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BLACK POLITICAL PARTICI PATION 205
The 1920s . . Jacob Lawrence The Migrants Arrive and Cast Their Ballets (1974) Serigraph The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Gift of Lorillard Company
U ntil very recently, blacks have usu- ally had to seek basic citizenship rights from outside the nation's electoral institutions. Thus, the frequent designation of political participation as vot- ing, campaigning, and lobbying of elected and other public officials (see Verba and Nie, 1973:2-3) has not generally applied to black politics. For blacks, the struggle for basic citizenship rights-protection of person and property, equal treatment in the courts, the right to vote and hold public office, and equal treatment when seeking education and employment-has frequently involved litigation and protest. Through litigation and protest, black political participation has been pri- marily a collective process throughout much of the period covered by this report. Therefore, we define political participation as activity directed toward the attainment, maintenance, or enhancement of collective aspirations re- garding the rights of citizenship. We analyze and discuss the political status of black Americans in three categories: civil, democratic, and allocational. Civil status refers to how well the government respects and enforces the liberty of the person; the freedoms of speech, assembly, religion, petition, and the press; the rights of property and contract; and the right of citizens to equitable justice by due process of law. Democratic status concerns the extent to which citizens participate in the governmental process through voting, selecting public officials, and holding public office. Allocational status denotes the degree to which citi- zens share in the provision of income, goods and services-including any 207
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY public entitlements to an acceptable standard of social and economic secu- rity-and in educational and occupational opportunities.) FROM RIGHTS TO RESOURCES The transition from black Americans' concerns with civil and democratic status to their concerns with avocational status can be viewed as a move from the politics of rights to the politics of resources (Hamilton, 1986) . For most of this century, black politics was a politics of rights. The objectives sought fell into two broad categories: the freedom to participate in the polity through the electoral process and the freedom to participate in the broader society through equal access to its institutions. In law, these objectives had been formally acknowledged by 1968: desegregation in public education was ordered by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954; equal access was extended to public accommodations by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and to the housing market by the Fair Housing Act of 1968; and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 guaranteed the franchise to southern blacks for the first time in this century. As a consequence, there was a broadening of black political objectives in the mid-1960s, a shift from the politics of rights to the politics of resources, a stronger emphasis on blacks' material status. The shift in emphasis did not mean that the civil and democratic status of black Americans had been fully resolved, as controversy continues over the nature and enforcement of those rights. Nor did it mean that blacks had previously been unconcerned about social and economic goals. Because of the poverty of the black community, the desire for an alternative distribution of resources has always figured prominently in black politics. What changed in the 1960s was the relative weighting of the two agendas (see Smith, 1982:39) . By the politics of resources, we refer to the pursuit of resources through political, and often, collective, means. As the politics of rights was concerned with securing improvements in civil and democratic status, the politics of resources is concerned with securing improvements in material well-being or allocational status. The politics of resources aims to increase government responsibility for the allocation of social and economic goods and services to benefit the disadvantaged. It is a strategy to direct political activity toward allocational decisions. There are two distinct but interrelated controversies inherent in a politics of resources. One is ideological and the other operational. First, to what extent should the allocation of economic resources be a function of political decision making? Second, given the realities of private management in the American economy, to what extent can the allocation of resources be a function of political decision making? In this chapter we consider the empir 1. Our use of these categories of political status is for organizational purposes only; for a conceptualization, see Marshall (1964:Ch. 4) or Parsons (1965). 208
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICIPATION ical aspects of the second question. How have blacks attempted to achieve more equal allocational status through a politics of resources? We consider several aspects of this question. We discuss how blacks mobilized to secure the civil and democratic status of citizenship, the prerequisite to participation in the competition for political voice ("The Struggle for Civil Rights". We then examine voting and the election and appointment of black public officials ("Democratic Statuses. The last major section discusses the organi- zation and mobilization of the black community for collective action and the making of public policy ("Avocational Statuses. But before we begin this examination of the politics of rights and the politics of resources, the next section ("Core Political Values") examines the ways in which the diverse sectors of the black community make sense of the political world and how those ideas are related to concrete programs for action. CORE POLITICAL VALUES Most Americans are not ideologues in the sense of possessing highly constrained belief systems that structure their political attitudes (Converse, 1972; Kinder, 1983~. People do not make political evaluations on the basis of ideological reasoning, but on the basis of competing criteria, which in- clude self-interest, group identification, and government performance. As people observe events, "policies and actions are simply judged right or wrong because of their implications for deeply held values" (Feldman, 1988~. Thus, most people evaluate political issues and leaders while being "innocent of ideology" (Sears and Kinder, 1985) . In our usage, core political values are the basic criteria that underlie peo- ple's preferences for political action; they define what people expect from politics. They are "abstractions drawn from the flux of the individual's immediate experience," which are emotionally charged, and which "provide the criteria by which goals are chosen" (Williams, 1970:440~. Hanes Walton (1985:29) observed: "Many social scientists study black political ideologies to see why people adhere to them rather than to see how they affect and shape black political action." As Walton implies, the second question is at least as important as the first. In this section, we pursue that question, to explore why black Americans generate the specific political claims they do and how the beliefs of diverse groups within the black community are expressed in the forms of public opinion. BLACK PRAGMATISM The conventional framework for thinking about political values in Ameri- can society does not adequately capture the spectrum of black political values. According to Gilliam (1986), the American left-right spectrum is articulated with reference to a constellation of issues concerning the role of the government in regulating the economy, the power of corporations and 209
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY unions, the relations between federal and state governments, and the extent of civil rights and civil liberties. But in examining black core values, there are two different and distinct issues: the strategy, philosophy, and political meaning of the black experience, and the relationship of black priorities to the spectrum of political debate in the broader American polity. Black Americans have never been united behind a single political philoso- phy (see Cruse, 1967~. The labeling of blacks as "liberal" may help to illuminate the role of blacks in the coalition structure of American politics, but it is uninformative concerning the nature of political debate within the black community (Morris and Henry, 1978~. Blacks have perennially de- bated the desirability of integration as opposed to black separatism and the strategic and tactical utility of accommodation and coalition as opposed to black self-determination (e.g., Carmichael and Hamilton, 1967; Holden, 1973; Walters, 1988~. Another recurring debate concerns the relative impor- tance of race and class as determinants of the black condition (e.g., Pinkney, 1984; Wilson, 1978~. Which of these viewpoints to emphasize in a given strategic situation is critical to the articulation and pursuit of black political interests. Blacks, like whites, evince a tendency to reject inflexible labels as irrelevant to the exigencies of politics. In a study of black elected officials in New Jersey, Cole (1976:93) observed: The difficulty of left-right labeling is compounded when it is applied to blacks. For blacks have been the have-nots of the system. Abstract ideolo- gies for "all mankind" mean less to them than filling voids created by oppression. Above all else, black political values concern the black community's per- petual struggle to succeed in a white-majority world. Thus, black core values are supple in their application: as the saying goes, blacks have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests-a political tradition with regard to white allies that held sway as long ago as the Reconstruction era (see laynes, 1986:266~. W. E. B. DuBois once framed this issue with the admonition, "We face a condition, not a theory." Or, as Vernon Jordan, former executive director of the National Urban League, greeted Ronald Reagan's victory in 1980: If the Reagan Administration protects black social and civil rights gains, and if it fulfills its promises to wipe out unemployment, it can add blacks to its Pm~r~in~ rm~litimn Clark r,er~nle urn nor we.~1 to anv given r,olitical -^~^-~D^~ _~^~^_~^A~ ^~ ~--t~ -} D- --- 17- philosophy. Our needs are not bounded by liberal dogma. We are prag- matic. We want results, and if conservative means will move us closer to equality we will gladly use those conservative means. As Hamilton (1981:250) notes, this language "is intended, one would assume, as a statement of how to function in the existing political environ- ment-not a statement about what that environment ideally ought to be." This political flexibility can be seen in other realms as well. For example, 210
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICIPATION TABLE 5-1 Attitudes Toward Capitalism, by Race (percent agreeing) Blacks Whites Statement (N= 150) (N= 1,172) - The economy can run only if businessmen make good profits. 65 72 Generally speaking, business profits are distnbuted fairly in the United States. 29 36 In the United States, traditional divisions between own crs and workers still remain. A personas social standing depends upon whether he/she belongs to the upper or lower class. 72 70 Source: Data from 1984 General Social Survey. many blacks view the choice between "black power" and "integration" in instrumental or tactical, rather than philosophical, terms. For many black Americans, the desirability of a given mode of political activity (voting, lobbying, or protest) is often seen as being contingent on circumstance, rather than being considered intrinsically worthwhile. Or as Hamilton (1982:xix) noted: "People participate where, when, and how they think it matters. " In line with this preference for pragmatic goals and results rather than ideology, blacks use different criteria when evaluating political leaders. The authors of the most comprehensive survey of citizen evaluations of legislators report (Cain et al., 1987:420~: Blacks ranked the roles of representatives very differently from the rest of the groups. They regarded policy as the least important activity and consid- ered protecting the interests of the district and helping people as, respec- tively, second and third most important. As a group, blacks placed a higher priority on helping people than did any other group. To some extent this racial difference arises from educational and class differences, but even when such factors are taken into account, racial differences in representative pri . . . Orltles remam. Similarly, when presented with a liberal-to-conservative scale and asked "Where would you place yourself on this scale, or haven't you thought much about this?," blacks are considerably more likely than whites to reject either ideological label, choosing instead to deny that they classify themselves in such terms. Controlling for education diminishes the gap a little, but a gap of over 10 percentage points remains. However, blacks and whites hold similar views about basic tenets of our free enterprise system. As Table 5-1 shows, they substantially agree on the importance of profits as the motive force of capitalism. Just 7 percentage points separate blacks and whites on how fairly profits are allocated in the economy. And several questions about the rewards of "hard work" yield no racial differences (Kendrick, 1988 : Tables 9-10~. Blacks are somewhat less willing to agree that "most people who don't get 211
