December 9.

1991

The Nation.

ARTICLES.
Equality: why We CantWait

733

Having laid this foundation, the Edsalls adorn it with manyof the standard
pieces of the new line. They presentDaniel
Patrick Moynihans racist,scurrilousand
J
i
m
Sleepers
in
The
CIosesl
of
StmnADOLPH REED JR. AND
ly
misogynous
1965 report, The Negro
gers:
Liberalism
and
the
Politics
of
Race
JULIAN BOND
in New York, champion the cause of Family: TheCasefor National Action, as
of prophetic inspecter is haunting liberal-left whites who feel threatened by feminist an unfairly scorned work
demands and liberal initiatives aimed at sight, and they even attempt to legitimize
intellectual life-the specter
of racist opportunism. From advancing racial equality. The most ex- it by linking it to W.E.B.Du Boiss 1899
prestigious sociology depart- tensive and coherent statementof the new study, The Philadelphia Negro-also a
ments to The Atlantic, The American orthodoxy by far, however, is Thomas standard move at the moment. (They neProspect, Dissent and In These Times, Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsalls new glect tomention, however, that Moyfrom Washington Post pundits to New tract, ChainReaction:The Impact of nihan called for correcting young black
YorkNewsday editors, its victim-blaming Race, Righfs, and Taxes on American mens putative character defects by shipmessage echoes:Liberal and progressive Politics. Because of its comprehensive- ping them intoa worldaway from
forceshave fallen onto hard times in ness the Edsalls volume epitomizes the women in the military, coincidentally
just as cannon-fodder needs were increasAmerican politics because they have be- current vogue.
ing along with escalations in Vietnam.)
come too closely identified with the exThe Edsalls attempt to vindicate Moycessive demands of blacks, feminists,etc.
nihan is part of a general attack on those
and have failed to give proper weight to
who have dissentedfrom victim-blaming
the concerns of the beleaguered white
rhetoric,
particularly regarding inner-city
working and middle classes. Thisstory is
poor
people.
Worse yet, the Edsalls say,
rapidly congealing into an unexamined
liberals
and
the
left have beenirresponorthodoxy, a ritual lament that seeks to
sible
not
only
in
failingto face up to poor
justify what is at best a failure of nerve.
blacks
socially
destructive
behavior but
In this lament, progressive agendas
also
in
pursuing
divisive
strategies
of solost credibility, and/or Democrats lost
cial engineering in struggles for the mtethe White House, because they deviated
gration of schools and public housing in
from the old New Deal coalitions focus
For the Edsalls the meter of history Northern cities likq Bostonand Chicago.
on universalistic programs and became starts runningin the mid-1960s. At that
They adduce these actionsto show how
identified with special interests. This point Goldwaterite Republicans began the spread of civil rights activism in the
alienated the Democratic Partys white what would become a successfql polar- North created a growing link between
working- and middle-class constituency, ization of American politics around the race and partisan allegiance-the core
which both carried the fiscal burden for issues of racialliberalism, the prolifera- of their argumentthat a chain reaction
the programs targeted to others and felt tion of groups claiming institutionalized driven by race has transformed the white
that many of the specific programs af- rights, and governmentspending-all
electorate. And who is to blame? Upperfronted their own traditional values. three of which cameto be identified with status white liberals and extremist or
Versions ofthis tale have proliferated. the Democratic Party.
undeserving blacks undermined the DemSome, likeTheda Skocpols inSustainThe Goldwaterites were aided in this ocratic coalition by challenging tradiable SocialPolicy: Fighting Poverty With- mission, the Edsalls say, by the violent tionally Democratic whites who were
out Poverty Programs (The American contagion of race riotsin northern slums, affronted by civil rights agendas. This
Prospect, Summer 1990) and William the inflammatory antics of black ex- combination of black bad behavior and
Julius Wilsons in The Truly Drsadvan- tremists (whoeven taught right-wingers white liberal insensitivity produced an
taged and Race-Neutral Policiesand the that confrontation andrejection of ac- ugly disenchantment with black aspiDemocratic Coalition (The American commodation were themselves mobiliz- rations, reaching from the bungalow
Prospect, Spring 1990), concentrate on ing strategies) and the reluctance of wards of Chicago. . . to prominent pubbemoaning the alleged hijacking of lib- liberalism and the Democratic party to lic intellectuals like Norman Mailer.
eral social policy in the 1960s by small- forthrightlyacknowledge and address the
In the context of this backlash, the
minded black militants whoinsisted
interaction of crime, welfare dependency, Edsalls portray ordinary citizens, the
on race-targeted programs and censored joblessness, drug use, and illegitimacy average working man and woman (to
public discussion of social pathologies with the larger questionsof raceand pov- be average and ordinary, of course,
among the black poor. Others, like Jon- erty. Although blacks bad and insensi- one must be white), as repelled by liberathan Rieders in Canarsie: The Jews and tive behavior is pivotal in the Edsalls als forsaking of standardized meritItalrans of Brooklyn Agarnst Lrberalism, story, others also contributed to the new oriented criteria for racial preferences
polarization by threatening the most en- in hiring and in education. Listen careAdolph Reed Jr. ISa professorofpolitical trenched traditions of the middle class; fully to their historyof the period: Lawscience at Northwestern University. Julianamong them were those who fought to se- suits forcing court-ordered hiring
and proBond IS a longtime crvil rights activist cure constitutional protection for crimi- motion in unions and in police and fire
and avisrtingprofessor at Harvard Uni- nal defendants, advocates of reproduc- departments were driving a wedge beversity and American University.
tive libertyand proponents of gayrights. tween formerly Democratic white work-

