituted one of the harshest, cruelest and most violent systems of colonialism
in Africa.”*! American foreign policy stood silent as the atrocities of King
Leopold occurred on a daily basis.” George Washington Williams—historian,
politician, and Ohio legislator—bitterly criticized King Leopold’s policies in the
Congo.” African American dissenters to American foreign policy now began to
fashion a role in line with specific events and places. The actions by Williams
 CHAPTER 15 > U.S. Foreign Policy 377

were more specific and more focused than had been the work of Cuffe, Delany,
and Campbell.
Many African American leaders were vigorous opponents of the Mexican—
American War. Frederick Douglass, for example, was scathing in his criticism,
writing in his newspaper the North Star that the U.S. government had

succeeded in robbing Mexico of her territory, and are rejoicing over their
success under the hypocritical pretense of a regard for peace. Had they not
succeeded in robbing Mexico of the most important and most valuable of her
territory, many of those now loudest in their professions of favor for peace
would be loudest and wildest for war.”4

Following in the path blazed by Williams and Douglass was Bishop

Alexander Walters of the National African American Council, who was strongly
critical when the United States annexed the Philippines during the
Spanish-American War.” There, in the cause of white supremacy, the United
States turned from a policy of cooperating with Tagalog insurgents against the
Spanish colonial authorities to one of joining with the defeated Spaniards against
the Filipinos.”° Therefore, as a foreign policy dissenter, Walters noted that “had
the Filipino been white and fought as brave as they have, the war would have
been ended and their independence granted a long time ago.”?”
In the Boer War, where the British fought the white South Africans,
American foreign policy was one of solidarity with the British. African Americans
spoke out, denouncing the war as aggression.?® At first blacks viewed the
struggle as between whites with little interest to them. As they learned more of
the racism in Afrikaner society, they became increasingly hostile to the Boers.??
With the coming of World War I, African American socialists A. Philip
Randolph and Chandler Owens demanded a change in America’s foreign policy.
They published a newspaper, The Messenger, in New York, and because of an
article they wrote, “Pro-Germanism among Negroes,” Randolph and Owens
were sentenced to jail, and their second-class mailing privileges were revoked.*°
The Paris Peace Conference, the Treaty of Versailles, and the founding of
the League of Nations all gave African American leaders an opportunity to
further express their foreign policy concerns. Both W. E. B. Du Bois and William
Monroe Trotter attended the Paris Peace Conference. While Du Bois was able
to influence the creation of the League of Nations mandate system for the
colonial-held Third World nations,*! Trotter found that the State Department
denied him a passport and thereby an official presence at the Conference.*” Yet
Trotter attended and wrote his critical observations in his newspaper, the Boston
Guardian.**
The Italian invasion of Ethiopia mobilized the African American community
to action on foreign policy like no other event. Mussolini had come to power
in Italy in 1922, and, by 1935, he was seeking to restore the Roman Empire by
378 PARTV > Public Policy

overrunning Ethiopia. In the face of such naked imperialism, it could be expected

that a few lonely voices and organizations might have spoken out. However,
Franklin and Moss write, “When Italy invaded Ethiopia African Americans
protested with all the means at their command. Almost overnight even the most
provincial among black Americans became international-minded. Ethiopia
was a black nation, and its destruction would symbolize the final victory of
white over blacks.”24 In opposition, African Americans held pro-Ethiopian _
demonstrations, sent money and medical supplies to Ethiopia, and boycotted
Italian-made goods. Ethiopia was also a major concern of the black press in the
1930s, with most of the black media criticizing the Italian invasion of Ethiopia.*°
The Pittsburgh Courier assigned J. A. Rogers as a war correspondent to send
the news on the war front back to the United States; and there were pleas made
both to the U.S. government and the League of Nations. For instance, the
NAACP telegraphed the League of Nations on behalf of 12,000,000 American
Negroes, demanding action to restrain Mussolini.°*°
All this frenzied lobbying set the African Americans against outspoken
Italian American groups that, as a matter of ethnic pride, supported their
ancestral homeland. In some eastern cities where Italian and black neighborhoods
adjoined, riots erupted.*’ In this intense and rising competition between the two
groups to affect policy toward the war, the African Americans were more
successful than the Italian Americans because the Roosevelt administration
imposed an arms embargo on Italy.°* The intensity as well as the strength of
the African American reaction to the Italian invasion helped considerably in
arousing a general American sympathy for Ethiopia.*? This time the outcry came
from all quarters and sectors of African American society. Indeed, the demand
for help for Ethiopia was so systematic and comprehensive this time that in the
midst of the conflict, in January 1937, African American leaders founded the
Council on African Affairs, a national organization to lobby for Africa—a
forerunner of Trans Africa.
During World War II, the global nature of the struggle and the indeterminate
post-world war realities forced African Americans to wage a “Double V” cam-
paign, victory at home as well as abroad.*° In World War II, African Americans
were willing to do their part and to make necessary sacrifice to ensure victory,
but they constantly reminded the people of the United States that they resented
all forms of racism.*! In addition to the Double V, the African American press
simultaneously called for a new and more progressive approach to colonialism
and the problems of Third World nations.*2
African American leaders supported an independent Israel but, after the 1973
Yom Kippur War, increasing numbers of African Americans began to speak for
the cause of Palestinian independence as well.
During 1946-1947, leading black newspapers were opposed to the cold war
policies of the United States. At the same time, these papers reminded Americans
 CHAPTER 15 > U.S. Foreign Policy 379

that the best defense against communism was universal freedom, at home and
abroad.*?
One of the crisis events of the cold war that U.S. policy makers had to cope
with was the Nigerian civil war, better known as the Biafran secession, which
emerged during the Nixon administration. President Nixon supported the Biafran
secession, a position that put him at odds with the African American
community.** From the outset, African Americans put their support behind the
Nigerian federal government. Thus, when the Biafran secessionists surrendered
in January 1970, the Nigerians expressed gratitude toward African Americans
who helped to keep Washington committed to the one-Nigeria policy.45 Like
the situation in Ethiopia some three-and-a-half decades earlier, blacks had
helped to shape events in Nigeria in a way supportive of African nationality.
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was among the
first national organizations to oppose the Vietnam War. Muhammad Ali, Martin
Luther King Jr., and many other prominent blacks also voiced opposition to
the Vietnam War. When Martin Luther King Jr. dissented from the rising
American consensus about the war, it divided the civil rights movement and
angered liberals and President Johnson. Several African American leaders,
notably Whitney Young of the Urban League, denounced King and supported
President Johnson. But King’s prestige made him a major voice in the antiwar
movement.’ Inside the military, African American troops spoke out against both
the racial epithets and some of the inhumane policies of American troops
fighting in Vietnam.*”
When President Reagan ordered an invasion of the Caribbean island nation
of Grenada in October 1984, five members of the Congressional Black Caucus
moved to impeach the president, and the entire Caucus condemned the invasion
as being nurtured essentially by white racism. African Americans also opposed
George H. W. Bush’s Persian Gulf War*® and his son’s invasion of Iraq.
African Americans have not had a commanding influence in American
foreign policy, but they have had a continuing presence. On several occasions,
that presence has had a decided impact on the outcome of American foreign
policy, such as the Ethiopian War. African Americans were successful in changing
the Nixon administration policy during the Nigerian civil war and in pressuring
President Clinton to intervene in the Haitian conflict on the side of the
democracy. These are direct linkages between the expressed desires of black
Americans and American foreign policy. However, there is a very important
indirect link. For example, King’s outspoken stance against the Vietnam War
led to a larger, much more powerful, and vocal antiwar and peace movement.
African American opposition to America’s wars comes as no surprise to
students of U.S. foreign policy. In some ways, it is as old as black opposition
to the 1848 Mexican-American War and the 1890s war against the Filipino
insurgency. Since Vietnam this opposition has come earlier and been more intense
and widespread. Scholars trace the sources of this antiwar sentiment in black
380 PARTV > Public Policy

America to a kind of Third World solidarity with the world’s people of color;
what one scholar calls an “Afro-Centric” foreign policy perspective.*” Also, many
blacks feel that racism and poverty force many young blacks into the military
because they cannot find educational and economic opportunities in the civilian
economy. Thus, it is argued that blacks will suffer disproportionate casualties
in what some refer to as the “white man’s wars.”

Trans Africa: African Americans as Foreign

Policy Lobbyists
Figure 15.1 reveals the rise, fall, and evolution of African American organized
interest and pressure group activity up to the founding of Trans Africa. In 1976
Congressmen Charles Diggs of Michigan (chair of the House Foreign Affairs
Subcommittee on Africa) and Andrew Young convened 30 black leaders to
challenge the Ford administration policy toward white-ruled Rhodesia. But, little
changed during the Ford administration. The incoming Carter administration,
however, was concerned with human rights, and its leaders were willing to listen
to Congressman and later UN Ambassador Young. As a result, the political
context changed significantly. In May 1978, Young and his colleagues organized
Trans Africa, the first mass-based African American lobby.
To carry out its lobbying, Trans Africa—the “Black American Lobby for
Africa and the Caribbean”—sends out “Issue Briefs” and a newsletter to alert
its membership and individuals in the Congress to matters on which its leaders
want action. It holds news conferences, public demonstrations, and annual
dinners and symposiums to keep its constituency informed. To involve as well
as mobilize people, Trans Africa has engaged in boycotts, marches, mass
demonstrations, letter writing, and a hunger strike by its former director Randall
Robinson. Out of these different tactics and strategies, the organization has met
with considerable success.
Outstanding among its efforts was its protests against South Africa, which
began on Thanksgiving eve, 1984, as a sit-in at the South African Embassy in
Washington. These protests eventually led to the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid
Act. Introduced by Congressman William Gray of Pennsylvania, this act passed
both houses of Congress but was vetoed by President Reagan. However, the
veto was overridden when Republicans joined with African Americans and
Democrats to impose sanctions on the South African regime.
During the Clinton administration, Trans Africa’s executive director, Randall
Robinson, used a hunger strike to force the president to change his policy toward
Haiti.*° Initially, Clinton had essentially followed the Bush immigration policy
limiting Haitian immigration, and had successfully defended that policy in the
Supreme Court. Trans Africa, under Robinson’s leadership, helped to reverse
the policy.
 CHAPTER 15 > U.S. Foreign Policy 381

1. President FDR
Italian Embargo
2. President Clinton
Haiti
AFRICAN
a AMERICAN
ELITES AND
Ww, MASSES

COLLECTIVE 1. Rhodesia Chrome

VOICES Ban Law—1977
2. Anti-Apartheid
Law—1986

1. Responses to Protest
Diplomacy
2. Modification of Existing
Rules
3. Implementation of New
Procedures

FIGURE 15.1
Sources and Outcomes of African American Foreign Policy-Making Initiatives
Sources: Adapted from Hanes Walton, Jr., ed., “African American Foreign Policy: From
Decolonization to Democracy,” in African American Power and Politics: The Political Context Variable
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), chap. 18; and Jake Miller, The Black Presence in
American Foreign Affairs (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1978).