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY TABLE 5-2 Attitudes Toward Equality, by Race and Income (percent agreeing) Income Less Than $15,000 Statement Blacks Whites Income More Than $15,000 Blacks Whites Our society should do whatever is nec- cssary to make sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed. One of the big problems in this country is that we don't give everyone an equal chance. If people were treated more equally in this country we would have many fewer pow ~ ~ 95 91 97 88 83 57 81 45 87 66 87 53 Source: Data from 1986 National Election Study, reported in Kendrick (1988:Table 11). ahead should not blame the system." The difference is markedly larger on other assessments of American society; see Table 5-2. Irrespective of income, more than 80 percent of blacks agree that all Americans do not have "an equal chance." This opinion is held by 57 percent of whites making under $15,000 a year and by 45 percent of more affluent whites; but higher income has no effect on blacks' skepticism about how well the country lives up to its ideals of equal opportunity. This pattern recurs in almost every compari- son of black-white differences in political attitudes: if anything, middle-class blacks are more liberal and critical than less affluent blacks. The distinctiveness of black political views is particularly notable on the question of government responsibility to aid the disadvantaged. Blacks are considerably more supportive than whites of the position that the govern- ment should Guarantee a basic level of support to all citizens and protect ~ Do 1 1 people trom the consequences ot sickness, poverty, unemployment, and ova age. As Table 5-3 shows, controlling for income actually enhances black- white differences on this subject (see also Gilliam, 1986; Gurin et al., 1988.) Blacks are also more willing to turn to the government for help with a pressing problem of any sort (Wolfinger, 1988:113~. More detailed and explicit responses on the role of government can be found in Table 5-4, which contrasts black and white views on spending for a variety of purposes. When asked about the adequacy of government spend- ing on almost every specific category (e.g., health, environment, drug con- trol, education, and crime control), majorities of both whites and blacks say that "too little" money is being spent. However, blacks invariably are more likely to favor increased spending on social services: the differences are 20 percentage points on "improving cities" and 41 percentage points on "wel- fare, but only 4 percentage points on crime control." It appears that the political views of blacks also differ significantly from those of other racial minorities, although the data on this subject are frag- mentary. A survey in California found that blacks were the most supportive 212
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICIPATION TABLE 5-3 Attitudes Toward Government Responsibility for Citizens' Welfare, by Race and Income (percent agreeing) Income Less Than $15,000 Income More Than $15,000 Statement Blacks Whites Blacks Whites The government must sce to it that everyone has a job and that prices are stable, even if the rights of businessmen have to be restricted. It is the responsibility of the government to meet everyone's needs, even in case of sickness, poverty, unemployment, and old age. Personal income should not be determined solely by one's work. Rather, everybody should get what he/she needs to provide a decent life for his/her family. The government in Washington ought to reduce the income differences between the rich and the poor, perhaps by raising taxes on wealthy ~ . . . . ramt les <>r by glvmg income assistance to the poor. a 64 56 67 33 80 61 79 50 64 45 30 22 69 54 62 39 a Responses to this item are pooled data from General Social Surveys in 1978, 1980, 1983, and 1984. Source: Data from 1984 General Social Survey, reported in Kendrick (1988:Table 12). TABLE 5 - Attitudes Toward Government Spending, by Race (percent agreeing) Difference: Black Black White Minus Item (N = 510) (N = 1,323) White Increase government spending on Education 78 55 23 Improving cities 67 47 20 Health 75 57 18 Environment 67 52 15 Crime control 79 75 4 Drug control 71 60 11 Welfare 58 17 41 Improving race relations 88 23 65 Decrease government spending on Defense 46 30 16 Space exploration 76 38 38 Source: Data from 1982 General Social Survey, reported in Seltzer and Smith (1985:Tables 1, 4). 213
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY of government social spending of all major racial and ethnic groups. Latinos ranked second, and Asian-Americans' views resembled those of whites (Cain and Kiewiet, 1986~. Here we see the roots of the politics of resources. Many blacks are convinced that much of the progress in American society has come about, for them and others, because of the progressive role played by federal government policy. In tandem with black core values stressing fairness and equity in the allocation of society's goods and resources, this operational conclusion has given rise to the issues that now dominate the political agenda of blacks. It also explains the "liberalism" of black priorities when viewed through the prism of mainstream political categories (see, e.g., Nie et al., 1976:23-24, 253-255). Black-white differences in values concerning redistribution are also reflected in the attitudinal differences between black and white elected officials. For example, 70 percent of black officials, compared with 26 percent of white officials, agreed with the statement: "True democracy is limited in the United States because of the special privileges enjoyed by business and in- dustry." And 76 percent of black officials, compared with 30 percent of white officials, agreed: "It is the responsibility of the entire society, through its government, to guarantee everyone adequate housing, income, and lei- sure" (Conyers and Wallace, 1976:31~. A closely related attribute of black core political values is the emphasis on the polity as an arena for the pursuit of group equity, rather than a frame- work to assure the freedom of the individual. Blacks are well known for their use of collective actions such as boycotts, which are explicitly designed to advance collective goals for allocational status, and investing those claims with a moral significance. The black assertion of a moral claim to group entitlements is based on the view that discrimination and the economic structure produce an unfair and unequal distribution of resources. In con- trast, the prevailing view of the white majority is that government is a means of nurturing the liberty needed for individual advancement, and whites see the prevailing economic distribution as the result of fair competition (Dan- zig, 1964; Huber and Form, 1973; Lane, 1986~. Blacks have often articulated a vision of maintaining a distinct black iden- tity in the midst of American society (see Chapter 4~. In Tesse lackson's 1984 and 1988 presidential campaign speeches, the "rainbow" imagery was a rhetorical celebration of the group diversity in American society. In this respect, the "rainbow" is the very antithesis of the "melting pot" often seen as the American ideal. Blacks tend to be more responsive than whites or Asian-Americans to the distinctive cultural aspirations of Latinos on the issues of bilingual education and bilingual ballots (Cain and Kiewiet, 1986~. Well-educated blacks tend to be the most supportive of group solidarity in political action. Upper status blacks are also the most likely to possess the motivation and organizational ties to participate actively in electoral politics, as well as in other modes of political activity (Gurin et al., 1988~. Thus, most members of the black middle class pursue group as well as individual goals when they attain positions of leadership. The sense of a "common 214
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICIPATION TABLE 5-5 Social Values, by Race (in percent) Black White Value (N = 510) (N = 1,323) Women's rights Approve women in politics 65 75 Approve married women working 70 76 Men better suited for politics 60 63 Approve abortion on demand 28 41 Approve Equal Rights Amendment 82 71 Vote for women president 89 86 Morality and religion Approve sex education 87 85 Approve easier divorce law 47 20 Support Supreme Court on school prayer 21 41 Crime Courts too soft on crime 16 2 Oppose death penalty 53 18 Approve gun control 79 72 Source: Data from 1982 General Social Survey, reported in Seltzer and Smith (1985:Tables 2, 3, and 4~. fate," or identification with the shared experience of black Americans, is an important predictor of policy preferences. In addition to support for pro- black positions on race-related issues, such as affirmative action and South Africa, it is also associated with a desire for increased spending on education, jobs, and social welfare, and a desire to cut spending on defense. This support is consistent among all blacks, regardless of socioeconomic status or other demographic factors (Gurin et al., 1988~. Probably because of the rural southern heritage of so many blacks, a vein of social conservatism is manifested on certain kinds of issues among blacks. For example, blacks are less likely than whites to approve abortion on demand (by 28 to 41 percent). Blacks are also less likely than whites to approve of, married women working (by 70 to 76 percent), women in politics (by 65 to 75 percent)-although they are as willing to vote for a woman President (by 89 to 86 percent), or the Supreme Court's restrictions on school prayer (by 21 to 41 percent); see Table 5 5.2 A California study on racial minorities found blacks more favorable to school prayer and less favorable to banning handguns than whites, Asian- Americans, or Latinos; blacks were the least likely to favor the death penalty for murder (Cain and Kiewiet, 1986:31~. However, views on such "social" issues do not appear to determine black political preferences; rather, views on spending for the disadvantaged appear to count more heavily in most blacks' voting decisions (Cavanagh, 1985~. 2. These data are not broken down by education or income; we do not know if the black- white differences would remain if socioeconomic status differences were controlled. 215
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY BLACKS AN D THE POLITICAL PARTI ES From Emancipation to the Great Depression, the black vote was heavily Republican. The GOP, the "party of Lincoln" that had freed the slaves, was seen as more receptive to black interests and black participation than the Democratic party with its segregationist southern wing. The New Deal poli- cies of Franklin D. Roosevelt caused a large shift of blacks into the Demo- cratic party in the 1930s. However, many blacks considered themselves "Roosevelt Republicans" during these years, and sizable pockets of black Republicanism persisted in many local areas (Weiss, 1983~. A significant fraction of blacks continued to identify as Republicans, and Republican presidential candidates received from one-quarter to more than one-third of all black votes. (There were also substantial numbers of southern blacks who professed no interest in politics, doubtless a reaction to widespread denial of political freedom.) The shift from Republican loyalties was based on the Democrats' more generous and active social welfare policies; as late as 1960 the Democratic party's civil rights image was confused and ambiguous (Campbell, 1966; Hagen, 1989:Table 10~. The landmark 1954 school deseg- regation decision, announced by a chief justice recently appointed by a Republican president, may have suggested that the Republican party still had much to offer blacks. This transitional phase ended in 1964. Although that year's Civil Rights Act actually was supported in Congress by a higher proportion of Republi- cans than Democrats, the significant facts were its introduction by one Democratic president and its signing into law by another. Only six Republi- can senators voted against it, but one of them was Barry Goldwater, his party's presidential candidate. Goldwater's campaign ended Republican hopes of regaining a meaningful share of black support in national politics. Since then, blacks have been nearly unanimous in their Democratic affiliation, support for Democratic presidential and congressional candidates, and belief that the Republican party offers less to them. However, liberal or moderate Republicans opposing conservative Democrats in state and local elections have sometimes managed to attract significant black support. A study on minorities in California offers comparative data on party iden- tification among racial groups. The patterns roughly correspond to those with regard to political beliefs presented above. Blacks are by far the most Democratic in their allegiance (78 percent), followed by Latinos (54 per- cent). Among whites, Democrats have only a narrow margin of 37 to 35 percent over the Republicans, and Asian-Americans identify with Republi- cans over Democrats by 38 to 35 percent (Cain and Kiewiet, 1986~. Among whites, socioeconomic status is a strong predictor of party identi- fication; lower status whites are much more likely to identify as Democrats and higher status whites as Republicans. Among blacks, this correlation has traditionally been much lower, and it was virtually absent in the mid-1980s. A Gallup survey commissioned for the Joint Center for Political Studies in 1984 found that "flower and] upper status blacks are almost equally likely 216