I t is instructive thatthe
EaTsalk identifvrace
rather thanracism as
thepivotal issue.

The Nation.

734

ers and . . . black competitors;affirmative action was forcing divisive conflicts between . . . Jews and blacks.
[Emphasis added.]
But thisformulation, in presuming
a prior compatibility, denies the reality of explicitly racial stratification within the working class and a history of
white working-class antagonism toward
blacks-coexisting, certainly, with many
exemplary instances of interracial solidarity-that stretches back through the
1863 New York draft riot. This antagonism was visible after Reconstruction in
the widespread expulsion of blacks from

occupational niches in cities both North

and South, and active, often militant,
support for occupational and residential
segregation. Unfortunately, the Edsalls
are so locked into animage of black demands as the root
of all evil that they do
not bother to consider why, after all,
there was evera need for aggressive antidiscrimination efforts in the first place.
Edsall and Edsall never explain why
they choose to start their story when they
do, why theyfocus it the way they do, why
they tell it the way they do-despite the
fact that alternative interpretations yielding different conclusions exist at every

December 9,I991

point. Take their view of deindustrialization: Jobs leave, local economies change
and wage scales drop asa result of economic forces. That construction sets the
stage for jeremiadsabout theexigencies
of global competition, which leaves
little or no room for traditionalliberal
Democratic policies sheltering the disadvantaged. With that, they issue what
amounts to a warning to theleft to shut
up and get with the program:
Intensified international competition
will exert increasingly brutal pressure
on America's economic and political
systems, and on pollcies offering special protection, preference, or subsdy to groups withinthe populationwhether they be ethnic or racial minorities,
unskilled
workers, prisoners,
elected offdals, the elderly, the disabled, AIDS vlctims, or single mothers.

Zora Neale Hurstons best-loved novel IS now avadable m a deluxe

clothbound gaft edIhon designed by Barry Moser, wth nme ongnal
drawmgs by award-wnnmg dustratorJerry Pmkney, a foreword by Ruby
Dee, and an mtroductlon by Sherley Anne Wdhams $24 95

At bookitores or
order toll free
800/545-4703
(MD residents,
301/338-6927)

Yet this storys inexorability is a function of its narrow perspective. A different, moretextured explanation of the
foundations of the postwar governing
synthesis and the tensions within it is provided by Alan Wolfes Americas Impasse; Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrisons TheDerndustrializationof America; and Samuel Bowles, David Gordon
and Thomas Weisskopfs Beyond the
WmteLand.These authors demystify the
public sectodprivate sector distinction,
demonstrating the ubiquity of government interventionto cement loyalties by
using public policy to channel the flow of
material resources. They illuminate the
extent to which corporate choices and
American public policy-foreign and domestic-are implicated in urban, regional andnational deindustrialization.Had
they taken this analysis into account, the
Edsalls might have been constrained (a)
to explain why only certain categories of
domestic public spending become stigmatized as welfare and (b)to come out
from behind their smokescreen of claptrap about the
exigencies of global competition and affirm as their own the vision they project to be the ineluctable
course of American politics and policy.
Similarly, they simply recycle the canard-legitimized by William Julius Wilsons black imprimatur-that the left
was responsible for the backlash against
antipoverty policy because of its refusal
to confront theissue of social pathology
among the poor. That charge is a complete falsehood, andonethe
Edsalls
elide (likethe blank in the Watergate t
a
p
e
)
with the gaps in their bibliography. In
fact, thepervasive spread of meanspirited rhetoric about poverty in the 1980s