Trans Africa has also embarked on a program of action designed to influence

some of the African and other Third World dictatorships (especially Nigeria) to
pursue, with America’s help, democratic elections and governance.°' With
colonialism as a political system disappearing from African and Third World
countries, this new course helped to achieve democracy in some African countries.
Thus, this organizational presence of African Americans, through interest
group lobbying, like its counterparts in other parts of the foreign policy process,
has had some successes in changing America’s foreign policies toward Africa
and the Third World.

African Americans and Citizen Diplomacy:

Historical Background and Context
African American foreign policy leaders have a long history of creating new
strategies and tactics to influence and shift the State Department’s direction of
382 PARTV > Public Policy

foreign policy.s2 One of these strategies for articulating the African American
position is citizen diplomacy.
Professor Karin Stanford has defined citizen diplomacy “as the diplomatic
efforts of private citizens in the international arena for the purpose of achieving
a specific objective or accomplishing constituency goals.”°? This particular
technique for influencing foreign policy arose when George Logan, a white
private citizen, decided on his own to intervene when the United States ratified
the Jay Treaty with Great Britain in 1798. The French responded negatively,
and, with military force, seized U.S. ships on the high seas. Logan went to Paris
and asked the French to avoid a military crisis and defuse the situation by
releasing the hostages and expressing goodwill. The U.S. government responded
to Logan’s efforts by passing the Logan Act on January 30, 1799, an act that
prohibited individual citizens from trying to conduct official diplomatic
endeavors.°** But the government did not prosecute Logan then, and it has never
prosecuted anyone for violating this law. Throughout America’s history,
numerous individuals have engaged in citizen diplomacy. During the Vietnam
War, scores of individual citizens journeyed to Hanoi to participate and engage
in citizen diplomacy. Among them were former attorney general Ramsey Clark,
movie stars Jane Fonda and Clint Eastwood, and the 1996 Reform Party
presidential candidate H. Ross Perot.

African American Citizen Diplomats

From the time of slavery, African Americans have consistently engaged in citizen
diplomacy; for example, Frederick Douglass and many others traveled to Europe
in efforts to universalize the struggle against slavery.
As mentioned earlier, in the post-Reconstruction Era, there were forays by
George Washington Williams and Booker T. Washington into the Congo.°> At
the start of the twentieth century, Sylvester Williams and W. E. B. Du Bois
launched the Pan-African Congresses to call attention to the global oppression
of African peoples. The NAACP sent an observer to Haiti when American
occupation began. Black journalist George Schuyler went to Liberia in 1931 for
three months to investigate slavery there, and on his return, he used the data
he had amassed on forced labor and slavery to write a novel, Slaves Today:
A Story of Liberia.** In the preface to the novel he stated his objective:

If this novel can help arouse enlightened world opinion against this
brutalizing of the native population in a Negro republic, perhaps the
conscience of civilized people will stop similar atrocities in native lands
ruled by proud white nations that boast of their superior culture.‘7

The 1930s were a period of great activity. Colonel Hubert Julian, a fighter
pilot, fought for Ethiopia in that conflict and tried to serve as a diplomatic
 CHAPTER 15 > U.S. Foreign Policy 383

negotiator,°® while numerous African Americans did the same in the Spanish
civil war.>?
There were also African Americans who advocated the Soviet point of view
about the communist system and its vision of universal freedom and global peace.
Chief among them were W. E. B. Du Bois and entertainer-scholar Paul Robeson
in the 1950s and early 1960s.®
Malcolm X made numerous pilgrimages to Africa and the Middle East,
where he met with the heads of state of such nations as Egypt, Ghana, and
Tanzania. The purpose of these missions was to universalize the African freedom
struggle by developing linkages between the African and African American
leadership communities. At the time of his murder, Malcolm X was attempting
to develop support among African and other Third World nations for a UN
resolution condemning the United States for violating the human rights of its
African American citizens. Another example of a citizen diplomat was Reverend
Leon Sullivan and his articulation of the Sullivan principles (requiring equality
in employment and working conditions) in regard to American corporations
doing business in South Africa.
Reverend Jesse Jackson was continuing the long history of African American
citizen diplomats when he went to Syria to secure the release of Lieutenant
Robert O. Goodman, Jr., an African American pilot who had been shot down
in an air raid over Syria earlier in the month.*! Out of this history of black
citizen diplomats, there is a fairly discernible model and pattern.
On the whole, African American citizen diplomats have been (1) well-
known domestic leaders, (2) spokespersons for a specific issue, (3) persons
wanting to activate world public opinion, and (4) citizens who want to reshape

Reverend Jesse Jackson on one of his many exercises in citizen diplomacy. Here he
is with Cuban leader Fidel Gastro. On this mission, Jackson secured the release of
scores of political prisoners.
Source: Jacques M. Chenet/Corbis
384 PARTV > Public Policy

American foreign policy. However, the Jackson forays departed significantly

from the models of the past. They differed from past efforts because Jackson
was an announced Democratic presidential candidate in the midst of the
presidential primary season and had a long history of international human rights
missions. Jackson also had significant personal relations and friendships with
many world leaders. These domestic and global characteristics significantly
distance the Jackson model of citizen diplomat from many of his African
American predecessors. Jackson’s model was different because of his
credentials—personal and political.

The Foreign Policy of the First African

American President
President Obama during the campaign promised to change the style and
substance of U.S. foreign policy, to move away from the Bush administration’s
unilateralism and reliance on military power. He also pledged to engage the rest
of the world, including Iran and other nations defined as America’s adversaries.
With the notable exception of Israel, his election was greeted globally with
enthusiasm. To the leaders, nations, and peoples of the world, Obama—the
talented, charismatic, and multicultural son of an African—was the embodiment
of hope and change—hope for change in America’s relations with the world.
Not since John F. Kennedy had an American president inspired such sentiments.
The Nobel Committee, in recognition of this hope and in order to encourage
it, awarded Obama its peace prize after he was only several weeks in office.
In speeches in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, Obama espoused
a less confrontational, more cooperative foreign policy. The administration’s
official “National Security Strategy” document issued in the spring of 2010
explicitly repudiated his predecessor’s emphasis on unilateralism and the right
to wage preemptive war, while emphasizing international alliances and institu-
tions.°* The strategy document also emphasized the reduction and eventual
elimination of nuclear weapons, and strategies to fight global poverty and
climate change. On nuclear weapons, the president hosted a global summit and
successfully completed negotiation of a nuclear arms reduction treaty with
Russia. The president also established diplomatic relations with Cuba, ending
the 50-year-old policy of nonrecognition and isolation of Fidel Castro’s com-
munist government; negotiated with other major powers an agreement with Iran
to delay, if not stop, its development of nuclear weapons; orchestrated the Paris
Climate Agreement to curb the global growth of greenhouse gases and meliorate
global warming; and concluded the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement.
In Iraq, President Obama withdrew all U.S. combat forces by the end of 2011.
In Afghanistan, in his first term he dispatched 30,000 additional troops but near
the end of his second term the number of U.S. troops had declined to a small
 CHAPTER 15 > U.S. Foreign Policy 385

President Obama meeting with Raul Castro, President of Cuba.

Source: “President Obama and Cuban leader Raul Castro shake hands during a bilateral meeting at
the United Nations Headquarters on Sept. 29, 2015, in New York City.” 22 February 2016. Retrieved
4 October 2016 from https:/Awww.studentnewsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/RaulCastro-
Obama-820x512.png

residual force. The president’s war policies are also characterized by what he did
not do. Going against the advice of most of his military and security advisors,
he refused to intervene militarily in the Syrian civil war; refused to send arms to
the Ukraine in its conflict with Russian-backed rebels; and refused to send combat
troops to combat ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), the brutal Middle
East terrorist group. These decisions by Obama to rely on diplomacy rather than
war were sharply criticized by conservatives in Congress and the media, who
accused the president of weakening the U.S. position in global politics and
emboldening the nation’s adversaries including China, Russia, and Iran.
While Obama’s reluctance to pursue war was controversial, in general it
accorded with the African American perspective in foreign policy which shows
greater reluctance toward the pursuit of war as compared to white Americans.
It should be clear, however, that Obama’s reluctance to use military force was
relative. His administration, for example, was far more aggressive than the Bush
administration in waging the so-called war on terror, making extensive use of
drones to pursue targeted killings in Yemen, Pakistan, and East Africa. The most
important example of this aggressiveness was the May 2011 killing in Pakistan
of Osama bin-Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.
386 PARTV > Public Policy

The first U.S. president of African descent did not advance any new Africa
policy initiatives; as one scholar wrote “Lots of Hope, Not Much Change.”
Obama visited the continent on several occasions (including a visit to his
ancestral homeland, Kenya) and hosted in August 2014 a summit in Washington
of 50 African leaders to discuss issues of trade, development, and security. But
in general Africa for the first African American president was not, as it was not
for all of his predecessors, a major concern of Obama’s foreign policy.
Overall while Obama embraced diplomacy and multilateralism more than
his predecessors and to some extent changed the style and tone of U.S. foreign
policy, fundamentally the “Obama Doctrine” did not depart from the policy
priorities of his post-cold war predecessors.