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICIPATION TABLE S-6 Black Delegates at National Political Conventions, 1912-1984 Democratic Conventions Black Year Delegates Percent Total Delegates 1,094 1,092 1,094 1,098 1,100 1,154 1,204 1,094 1,176 1,234 1,230 1,372 1,521 2,316 3,084 3,103 3,048 3,331 3,933 Republican Conventions Black Delegates 65 35 29 39 49 26 45 32 18 41 29 36 22 14 26 56 76 55 69 Percent Total Delegates 1,078 985 984 1,109 1,098 1,154 1,003 1,000 1,057 1,094 1,206 1,323 1,331 1,308 1,333 1,348 2,259 1,993 2,235 1912 1916 1920 1924 1928 1932 1936 1940 19424 1948 1952 1956 1960 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 o o o o o 12 7 11 17 33 24 46 65 209 452 323 481 697 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.0 1.0 0.6 0.9 1.3 2.6 1.7 3.0 2.8 6.7 14.6 10.6 14.4 17.7 6.0 3.5 2.9 3.5 4.4 2.2 4.5 3.2 1.7 3.7 2.4 2.7 1.6 1.0 1.9 4.2 3.4 2.7 3.1 Sources: Data for Democratic conventions of 1912-1928 Mom Barn and Parns (1973) and Work (1937:102); for Democratic conventions of 1932-1984 from the Joint Center for Political Studies (1984a:Table 2); data for Republican conventions from the Joint Center for Political Studies (1984b:Table 1). to identify with the Democratic party, whether the indicator of social status is education, income, or occupation" (Cavanagh, 1985:35~. However, younger blacks were more likely to be Republicans than were older blacks. A follow-up study in 1987 found that 18 percent of blacks under the age of 30 identify as Republicans and 27 percent as "strong" Democrats. But among blacks over age 50, 6 percent are Republicans and 46 percent "strong" Democrats. Eddie N. Williams (1987) suggests that the Republicans may currently have an opportunity to target younger blacks to reduce the large Democratic majorities in the black community (but see Pinderhughes, 1986~. Civil rights issues have reinforced the economic interests underlying black partisanship. Lower status blacks, like lower status whites, support the Dem- ocrats for economic reasons. Upper status blacks often come from families with a history of poverty and view programs for the poor and for public sector employment as a basis of social mobility. They also support the Democrats' civil rights policies. The only comprehensive time-series data on black participation in the national party organizations are statistics on black delegates to national party conventions (see Table 5-6~. Black representation at Republican conventions 217
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY was considerably higher in the early years of the century than it is today. It was also higher than the black proportion of Democratic delegates until 1952. The black share of Democratic delegates has increased from 0.6 per- cent in 1940 to 17.7 percent in 1984. The black share of Republican dele- gates declined from 3.2 percent in 1940 to 1.0 percent in the Goldwater convention of 1964 and rebounded to 3.1 percent in 1984. The Democrats face a challenge in attempting to retain their black base. They must wrestle with the "special interest" perception in handling black priorities, but they must also accommodate the reality of the increased black presence in the parry's shrunken coalition base and the demands for an increased leadership role that accompany that presence.3 Despite the difficul- ties posed by most blacks' negative view of the Reagan legacy, the Republi- cans currently enjoy the best opportunity in a quarter of a century to compete for the black vote-particularly among younger blacks of the post- civil rights generation. This factor may encourage both parties to devise new strategies to compete for black votes. BLACK NATIONALISM Probably no other aspect of black political behavior is so thoroughly misunderstood by the broader society as black nationalism. Some commen- tators dismiss it as an aberrant form of racism. As Hanes Walton (1985:29) notes: "Most scholars have argued that black nationalism is apolitical," a romantic flight from the hard-nosed reality of American politics (see, e.g., Draper, 1970~. Yet black nationalist movements have played leading roles in the election of such blacks as former mayor Kenneth Gibson of Newark, New Jersey, and former mayor Harold Washington of Chicago. Nationalist sentiments have also been instrumental in black protest and lobbying cam- paigns, conflicts over community control of schools and housing authorities, and most recently in the 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns of Jesse Jackson. Black nationalism is not a cohesive, unitary body of thought or action; it is probably more accurate to speak of black nationalisms (see Chapter 4~. The major themes in black nationalist approaches to politics are racial pride and an emphasis on black control over the affairs of black communities. But there are major differences over such questions as the relevance of Christian religious traditions or leftist class analysis to an understanding of the black condition, as well as the conditions under which interaction and alliances with whites are acceptable (Smith, 1982~. Moreover, there are regional vari- ations in the black political expenence; as Cole (1976:93) notes: 3. In late 1988 and early 1989, William Gray was elected chairman of the Democratic Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives, and Ronald Brown was elected chair of the Democratic National Committee. 218
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICI RATION Neither black nationalism nor integration perch comfortably on a lefc-right spectrum. In much of the North black separatism is equated with radical- ism, integration with conservatism; in the South, the reverse. Systematic public opinion data on black nationalism are scarce. According to Smith (1982:69~: At the peak of nationalist agitation in the late 1960s, support for the ultimate nationalist goal of a separate black state found support among only 7 percent of the national black population. On the question of automatically voting for black candidates, blacks re- spond "no" by 81 percent. The contemporary level of support for a separate black political party has never exceeded the one-third of the black electorate recorded in 1972. The 1984 National Black Election Study found 24 percent in favor of a black party (Gurin et al., 1988~. An earlier nationwide survey of black elected officials found that 9 percent considered "formation of an independent all-Black political party" to be "very important," and 15 per- cent considered it "fairly important" as a means of"achieving real progress for Blacks in America" (Conyers and Wallace, 1976:28~. Black separatism has historically been stronger among the black lower classes than among the middle class, which has tended to work more closely with mainstream, interracial political structures. Thus, Marcus Garvey was most popular with the urban black working class in the 1920s (Bracey, 1971), and the black independent parties of the 1960s and 1970s in Missis- sippi and Alabama were largely concentrated in impoverished, rural black communities (Frye, 1980; Walton, 1972~. Marx (1967:Ch. 5) found that black nationalists were disproportionately young, male, urban, and northern. Yet, like black conservatives, they were more likely to be lower than upper class, have low rates of social participa- tion, lack knowledge about black leaders, and score high on a scale of authoritarian tendencies. Black attitude clusters about race relations during this period formed a monotonic scale. Black nationalists were the most pessimistic about the black condition and most likely to condone violence, conservatives voiced the opposite views, and militant integrationists were generally in the middle (Marx, 1967:11~115~. The 1984 National Black Election Study found that the least educated and least affluent blacks were most likely to support an all-black party and a vote- black strategy. Among higher status respondents, younger blacks tended to be much more nationalist than older blacks, but there was no significant age difference among lower status blacks. Partly because they lack economic and organizational resources, and partly because they are skeptical of the recep- tivity of the political system to black participation, supporters of black na- tionalists are much less likely to vote or engage in campaign activity than other blacks are (Gurin et al., 1988~. 219
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY TH E STRUGGLE FOR CIVI L RIGHTS: PROTEST AND LITIGATION Throughout the civil rights movement, two struggles were taking place simultaneously: a legal struggle and a protest struggle. The movement also had two goals: winning formal recognition of rights and ensuring that these rights would then be enforced. These goals were pursued through litigation and protest, and both were indispensable to the movement. Many rights successfully litigated in the courts, such as the right to equal treatment in interstate travel (Morgan v. Virginia, 1946), were not honored in practice until actual conditions of discrimination were shown to the nation and the world through mass media coverage of protest activity. ANTECEDENTS TO THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT The use of protest as a political tactic has a long history among blacks. Developed as one of the few tactics available to them as slaves, organized protest was artfully used as a political and economic stratagem by the freed people during Reconstruction and afterward (Genovese, 1974; laynes, 1986:Ch. 7~. During the first few decades of the twentieth century, black protest played a sporadic but important role. Between 1929 and 1941, northern blacks organized a series of "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" campaigns in which white-owned ghetto businesses were boycotted unless they agreed to hire blacks. These "Iobs for Negroes" campaigns occurred in at least 35 cities, virtually all in the North (Brisbane, 1970:137-143; Meier and R;udwick, 1976:314-332~. Two other forms of economic grass roots protest were noteworthy in the 1930s. Blacks were active participants in the anti-eviction campaigns waged against landlords in large cities during the decade, and they also figured prominently in organized rent strikes later in the decade (Frank, 1982; Meier and Rlldwick, 1976:336~. A rural parallel to the urban anti-landlord activity was the attempt to unionize tenant farmers and sharecroppers during the 1930s in a number of cotton-growing areas of the South (Grubbs, 1971; Harris, 1982:102-103). Schools were also an early arena for blacks' quest for equality, an arena in which complementary strategies of protest and litigation were highly effec- tive. In the North during the 1920s and 1930s, the practice of keeping black students out of school to protest poor conditions in all-black schools "arose principally from the growing school segregation that accompanied the migra- tion of Negroes to Northern cities" (Meter and Rlldwick, 1976:312-313~. Beginning with a movement in Springfield, Ohio, in the 1922-1923 school year, boycotts-sometimes accompanied by picketing-were seen in dozens of northern cities over the next three decades. This was one of the earliest examples of a recurring pattern of litigation and protest used as complemen- tary modes of black political activity (Meter and Rudwick, 1976:313~: 220