December 9, 1991

was surprising precisely because careful

and thorough liberal scholarship had so
recently demolishedits prior incarnation
as culture of poverty ideology in the
1960s and 1970s. The Edsalls ignore
Carol Stacks accessibleand widely read
All Our Kin, which directly challenged
Moynihans pathological-matriarchy thesis with ethnographic data, and fail to
The Culture
recognize Eleanor Leacocks
of Poverty: A Critique and Charles Valentines Culture and Poverty, which
systematicallyrefuted the culture-ofpoverty ideaon both theoretical and empirical grounds as anthropologicallyand
politically bankrupt.
ecause theirs is the most elaborate
B
presentation to date, the
Edsalls most
clearly revealthe complex ofdistortions
and mystifications on which the new orthodoxy rests. They writeas if American
society emerged in 1964 from a state of
nature. Only by doing so can they represent whiteworking-class and middleclass hostility to black aspirations as a
post-civil rights movement phenomenon, or romanticize the old New Deal
Democratic coalition as
an entity neutral
with respect to distinctively racialstratification. This convenient amnesia sustains the lie that the put-upon Joe SixPack and the average family are not
directly implicatedas beneficiariesof the
racially stratified system.
The Edsalls insulate the absurdity of
this view by packing around it a comparably mystifiednotion of the suburbs as
a new, coherent political constituency.
For them, the phenomenon of postwar
suburbanization had nothing to dowith
pre-existing racialpolarization, and thus
the attitudeof whlte suburbanites now is
a reaction aga~nstwhat they seeas the excesses ofthe inner city. Butthe desire to
flee from impoverished inner-city populations (and from blacks ingeneral) that
the Edsalls describelong preceded postwar suburbanization and was.in fact,
one of the forces that drove it. While it
is true that not living withinthe same municipality certainly reinforces whlte separation from inner-city life,suburbanlzation is more the effect than the cause of
polarization. In addition, there are suburbs, and there are suburbs. lnvocation
of suburban as a euphemism for white,
or even middle class, is not exactly accurate, as suburban life itself becomes increasmgly diverse. Interestingly,the Edsalls demonstrate the polysemous character of thesuburban image in their own
stereotypes. On the one hand, they decry

The Nation.

735

out-of-touch suburban liberals who and occupational mobility.Yet they scold

ram race-mixing down
the throatsof the liberals for having aimedantidiscriminasturdy white working and middle classes;
tion efforts at unabashedly racial moon the other, the suburb appears as a nopolies in building trade unions and
spawning ground for white racial impa- municipal employment, efforts that retience. Which isthe real suburb, thenquired whites to give up bothcustomary
not to mention polyglot entities like East privileges and substantial material reOrange, New Jersey; Mount Vernon, New wards. Theyallow that those practices
York; Skokie, Illinois; Montgomery clearly had discriminatory consequences,
County, Maryland; DeKalb County, but they werealso practices coreto a host
Georgia; Santa Clara County, California? of craft unions across the country, unions
To their credit, the Edsalls note the that had been built not only as laborormajor role of civil rights enforcement ganizations, but as family and ethnic asand government emdowent in account- sociations structuring community life.
irIg for the post-1964 risein black income They veer from this sentimentality, wor-

The Nation.

736

LINCOLN AND THE NEGRO

by Benjamin Quarles
The most balanced and sensltlve analyslsof Llncolns pollcles on emanclpatlon
and race as well as hls personal relatlons wlth blacks
James M. McPherson
$13 95

THOMAS MORRIS CHESTER,

BLACK CIVIL WAR CORRESPONDENT
His Dlspatches from the Virglnla Front

, Edited, with a biographical essay and notes, by R.J.M. Blackett

Here arevivld descrlptlons of camp hfe among theblack troops, inslghts mto the
white officers, descrlptlons of mllltary engagements and seemmgly obJective accounts of the fall of Richmond and the beginnings of Reconstructlon What I S
unique is that all of these things are seen from the vantage polnt not so much of
the Yankees as of the black Amerlcan
Richmond Trrnes-Dispatch
$13 95

BLACK MUSICAL THEATRE

From Coontown to Drearngirls
b y Allen Woll
Nearly a century of black rnuslcal theater unfolds In thls sohd study of an Important and strangely neglected subJect , The story IS a fascmatmg one, drawlng
together a number of factors-race preJudlce, the economlcs of show busmess,
soclal change, theatrical stereotypes-that intersect In complex ways
-Jazz Twnes
$13 95