Faces and Voices in the Struggle for Universal Freedom

RALPH BUNCHE (1904-1971)
Ralph Bunche contributed to the idea
of universal freedom in international
politics through his work as a founding
diplomat at the United Nations. The
first African American to be awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize (in 1950 for his
work in negotiating peace between
Arabs and Israelis in 1948), Bunche
viewed the UN as indispensable in the
maintenance of world peace and the
establishment of a rule of law that
would respect the human rights and
aspirations for freedom of all the
world’s peoples. Although President
Truman in 1949 offered him an
appointment that would have made
him the first African American assistant
secretary of state, Bunche declined, Dr. Ralph Johnson Bunche.
preferring to work as an international Source: Biography of Ralph Johnson Bunche,
rather than an American diplomat. In UN Ambassador and Recipient of the Nobel
Peace Prize 1950. Retrieved 4 October 2016
1954 he was named UN _ under- from
secretary general for political affairs, a www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureat
es/1950/bunche-bio. htm!
position he held until his death.
 CHAPTER 15 > U.S. Foreign Policy 387

Born in Detroit, the son of a barber, Bunche was graduated summa cum
laude from UCLA and in 1934 became the first African American to earn a
Ph.D. in political science from Harvard. While a professor at Howard University,
he wrote a series of monographs on black politics and leadership for the
landmark work An American Dilemma. The Negro Problem and Modern
Democracy. While at the UN, he advocated for civil rights in the United States
and marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in the famous Selma-to-Montgomery
voting rights protest. Throughout, however, he remained committed to the UN
as humankind’s last best hope for peace, freedom, and equality.

* Charles Henry, Ralph Bunche: Model Negro or American Other (New York: New York University
Press, 1999).

SumM ary Gls a

As with most areas of American life, African Americans have had to struggle
to become participants in the making of U.S. foreign policy. But since historically
foreign policy in the United States has been the almost exclusive preserve of the
white Anglo-Saxon establishment, the black struggle for inclusion here has
required innovative and creative strategies as diplomats and consuls in official
positions, as foreign policy dissenters (from the Mexican-American War to
the Vietnam War to the Iraq War), as lobbyists through interest groups such
as Trans Africa, and as “citizen-diplomats.” In all of these strategies and
approaches, African Americans have consistently pursued universal freedom,
opposing the international slave trade, imperialist wars, colonialism, and wars
of aggression—whether by Italy in Ethiopia or the United States in Vietnam.
And in their efforts to influence and shape U.S. foreign policy, the African
American minority—sometimes alone and sometimes in coalitions with whites—
has produced results that occasionally have directed and reshaped the nation’s
foreign policy in the direction of its ideal of freedom, universal freedom.

Critical Thinking Questions

1. Define “black nationality” as it relates to the African diaspora and foreign
policy. Are there similarities with black nationalism within the United
States? Explain by giving examples to support your argument.
2. Discuss the various roles African Americans have played in shaping U.S.
foreign policy.
3. From the Mexican-American War to the Iraq War, African American
leaders have been in the forefront of opposition. Explain this tradition of
antiwar dissent in African American politics.
388 PARTV > Public Policy

4. Explain how African Americans used their position as U.S. diplomats to

advance “black nationality.”
5. Discuss some techniques or strategies used by African Americans to influence
foreign policy and advance universal freedom globally.

Selected Bibliography Dla)

Clemons, Michael, ed. African Americans in Global Affairs: Contemporary Perspectives.
Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1991. A collection of essays examining
the role of African Americans in foreign policy, focusing on the role of interest groups,
black policy makers, and the Congressional Black Caucus.
DeConde, Alexander. Ethnicity, Race and American Foreign Policy: A History. Boston,
MA: Northeastern University Press, 1992. An excellent comparative history, covering
all major ethnic groups over the course of American history.
Dudziak, Mary. Cold War Civil Rights. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.
A study of how the international struggle against communism influenced the domestic
struggle for civil rights.
Goldberg, Jeffrey. “The Obama Doctrine: How He Has Shaped the World.” Atlantic,
April, 2016. A long article based on multiple interviews with the President over several
years in which Obama articulates his foreign policy worldview and the limits of
military power.
Henderson, Errol. Afrocentrism and World Politics: Toward a New Paradigm. Westport,
CT: Praeger, 1995. An important work that suggests and details a new “Afrocentric”
approach to U.S. foreign policy.
Kegley, Charles, and Eugene Wittkopf. American Foreign Policy: Pattern and Process,
3rd ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987. A good introduction to the structures
and processes of U.S. foreign policy making.
Krenn, Michael. Black Diplomacy: African Americans and the State Department,
1945-1969. Amonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998. A study of the integration of the State
Department after 1945 and the appointment of black ambassadors to Africa and other
Third World nations.
Krenn, Michael, ed. The African American Voice in U.S. Foreign Policy since World
War II. New York: Garland Publishing, 1999. A collection of articles that
demonstrates how the fight for civil rights in the United States spilled over into concerns
about the cold war and race and foreign policy.
Lusanne, Clarence. Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice: Foreign Policy, Race and the New
American Century. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006. This first book-length study of the
role of Powell and Rice in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy is critical of the two
diplomats for their failure to embrace their racial identities and stress global equality.
Miller, Jake. The Black Presence in American Foreign Affairs. Washington, DC: Howard
University Press, 1978. The standard work on the subject, with an excellent summary
and overview from a historical perspective.
Skinner, Elliot. African Americans and U.S. Policy toward Africa, 1850-1924: In Defense
of Black Nationality. Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1992. The definitive
work by the African American historian and diplomat, with detailed and
comprehensive treatment through 1924. Unsurpassed as a source.
Skinner, Elliot, and Pearl Robinson, eds. Transformation and Resiliency on Africa.
Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1983. A good collection of case studies
and a wonderful essay on the African American intelligentsia and Africa.
 CHAPTER 15 > U.S. Foreign Policy 389

Stanford, Karin. Beyond the Boundaries: Reverend Jesse Jackson in International Affairs.
Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997. A pioneering exploration of the concept of citizen
diplomacy, African American citizen diplomats, and Jesse Jackson’s role in foreign
affairs.
Tillery, Alvin. Between Homeland and Motherland: Africa, U.S. Foreign Policy and Black
Leadership. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011. A history of black elite
engagement with U.S. Africa policy, focusing on how it relates to domestic policy
concerns.

Notes e
ae e
ee e
1 Hanes Walton, Jr., Black Women at the United Nations (Irvine, CA: Borgo Press,
1995): chap. 2.
2 John Hope Franklin and Alfred Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom, 7th ed. (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1994): 391.
3 John Stanfield, II, “Preface,” in C. Johnson, ed., Bitter Canaan: The Story of the
Negro Republic (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1987): vii.
4 Jake Miller, The Black Presence in American Foreign Affairs (Washington, DC:
University Press of America, 1978): 1.
6) See “Distinguished African Americans at the Department of State,” U.S. Department
of State, FY 2008 Financial Report, Bureau of Resource Management, www.state.gov/
s/d/rm/rls/perfrpt/2008/html/112148.htm (accessed March 10, 2016).
Ibid.
Elliott Skinner, African Americans and U.S. Foreign Policy toward Africa, 1850-1924:
In Defense of Black Nationality (Washington, DC: Howard University Press): 515.
Ibid., p. 517.
Quoted in Skinner, African Americans and U.S. Policy toward Africa, p. 53.
Ibid.
Alexander DeConde, Ethnicity, Race and American Foreign Policy: A History
(Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1992): 39.
Miller, The Black Presence in American Foreign Affairs, p. 18.
Ibid., pp. 23-32. See also Norma Brown, ed., A Black Diplomat in Haiti: The
Diplomatic Correspondence of U.S. Minister Frederick Douglass from Haiti,
1889-1891 (Salisbury, NC: Documentary Publications, 1977).
Ibid., p. 32.
Skinner, African Americans and U.S. Policy toward Africa, p. 519.
Ibid., p. 517.
Ibid., pp. 520-21.
Miller, The Black Presence in American Foreign Affairs, p. 99.
Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, p. 98. See also Lamont Thomas, Rise
to Be a People: A Biography of Paul Cuffe (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986).
Skinner, African Americans and U.S. Policy toward Africa, p. 52.
Booker T. Washington, “Cruelty in the Congo Country,” Outlook 78 (October 8,
1904): 375-77.
Ibid.
Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, p. 296. See also John Hope Franklin,
George Washington Williams (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1985).
“Frederick Douglass on the Mexican American War,” in H. Aptheker, ed., A
Documentary History of the Negro People, vol. 1 (New York: Citadel Press, 1967):
267.
390 PARTV > Public Policy