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICIPATION Legal action accompanied nearly all of these boycotts. The NAACP with its strategy of litigation was involved in the overwhelming majority of them; either parents received NAACP support after the boycott had started, or occasionally . . . NAACP leaders suggested the boycott in the first place. . . . [A]lthough most of these campaigns proved successful, victory came either through threatening court action or going to court, rather than through the boycott tactics. In the South, one can observe the same pattern: school protests occurring alongside litigation to secure school desegregation (Kruger, 1976~. This pat- tern would continue as the movement encompassed the desegregation of mass transit and public accommodations in the South. THE CONTEXT OF THE POSTWAR YEARS No single factor can be isolated as the overriding explanation of a civil rights movement that in many ways spanned the middle third of the twen- tieth century. Blacks have protested their status throughout American his- tory. To understand why a successful, broadly based civil rights movement emerged when and where it did, one must look beyond the constant of racial inequality and focus on variables such as socioeconomic development, political opportunities, black organizational resources, and changing atti- tudes toward race relations in the population (see Chapters 2-4 above; McAdam, 1982; Morris, 1984~. Socioeconomic Changes The opportunity for a comprehensive attempt to change black political status was facilitated by the rapidly changing socioeconomic structure of the postwar South. A very important factor was the restructuring of the cotton economy from labor-intensive agriculture to mechanized farming, which dramatically changed many social alignments among both black and white southerners. The migration of displaced black tenant farmers and sharecrop- pers into the manufacturing economy of the urban South and North im- proved wage levels for black adults, and black educational opportunities and attainment increased rapidly as well. As discussed throughout this report, these changes aided the growth and development of indigenous organiza- tions in the black community. In addition, the long-standing unity of the southern business establishment in defense of segregation was fragmenting just as blacks were beginning to mobilize after World War II. Southern manufacturing and retail interests sought social modernization as a prereq- uisite to desperately needed economic growth. For some of the new white business leaders, the inadequacy of the black educational system and repres- sion of black civil status represented an irrational underdevelopment of labor and consumer markets and a factor contributing to social disharmony (Bloom, 1987; Wright, 1986~. 221
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY The restructuring of southern agriculture and the growth of other indus- tries also had an impact on the white population. The urbanization of southern whites increased their incomes and educational opportunities and precipitated a slow restructuring of political preferences away from rural conservatism. Over time, the civil rights movement effected change with the aid of these social forces. Public opinion toward desegregation, even in the South, changed rapidly. As two students of public attitudes put it (Rsed and Black, 1985:16-17~: [S]upport for segregation in 1942 was virtually universal among white Southerners; no particular kind of white Southerner was less likely to sup- port it than any other kind. By the 1950s, however, support for segregation had become less common among educated Southerners, less common among urban Southerners, less common outside the conventionally defined "Deep" South, less common among those who had lived outside the South or were open exposed to the mass media-less common, in short, among the kinds of Southerners being produced in ever larger numbers by urbanization and economic development. As political opportunities arose, black organizations took advantage of them. Sit-ins and boycotts pressured the socioeconomic structure at its weakest link: its dependence on a black consumer market. Thus, at many critical junctures, typified by Birmingham in 1963, white retail merchants and manufacturers called for an accommodation with black community lead- ers that the local political establishment was reluctant to accept (Bloom, 1987; Morris, 1984; Juan WiHiams, 1987~. Political Effects At the same time, black outmigration to northern cities expanded the size of the active black electorate, making it easier for blacks to get a hearing in national politics. The political thrust generated by the growing concentra- tions of black voters in northern industrial cities and states combined with black protest activity in the South to place black concerns on the national agenda. Ultimately, southern officials were forced to respond to decisions made in Washington by all three branches of the federal government, and this decisive federal intervention finally ended legal segregation in the South. Thus, socioeconomic change and the related shift in the structure of political opportunities determined the receptivity of the political process to the surge of black organizational activity. This activity was initially generated by local leaders seeking to achieve local objectives. The bus boycotts in Baton Rouge, Montgomery, and Tallahassee in the 1950s originated among activists in those cities without much direc- tion or encouragement from national civil rights leaders; the same was true of the student lunch counter sit-ins that began in the late 1950s (Carson, 1986; Morris, 1984j. As these local activities became the focus of more and more national attention, the debate shifted to a broader plane. Black rights 222
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICI RATION became an issue not just in Albany, Georgia, or Birmingham, Alabama; the demand grew to ensure such rights on a uniform, nationwide basis through the passage of federal legislation. Local protest activity created a climate in which such legislation could win a place on the national agenda, but its actual passage required extensive lobbying activity centered in Washington. At the national level, black leaders hoped the media coverage of southern violence in the face of demonstrators would elicit sufficient outrage to over- come the long-standing federal reticence to interfere with the prerogatives of state and local governments. The Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations initially tried to limit federal involvement to the field of voting rights, which enjoyed more broadly based support than the emotional issue of desegrega- tion. It was only after a racial crisis in Birmingham during 1963 that political pressure could entice Kennedy to propose a Civil Rights Act, which was passed early in the Johnson administration. The international uproar over brutal racial violence in Selma, Alabama, the following year was the spur to passage of the 1965 Voting [Rights Act (Fleming, 1965; Garrow, 1978~. Pebbly Opinion By July 1963, a large majority of white Americans accepted the principles of equal voting rights and desegregation in employment and public accom- modations (see Chapter 3~. Support for congressional legislation mandating desegregated public accommodations grew rapidly from June 1963 to Janu- ary 1964, a period encompassing the Birmingham crisis, the historic civil rights march on Washington, and nationally televised speeches in favor of such legislation by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. It was black claims on the public conscience made visible by disruptive public activism that forced national attention on civil rights. There is a striking correlation between the degree of movement activity and Gallup Poll figures on the proportion of the public identifying civil rights as the "most important problem facing the country." Both time series reach their peaks during the most intense period of movement activity from 1963 to 1965, which coincided with the adoption of the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965) (see Figure 5-1~. But the pace of change was unsettling to many whites. Survey data show that most whites thought that the administration was "pushing too fast" for desegregation throughout this period. An even larger majority of whites thought that civil rights leaders were "pushing too fast." Blacks, however, increasingly thought that their leadership was "going too slowly" rather than "pushing too fast" (Burstein, 1985:59~. Thus, the civil rights initiatives of the 1960s occurred in an atmosphere that might best be characterized as a mixture of empathy with the civil rights movement and growing acceptance of the notion that black Americans were entitled to the enjoyment of the most basic civil rights, counterbalanced by anxiety over the speed of change. 223
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY FIGURE 5-1 People's identification of civil rights as the most important problem confronting the country, 1962-1971. 55 50 45 ~ 40 By LL LL] 35 30 25 20 10 (1) (1) (2) (4) , (4 ~(1) (a (3) l l ~ I (2) (2) /~ 1(3) I (A (4) (3) \ (5) ol ,., I l l l l l l l 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 YEAR 1968 1969 1970 1971 Note: The numbers in parentheses refer to people's rank of civil rights among the problems identified in that poll. Source: McAdam (1982:198). Repnnted with permission. EN FORCEMENT OF CIVI L RIGHTS Following passage of the civil rights laws of the 1960s, emphasis in the field of civil rights shifted from the adoption of laws and policies to issues of enforcement. This section examines the evolution of civil rights enforcement in four areas: voting, education, employment, and public accommodations and housing. In all four areas, the key issue in enforcement has been the conflict between the intent and effect standards of proof in discrimination cases (Bell, 1986a:37) . Under an effect standard, discrimination is proven when the use of a proce- dural rule is shown to systematically reduce the representation of blacks that would otherwise be expected. This outcome can result even though the rule may appear racially neutral on its face. Under an intent standard, it is neces- sary to prove that any underrepresentation of blacks is a consequence of a deliberate action or desire for that outcome by a specific perpetrator. The intent standard is more consistent with the common-law tradition of evidentiary proof than the effect standard, but it is very difficult to satisfy in discriminationcases(Freeman,1978:1052-1055~.Aneffectstandardpermits . 224
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICI RATION a clearer definition of guidelines for enforcement (Bell, 1986a) . By the early 1970s, the enforcement practices in all four policy areas under examination had shifted from a reliance on intent to a reliance on effect; by the early 1980s, with the exception of voting rights, there had been a pronounced return to an intent standard in civil rights enforcement. Voting The voting rights that were to be protected by the voter registration provisions of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 could not be imple- mented in practice because of the necessity for case-by-case adjudication in the courts. This was remedied by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which mandated the stationing of federal examiners in those individual southern counties with the worst history of abuse (see below). Counties with exam- iners showed the most dramatic black registration gains in the initial years of the act (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1968:222-223~. In addition, states with a long history of little black participation were required to submit all proposed changes in election procedures to the U.S. Department of Justice for "preclearance." Under this program, the proposed changes had to be approved by the department's Civil Rights Division before they were allowed to take effect. By 1970, blacks trying to register to vote infrequently encountered biased procedures or economic retaliation. Ed~cat~m Public school desegregation has also led to controversies about whether it is necessary to demonstrate intent in order to secure an encompassing court order that actually has an effect. The 1954 Brown decision declared segregated public schools unconstitutional, while the 1955 Brown ruling gave district federal courts the responsibility for implementing the decision if local officials did not do so. Most southern districts maintained their separate schools; in the North, school administrators often felt that the Branm decisions did not apply since school segregation resulted from the residential segregation of whites and blacks. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, plaintiffs in the South demonstrated that school officials were maintaining separate schools. The early decisions relied on an intent standard: that is, if there was no demonstrable intent to segregate black and white students, the plans were acceptable. If southern school administrators could demonstrate that their procedures would, pos- sibly, allow some black students to attend classes with whites, their plans were often accepted. Thus, there was the emergence of"freedom-of-choice plans," under which a few exceptionally motivated blacks attended formally white schools. Then, in a series of unanimous and authoritative decisions between 1968 and 1972, the Supreme Court adopted an effects standard: that is, if the 225
