Prometheus 6

Once, again, the media is creating a false dichotomy regarding the political activites of Black Americans. There is no such thing as post-Civil Rights black leadership unless one is referring to this new breed of black conservative Republicans. This designation, too, would be false because not one of these black conservative Republicans has ever been elected to any office - even at the local level - by a predominately or majority black electorate. I have not seen one survey or study that supports the view that John Conyers' and John Lewis' views on public policy matters are substantively and markedly different from, say, those held by Barack Obama, Deval Patrick or Corey Booker. This is little more than media hype intended to promote the view that there is a vast chasm between blacks who came of age during the Civil Rights Movement and those who were born later.

There is no huge chasm, philosophically wise, between the 'Old Guard' and the 'New Guard'. Now, if you add Harold Ford, you could say that he's more conservative than the Old Guard, but even he's not a Republican. I do agree with you that a true chasm of 'thought' is with the Republicans, but they can't get anyone elected to office. The sea change will occur when they get someone elected FROM A MAJORITY BLACK DISTRICT. Hell, if they get someone within 10 points in a Majority Black District, it will signal a sea change.

The entire meme about the alleged split between so-called Civil Rights and so-called post-Civil Rights black leaders was generated by white conservative Republicans beginning in the Reagan era. They were looking to create a new cadre of black leaders who were amenable and sympathetic to their views regarding Civil Rights and other issues of great and immediate concern to African Americans. The media picked up this theme and began promoting it as if it were an accurate description of certain phenomena occuring above and below ground in the black electorate.

There is a clash of values among some older and some younger black leaders but this conflict is occurring almost exclusively among those older black leaders who I have described here and elsewhere as "second line inheritors" of the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement. I think the leading and most publicized contemporary example of this type of black leader is the recently indicted Sharpe James, the former mayor of Newark, New Jersey. James' inability to build upon the progressive hopes and promises of the coalition that initially brought him to power either because of personal failure or a lack of focus and vision does not suggest, in my opinion, the exhaustion and impotency of the Civil Rights Movement.

What it suggests, on the contrary, is that these "second line inheritors" proved more adept at putting a black public face on the same institutional and bureaucratic structures that had been put in place by white ethnics in earlier generations to consolidate and hold onto power. Those progressive black voices that had been an integral part of these "second line inheritors" coalition were eventually squeezed out and many of them withdrew entirely from politics or left cities like Newark altogether.

While the emergence of certain new black leaders such as Corey Booker may be deplored by these same progressives and certainly by the "second line inheritors" and their followers, there is no denying that Booker and other young black leaders have had little choice but to cobble together a "new urban" political coalition in order to win election. The "second line inheritors" have never shown the slightest interest in either voluntarily relinquishing power or grooming and creating a new cadre of black leaders. Given these circumstances, a full frontal assault on political leaders like James was predictable and inevitable.

The problem for Booker and other young black politicians (I am not including Harold Ford in this grouping.) is that their political movement is being described by a political and media elite that is more interested in promoting an agenda that is in opposition to the best interests of the constituents these new black leaders are pledged to serve. This is why, for example, they are described as being "post-Civll Rights black leaders" and other such meaningless phrases. It is in the direct interests of these elites to continue to deny both the existence and persistence of structural racism in the United States. This is why, for example, they are always citing polls of individual Americans showing that there had been a decline of feelings of racial animosity toward blacks or why every year somebody, somewhere in this country wants to know why all the black kids allegedly eat at the same cafeteria table while ignoring the fact that larger numbers of white students do the same thing.

What these elites do not want people to look too closely at is who gets what and why in the United States. This issue is not just about race. It is also about class. The political and financial elite in this country, for example, are working overtime to convince the American people that their interests would be best served by an uninterrurpted 30 year reign in the White House of somebody named Bush or Clinton. People who work for wages have not benefited from the tax and trading policies promoted by the Bushes or Bill Clinton and they will not benefit if Hillary Clinton is elected the next president of our nation.

PT...  How does the rise of the DLC play into this perception of "post-Civil Rights leaders"?

The creation of the DLC was, in part, a response among certain moderate and corporate elements within the Democratic Party who were alarmed at what they perceived as the growing Republican majority in the United States and the alleged lock on the White House held by the Republicans. In addition, it was clear to those forming the DLC that the traditional Democratic Party coalition was unraveling and that one of the alleged causes of this unraveling was the perception that the Democratic Party was paying too much attention to the issues and causes of black folks thus alienating its ethnic white working class members. The founders and leaders of the DLC clearly wanted the party to put less stress on racial issues because of their desire to coax ethnic whites back into the party and the work of various scholars and policy analysts whose work was suggesting that the persistence of poverty and social ills in the black community were the result of more than just racism.(No credible black leader or scholar had ever argued that all of the black community's problems were the result of racism but their voices, as usual, were ignored.)