25 DeConde, Ethnicity, Race and American Foreign Policy, p. 64.

26 Ibid., p. 63.
Dil Ibid., p. 65.
28 Ibid., p. 66. See also Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., “Black Americans and the Boer War,
1899-1902,” South Atlanta Quarterly 75 (Spring 1976): 234.
29 Ibid.
30 Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, p. 345.
31 Hanes Walton, Jr., “The Southwest Africa Mandate,” Faculty Research Bulletin 26
(December 1972): 94.
32 William Monroe Trotter, “How I Managed to Reach the Peace Conference,” in
P. Foner, ed., The Voice of Black America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972):
740-42.
33 See Stephen Fox, Guardian of Boston: William Monroe Trotter (New York:
Atheneum, 1971); George Padmore, “Review of the Paris Peace Conference,” Crisis
(November 1946): 331-33, 347-48; and George Padmore, “Trusteeship: The New
Imperialism,” Crisis (October 1946): 302-9.
34 Ibid.
35 Miller, The Black Presence in American Foreign Affairs, p. 235. See also J. R.
Hooker, “The Negro American Press and Africa in the 1930s,” Canadian Journal
of African Studies (March 1967): 43-50; and W. E. B. Du Bois, “Interracial
Implications of the Ethiopian Crisis,” Foreign Affairs 14 (October 1935): 1982-92.
DeConde, Ethnicity, Race and American Foreign Policy, p. 107.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 108.
Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, p. 454.
Ibid., p. 453.
Ibid., p. 236.
Ibid., p. 237. See also Mark Solomon, “Black Critics of Colonialism and the Cold
War,” in T. Patterson, ed., Cold War Critics (Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books, 1971):
205-39. For a comprehensive study of the relationship between the international
struggle against communism and the struggle for civil rights, see Mary Dudziak, Cold
War Civil Rights (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
Deconde, Ethnicity, Race and American Foreign Policy, p. 148.
Ibid.
For a discussion of King’s anti-Vietnam remarks, see Martin Luther King Jr., The
Trumpet of Conscience (New York: Harper & Row, 1968).
Wallace Terry, Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War (New York: Random
House, 1984): xvi.
Lynne Duke, “Emerging Black Anti-War Movement Rooted in Domestic Issues,”
Washington Post (February 8, 1991).
Errol Henderson, Afrocentrism and World Politics: Toward a New Paradigm
(Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995).
Hanes Walton, Jr., “African American Foreign Policy: From Decolonization to
Democracy,” in Walton, African American Power and Politics: The Political Context
Variable (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997): chap. 18.
my Ibid.
Miller, The Black Presence in American Foreign Affairs, pp. 127-242.
Dye, Karen Stanford, Beyond the Boundaries: Reverend Jesse Jackson in International
Affairs (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997): 9.
 CHAPTER 15 > U.S. Foreign Policy 391

54 Ibid., p. 19.
EP) Elliott P. Skinner, “Booker T. Washington: Diplomatic Initiatives,” in Skinner,
African Americans and U.S. Policy, pp. 291-348.
56 George Schuyler, Slaves Today: A Story of Liberia (Baltimore, MA: McGrath, 1931):
SD:
o7, Ibid., p. 6.
58 Robin Kelley, “This Ain’t Ethiopia but It’ll Do: African Americans and the Spanish
Civil War,” in Kelley, Race Rebels (New York: Free Press, 1994): 130.
2 Ibid., pp. 123-60.
60 See Gerald Horne, Black and Red: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response
to the Cold War (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1986).
61 For a short account of that rescue mission, see Wyatt Tee Walker, The Road to
Damascus (New York: Martin Luther King Jr. Fellows Press, 1985).
62 “National Security Strategy,” www.whitehouse.gov/site/default/files/rss-viewer/
national-security-strategy.pdf.
63 Peter Bergen, “Warrior in Chief,” New York Times, April 28, 2012; and David
Sanger, Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American
Power (New York: Random House, 2012).
64 Nicolas Van De Walle, “Obama and Africa: Lots of Hope, Not Much Change,”
Foreign Affairs 94 (2015), www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/obama-and-africa.
65 For a balanced overview of Obama’s foreign policy from liberal and conservative
perspectives see the special issue of Foreign Affairs, “Obama’s World: Judging His
Record” 94 (2015), www.foreignaffairs.com/press/2015-08-19/obama-5-world-
leading-experts-assess-president-5foreign-policy-record-thusfar-new. For a black
perspective see Clarence Lusane, “We Must Lead the World: The Obama Doctrine
and the Re-Branding of U.S. Hegemony,” in Charles Henry and Robert Allen, eds.,
The Obama Phenomena: Toward A Multiracial Democracy (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 2014).
mm APPENDIX Ml
Parts of the Constitution
Relating to the Presence
of Africans in America

Article |
Section 2 Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among
the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their
respective Numbers which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number
of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and
excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

Section 9 The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the

States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the
Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or
duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each
Person.

Article IV
Section 2 No Person held to Service or Labour in one State under the
Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or
Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be
delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

Article V
Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One
thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth
Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article;
392
 APPENDIX 393

Amendment Xill
[Ratified on December 6, 1865]
Section 1 Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punish-
ment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist
within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2 Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate

legislation.

Amendment XIV
[Ratified on July 9, 1868]
Section 1 All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject
to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State
wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State
deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor
deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2 Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States

according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in
each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any
election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United
States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a
State, or the members of the Legislature thereof is denied to any of the male
inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the
United States or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or
other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the
proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole
number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3 No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or

elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under
the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as
a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of
any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support
the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or
rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But
Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House remove such disability.
Section 4 The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized
by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for
394 APPENDIX

services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But

neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or
obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States,
or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave, but all such debts,
obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5 The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate
legislation, the provisions of this article.

Amendment XV
[Ratified on February 3, 1870]

Section 1 The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be
denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race,
color, or previous condition of servitude.

Section 2 The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by

appropriate legislation.
= CRS
Chapter 1: https://lasentinel.net/dr-ron-walters-
p. 12 (image 1.1), The White House scholarly-grant.html
Historical Association
p. 22 (image 1.2), “Black Patriots During Chapter 5:
the Revolution,” Varsity Tutors. Retrieved p. 99 (image 5.1) “Melissa Harris-Perry on
October 4, 2016 from https://www.google. MSNBC” Retrieved 4 October 2016 from
com/search?q=jame+forten&source=Inms www.msnbc.com/sites/msnbc/files/styles/
&tbm=isch&sa=X &ved=O0ahUKEwi3plqb headshot—260tall/public/field_headshot
ysHPAhXq7YMKHRfyDGsQ_AUICCgB _small/melissaharris-perry_s.png?itok=
& biw=12808bih=900#tbm=isch&q=jame EBYtvLMu
+forten%2C+black+and+white%2C+imag p. 99 (image 5.2) “Dorian Warren at the
e&imgrc=W9IKJUBuNnsFWIM%3A Roosevelt Institute” Retrieved 4 October
2016 from _http://rooseveltinstitute.org/
Chapter 2: dorian-warren/
p. 30 (image 2.1) Elliot Erwitt/Magnum p. 102 (image 5.3) “Legend: Ida B. Wells-
Photos Barnett, Journalist and Anti-Lynching
p. 44 (image 2.2) AP Images Crusader” National Women’s History
p. 49 (image 2.3) “AP Photo #693150408 Museum. Retrieved 4 October 2016 from
695.” AP Images. 9 December 2014. https://www.nwhm.org/html/support/event
Associate Press. Web 4 October 2016. s/depizan/ida.html

Chapter 3: Chapter 6:
p. 63 (image 3.1) Bettmann/Corbis p. 126 (image 6.1) Schomburg Center/Art
p. 66 (image 3.2) “Obama Calls for Racial Resource, NY
Understanding, Unity as Thousands Mourn p. 133 (image 6.2) S.F. Examiner/AP Images
S. C. Pastor,” Washington Post. 26 June p. 140 (image 6.3) “John Brown, 1800-
2015. Retrieved 4 October 2016 from 1859” The West, PBS. Retrieved 4 October
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ 2016 from www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/
thousands-gather-to-mourn-the-rev- people/a_c/brown.htm
clementa-pinckney-in-charleston/2015/06/
26/afO0laaae-1c0c-11e5-ab92-c7S5ae6ab Chapter 7:
94b5_story.html p. 155 (image 7.1) Malet, Jeff. “Inside
p. 68 (image 3.3) “Harry Belafonte the D.C. Statehood Senate Hearings,”
#ZZZ003917-PP-RC1” Wolfgang’s Vault. The Georgetowner. 17 September 2014.
Retrieved 4 October 2016 from http:// Retrieved 4 October 2016 from www.
images.wolfgangsvault.com/images/ georgetowner.com/articles/2014/sep/17/insi
catalog/detail/ZZZ003917-PP.jpg de-dc-statehood-senate-hearing-photos/
p. 162 (image 7.2) Eve Arnold/Magnum
Chapter 4: Photos
p. 86 (image 4.1) Edney, Hazel Trice. p. 164 (image 7.3) Zeilinger, Julie. “Maria
“Dr, Ron Walters: ‘Scholarly Grant,’” W. Stewart.” Identities.Mic. 3 March
Los Angeles Sentinel. 17 September 2015. Retrieved 4 October 2016 from
2010. Retrieved 4 October 2016 from https://images.mic.com/qhcestoueglge8
395
396 CREDITS

xiosoiud9tz6weiwycnpn9no9 8i08f0f7xzb4 Chapter 13:

8whl2ztgnybfh.jpg p. 342 (image 13.1) Undated Photo “Mayor
Unita Blackwell” Retrieved 4 October
Chapter 8: 2016 from www.fannielouhamer.info/
p. 175 (image 8.1) Bettmann/Corbis blackwell. html
p. 176 (image 8.2) Bettmann/Corbis
p. 187 (image 8.3) Photo retrieved 4 October Chapter 14:
2016 from www.marketsmithinc.com/wp- p. 366 (image 14.1) 1972 Photo “Johnnie
content/uploads/2013/02/Chisholm. gif Tillmon,” Ms. Magazine. California State
University Long Beach University Library,
Digital Repository. Retrieved 4 October
Chapter 9:
p. 214 (image 9.1) Brady, Mathew. “John 2016 from http://symposia.library.csulb.
Mercer Langston.” Library of Congress edu/iii/cpro/CollectionViewPage.external;
jsessionid=02D6733D0B0C07699931838
Prints and Photographs Division. Brady-
Handy Photograph Collection. Retrieved 4 383D1C94E?lang=&sp=1000076
&suite
October 2016 from http://hdl.loc.gov =def