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY procedures adopted by school officials left most blacks and whites in racially homogeneous schools or classes, the plans were unacceptable. Federal courts were obligated to order strategies that actually desegregated the schools. In the precedent-making decision, involving schools in Charlotte, North Caro- lina, the Supreme Court approved the use of busing and racial ratios to achieve the desegregation required by the Brown decision (see pages 75-80~. In the early stages of post-Brown litigation outside the South, federal judges rejected plaintiffs' arguments and agreed with the contentions of school administrators that residential segregation caused school segregation. Later, plaintiffs demonstrated that city officials and school boards in the North and West took actions that exacerbated residential segregation and thereby caused school segregation. In Ibises v. Denver School Dismct No. 1 (1973), the Su- preme Court ruled that there was no difference between the de jure school segregation of the South and the de facto segregation in the North. Because school board actions had played a role in residential segregation, the court approved an extensive busing program to desegregate Denver's schools. This decision served as precedent for decisions that affected many northern cities, including Detroit, Boston, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Columbus, and Dayton. The city-suburban pattern of residential segregation that is found in many metropolitan areas guarantees that minority students in central-city public schools will attend classes with predominantly minority enrollments while white suburban students attend largely white schools. If the Supreme Court had used the effects standard, they might have approved the pooling of city and suburban students for purposes of desegregation. However, in 1974 decisions involving Detroit and Richmond, the court ruled that plaintiffs had not sufficiently demonstrated that the actions of city and state officials caused the residential segregation of blacks in the central cities and whites in the suburban rings. Because of the geographic separation of blacks and whites in separate city and suburban school districts, that decision appears to guar- antee that public schools in many metropolitan areas will be as segregated as residential neighborhoods. Many local elected officials and executive bodies have little power to merge black and white school districts. And the legislative and executive branches of the federal government have mostly left the issue of school desegregation to the courts. In general, legislators and executive officials have opposed busing, although it is frequently the only effective strategy for desegregation. Some officials, for example, have advocated a constitutional amendment to ban such busing. In the mid-1980s, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice devoted much effort to end busing in some locations where it had been ordered by federal courts-Norfolk Savannah, and Okla- homa City-or where it had been voluntarily adopted-Seattle. The Justice Department also argued, in the Bob Jones University case, that federal desegregation requirements should not apply to church-affiliated schools, a view that was rejected by both the courts and Congress. In Atlanta, Detroit, Dallas, Portland (Oregon), and most recently in Nor- folk, black community activists have recognized residential segregation pat 226
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICIPATION terns as deterrents to desegregated schools, and therefore they have moved toward a strategy of seeking to improve the quality of existing schools irrespective of the racial composition of their student bodies. The negotia- tion of agreements and programs along these lines has generally been op- posed by the national civil rights organizations and their legal staffs, which remain committed to school desegregation as a primary objective for blacks (Bell, 1986a:17-18~. In higher education, efforts to recruit blacks have been widespread. The use of positive programs to open opportunities for blacks in educational admissions and in jobs has involved similar issues. Despite continuing con- troversy over quotas and goals, the Supreme Court has upheld the use of numerical remedies. The law with regard to educational admissions appears to have stabilized around the standards proposed by [ustice Powell in his pivotal opinion in the Bakke decision (438 U.S. 265 [19781~. Today, colleges and universities may use race as one of the factors considered in the admissions process, but it may not be the sole determining factor. Because racial "quotas" in edu- cation are tied to constitutional standards, they are invalid unless one of three conditions is met: they are based on a specific finding of past discrimi- nation; the minorities receiving the actual benefit were themselves victimized by specific acts of discrimination; or the whites disadvantaged by the pro- gram either contributed to the discriminatory practices or directly benefited from them (Bell, 1986a:73~. Employment Employment, as well as higher education, has been an important area of civil rights litigation during the past decade. To address job discrimination, the effect standard has taken the form of court decisions requiring numerical remedies to correct discriminatory patterns and agency-administered "affir- mative action" mandating "goals and timetables" for the employment of blacks. Employment quotas are not an altogether unprecedented phenomenon in federal employment policy. The Public Works Administration required con- tractors to meet black hiring quotas in public housing construction for some years beginning in 1936 (Weaver, 1942~. In the 1940s, this policy was extended to Federal Works Agency projects (Kruman, 1975~. For statutory standards now in effect, preferential hiring and promotion of blacks is legal and constitutional for manifestly segregated job categories so long as existing white employees are not fired or demoted, their rights are accommodated as part of the remedy, and the remedy is temporary. The major enforcement arm of the federal government in employment discrimination is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), created by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In its early years, the agency was relatively impotent. Its functions were limited to investigation, fact finding, and conciliation, and it had no powers of enforcement or 227
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY prosecution. The EEOC could simply encourage the aggrieved party to initiate a civil suit in a U.S. district court against an employer or labor union. The U.S. Attorney General was also authorized to initiate actions when a "pattern or practice" of discrimination was found, although this authority was infrequently invoked. After the enactment of Title VII, overt refusals to hire or promote for racial reasons became relatively rare, but employers made use of a wide range of seemingly neutral criteria in personnel decisions: education, training, ex- perience, seniority, test scores, and arrest records. In response, the EEOC asserted as early as 1966 that Title VII prohibited the use of putatively racially neutral standards if they had an adverse impact on a disproportionate number of minorities and were not justified by business necessity. These principles were adopted by a unanimous Supreme Court in Grads v. Duke Power Co. (401 U.S. 424 [19711:429-431): [P]ractices, procedures, or tests neutral on their face, arid even neutral in terms of intent, cannot be maintained if they operate to "freeze" the status quo of prior discriminatory employment practices.... Congress directed the thrust of the Act to the consequences [emphasis in the originals of em- ployment practices, not simply the motivation. In Grails, the Court held that differential results were a violation of the 1964 act if they were produced by "employment procedures or testing mecha- nisms that operate as 'built-in headwinds' for minority groups and are un- related to measuring job capability" (401 U.S. 424 [19711:431~. Both the language of Title VII and the legislative history of the 1964 Civil Rights Act offered explicit assurances that employers would not be required to maintain quotas of employees. But the Court subsequently held that the antiquota language applied to proportional racial representation, not to the use of numerical remedies to correct past discrimination. During the debate over the 1972 amendments, the Senate defeated an amendment that would have prohibited federal agencies and officials from imposing numerical goals and timetables under Title VII or federal executive orders. This defeat pro- vided a record of congressional intent for the Court (Days, 1984:317~. The EEOC's limited investigatory apparatus was swamped by a huge vol- ume of complaints during its first years. When Congress amended the statute in 1972 to give EEOC authority to sue in court, the EEOC brought class- action suits to which the courts proved quite receptive (Laney, 1986; Rosen- thal, 1973; U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 1984:Ch. 3~. In amending Title VII, Congress recognized that the initial congressional restrictions had had the unintended consequence of making the EEOC concentrate its resources on individually based actions rather than on class action suits that more efficiently deter discrimination. The 1972 amendments also brought public employment under the cover- age of Title VII and gave EEOC authority to sue employers in federal district courts. In 1976 Congress further amended the statute to protect pregnant women from discrimination, and in 1978 several new responsibilities were 1 ~ 228
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICI PATION transferred to the EEOC, including implementation of the Equal Pay Act and the Age Discrimination Employment Act. An administrative reorgani- zation in 1978 established a system for the rapid processing of complaints at the local level and eliminated the bulk of the backlog (Laney, 1986; U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 1984:120~. While the enforcement machinery was improving, however, judicial inter- pretation was being restricted. A number of cases tightened the requirements for private parties bringing class actions. The Supreme Court held that Section 703(h) of Title VII exempting "Bonnie seniority or merit systems" protects present job incumbents if granting preferences to blacks requires the denial of vested seniority rights. This ruling grants immunity from layoffs when seniority is involved, even when a policy of "last-hired, first-fired" incorporates past discrimination against newly hired black employees. In Fighters Local Undo Ho. 1784 v. Stotts (104 S.Ct. 2576 t19841), the Memphis firefighters case, the Supreme Court voided a lower court decree that would have protected from layoff those blacks hired specifically to remedy discriminatory hiring by the Memphis Fire Department. P"bl~c Accornmodattons and Housing Public accommodations and housing are the two polar ends of the com- pliance continuum in the civil rights field. Compliance with the public accommodations provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act has been relatively straightforward, although some legal ambiguities remain with regard to pri- vate clubs. In housing, however, continuing segregation and overt discrimi- nation against blacks have been the norm, and there have been no effective legislative remedies. At the federal level, an ineffectual enforcement mecha- nism was created by design. Virtually all observers concede that the Fair Housing Act of 1968 owes its existence to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Ir., and the subsequent riots. The act was actually an amendment to a highly popular bill to prose- cute participants in riots and civil disorders, and the package was passed within a week of the national turmoil following King's assassination. Enforcement is lodged with the secretary of the U.S. Department of Hous- ing and Urban Development, who is empowered to hear and investigate complaints but cannot initiate them. The secretary may then refer the com- plaint to the requisite state agency, although the victim may also sue in federal court if no state court has jurisdiction. State governments have been reluctant to venture into this area since the repeal of several state fair housing laws in referenda during the 1960s. The "reliance on victims of discrimina- tion to initiate compliance processes" has proved to be the "principal weak- ness" in fair housing enforcement (Bell, 1980:509-516; Newburger, 1988~. 229
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY FIGURE 5-2 Reported voter participation in presidential elections, by race and region, 1952-1988. 90 80 70 CD Z 60 - 50 ' 40 cr In 30 20 10 ~ _ . ~ ~- Northern black ~ ~~ r \ __ ~ - Southern/ ~~ - whited . Southern 7 O 1 1 1 1952 1956 1960 1964 __ Nl~rth~rn whited / ~ at' 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 YEAR Source: Data from Current Population Surveys. DEMOCRATIC STATUS: VOTING AND HOLDING OFFICE The Voting Rights Act of 1965 marked the beginning of a new era in contemporary American politics. Before 1964, black voter participation rates lagged behind white rates by a large margin; since then, they have ap- proached the white rate (see Figure 5-2~. Abler 1965, black concerns within electoral politics have primarily been over the consequences of electoral participation: political office, jobs, and public policy. DETERMINANTS OF BLACK VOTER PARTICI PATION The level of voter participation can be seen as the product of two sets of forces: the incentives to participate and the legal and political obstacles to fulfilling the desire (see Cavanagh, 1987; Wolfinger and Rosenstone, 1980; Walton, 1985:Ch.l). Higher status people are more likely to vote than lower status people because they are more likely to display political efficacy (the belief that one's participation can make a difference in the political process), 230