Forthcoming in April 1992:

THE SUMMER THAT DIDNT END

The Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Project of 1964
by Len Holt
New preface by Julian Bond
One of the few accounts of the 1960s clvd rlghts movement by a p a r t u p a n t
Holt looks beyond the dramatlc deaths and violence and shows the reader the
summers successes
Jullan Bond
$14.95

Other recent titles:

BLACK MANHAmAN by James Weldon Johnson ($13 95)
BLACK ABOLITIONISTS by Benjamin Quarks ($13 95)
BLACK MAGIC: A Pictoriel Hlstory of the African American In the Performing
Arts by Lengston Hughes and Milton Meltzer ($19 95)
THE OMNI-AMERICANS:Black Experience end Amerlcan Culture
by Albert Murray ($10 95)
Avallable at your bookstore; or call 800-321-0050
For a compllrnentary brochure Ilsting our African Amerlcan books, wrlte:
Marketing Department

1991

December 9,

thy of any Old South apologist,

to anostensible pragmatism. True, they admit,
exclusionary practices had meant denial of jobs to blacks for several hundred
years, but the remedies were often zerosum solutions inwhich the gains of one
group were losses for the other. They
imply the existence of some other course,
but they offer nohint asto what it might
be. We might infer that blacks simply
should have forgone economicopportunity in deference to those whites traditional values, but once againthe authors
avoid coming clean.
It is instructive in this regard that the
Edsalls identify race rather than racism
as thepivotal issue. In so doing they reflect a longstanding sentiment that American politics and life would be better,
neater, more pure if we could somehow
get raceout of it. Thls sentlment has been
around since the Foundmg and has had
adherents at all pointson theideological
spectrum. In Its milder forms it appears
as a high-minded but naive call to transcend race;its most virulent strains-seen
most recently in David Dukes gubernatorial campaign-seek to expunge blacks
(and/or other nonwhites) from the body
politic. On the left it typically has been
expressed in exhortations to subordinate
the pursuit of racial justice to some other
mission-buildmg the (white) labor movement, advancing the agendas of petitbourgeois white women, preserving the
New Deal coalition, not hurting white
peoples feelingsor their traditional values. This sentiment rests on reluctance
to admit the endemic and pervasive character of expllcitly racial stratificat~onin
American society and thusreluctance to
accept the equally explicit struggle for racial justice as a necessarily integral component of our political life. At bottom it
stems from an inability to perceive black
Americans as legitimate, full members of
the polity. That is the ugly truth that
hides within all the sophistry about universal versus targeted federal programs
and leaks out in every reference to putupon average Americans; blacks are
construed as Americans with an asterisk,
a problem for a nonblack civic us.
The contributorsto this Nation special
issue have come together around a conviction that the new orthodoxy and its
premises must be challenged. We believe
that it is not onlywrongheaded and dangerous but also, in its essential particulars
and overall interpretation, simply false.
These contributions, therefore, present
crltlques of the orthodoxys central components and provide richer, more credi-

The Nation.

December 9,1991

ble accounts. The authorsdemystify the

breezily nostalgic representation of an
Edenic New Deal coalition and demonstrate ways that racial stratification continues to order the life chances of Americas citizens.