Chapter 15:
Chapter 10:
p. 383 (image 15.1) Jacques M. Chenet/
p. 234 (image 10.1) Getty Images/CQ Roll
Corbis
Call/Meredith Dake
p. 385 (image 15.2) “President Obama and
p. 241 (image 10.2) AP Photo/Ric Feld
Cuban leader Raul Castro shake hands
during a bilateral meeting at the United
Chapter 11: Nations Headquarters on Sept. 29, 2015,
p. 260 (image 11.1) Cecil Stoughton/LBJ in New York City.” 22 February 2016.
Library Collection Retrieved 4 October 2016 from https://
p. 280 (image 11.2) Gordon Parks/Getty www.studentnewsdaily.com/wp-content/
Images uploads/2016/02/RaulCastro-Obama-
p. 288 (image 11.3) Michael Bryant/MCT/ 820x512.png
Newscom p. 386 (image 15.3) Biography of Ralph
Johnson Bunche, UN Ambassador and
Chapter 12: Recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize 1950.
p. 303 (image 12.1) Bettmann/Corbis Retrieved 4 October 2016 from www.
p. 321 (image 12.2) Collection of the nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates
Supreme Court of the United States /1950/bunche-bio. html
 INDEX
Note: Page numbers followed by ‘b’, ‘f’, ‘I’ and ‘t’ refer to boxes, figures, illustrations and tables
respectively.

abolition of slavery Patient Protection and black nationality, concept of

in District of Columbia 235 Affordable Care Act of 373-376
Massachusetts first state to 2010 (‘Obamacare’) Black Panther Party 132b-133b
abolish 28 319b black population in segregated
by second Thirteenth Philadelphia Plan 262b states 28f
Amendment 251b policy making 262b-264b black power movement
slave trade. see slave trade and Reagan, Ronald 263b and black consciousness 134
abolitionism Regents of the University Black Panther Party
abolitionist coalition of California v. Bakke 132b-133b
113-115 263-264b, 267, 314-315 group-based identification
American Anti-Slavery Supreme Court and 40, 298, (‘Group Benefit’ response
Society 114 300, 305b-306b, 313-319 measure) 134t
Antebellum Era 28 and Trump, Donald 209 interest group organizations,
Congress and 235 women and 117, 155b creation of new 134-135
feminism and 115-117 African immigrants, affirmative as model for other rights
abortion 41, 85, 157-158, action and 123, 124 movements 135
158 Alexander v. Sandoval 320 origins 130-131
Adams, John 7 alienation from government radicalist and reformist
Adams, John Quincy 19b, 235 77-79 directions 131-135, 132f
affirmative action American Anti-Slavery Society ‘black spaces’. see community
African immigrants and 123, 114 institutions (‘black spaces’)
124 anti-colonialism 376-378 Blackwell, Unita 342-343, 342i
and Bush, George W. anti-racism role of media 93 ‘Blue Dogs’ (Democratic
263-264b, 267 Aptheker, Herbert 6 Leadership Council) 231
California abolition of 263b autonomy Boer War 377
and Carter, Jimmy 261, freedom as 5 Booker, Cory 225
263b public support for 82t Boorstin, Daniel 9b
and Census Bureau racial Bork, Robert 27, 29
categorization 284 Baker v. Carr 225, 321 Breyer, Stephen 311
and Civil Rights Act of 1964 Bakke, Allan 262b—264b Brooke, Edward 225
236, 354, 355b Bakke case 263-264b, 267, Brooks, Preston 238b
Cleveland Plan 262b 314-315 Brown, John 115, 139-140,
and Clinton, Bill 182, 263b, balance of power, holding of 140i
265, 319 M2. Brown v. Board of Education
Davis Plan 262b Bannon, Steve 12 303b, 307, 308, 321
Democratic Party and 174 Barbe-Marbois, Francois 11b Buchanan, Pat 11-12
in education 314-317 Barrett, Edith 330-331 Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen
employment 317-318 Belafonte, Harry 68-69 and Abandoned Lands. see
Executive Orders 250b, 261, Bethune, Mary McLeod 279, Freedmen’s Bureau
262b 280i Bureau of the Census. see
and Fletcher, Arthur 287-288 Bevin, Matt 34b Census Bureau
government contractors and Biafra 379 bureaucracy. see federal
250b, 261, 277, 318-319 Bill of Rights, Supreme Court bureaucracy
housing policy 274 Decisions 42t Bush, George H. W.
and Nixon, Richard 261, Birth of aNation (film) 285 and Civil Rights Act of 1990
262b Black Lives Matter (BLM) 264
and Obama’s ‘Deracial- 136-139, 274 federal court appointments
ization’ strategy 181 Black Muslims. see Nation of 298
opposition to 80, 204, 205 Islam and Holder, Eric 288

397
398 Index

Persian Gulf War 379 citizen diplomacy, history of Clyburn, James 232
Supreme Court appointments 381-382 coalition politics
264-265, 302 citizen diplomats in action abolitionism and feminism
Bush, George W. 382-384 115-117
and affirmative action civic freedom 5 abolitionist coalition
263-264b, 267 civil rights 113-115
attitudes and policies on race defined 5 Black Lives Matter (BLM)
266-267 and expansion of federal 136-139
civil rights enforcement power 21 black power movement
286-287 presidents’ attitudes and 130-135
election as President 18b, 19b policies 253-275 Civil Rights Movement
federal bureaucracy Civil Rights Act of 1875 258 125-130
appointments 281-282, Civil Rights Act of 1957 277 ‘coalition’ defined 110
283 Civil Rights Act of 1960 277 coalition partners,
and Haiti 267 Civil Rights Act of 1964 1760-present 112f
and Hurricane Katrina 267 affirmative action 236, 354, and ethnic diversity
Iraq war 379 355b 123-125
and King, Martin Luther, Jr. enactment 236 future non-white majority
266 equal employment 305b, coalition 122-123
and Liberia 266 355b immigration and 122-125
Supreme Court appointments federal bureaucracy interracial coalitions (black
298, 302 appointments 286 and white) 110
Voting Rights Act renewal race-oriented federal intraracial coalitions (black-
236, 311 bureaucratic units 277 only) 110
school desegregation 307 labor movement 119-120
California, abolition of and universal freedom 28, 29 Left (socialists and
affirmative action 263b Civil Rights Act of 2008 237, communists) 120
Canon, David 229 239 limited freedom coalition
Carmichael, Stokely 10 civil rights legislation (Booker T. Washington)
Carson, Andre 231 enactment 235-241, 236t 117-118
Carson, Julia 231 reversal of Supreme Court material-based coalitions
Carter, Jimmy decisions 237-239 defined 111
and affirmative action 261, universal freedom and 29 National Association for
263b civil rights movement the Advancement of
federal bureaucracy about 37-38 Colored People (NAACP)
appointments 281, 282 as model for other rights 125-128
federal court appointments movements 37-38 New Deal coalition, collapse
298 civil service. see federal of 172-174
and Humphrey-Hawkins Act bureaucracy populist movement 118-119
240, 261 Cleveland, Grover 19b, 258, post-—civil rights era 135-140
and Jackson, Jesse 372 279 presidential election 2016
Castro, Fidel 383i Cleveland Plan for affirmative 210-213
caucuses, congressional action 262b progressive movement 119
230-231 Clinton, Bill rainbow coalitions 121-122,
celebrity impact on politics and affirmative action 182, 210-213
100-101 263b, 265, 319 rights-based coalition defined
census attitudes and policies on race ela
and House reapportionment 265-266 Southern Christian
and redistricting 227 executive orders (E.O.s) 249b Leadership Conference
statistical sampling 227-228 federal bureaucracy (SCLC) 129-130
undercounting of minorities appointments 281, 282, theme of 110
227 283 theory of 110-113
Census Bureau, racial federal court appointments Coleman, Major 67b
categorization 284b 298 collective deliverance 5
Chisholm, Shirley 176i, Haiti intervention 379 collective experience and
187-188, 1871 opposition to welfare 239 memory, political
Choate, Rufus 9b Clinton, Hillary socialization role 62-64,
Christianity. see church Democratic presidential 65-68
church nomination 2016 205-208 committees of the House 232,
political socialization role 62, rainbow coalition, Obama 235t
64-65, 66b-67b coalition compared communal issues, women’s
strength of 66b-67b 210-213 concern for 85
 Index 399

communism Dahl, Robert 297 and Mexican-American War

coalition politics 120 data surveys of voting behavior Bui
universal freedom as defense 196-197 militant abolitionism
against 379 Davis Plan for affirmative 114-115
community institutions (‘black action 262b on Reconstruction Era 35-36
spaces’) de Tocqueville, Alexis 12b, and Republican Party 170
political socialization role 248-249, 252 and state power 35-36
65 Declaration of Independence and Sumner, Charles 238b
public opinion shaping role drafting of 7-8, 9b, 11b Dred Scott v Sanford 9b, 297
85 slave trade and 7-8 Du Bois, W. E. B. 4,
Compromise of 1877 258 Democratic Leadership Council 126b-128b, 326, 328, 361,
Congress (‘Blue Dogs’) 231 373
abolition of slavery 235 Democratic Party Duke, David 10
apology for slavery 239 and affirmative action 174 Dunne, Finley Peter 297
civil rights legislation leadership 231-232
235-241, 236t party politics 172-174 Easley v. Cromartie 310-311
demographic make-up of power structure 231-234 economic inequality
114th Congress 225t support for 171 growth of 364-365
descriptive representation Democratic primary vote 2008 power and 226
224-226 ideology and issues 181 economic well-being
differential representation of Obama campaign 180-183 and Great Recession 363
wealthy and nonwealthy race and gender measures of 357t
226 demographics 181-183 universal freedom and
as first branch of government demographic analysis of voters 356-357
223 LOT 199¢ education
race and representation demographic make-up of 114th affirmative action in 314-317
229-230 Congress 225t political socialization in
representation in 224-226 DePriest, Oscar 224 schools 62
and rights-based issues 235 ‘Deracialization’ strategy 181 school desegregation cases in
and slave petitions 235 descriptive representation Supreme Court 306-309
substantive representation in Congress 224-226 unemployment and 361-362
224, 226 in states 330-334 Edwards, Donna 231
symbolic representation 224, digital media 96 Edwards, George 272b
226 Dillion, John 328 Egerton, Douglas 326
and universal freedom diplomacy. see foreign policy Eisenhower, Dwight
235-239 disenfranchisement of felons executive orders (E.O.s) 250b
Congressional Black Caucus 33b-34b federal bureaucracy
(CBC) 230-231, 240 diversity appointments 279
congressional districts 231-232 within black public opinion and race 259-260
congressional elections 85 Supreme Court appointments
in 2016 213-215 and coalition politics 302, 321
reapportionment and 123-125 and Warren, Earl 321
redistricting 227-228 presidential candidates in elections
conservatism as ideology 80-82 2016 election 197, 200 congressional elections
Constitution in Republican Party 234 213-215
African Americans in 13 Dixon, Thomas 285-286 presidential elections. see
Bill of Rights 20 domestic policy presidential elections
branches of government 223 material-based rights and voting behavior. see voting
federalism 20 issues 150-156, 239-242, behavior
formation of 12-13, 19-21 351-371 Electoral College, slavery and
freedom and 17-18 Obama administration 268 18b-19b
parts relating to black people Douglas, Stephen 9b electoral strategies by black vote
13, 353-355 Douglass, Frederick 171
principles 19-21 citizen diplomacy 382 Elijah Muhammad 162-163,
separation of powers 20 and Compromise of 1877 162i
slavery and 13, 17 L7, Ellison, Keith 231
Supreme Court interpretation and feminism 116 Emancipation Proclamation. see
299-302 and Grant, Ulysses S. 257, Gettysburg Address
Continental Congress 7 281 employment
Conyers, John 33 on immigration 122 affirmative action 317-318
criminal justice system 361-362 and Lincoln, Abraham 250, demands for jobs 240
Crist, Charlie 33 252, 281 legislation 240-241
400 Index