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICIPATION citizen duty (the belief that voting is a civic obligation in a democracy), and a strong party allegiance (Campbell et al., 1960:Ch. 5~. Blacks are less likely than whites to have strong feelings of political efficacy or of trust in government. However, this relationship disappears or even reverses when socioeconomic status and feelings of personal trust and efficacy are held constant (Glaser, 1987~. The apparent black alienation from politics has been due to two factors: socioeconomic disadvantage and a more broadly based distrust of other people's behavior. The latter factor is probably heavily conditioned by the generally subordinate position of blacks in American life. Yet lower status rural blacks are distinctive for a lack of political interest and a high degree of trust in political authorities-a combination of attitudes that tends to depress all forms of political participation (Gurin et al., 1988) . With regard to legal requirements, the same socioeconomic factors that increase the incentive to vote also enable potential voters to overcome the hurdles of registration imposed by the political system (Wolfinger and Rosenstone, 1980~. Changes in the legal and political environment have been an especially important determinant of black participation in the South. The Fifteenth Amendment-adopted in 1870-said that voting rights could not be abridged on the basis of race or previous condition of servitude. For almost three decades, blacks participated in the political system of the South; many were elected to state legislatures and a few to Congress. However, many southern whites opposed black suffrage, and several strategies were used to get blacks off the voting rolls. In many areas of the South, the Ku Klux Klan and similar organizations used violence and economic sanctions to intimidate blacks who dared to go to the polls. But a series of Supreme Court rulings allowed southern states to disenfranchise blacks directly: the Court ruled that although the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed blacks vot- ing rights, individual states-not the federal government-determined who was eligible to vote. In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, southern state legisla- tures created numerous obstacles (e.g., poll taxes and literacy tests) that discouraged blacks, and sometimes poor whites, from voting. Some states enacted "grandfather clauses"-that said that a person could vote if he were literate or if his grandfather had been eligible to vote. Such clauses disenfran- chised blacks but not illiterate whites. Blacks in the South sued to overturn these laws, sometimes with the assistance of the Justice Department. In 1915 the Supreme Court ruled that grandfather clauses were unconstitu- tional. Early in this century, southern states adopted a different technique to keep blacks from voting. In many states there was a one-party system, so winning the Democratic primary was tantamount to election. Southern legislatures declared that the Democratic party was a private organization with the ability to determine who could participate in its activities, including the primary election. The Supreme Court rendered a series of ambiguous decisions about the constitutionality of such an arrangement, but in 1944 held that whites- only primaries violated the Fifteenth Amendment. Following World War II, 231
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY an increasing number of blacks in the urban South and in border states gained the franchise and began to influence politics at the local level. President Eisenhower's U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1961:23) found that "substantial discriminatory disfranchisement of Negroes" then existed in about 100 counties in eight southern states. That report played a crucial role in laying the groundwork for extensive federal intervention in the voter registration process. In reviewing the enforcement of the 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights Acts, the commission concluded that the tedious procedure of pursuing litigation on a county-by-county basis would not provide an ade- quate remedy (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1961:100, 136~. The futility of this piecemeal litigation strategy was recognized in the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which authorized the appointment of federal officials to register voters in those counties that most egregiously denied blacks the right to vote. Moreover, literacy tests were forbidden in counties that apparently had applied them unfairly. Replacing biased local registrars with federal offi- cials produced an almost immediate political revolution in the South. The most dramatic result was in Mississippi: in 1965, just 28,500 blacks, a mere 7 percent of the voting-age population, had been registered; 3 years later, 250,770 blacks were registered (Colby, 1984~. In 11 southern states, black registration increased by 10 percentage points from 1964 to 1966, and by another 15 points in the next 4 years (Table 5-7~. Although southern blacks were able to register and vote, the meaning of that victory could be diminished by a variety of measures that local officials adopted to minimize black voting strength. Legislative malapportionment, one traditional method of giving more weight to some voters, had been prohibited by the Supreme Court's one-person, one-vote decisions in 1964. But a number of other methods were available to ingenious officials, includ- ing gerrymandering, use of at-large rather than district elections for local offices, adoption of runoffelections, annexation of neighboring communities to reduce the black proportion of city populations, and inconveniently located polling places. These possibilities were anticipated in the Voting Rights Act. Title 5 of the law required that governmental units in "covered jurisdictions"-essen- tially, those jurisdictions to which federal registrars could be sent-had to get approval for any proposed changes in a "standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting." This "preclearance" could be obtained either from the U.S. Department of Justice or the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia. In contrast to Section 5, which applied to jurisdictions whose past history of abridging minority voting rights made their future conduct suspect, the new law's Section 2 applied to the entire country and was aimed at existing electoral procedures. It authorized litigation, either by public or private parties, to challenge any arrangements that might hinder a minority person's full use of the ballot. These provisions were rooted in fears that some local officials would sub- vert black enfranchisement. But such an intent test proved difficult to apply in many cases. In White v. Requester (412 U.S. 755 [19731), the Supreme 232
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICIPATION TABLE 5-7 Black Registration in Southern States, 1940-1984 Black Blacks Voting- Registration Year Registered Age Population Rate (percent) 1940 151,000 4,843,000 3.1 1946 595,000 4,869,000 12.2 1952 1,006,000 5,019,000 20.0 1956 1,238,000 4,955,000 25.0 1958 1,304,000 4,994,000 26.1 1960 1,463,000 5,090,000 28.7 1962 1,481,000 5,148,000 28.8 1964 2,165,000 5,173,000 41.9 1966 2,689,000 5,208,000 51.6 1968 3,112,000 5,299,000 58.7 1970 3,506,000 5,243,000 66.9 1972 3,448,000 6,178,000 55.8 1974 3,842,000 6,562,000 58.6 1976 4,149,000 6,931,000 59.9 1978 - 7,305,000 - 1980 4,254,000 7,718,000 55.1 1982 4,302,000 8,077,000 53.3 1984 5,596,000 8,368,000 66.9 1986 5,796,000 8,957,000 64.7 1988 5,842,000 9,171,000 63.7 Sources: Data for number of blacks registered Tom Voter Education Project; black voting-age population estimated by the committee. Court applied the far broader criterion of the likely effect of a particular provision. It called for an "intensely local appraisal" of the "totality of the circumstances" concerning whether minorities "had less opportunity than did other residents in the district to participate in the political process and to elect the legislators of their choice," thus violating the equal protection clause of the Constitution. Seven years later, the Court held that Congress had meant only to apply an intent test, rather than being concerned with the effects of any electoral arrangement (446 U.S. 55 [19801~. Two years later Congress in effect reinstated an effect test in the 1982 amendments to the Voting Rights Act. By the 1980s the Voting Rights Act had become a major tool to advance the interests not just of blacks but of some other minorities as well: American Indians, Asian-Americans, and Hispanics. The key criterion is election of minority candidates (Thernstrom, 1987~. When courts or the Justice De- partment have held that either proposed changes or existing arrangements might produce a lowered chance of victory for minority candidates, the remedy has been an alteration either of electoral arrangements or their appli- cation in particular cases. Thus, Los Angeles heeded a warning from the Justice Department and drew new boundaries for its city council districts to increase the election opportunities for Hispanics. In one of the most far 233
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY reaching decisions in March 1989, noting that a California city with at-large city council elections and a near majority of Hispanic residents had had only a single Hispanic council member in its history, the Supreme Court ordered that henceforth its council be elected from districts. This decision is likely to have major implications for the distribution of political power in hundreds of cities where at-large elections inhibit the full mobilization of black voting strength. According to the University of Michigan's National Election Studies (NES), self-reported black general election turnout in the South has increased from 13 percent in 1952 to 65 percent in 1984. In the North, self-reported black turnout was 55 percent (27 percentage points below white turnout) in 1952, peaked in the 1964 Tohnson-Goldwater contest at 85 percent, and has hovered between 65 and 73 percent since then. However, the NES regional data for blacks are subject to a relatively large sampling error (over 10 percentage points) due to small sample size. The most accurate estimates of black turnout are those of the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (which are subject to a sampling error of only about 2 percentage points for both southern and nonsouthern blacks). This time series indicates a sharp drop in northern black turnout from 1964 to 1976, followed by a recovery in 1980 and 1984, with a less pronounced but similar pattern in the South; see Table 5-8. Both the Census Bureau and NES estimates are subject to an additional source of error known as overreporting, the tendency of some survey respon- dents to report having registered and voted when they did not. Black non- voters are consistently more likely to report voting than are white nonvoters. It is not yet clear whether this remains true after controlling for demographic characteristics, but the possibility should be kept in mind when considering the data reported. . The relationships linking race and other demographic variables to turnout have clearly changed over time, and these changes have had important con- sequences for the electoral inclusion of lower status black Americans. The demographic characteristics of the black voting-age population explained about one-third of the gap between black and white turnout prior to 1964. The remainder must be attributed to the systematic disenfranchisement of blacks in the South. Since that time, blacks have at times voted at a higher rate than whites of similar socioeconomic status: this occurred in the North in 1964 and in the South from 1968 to 1976; see Table 5-9 (see also Danigelis, 1978; Kleppner, 1982:117~. It has become a nationwide phenom- enon in the 1980s. In order to examine these trends in more detail, we undertook an analysis of Current Population Survey samples from 1978 to 1984. Reported black turnout in 1984 was 5 percentage points hi than reported white turnout when demographic characteristics and state-level political and contextual variables were held constant (Hager, 1988b:Table 21~. This is a significant change from 1972, when black turnout was only marginally higher than white turnout after controlling for demographic factors (Wolfinger and Ro 234
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICIPATION TABLE 5-8 Voter Participation (as a percentage of voting-age population), Presidential Election Years Region and Race United States White Black Difference North and West White Black Difference South White Black Difference 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 70.7 58.5 12.2 74.7 72.0 2.7 59.6 44.0 15.6 69.1 57.6 11.5 71.8 64.8 7.0 61.9 51.6 10.3 64.5 52.1 12.4 67.5 56.7 10.8 57.0 47.8 9.2 60.9 60.9 48.7 50.5 12.2 10.4 62.6 52.2 10.4 57.1 45.7 11.4 61.4 55.8 5.6 62.4 63.0 52.8 58.9 9.6 4.1 57.4 48.2 9.2 58.1 53.2 4.9 59.1 51.5 7.6 60.4 55.6 4.8 56.4 48.0 8.4 Mid-Term Election Years 1966 1970 1974 1978 1982 1986 United States White 57.0 56.0 46.3 47.3 49.9 47.0 Black 41.7 43.5 33.8 37.2 43.0 43.2 Difference 15.3 12.5 12.5 10.1 6.9 3.8 North and West White 61.7 59.8 50.0 50.0 53.1 48.7 Black 52.1 51.4 37.9 41.3 48.5 424.2 Difference 9.6 8.4 12.1 8.7 4.6 4.5 South White 45.1 46.4 37.4 41.1 42.9 43.5 Black 32.9 36.8 30.0 33.5 38.3 42.5 Difference 12.2 9.6 7.4 7.6 4.6 1.0 Source: Data Tom Bureau of the Census. senstone, 1980:90-91~. In addition, black women are now4 percentage points more likely to vote than black men of comparable socioeconomic status. And black women who are heads of households are 11 percentage points more likely than similarly situated white men to vote (Hager, 1988b:Table 10~. Since 1978 there has been a significant reduction in the impact of socioeco- nomic status as a determinant of black turnout (Kendrick, 1986~. In 1984, blacks at the lowest levels of education and income outvoted similar whites by 9 to 12 percentage points; at the upper end of the status scale, black and white turnout was about equal. Blacks aged 35 or younger were 7 to 9 percentage points more likely to vote than whites of the same ace (Havens 1988b:Tables 6-8~. Overall, the 1980s have seen a dramatic mobilization of lower status blacks with a previously marginal attachment to electoral politics. For example, first-time black registrants between 1982 and 1984 were disproportionately ~' ~ 235