737

canism in the I870sto get beyondthe for building a progressive movementthat

race issueby having minorities go away. accounts for the complex and corrosive
That strategy is both obnoxious and effects of racial stratification. Nomore
doomed. Our only hope lies not in reject- euphemisms, no elaborate circumlocuing butin resuscitating the project of con- tions. Those who want to dispense with
fronting racism in
the white electorate for an egalitarian agenda should declare
what it is and struggling with whites to themselves forthrightly and stand on
inally, at the risk of seeming defen- overcome their commitments to racial their convictions. That waywe can all
we begin honest- knowwho stands for what, and act
sive about our own pasts, we must privilege. Only then can
0
take note of the curious circumstance ly and productively to discuss strategies accordingly.
that in virtuallyall versions ofthe narrative against which we write,
the mid-1960s
appear as the Fall. Some proponents of
that view depict an era, moreover, most
RICHARD A. CLOWARD AND of key committees to Southern one-party
unfamiliar to those of us whowere
oligarchs.
around at the time. In Theda Skocpol FRANCES FOX PIVEN
Moreover,theseoligarchs
remained
and William Julius Wilsons 1960s, for
he current political wisdom, unchallenged, because constitutionally
example, black militants were powereven among some on the left, is based governmental decentralization perful enough to dictate the terms of federthat
blacks and liberals are to mitted states to usevoter registration
al social policy; inthe Edsalls, onlyanti1
blame
for the troubles of the barriers to disfranchise blacks and most
waractivists, not the war inVietnam
Democratic
Party.
Supposedly, divisive poor whites. As representatives ofupperitself, caused domestic political conflict.
demands
for
race-specific
remedies for strata whites, Southern Congressmen
In some cases, perhaps, specific old
past
discrimination
advanced
by blacks moved easily into alliances with Repubpersonal grievances support this queer
and
their
liberal
allies
antagonized
the licans, limiting Northern working-class
reading of 1960s radicalism. Perhaps it is
white
working
class,
destroying
the
bi- power and preventing the New Deal
also fed by beliefsthat politics shouldnot
coalition from becoming a labor party.
racial
and
class-based
coalition
that
involve rockingthe boat andconvictions
Nor was there any possibility of a birachampioned
progressive
reform
in
Amerthat minority poor people are a breed
cial
party during the 1930s, since 80 perica.
By
this
account,
it
was
wrongheaded
apart. Some liberals seemto be middleto
demand
affirmative
action
cent
or
school
of blacks lived inthe South, where
aging into a tolerance of privilege that
integration or-most egregious of allthey were disfranchised.
just happens to be racial. Across the
The South extracted a high pricefor its
welfare rights, because these policies
board, though, this representation of
highlighted race and exacerbated racial fealty to the party (Rooseveltwonas
the 1960s justifies a view that commit- divisions. And it was nothing short of much as 85 percent ofthe Southern vote),
ment to principle has little, if any, place madness to advance thesedemands with mainly by blocking anynational policies
in politics. It underwrites three strategic the flamboyant and disruptive tactics that would interfere with the low-wage
assumptions: (1) No price is too great to that characterized the black movement. and caste-bound Southern labor system.
pay for the election of any Democrat to
There are three weaknesses in thisar- Southern Congressmen promoted rightthe presidency; (2) race is so monolithic gument, all fatal. The New Deal Demo- to-work laws and other antilabor legislaand immutable a cleavage in American cratic Party was not a working-class tion, thus weakening the unions that had
politics that progressive initiatives will party; neither was it supported by a bi- begun to serve as the mobilizing infrainevitably failif theyopenly endorse pro- racial coahtion. And there was no way structure of the Democratic Party. One
grams of racial justice;and (3) those spe- blacks could win concessions without consequence was that working-class votcial interests canonized in the 1960sers could not control Democratic Presialienating whites.
black Americans especially-must now
For a brief moment at thedepth of the dents. Harry Truman may have vetoed
do penance for the
harm wrought by their Depression, widespreadpanic and rising the Taft-Hartley Act, but he invoked its
profligate ways.We emphatically reject insurgency in the urban North prodded strlke-curbmg provlsions twelve times in
all three and insist that principle can F.D.R. to adopt labor-oriented policies the year after the veto override. No Demoindeed win.
a serious effort
and rhetoric. But overthe slightly longer cratlc President has made
One could just as easily look back to run, it became clear that the party was to repeal Section 14B of Taft-Hartley,
the 1960s and point the finger the other hostage to its Southern wing. Constitu- which legalizedstate right-to-work laws.
way. Many of us recallan understanding tional arrangements wereweighted toThe South was nothing less than trithat part of the white lefts mission was ward the South in both the Electoral Col- umphant in shaping the nations social
to organize and educate against racism lege and the Senate, and Congressional welfare policy. Most ofthe programs prowithin white middle- and working-class seniority arrangements delivered control moted by labor parties in Europe-inconstltuencies. That project obviously
come protections for the unemployed,
did not get very far, though many good Richard A. Cloward is aprofessor at the the old and the poor; rnlnimum wages;
people put a great deal of effort into it Columbra University School of Soclal and so on-would have wreaked havoc
and continue to do so. Others either gave Work. Frances Fox Piven IS a Distrn- on the Southern economic system, espeup or were fainthearted all along in their guished Pmfessorat the Graduate School cially its labor system. Accordingly,after
own commitment to the premiseof racial and University Center, CUNX Their the worst years ofthe Depression, Southequality. Thus we hear a Realpolitik that most recent book is Why Americans ern Congressmen who controlled committees joined with Republicans
to defeat
wants-in the mode of Liberal Republi- Dont Vote (Pantheon).

Race and the Democrats