The search among the DCL and its acolytes for ways to rebuild the Democratic Party coaltion and recapture the White House dovetailed with the neverending desire of the American conservative movement to thwart, roll back and deny black advancement. (Conservatives may deny this fact but I am old enough to remember that not one of their political leaders or theoreticians ever called for the immediate dismantling of state sponsored racial segregation on the grounds that it was plainly unconstitutional. William Rehnquist and Robert Bork, for example, actually drafted the legal memo that Barry Goldwater used in 1964 to explain and justify his vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. Bork and Rehnquist met Goldwater at the airport in Phoenix where they delivered their infamous memorandum to him.)

The DLC is keenly interested in promoting black politicians who buy into and support its world view, especially with regard to racial issues. We should be cautious, however, in withholding support from and condemning black politicians who may take a sip or two of the DLC's kool-aid. Given the stranglehold the "second-line inheritors" have put in place on the political machinery in their respective districts, many aspiring black leaders, especially if they are young and have never held an elective office, have little choice but to cozy up the DLC. The downside, however, is that many of them also make themselves captives of domestic and foreign policy agendas that do not serve the long term interest of the black community or the United States.

The following is an excerpt from The Fire Last Time by Kevin Boyle that was published in today's edition of the Washington Post.

"In retrospect, Americans should have seen the riot coming. Since the 1920s, not just Detroit but all of the nation's major cities had restricted blacks to the oldest, most decrepit neighborhoods available. Segregation inevitably spawned discrimination: Schools in African American areas were overcrowded and underfunded; city services were delivered sporadically; policing was frighteningly oppressive.

"Then, in the 1950s and 1960s, the urban black economy tumbled into crisis, as decent-paying factory work started to disappear. From 1947 to 1967, Detroit alone lost 120,000 manufacturing jobs. In the city's ghetto, unemployment skyrocketed. Poverty intensified. And under the strain of it all, life on the streets became more dangerous. There were 112 murders in Detroit in 1946. In 1966, there were twice as many, a sure sign of a horribly strained social fabric.

"As if that weren't bad enough, the crisis of the inner cities struck as much of the nation's economy boomed, creating a dazzling world of color TVs, backyard barbecues and cars the size of luxury liners. Poor blacks could see it all on display in the new suburbs that necklaced central cities. But suburbia was white man's territory, and it was fiercely defended. Just a month before the Detroit riot, white thugs killed a young black man, a Vietnam veteran who had the audacity to linger in a suburban park after dark. So African Americans had no choice but to stay on the far side of the urban color line, struggling to make do while white America made good."

No black elected official with sense to come in out of the rain would argue that there is not a causal connection between racism, the denial of constitutional rights to Black Americans and the horrific conditions found in many of our urban areas today. There is no post-Civil Rights cadre of Black leaders save for conservative Black Republicans and these kneegrows have not managed to persuade any group of black people in the United States to elect them to anything at all.

there are differences. but what is a problem is the argument that these differences are new, and in some cases important. There are at the very least stylistic differences between the mayors elected in the late eighties and those elected in the seventies. Political scientistis coined the term "deracialization" to refer to their approach.

Political scientistis coined the term "deracialization" to refer to their approach.

That's curious, since it's done for racial reasons. 

My intent here, KS, is not to ridicule your analysis but the stress placed by political scientists and political junkies on "stylistic differences" amounts, in my opinion, to a distinction without a difference. There were stylistic differences, for example, between Irish-American or Italian-American politicians elected in the 1930s and those elected in the 1960s. There are stylistic differences between Fiorello LaGuardia and Rudolf Giuliani but it is almost exclusively with regard to African American elected officials that these "stylistic differences" are presumed to both denote and connote substantive philosophical differences when they in fact may not indicate any such differences at all.

The late Harold Washington made a concerted and well documented effort to reach out beyond the black electorate for support but his tenure would not be described by these same scholars as a period of "deracialization" despite the fact he did not make an overt, racially-based appeal to black voters. When Washington won his first term and famously declared that "it is us our turn" white folks in Chicago and throughout the nation responded as if he had just put a bone through his nose, put on a loincloth and spoke in glowing terms about reviving the Mau-Mau rebellion. The very notion that a black person would actually declare that black folks were entitled to a ride on the municipal ferris wheel after 80 years caused so-called liberals, moderates and conservatives alike to swoon and call for smelling salts. 

i understand your point ptc. this bears a much larger discussion, and i just don't have the writing time for it. suffice it to say that i've written about the wrongheaded focus on stylistic differences--note that the washington post has already written at least two articles about both booker and obama's style choices. and i recall giving an interview noting that comparing harold ford and his father, and kwame kilpatrick and his mother, would show more similarities than differences.