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY TABLE 5-9 Differences Between Reported Black and White Voter Turnout, by Region, 1952-1980 · Non-South South Election end Year Unadjusted Adjusted Unadjusted Adjusted Presidential elections 1952 -21.8 - 14.6 -47.6 -35.9 1956 -25.7 -16.7 -41.1 -25.9 1960 - 14.3 - 10.8 -45.3 -28.7 1964 -3.1 +8.6 -22.4 -11.0 1968 - 17.3 - 10.8 +0.8 + 14.9 1972 -2.5 +1.3 -7.1 +11.5 1976 - 1.2 +3.5 -2.1 + 12.4 1980 - 11.4 -5.2 -6.1 -2.0 Congressional elections 1958 - 13.4 -4.0 -24.9 - 16.7 1962 -20.7 -14.5 - 14.2 -3.6 1966 -5.7 +5.0 - 14.9 -0.9 1970 - 17.3 -3.9 -9.0 -0.5 1974 -20.0 - 15.8 -4.3 +3.8 1978 - 12.0 -7.4 -9.7 - 1.5 Motes: Values are differences (in percent), white minus black burnout. The. adjusted difference was calculated by multiple classification analysis to remove the effects of age, education, income, and sex. Respondents below 21 years of age were excluded Tom the percentage base in all years. Source: Data Tom Current Population Surveys, reported in Kleppner (1982:117). composed of young people with high levels of racial consciousness (Cavan- agh, 1985~. The trend toward mobilization of lower status blacks is not mirrored in the white population: between 1978 and 1984, the determinants of white turnout remained fairly constant. The role of race consciousness as a factor in political participation has received increased attention in some recent studies. Race consciousness among blacks involves (1) a feeling of closeness or identification with other group members; (2) dissatisfaction with group status, especially in the polit- ical arena; (3) an attribution of the unsatisfactory group status to illegitimate causes such as discrimination; and (4) a belief that group members must act collectively to improve the group's position. Studies using this set of atti- tudes have found that blacks are more likely than whites to express high levels of group consciousness on each dimension and that such patterns of belief are important correlates of political participation (Miller et al., 1981) . To explain why blacks had higher participation rates than whites of similar socieconomic status, Verba and Nie (1973:158) concluded: "Consciousness of race as a problem or a basis of conflict appears to bring those blacks who are [racially] conscious up to a level of participation equivalent to that of whites." In a reanalysis of the Verba and Nie data, Shingles (1981:78-84) reported that a combination of feelings of political efficacy and mistrust seems to stimulate the desire to participate in policy-oriented activities among 236
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICIPATION lower status blacks, while no comparable mechanism operates among lower status whites. A comprehensive analysis of these issues was undertaken by the 1984 National Black Election Study (Gurin et al., 1988~. In general, the study found that education is the most important positive correlate of feelings of racial solidarity. Although middle-class blacks exhibit the highest levels of group identity and political consciousness, racial solidarity is present throughout the black community to some degree. By motivating blacks to participate in community organizations, racial solidarity helps to mobilize lower status as well as upper status blacks for political activity (Gurin et al., 1988~. In contrast, other researchers believe that changes in the political environ- ment is the major determinant of political participation. For example, Wal- ton (1985:Ch. 5) argues that black participation rates have shown enormous variation over time despite the apparent existence of strong feelings of group consciousness among blacks throughout much of American history. Walton stresses such structural factors as the repression of black voting rights and the responsiveness of the major parties to black concerns as being more impor- tant determinants of black participation than other factors. Registration practices make an important difference in voter participation. Compared to a system of election day registration, a closing date for registra- tion 30 days prior to an election reduces black turnout by 10 percentage points and white turnout by 13 percentage points. For both whites and blacks, the availability of deputy registrars increases turnout by 2 to 3 per- centage points, and the use of neighborhood registration locations (such as libraries, schools, and post offices) increases turnout by an additional 2 percentage points (Hager, 1988b:Tables 14-15~. A number of factors in local political environments are also important determinants of black voter turnout. Many citizens only vote when they believe there is a worthy candidate. This factor is one explanation for the frequent finding that black voter turnout in municipal elections tends to be much more variable, and usually much lower, than white turnout. Black turnout tends to surge in the presence of a strong black candidate (see Hamilton, 1977; Nelson, 1982; Preston, 1984; for a review of case studies, see Cavanagh, 1987:Ch. 4~. For example, the turnout of blacks in Chicago and Philadelphia in 1984 was about 11 percentage points higher than would have been predicted on the basis of the demographic characteristics of the population; whites in those cities were 10 percentage points more likely to vote than whites elsewhere. This turnout was probably a carryover from the intensity of the 1983 black mayoral campaigns in the two cities. Turnout among both races was higher in states with the highest level of voter education activity in 1984. The difference in turnout in the states with the most and states with the least voter education money spent per capita was 7 percentage points for blacks and 6 percentage points for whites (Hager, 1988b:35-39~. Since nonprofit voter education activity was disproportion- ately directed toward blacks in 1984, it is possible that the effect was to spur 237
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY TABLE 5-10 Black Elected Officials, by Region, 1941-1985 _ NortheastNorth CentralSouth WestTotal Year 1941 10202 133 1947 21356 466 1951 293116 682 1965 6310487 26280 1970 238396703 1321,469 1975 5038691,913 2183,503 1980 5701,0412,981 2984,890 1985 6941,1503,801 3716,016 Note: Regions are those of the Bureau of the Census. Sources: Data for 1941-1947 Dom Guzman (1947) and Mumy (1947); for 1951 Tom Guzman (1952); for 1965 Tom Ebony (1965, 1966), U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1968), and Weaver (1964); and for 1970-1985 Tom the Joint Center for Political Studies (1985). a countermobilization of white voters in those states, as may have occurred in the South after passage of the Voting Rights Act (Hammond, 1977; Hanks, 1986; but see Stanley, 1987~. Two other contextual variables uniquely affect blacks. Black voter partici- pation is 12 percentage points higher in states with a large black population (30 percent or more) than those with a negligible black population (1 percent or less); the black population percentage has no impact on white turnout, however. This finding probably reflects the importance of both plausible black candidate victories and black organizational activity at the local level in stimulating black turnout. Local economic conditions are also important factors. A 10-percentage-point increase in state unemployment boosts turn- out in a state by 5 percentage points, regardless of race. ELECTED OFFICIALS The number of black elected officials increased from approximately 33 in 1941, almost all in northern cities, to about 280 in 1965. Thereafter it grew dramatically, especially in the South, where black candidates were generally not viable until the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Since 1965, black Americans have been elected to every major elective public office except those of chief executives: president, vice president, and governor. The na- tional total of black elected officials was 6,829 in 1988. From the perspective of the entire American political system, the number of black elected officials is still very small. As of 1985, 4.0 percent of all elected officials in the South were black, as were 0.7 percent of those outside the South, and 1.2 percent of those in the nation as a whole (Toint Center for Political Studies, 1985:Table 2~; see Table 5-10. The annual rate of increase for black elected officials has dropped from a high of 26.6 percent in 1971 (the high point after the 1965 changes) to single-digit percentages in the 1980s. 238
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICIPATION The single most important determinant of black candidates' success is the racial composition of the electoral jurisdictions: the higher the black percent- age of the voting-age population, the higher the probability of the election of a black to office (Conyers and Wallace, 1976:131-135; Engstrom and McDonald, 1981; Karnig and Welch, 1980:32~. Thus, the largest increases have come at the lower levels of government. While the number of blacks in Congress increased from 10 to 22, between 1965 and 1985, the number of black state legislators increased from 102 to 392. And there were much larger increases among; city council members (74 to 2,1891' school board V J ~ ~ ~ J members (68 to 1,363), and mayors (3 to 286); see Table 5-11. The relationship between racial composition of jurisdiction and black elect- ability is mediated in important ways by intervening variables such as region, city size, districting procedures, and the use of partisan ballots in elections. Region and city size interact to produce what appears to be systematic black underrepresentation in small towns in the rural South. Among incorporated municipalities with a black population majority, 70 percent in the North had black mayors in 1985, compared with 31 percent in the South. Just over one-half of the municipalities outside the South with more than 2,500 people had black mayors if their population was 50 to 65 percent black. Southern municipalities were not likely to elect black mayors unless they were 80 percent or more black (Table 5-12~. This pattern accounts for the low levels of black officials in southern county government as well. There are 82 black-majority counties in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia: in 1985, the local govern- ments were headed by whites in 61 of these counties; 23 of the 82 each had one black county commissioner; and in 15 others the county boards were completely white (Edds, 1987:11; see also M. Jones, 1976; Stekler, 1982~. The design of a local election system is an important determinant of the electability of black candidates. Election of blacks is more likely under a district election system than under an at-large election or a hybrid system combining aspects of the two (Engstrom and McDonald, 1981; Heilig and Mundt, 1983; Karnig and Welch, 1982; Latimer, 1979; Stekler, 1982:Ch. 3; Tacbel, 1978~. After controlling for other factors, election by districts yields a level of black representation on city councils that is roughly equal to the black share of the city population; an at-large system yields a black share of seats that is one-half the black population percentage; see Figure 5-3. This factor accounts for a large part of the disparity between black popu- lation percentages and black representation in the South. At-large systems are much more common in the South. In examining 224 SMSA (standard metropolitan statistical area) central cities, Engstrom and McDonald (1981:1094) found 68 percent of southern cities had at-large elections, com- pared with 45 percent of nonsouthern cities (see also C. Jones, 1976; Karnig, 1976~. Some investigators argue that the greater use of at-large elections in the South is partly due to an attempt to limit black representation (Davidson and Korbel, 1981~. Partisan municipal ballots have both positive and negative implications for 239