Obama administration job and Douglass, Frederick 116 Garrison, William Lloyd
creation measures 357-358 focus on communal issues 85 114-115
unemployment. see as ideology 83-85 Garvey, Marcus 118, 124, 159,
unemployment interest groups 156-158 162-163, 188
women 359 intersectionality 84 gender
Employment Act of 1946 240 Fletcher, Arthur 287-288 and Democratic primary vote
environmental influences on Foner, Eric 5, 36 2008 181-183
political socialization 62 Ford, Gerald 261, 281, 288, feminism. see feminism
‘environmental racism’, poverty 302 race and 84, 330-331
and 359, 361 foreign policy George III, King 7
Ethiopia, Italian invasion of activism and criticism Gettysburg Address 9b, 44b
377-378 376-380 Gilens, Martin 226
ethnic diversity. see diversity anti-colonialism 376-378 Gingrich, Newt 239
executive orders (E.O.s) black nationality, concept of Ginsberg, Ruth Bader 303b,
civil rights 249b-250b 373-376 S1285i6
president’s power to make citizen diplomacy, history. of globalization and
249b 381-382 unemployment 356
citizen diplomats in action Gore, Albert 19b
Fair Pay Restoration Act of 382-384 government
2009 237 initiatives, sources and alienation from or distrust
family as agent of political outcomes of 381f of 77-79
socialization 61 Obama administration sovereign power of
Farrakhan, Louis 64, 155b, 384-386 31-32
162, 163 Trans Africa lobby 380-381 government contractors,
Farrakhan v. Gregoire 34b and universal freedom affirmative action and
Feagin, Joe R. 13 372-373 250b, 261, 277, 318-319
Federal Bureau of Investigation Forten, James 21-22, 221 Grant, Ulysses S. 257, 279,
(FBI) 278 ‘forty acres and a mule’ 160b, 280, 281
federal bureaucracy 238b Gray, Bill 231-232
agencies 275 Fourteenth Amendment ‘Great Migration’ 29
appointments to 279-283, as charter of universal Great Recession
282t freedom 38, 239 and economic well-being
cabinet departments 275 controversies over 38-39 363
civil servants 283-286 and interracial or mixed unemployment and 357
Executive Office of the marriages 284b Great Society
President 275 Supreme Court and 39-43 about 37-38
government corporations 275 Franklin, Benjamin 7, 13 and expansion of federal
independent agencies 275 Franklin, John Hope 3-4 power 21
independent regulatory Fredrickson, George 250 initiation of 261
commissions 275 Freedmen’s Bureau 3, 36, 115, Greeley, Horace 247, 248
president as head of 275 277 Grenada, invasion of 379
race missions 277-279 Freedmen’s Bureau Act of 1865 Griffith, D. W. 285
structure of 275-276, 276f 160b, 170, 239, 257 group-based identification
Weber’s definition of freedom (‘Group Benefit’ response
bureaucracy 275 as autonomy 5 measure) 134t
federal court appointments 298, civic freedom 5
299t collective deliverance 6 Haiti 124, 215, 252, 265, 267,
federal power, expansion of 21 Constitution and 17-18 2793735 STANTS OND
federalism defined 3-7 380, 382
about 27-29 Fourteenth Amendment Hamilton, Charles 10
advantages and disadvantages 38-43 Hammond, James 235
32-35 liberal freedom 5 Harris, Patricia Roberts 261
concept of 20 meanings of 5-6 Harrison, Benjamin 19b, 258,
felons’ right to vote 33b-34b participatory freedom 5 372
national-centered versus sovereignal (organic) freedom Harris-Perry, Melissa 99
state-centered 35, 43 Hawkins, Augustus 240-241
origins and operations of typologies of 4-6, St Hayes, George 303i
29-31 universal. see universal Hayes, Rutherford B. 19b,
and sovereign power 29 freedom 258
felons’ right to vote 33b-34b freedom rides 68, 137, 242 health ;
feminism Freehling, William 13 Obama administration
differences within 84 Fugitive Slave Act 28 measures 270
 Index 401

‘Obamacare’. see Patient resource constraint 150-156 Kaplan, Abraham 6

Protection and Affordable structure of 150t Kennedy, Anthony 32
Care Act of 2010 think tanks 152b-153b Kennedy, Edward 238b-239b
(‘Obamacare’) women’s 156-158 Kennedy, John F.
racism and 360b-361b interracial political coalitions executive orders (E.O.s) 250b
and voting power 360b 110 federal bureaucracy
Henderson, Wade 152i intersectionality of feminism 84 appointments 281
Hill, Anita 265, 298 intraracial political coalitions federal court appointments
Hogan, Larry 34b 110 298
Holder, Eric 282, 283, 287 Islam. see Nation of Islam and Kennedy, Edward 238b,
Hoover, Herbert 373 239b
Hoover, J. Edgar 278 Jackson, Andrew 19b Obama administration
House of Representatives Jackson, Henry 176i compared 268-269
caucuses 230-231 Jackson, Jesse and race 260-261
committees 232, 233t citizen diplomacy 383, 383i Supreme Court appointments
Congressional Black Caucus and King, Martin Luther, Jr. 302
(CBC) 230-231 66b King, Martin Luther, Jr.
congressional districts and Obama administration assassination 44b, 240
231-232 273 and Bush, George W. 266
Democratic Party leadership and Obama campaign 169, and FBI 278
231-232 174, 179, 180, 181, 273 federal holiday
Democratic Party power presidential campaigns 64, commemorating 279
structure 231-234 67b, 77, 87, 120, and Jackson, Jesse 66b
direct election to 20 121-122, 163, 188, 194 leadership of SCLC 129-130
Muslim representation 231 rainbow coalition 111, and Lewis, John 241
representation in 224 121-122 Lincoln Memorial speech
size 227 and Roe v. Wade 158 44b, 441, 240
women’s representation 229 as special representative plan for poor people’s march
housing policy, affirmative 372 on Washington 240
action 274 Jefferson, Thomas and Vietnam War 379
Howard, Oliver O. 3 black descendents 266 Washington memorial to 242
Humphrey, Hubert 176i, 240 and Declaration of King, Richard 5
Humphrey-Hawkins Act of Independence 7-8, 9b Ku Klux Klan 327
1978 240-241 Lincoln quote 44b
Hutchings, Vincent 269 and natural rights 5 Langston, John Mercer
Hyman, Herbert 60-61 Notes on Virginia 10, 214-215, 2141
11b-12b Lasswell, Harold 6
‘T have a dream’ (Lincoln portrait 12i Leadership Conference on Civil
Memorial speech). see racism 8, 10, 11b-12b (and Human) Rights
King, Martin Luther, Jr. and slavery 8, 257 (LCCR) 154b-155b
ideology and state power 31 Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire
conservatism 80-82, 85 as white supremacist 8, 10 257)
feminism 83-85 ‘Jim Crow’ 30b legislation
liberalism 79-80, 85 jobs. see employment defined 223
nationalism 82-83 Johnson, Andrew 239, 257 and representation 223
immigration. see migration Johnson, Lyndon Leopold II, King of the Belgians
inferiority of black people, idea and Civil Rights Act of 1964 376
of 11-12 260i, 261 Lewis, John 237, 241-242,
informal institutions (‘black executive orders (E.O.s) 2411
spaces’). see community 250b liberal freedom 5
institutions (‘black spaces’) federal bureaucracy liberalism as ideology 21, 79-80
institutional racism appointments 281 Liberia 252, 266, 279, 373,
defined 320 federal court appointments 374, 375, 382
individual’s right to challenge 298 life, liberty, and the pursuit of
319-320 Great Society 261 happiness (natural rights) 5
interest groups Supreme Court appointments limited freedom coalition
growth of 149 297, 302 117-118
nationalist movements Joint Center for Political and Lincoln, Abraham
contrasted 158 Economic Studies assassination 44b
policy agenda 150-156 152b-153b colonialization policy 252
range of 149 Jones, Mack 6-7 commander-in-chief clause,
resource comparison 153t journalism. see media use of 251-252
402 Index