but there is a way to make the case that the stylistic issues that people focus on are largely the product of a wrongheaded understanding of black politics, while still tying what stylistic differences that DO exist to substance.

coleman young was the first black mayor of detroit. dennis archer was the second. the two of them had very different stylstic approaches--archer was very conciliatory towards white suburbanites and went as far as to call for the reintroduction of STRESS (google it), while young was known to cuss folks out on national television if need be. however the larger political economic context placed them in similar positions vis a vis federal and state governments. so both sought to catch the coattails of southern white male presidents, and both sought to use downtown development to revitalize their cities. given this these stylistic differences don't APPEAR to matter much.

but they do matter in that the stylistic differences both reflected and crystallized different bases of support. and in some cases these differences led to subtly different modes of resource allocation within the cities.

cory booker, obama, and patrick should be properly understood as coming from a line of black politicians that extends back to the mid eighties. they DO represent a group of post-civil rights politicians. it's simply that they are not the first group. 

Well, someday when you have the time you might offer a definition of this term. Willie L. Brown, Jr., for example, was the first black person elected to political office in the modern-era in San Francisco. Brown, who eventually became the Speaker of the Assembly and served longer in that position that anyone in California history, has always, at least publicly, spoken in a conciliatory and non-confrontational manner. He would not have been able to navigate the land mines of San Francisco's political landscape if he had been confrontational, say, in the manner and style of Coleman Young. Nonetheless, Brown's image has always used by the Republicans to play the race card despite the fact that Brown does not play this card himself.

part of this is cross-sectional vs cross-temporal. dawson was very different from adam clayton powell. tom bradley was different from coleman young. but within a given time period, was there a predominant tendency?

Younger people are going to have a different view of the world which they will inherit. They will, hopefully, learn from their elders and try approaches that are different to achieve "better" results.

I've written on the AFROAM-L list that in today's world, there are many causes where Black groups should align with non-Black groups. An example would be the repeal of Rockafeller laws.

The worldview of Harold Ford, Jr SHOULD be different than that of Harold Ford, Sr. The tactics used by Jesse Jackson, Jr MUST be different than the tactics used by Jesse Jackson, Sr. If not, then they are a waste.

Adapt or die.

Young people are born into a world that is, of necessity, older than they are. It is this interaction between that which is older and that which is newer that creates, when possible, change. While it is true and necessary for young people to empoly strategies and tactics that are different from what may have been used by their elders, the practice of dividing African American politicians into a Civil Rights generation and a post-Civil Rights generation serves as more than a generational line of demarcation. It is specifically designed to minimize and blunt any basis for Black Americans to assert any race-based claims on the grounds that they have suffered losses due to their race. 

If we are analyzing black politics, making the claim that black politicians across time are more or less the same is a hard one to make. Such a claim it basically renders the entire black politics enterprise moot. The conditions of racism that influenced one set of black political actors at one point in time are exactly the same as those that influence another set of political actors at a second point in time. They are in effect the same. The only thing left to study are shifts in tactics.

Writers of the Washington Post have shown themselves to be uniquely ill-equipped to deal with the complexities of black politics. But I think this is a case of ignoring a social phenomenon because the people studying it are racist. There are examples--brain size stands out--where this is appropriate. I don't think it is appropriate here. This particular narrative isn't generated by design. 

No claims are being made, at least in my corner, that black politicians "across time are more or less the same." The point I am trying to raise is that most so-called examinations of the differences between black politicians, i.e., those who have actually been elected to office (as opposed to, say, the current crop of black conservative Republicans who are granted a seat at the table but represent no substantial constituency within the black community)fail to address those differences save for using the shopworn cliches of "Civil Rights generation" or "post-Civil Rights generation" that does not explain anything at all. To illustrate the absurdity of these labels can you imagine Rudy Giuliani being referred to as a "post-immigrant Italian American politician" or Hillary Clinton as the "post-Betty Friedan female politician"? Any journalist who used such phrases would be laughed at by his or her editor. 

Politicians born at different times and seeking public office in different eras would employ different tactics and strategies both in their campaigns for office and their efforts to advance their respective issues and policies. Designating Willie L. Brown, Jr., for example, as a "Civil Rights generation" politician and calling Corey Booker a "post-Civil Rights generation" politician does not really tell us anything at all except when they, perhaps, were born. I still contend that the purpose of using these terms with regard to black elected officials is to minimize and blunt any basis for Black Americans to assert any race-based claims on the grounds that they have suffered losses due to their race. 

How about we call them "post anti-racism politicians"? It sends the same message without all that obfuscation.