and Declaration of media nationalism as ideology 82-83

Independence 9b about 93-95 nationalist movements
and Douglass, Frederick 250, anti-racism role 93 historical progression
252, 281 black Americans working in 158-163
Emancipation Proclamation 96-98 interest groups contrasted
(Gettysburg Address) 44b, celebrity impact on politics 158
251-252 100-101 natural rights 5
executive orders (E.O.s) conglomerates 95b New Deal
249b coverage of black Americans about 36-37
and first Thirteenth 98-100 and expansion of federal
Amendment 251b digital media 96 power 21
and Haiti 252 percentage of black New Deal coalition, collapse of
and Liberia 252 Americans 97t 172-174
and Pan African political scientists on New York v. United States 43
consciousness 374 television 99b-100b newspapers. see media
as paradigmatic president political socialization role 62, Nigerian civil war (Biafran
248-252 93 secession) 379
as pragmatic white positive imaging role 93 Nixon, Richard
supremacist 250 in post—civil rights era 101 and affirmative action 261,
and second Thirteenth median net worth 363-364 262b
Amendment 251b, 252 Mexican-American War 377 and Biafra 379
and slavery 247, 250-251 migration executive orders (E.O.s)
and state power 31 African immigrants and 250b, 261
and universal freedom affirmative action 123 federal court appointments
247-248 and coalition politics 298
view on integration 12b 122-125 and Holder, Eric 288
Lincoln, C. Eric 66b Douglass, Frederick on 122 Supreme Court appointments
Lincoln Memorial speech. see ‘Great Migration’ 29 302
King, Martin Luther, Jr. hostility to 122 Notes on Virginia (Jefferson)
local representation 340-341 Mill, John Stuart 223 10, 11b-12b
Locke, John 223 Million Man March 32, 33b
Louisiana, Colfax, 327 Mississippi Obama, Barak
Louisiana, registered voter felons’ right to vote 33b early life and career 178
percentage 196t largest percentage black election to Senate 178, 225,
Love, Mia 234 population 33b 336
Loving v. Virginia 284b, 321 Mississippi Freedom eulogy by 66i
Democratic Party 175b Obama administration
Madison, James 13, 14, 18b, Mosley-Braun, Carol 225 affirmative action on housing
20 Muhammad Ali 100, 372, 379 274
Malcolm X 63b, 131, 162, music, political socialization beginning of 267
162i, 373, 383 role 62 civil rights enforcement
Mamiya, Lawrence 66b Muskie, Edmund 176i 286-287
March on Washington (1963) domestic policy 268
44b, 240 Nabrit, James 303i executive orders (E.O.s) 250b
Marshall, Thurgood 19, Nation of Islam 155, 162-163 federal bureaucracy
297-298, 302, 303i National Association for the appointments 282-283,
Massachusetts Advancement of Colored 286
abolition of slavery 28 People (NAACP) federal court appointments
‘freedom’s birthplace’ 238b and federal bureaucracy 298
material-based economic and appointments 286 first act signed 237
social issues 356-366 foundation 125, 128 foreign policy 384-386
material-based political leadership 128 health insurance 270
coalitions litigation strategy 128-129, and Jackson, Jesse 273
defined 111 302, 303b job creation measures
historical progression lobbying strategy 128-129 357-358
118-125 Obama’s 2015 address at 273 and Kennedy, John F.
material-based rights 150-156, persuasion strategy 128-129 268-269
239-242 National Coalition of Blacks for ‘otherization’ and
Mauro, Tony 305b-306b Reparations (NCOBRA) polarization of 272b-273b
Mayfield, Curtis 63b, 63: 160b popularity 274-275
McAuliffe, Terry 34b National Coalition on Black poverty reduction 270-271
McGovern, George 176i Voter Participation 33 and race 268-271
 Index 403 |

Republican dominance of support for Republican Party parties. see party politics
state politics 339-340 WO=1 7A 72 philosophy and 12-13
Supreme Court appointments voting behavior. see voting power and 6-7
304, 306 behavior public opinion. see public
Obama campaign Patient Protection and opinion
coalition strategies, Jesse Affordable Care Act of positive imaging role of media
Jackson compared 179 2010 (‘Obamacare’) 93
Democratic partisanship 174 affirmative action 319b post-industrial America,
‘Deracialization’ strategy effect of 360b unemployment in 354-356
181 Patterson, Orlando 3, 4 poverty
gender and Democratic Pennsylvania Society for ‘environmental racism’ 359,
primary vote 181-183 Promoting the Abolition of 361
and Kennedy, Edward 239b Slavery 7 Obama administration
organization and strategy People, sovereign power of The reduction measures
180-182, 186 31-32 270-271
presidential election 2008 Philadelphia Plan for affirmative unemployment and 358-361
183-185 action 262b Powell, Adam Clayton 224
presidential election 2012 philosophy, politics and 12-13 Powell, Colin 124, 282
185-187 Pickering, Timothy 15-19 power
race and Democratic primary Plessy v. Ferguson 30b, black voters as balance of
vote 181-183 306-307 power 172
race and presidential election political culture and economic inequality 226
2008 184-185 about 57 expansion of federal power
race and presidential election commonly shared values of 21
2012 12, 186-187 SH national-centered versus
significance 169 defined 57 state-centered 35
‘Obamacare’. see Patient distinctiveness of black 58 politics and 6-7
Protection and Affordable elements of 58-60 presidential candidates in 2016
Care Act of 2010 political socialization. see election, diversity of 197,
(‘Obamacare’) political socialization 200
O’Connor, Sandra Day 31, 43, subcultures 58 presidential election 2008
310, 311 political participation, exclusion Obama campaign 183-185
‘one person, one vote’ decisions from 109 presidential election 2012
by Supreme Court 224, political parties. see party demographic categories 212t
228, 321 politics Obama campaign 185-187
Ornstein, Norman 268 political rights 5 presidential election 2016
political science, power and 6-7 Clinton’s and Obama’s
Pan African consciousness 374 political scientists on television rainbow coalitions
Paris Peace Conference 1919 99b-100b compared 210-213
SW political socialization Clinton’s nomination
participatory freedom $5 black Americans 60-61 205-208
party politics church’s role 62, 64-65, demographic categories 212t
black voters as balance of 66b-67b diversity of candidates 197,
power 172 collective experience and 200
collapse of New Deal memory as agents 62-64, ethnic identity politics 200
coalition 172-174 65-68 extraordinariness of 197,
democratization of defined 60 200
Democratic Party 174-176 environment as agent 62 progression of 208-209
electoral strategies 171 family’s role 61 race and 209-210
exclusion of black people Hyman, Herbert, study by Trump’s nomination
(‘no-party system’) 60-61 201-205
169-170 informal institutions of presidential election, effect of
Mississippi Freedom (‘black spaces’) 65 felony disenfranchisement
Democratic Party 175b media’s role 62, 93 33b-34b
Obama campaign. see music as agent 62 presidents’ racial attitudes and
Obama campaign in schools 62 policies
proportional representation, politics Antebellum Era 257
prospects for 171b as black/white power struggle Civil Rights Era 259-261
race and polarized politics 6-7 Post-Civil Rights Era 261
177-178 celebrity impact on 100-101 Post—Reconstruction Era
support for Democratic Party coalition politics. see 258-259
171, 172-174 coalition politics Reconstruction Era 257-258
404 Index

Revolutionary Era 257 Voting Rights Act renewal Schattsneider, E. E. 35

summary of 253 264 school desegregation cases in
typology of 254t-256t Reconstruction Era Supreme Court 306-309
press. see media ending of 327 schools, political socialization in
proportional representation, and expansion of federal 62
prospects for 171b power 21, 35, 36 segregated states, African
public opinion social and economic reforms American population 28f
alienation from or distrust of BL segregation
government 77-79 universal freedom 326 imposition of 29
black. see black public Regents of the University of ‘Jim Crow’ 30b
opinion California v. Bakke in southern states 30b
celebrity impact on politics 263-264b, 267, 314-315 Selma, Alabama, ‘bloody
100-101 registered voters. see voter Sunday’ demonstration
defined 74 registration eld
diversity within 85 Rehnquist, William 45, 46, 47, Senate
liberal consensus within 85 48, 302, 319 election to 335-337
shaping of 85 religion. see church representation in 225
support for African American reparation, movement for Sharpton, Al 95b, 99b, 163,
autonomy 82t 160b-161b 181
white. see white public representation, legislation and Shaw v. Reno 309-310
opinion 223 Shelby County Alabama v.
women voters 85 Republican Party Holder 311-313
dominance of state politics in Skinner, Elliot P. 374
race Obama Era 339-340 slave petitions, Congress and
gender and 84, 330-331 ethnic diversity 234 235
interracial political coalitions leadership 232 Slave Power 13
110 support for 170-171, 172 slave states
and Obama campaign Republican Party Conference additional electoral votes
182-187 232 17£
and polarized politics Rice, Condoleezza 282 additional seats in House of
177-178 Richardson, Heather Cox 327 Representatives 15f, 16f
white public opinion on rights, typologies of 5 slave trade
74-76 rights-based policy issues abolition of 235
racial categorization by Census Congress and 235 and Declaration of
Bureau 284b interest groups and 150-156 Independence 7-8
racial segregation. see rights-based political coalitions slavery
segregation defined 111 abolition. see abolition of
racism early movements 113-118 slavery
about 1-8 later movements 125-135 abolitionism. see abolitionism
defined 8-12 Riker, William 3, 27-28, 29, 35 about 1-8
inferiority of black people, Riley, Richard 249 apology by Congress 239
idea of 11-12 Roberts, John G. 45, 48, Constitution and 13, 17
institutional racism 319-320 312-313, 319 and Electoral College
symbolic racism, Obama and Robertson, Pat 66b 18b-19b
76-77 Robinson, Donald 14, 19, pre-Revolution America 8
white public opinion on 20-21 taxation and 13-14
74-76 Roe v. Wade 41, 85, 157-158, Three-Fifths Clause 13-19
rainbow coalitions. see coalition 158 social movements
politics Roosevelt, Eleanor 48-49, 49i, about 109-110
Randolph, A. Phillip 259 258 coalition politics. see
Reagan, Ronald Roosevelt, Franklin D. coalition politics
and affirmative action 263b, ‘black cabinet’ 281 defined 110
264 executive orders (E.O.s) 249b interest groups defined 110
federal bureaucracy federal bureaucracy social rights 5
appointments 281, 282 appointments 281 socialism, coalition politics
federal court appointments federal court appointments 120
298 298 Southern Christian Leadership
and Great Society 261 and race 258-259 Conference (SCLC), protest
and Grenada invasion 379 Supreme Court appointments strategy 129-130
and Holder, Eric 288 302 southern states
Supreme Court appointments Roosevelt, Theodore 258 ‘Great Migration’ to North
302 Rousseau, Jean Jacques 9b 29
 Index 405
percentage of voting-age Supreme Court Three-Fifths Clause 13-19, 15f,
citizens 196, 197t activism versus restraint 16f, 17£, 18b
Reconstruction Era. see 299-302 Tilden, Samuel J. 19b
Reconstruction Era and affirmative action 40, Tillmon, Johnnie 365-366, 366i
segregation. see segregation 298, 300, 305b-306b, Truman, Harry
and Three-Fifths Clause 313-319 executive orders (E.O.s)
13-19 appointments to 297-298 249b
sovereign power civil rights judgments, foreign policy appointments
federal or state? 31-32 reversal by Congress - 372
federalism and 29 237-239 and race 259
sovereignal (organic) freedom 5 constitutional interpretation Supreme Court appointments
Spann, Girardeau 301-302 299-302 302
state courts, representation in declarations of Trump, Donald
338-339, 338t unconstitutionality 300, and affirmative action 209
State Department, appointments 301t and Bannon, Steve 11-12
to 373 and equal employment and Duke, David 10
states 305b-306b Republican presidential
African Americans in state and executive orders (E.O.s) nomination 2016 201-205
legislatures 331, 332t-333t 249b
constitutionalism and and Fourteenth Amendment unemployment
federalism in 327-329 39-43 crime and 362
descriptive representation in and House reapportionment education and 361-362
330-334 and redistricting 227 globalization and 356
governors 335-336 ideological inclinations of Great Recession 357
institutional racism 319-320 justices 304t historical and systemic
political representation and individual challenge to context 353-354
policy responsiveness institutional racism, right ‘necessary’ level under
329-338 of 319-320 capitalism 354
race and gender of state law clerk appointments, post-industrial America
lawmakers 330-331 white male dominance 354-356
Republican dominance in 305b-306b poverty and 358-361
Obama Era 339-340 material-based cases 302, race and racism 355b-356b
senators 336 313-319 rate of 357-358
sovereign power of 31-32 ‘one person, one vote’ skills mismatch 356
state-centered federalism 35, decisions 224, 228, 321 spatial mismatch 356
43 as political institution 297 United Jewish Organizations v.
statewide offices, Congress precedent (stare decisis), Carey 309-310
members elected to adherence to 300 United Nations, representatives
336-337 as racist institution 297 to 372
statewide offices, election to rights-based cases 302, universal freedom
335-337 306-313 civil rights legislation and
substantive representation in and universal freedom 29
334-335 299-302 Congress and 235-239
and Tenth Amendment Warren Court 300 declaration of 41-43
328 Swain, Carol 229 as defense against
statistical sampling use in symbolic racism, Obama and communism 379
census 227-228 76-77 denial of 39-41, 170
statistical surveys of voting and economic well-being
behavior 196-197 Taney, Roger B. 9b, 296-297 356-357
Stevens, John Paul 31-32, 300, Tate, Katherine 229-230 and expansion of federal
310 taxation power 21
Stevens, Thaddeus 238b Reconstruction Era 327 foreign policy and 372-373
Stewart, Maria W. 164-165, slavery and 13-14 and Fourteenth Amendment
164i television. see media 39-43, 239
Student Nonviolent Tenth Amendment 328 presidents’ attitudes and
Coordinating Committee Texas Department of Housing policies 253-275
(SNCC) 241-242 and Community Reconstruction Era 326
subcultures, political 58 Development, et al. v. theme of 110
substantive representation Inclusive Communities women and 83
in Congress 224, 226 Project Inc. et al 320 women’s quest for 156-158
in states 334-335 Thomas, Clarence 31-32, U.S. Term Limits Inc. et al. v.
Sumner, Charles 238b, 374 264-265, 298, 311, 312 Thornton et al 31
406 Index

Vietnam War, opposition to Voting Rights Act of 1965 white people, dominant
379 anti-discrimination measures (superordinate) position as
Vilsack, Tom 34b AUD to black people 6-7
voter registration and voting declaration of white public opinion
levels compared 196-197, unconstitutionality Obama impact on symbolic
198t 311-312 racism 76-77
voters preclearance provision on race and racism 74-76
balance of power held by 329 white supremacy defined 8-12
172 renewal of 236-237, 311 Wilson, Woodrow 34-35, 258,
demographic correlates 197, Supreme Court cases 309, 285-286
199t 311-313 women
‘one person, one vote’ voting-age citizens, percentage and affirmative action 117,
decisions by Supreme in southern states 196, 155b
Court 224, 228, 321 197t employment 359
reapportionment and federal court appointments
redistricting 227-228 Walters, Alexander 377 _ 298
registered voter percentage Walters, Ronald 86-87, 861, feminism. see feminism
in Louisiana 196t 273 interest groups 156-158
voting behavior Warren, Dorian 99 opinion on communal issues
data surveys 196-197 Warren, Earl 300, 302, 85
historical progression 306-307, 320--321, race over gender as dominant
194-196 321i issue 84
presidential election 2016 Washington, Booker T. 80, representation in Congress
197-210 117-118,
127b, 159, 258, 226, 229
voting power, health and 281, 375, 382 Supreme Court litigation
360b Watts, J. C. 232 303b
voting rights wealth inequality 364-365 and universal freedom 83
felons 33b-34b Weber, Max 6 Woodward, C. Vann 30b
suppression of 19b Wells-Barnett, Ida B. 102 Wynn, Albert 231
Supreme Court cases Whitby, Kenny 229
309-311 White, George 224 Yarbrough, Jean 12b
 i ae

: ———
See 6
ASY et ib
;
Z ry 5 A a
i. 7 a oe 7 = .
’ SMA dtSEN phils
_ - lin SOT" ‘
s ty. : > 2) er
pel ¥ -
a toe ee Pas
POA LS ST ES oF
me. Pa “fs cal >
4 Pty :
ses
: ae a 7 4

: 7 "EAA! AN ADRS
1 q
ad DRS dhity sy ai ietige A P
peu pe
i k pr ae iY
- >
i-SO Ces Beas fl § +
Root Oe nahi om
re o ithiate os teins = 7
4 1

oa ast ee ea { _

Wehoas oy 7 je A
ory :
griy
wehaae 19 —
ae Per ih ae 7
a®. =

a == en Pars ony —
4 Sp. ek ee =
. * ‘ a ~ Gee
°

=
’ a7 :

7
Baye
=
— 7
te 7
- ‘
= = = «

am -
= “j

e
7

————s
r
&:
<=

a F

x A

ae a
Zz
a >

= 3 , 2 = ‘
Z nt2
a ‘
 i
Va
7,
ly
Praise for the Eighth Edition
The eighth edition of Walton, Smith, and Wallace's landmark text is better than ever. Cemented as the .|
introductory leading text in Black politics since its inception, this text explores the vast landscape of
African Americans’ experiences as part of the American political fabric. Brilliantly, the revised edition
continues its tradition of excellence by providing readers with historical details for in-depth exploration of 5)
the Black American political community. As African Americans grow increasingly diverse, the book aptly ¥
expands the text's inclusive framework that engages many intersectionalities of Black political activity, and ~~ j
includes a cogent and powerful analysis of the presidency of Barack Obama and its significance. This book
is required reading for anyone interested in Black politics, Black American life, and the role of America’s
institutions in the journey toward freedom in the Black experience. |
Ravi K. Perry, Virginia Commonwealth University ‘ |
American Politics and the African American Quest for Universal Freedom is the preeminent text in the field
of Black politics. The authors provide an alternative understanding to the foundation of American politics,
which is certain to broaden students’ perspectives about the true meaning of freedom in America. The |
new edition provides up-to-date, detailed information about the Obama presidency and the future of
Black politics in America. This text is essential to any course in American politics.
Angela K. Lewis, University of Alabama at Birmingham
American Politics and the African American Quest for Universal Freedom is the definitive textbook in the |
field of Black politics. In this most recent edition, the authors examine African American influence at the Ft
state and local levels in depth and offer a timely assessment of the 2016 congressional and presidential .
elections.
Diarra Osei Robertson, Bowie State University
American Politics and the African American Quest for Universal Freedom is a comprehensive, very f
informative book that details the major actors, events, and issues in African American politics. It isa must-
read for students, scholars, and laymen alike. ;
Sharon D. Wright Austin, University of Florida fa
| began using American Politics and the African American Quest for Universal Freedom as the textbook for
my African American Studies courses with the sixth edition, and | enthusiastically anticipate the release f
of this eighth edition. This text documents the significance of the Obama presidency while continuing
to define the historic importance of terms such as freedom, racism, inherently inferior, and the three-fifths
clause, as it relates to African Americans in these United States.
Samuel Craig, Wayne County Community College District
American Politics and the African American Quest for Universal Freedom offers both historical and |
theoretical insight into African Americans’ relationship to foreign policy, the federal courts, Congress, the
U.S. presidency, federalism, elections, social movements, public opinion, and the Constitution. The book
shows definitively that African American political agency is constitutive of the American political tradition.
Sekou Franklin, Middle Tennessee State University
iy
Hanes Walton, Jr. (1941-2013), Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan, was an architec of | >
the modern study of African American politics. - Sy
Robert C. Smith, Professor of Political Science Emeritus, San Francisco State University, is the author of —
multiple books and articles and of the Encyclopedia of African American Politics. \
Sherri L. Wallace, Professor of Political Science, University of Louisville, is an author and recipient of
numerous awards for excellence in teaching and instructional design.
POLITICS

Cover image: © Getty Images

ge. ISBN 976-1-198-65814-1_| If

Routledge > 4 |
Taylor & Francis Group www.routledge.com/, |ll I
www.routledge.com 9781138658141

COs. «. eet | 9"781138"658 141" ff |