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BLACK POLITICAL PARTICIPATION TABLE 5-~2 Incorporated Municipalities with Black Mayors, by Population Racial Composition, and Region, 1985 Percent Black Population: Percent Black Population: Population South Non-South of Municipality 50-64% 65-79% 80-99% 50-64% 65-79% 80-99% Less than 2,500 11 37 75 17 67 88 (N) (176) (78) (84) (6) (6) (16) 2,500 or more 12 45 100 58 75 78 (N) (93) (20) (9) (12) (8) (18) Total 12 39 77 44 71 82 (N) (269) (98) (93) (18) (14) (34) Source: Data Tom O'Hare (1986:7). black candidates. On the positive side, black candidates often benefit from the endorsement and financial support a political party can provide its can- didates. The party endorsement may also aid black candidates running on a party slate by drawing the votes of whites who might vote along racial lines in a nonpartisan ballot situation (Banfield and Wilson, 1963; Gordon, 1970; Karnig and Welch, 1980:26; Pettigrew, 1976; Pomper, 1966:79-97~. A negative aspect is that incumbent parry leaders frequently attempt to restrict access to party patronage and leadership positions, excluding blacks and other political newcomers. Blacks are more likely to run for mayor and city council in nonpartisan municipalities, presumably because under such a sys- tem there is no need to cultivate party ties. However, blacks are more likely to be elected mayor in partisan systems, leading the most thorough study of the subject to conclude that "once on the ballot, blacks benefit from the partisan system" (Karnig and Welch, 1980:146~. OTHER PUBLIC OFFICIALS AND EMPLOYEES Many decision makers in the public sector are chosen by executive ap- pointment, civilservice procedures, or other means. For example, judges are often appointed to office. Prior to World War II, black judges were even more scarce than black elected officials. The first black federal judge was William H. Hastie, appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937 as judge of the District Court for the Virgin Islands. The number of black federal judges rose from 1 in 1941 to 98 in 1986, while the national total of black judges rose from 10 to 841 in the same time span; see Table 5-13. Thurgood Marshall became the first black justice of the Supreme Court in 1968. The time series reveals the significance of the presidential appointment power with regard to black attainment of this particular public office. Presi- dent Carter placed 37 blacks on the federal bench, more than all other presidents combined; President Reagan, as of early 1988, had appointed 6. As a consequence, the growth in the number of black federal judges has 241
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY FIGURE 5-3 Relationship between black percentage of city population and black percentage of city council, by election format. 50 40 cn Ad 30 CO ¢ m Z 20 LL Q 10 o - // Proportional // Representation// i// Mixed ,' // ," ~ /' a,'"'''' ,< ,' ~ At-Large _ /', · ' ~' i/' 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 10 20 30 40 50 PERCENT BlACK POPULATION Note: The regression equations are: district = - 0.832 + 0.994 BP% (S.E. 0.075); mixed = 1.748 + 0.556 BP% (S.E. 0.061); at-large = 0.348 + 0.495 BP% (S.E. 0.061). Source: Engstrom and McDonald (1981:348). Repnnted with permission. leveled off in the 1980s, rising from 94 to 98, while the number of black state and municipal judges continued to climb, from 505 to 743. The black share of federal judicial appointments dropped from 16.1 percent under Carter to 2.5 percent under Reagan. The bunk of the recent growth has been in the South. The number of black state and municipal judges in the South rose from 38 in 1970 to 306 in 1986 (Table 5-14~. Despite this growth, however, and the fact that the black population is disproportionately concentrated in the South, the black proportion of state judges remains lower in the South (3.4 percent) than in 242
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICIPATION TABLE 5-13 Black fudges in the United States 1941-1986 , < ~ State and Year Federal Municipal Total 1941 1 9 10 1951 3 23 26 1961 4 54 58 1970 19 199 218 1980 94 505 599 1986 98 743 841 Sources: Data from Foster and Redid (1947:282), Guzman (1952:309-311), Toles (1970), Crockett et al. (1980), and the Joint Center for Political Studies (1986). any other region. This may be due to the methods of judicial selection in the South. Black judges are least likely to be selected in a system of popular election; they are most likely to be selected where judges are appointed by the executive branch or selected through a ment system. The 11 states of the Old Confederacy use popular election to select judges (Henry et al., 1985:18-28~. There are few systematic trend data available on black appointed officials. The most detailed information is for the federal government, where the black share of total employment rose Tom 10 percent in 1938 to 17 percent in 1980 (Cavanagh, 1987:Table 19~. For federal civil service executives, racial data have been collected since 1961: the black share of such positions (GS- 12 and above) rose steadily Tom 0.7 percent in 1961 to 6.5 percent in 1984. The black share of the Senior Executive Service, the "supergrade" level of noncareer appointments, rose Tom 1.2 percent in 1969 to 5.0 percent in 1980 and dropped to 4.2 percent in 1984 (Cavanagh, 1987:Table 20~. Systematic data on fir time presidential appointments are available only for the last two administrations: 12 percent of President Carter's appointees and 4 percent of President Reagan's were black. TABLE 5-14 Black State and Municipal Judges, by Region, 1970 and 1986 Region 19701986 Northeast 66157 North Central 72169 South 38306 West 23106 Territories 05 Total 199743 Note: Regions are those of the Bureau of the Census. Sources: Data for 1970 from Toles (1970); data for 1986 from the Joint Center for Political Studies (1986). 243
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY The black share of federal managerial positions is highest in the agencies with sizable black constituencies, such as the Equal Employment Opportu- nity Commission, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and agencies deal- ing with social services and personnel policy. Black managers are most rare in the "prestige" agencies dealing with economic policy, national security, and the sciences (Cavanagh, 1987:Table 22~. In the foreign service, the black share of ambassadorships declined from 6.9 percent under Carter to 4.8 percent under Reagan. Blacks then held 1.8 percent of the 650 most senior policy-making positions in the State Department. The black percentage of entering junior officers in the foreign service declined from 18 percent in 1978 to 4 percent in 1985 (Jackson, 1987:47~. The black proportion of public administrators rose from 0.4 percent in 1940 to 7.8 percent in 1980. Since 1970, the overall black share of inspec- tion and compliance officers has risen from 4.7 to 8.1 percent; many of these positions involve the administration of affirmative action programs for minorities and women. A curious anomaly is the position of postmaster; there were more black postmasters in 1950 than in 1980. The black percentage of officials and administrators at the state and local levels rose from 5.3 percent in 1974 to 8.0 percent in 1984. The black proportion of new hires at the official and administrative levels was higher in both years (7.2 percent in 1974 and 9.9 percent in 1984), suggesting that the black share of such positions should continue to increase. However, the number of new hires at the state and local levels declined from 17,749 to 13,699 over the same time span (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 1986:Tables 5, 7~. Thus, it seems probable that the rate of black increase will be lower in the immediate future than was the case in the last decade. By government function, state and local governments have a concentration of black employees in social programs servicing a disproportionately black clientele. Thus, in 1984, the state and local agencies with the highest pro- portions of black employees were housing (38.4 percent), hospitals (24.6 percent), public welfare (23.4 percent), and health (20.7 percent), in addi- tion to the agencies with a largely blue-collar work force, such as sanitation and sewage (32.7 percent), utilities and transportation (26.6 percent), and corrections (20.9 percent). , ~ ~ . _ ~ ALLOCATIONAL STATUS: INFLUENCING PUBLIC POLICY POLITICAL LEADERSH I P AN D PRIORITI ES I N TH E B LACK COMM U N ITY Prior to 1965, black electoral representation was largely restricted to a handful of black-majority districts in northern cities. As a consequence, black leadership generally "has not been an elected leadership, in the sense of a represented constituency choosing it at the polls" (Hamilton, 1981:240, 244
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICIPATION emphasis in the original; see also Smith, 1982:27~. In addition to the tradi- tional lobbying organizations, many of the social institutions in the black community have also tended to take on more or less explicitly political roles, in the sense of aggregating and articulating black interests as well as providing a system of influence and control in directing the affairs of the black com- munity (see Chapter 4; Carson, 1986:20; Holden, 1973:3-8~. Thus, black fraternities, sororities, mutual-aid societies, and business and professional associations have played a central role in the recruitment of leadership and the mobilization of collective action in the black community. The black church provides the most familiar example of the political role often assumed by black social institutions. In recent times, however, the clergy's leadership role has diminished and many black ministers feel that their major duty to their congregations concerns religious rather than political needs (Nelson, 1987~. Nonetheless, the church remains important in black politics as do the major civil rights organizations (see Chapter 4~. Since the early 1970s, the base of black leadership has been undergoing a major transformation. Structurally, this is due to the post-1960s growth in the black middle class, especially black professionals, which has provided an expanded base of black leadership outside the predominantly black institu- tions (see Chapter 4~. In addition, and perhaps as a result of the structural change in leadership possibilities, the breakthroughs in the politics of rights inspired a major debate over the question of alternative strategies and alter- native leadership frameworks for the pursuit of the politics of resources. In an influential article, Bayard Rustin (1965) argued that the era of protest was over and had to be succeeded by an era of black advancement through electoral politics. Similarly, Kilson (1987:17-18) argued that "the decline of civil rights groups is both inevitable and functional," and he agreed with Reed (1986) that black elected officials are destined to become the most important source of black political leadership. In contrast, Carson (1986) and Nelson (1987) argued that the protest movement was part of a long historical process of institutional development in the black community and stress its continuity with the strategy and tactics of black politics throughout the century. According to their view, social movement activity will continue to retain an essential role in black politics in the years to come. The existence of this controversy is itself a manifestation of black political progress. The emergence of a cadre of influential black elected officials obvi- ously provides blacks with a broader base through which political objectives can be pursued. At the federal level, for example, members of the Congres- sional Black Caucus can provide political leadership not otherwise available to blacks. However, there are important limitations on the political change that can be effected by a relatively small number of elected officials. In particular, if the political goals sought by black Americans are substantially out of favor with key decision makers and their constituencies, then there will be obvious constraints on the ability of black officials to enact their black constituents' preferences into policy. 245
A COMMON DESTI NY: BLACKS AN D AMERICAN SOCI ETY As we noted above (see Table 5-4), there is white support for an expanded federal role on many issues of interest to blacks, such as health, education, drug control, and the like. But whites may be less concerned about these issues. If blacks and whites have different priorities, blacks may have a difficult time placing their policy concerns on the federal government's pri- ority list. The evidence is mixed on black-white differences on issue salience. A special study conducted by the Gallup Organization in 1984 for the Joint Center for Political Studies found different priorities. For blacks, the three most important issues in the presidential campaign were unemployment (65 percent), government programs to help the poor (45 percent), and civil rights (38 percent). Whites divided almost evenly among unemployment (42 percent), the federal deficit (42 percent), and inflation (40 percent). Only 6 percent of whites named civil rights as one of the three major issues (Cavan- agh, 1985:4~. Of course, black priorities such as increased employment and aid to schools will not necessarily always remain low priorities to the general public. If so, black Americans and their political leaders will have a large stake and an important role to play in defining the policy agenda. No doubt black public officials, business elites, and other prominent professionals will have an instrumental position in the attempt to articulate issues of concern to blacks. However, this modern black leadership elite will also form partnerships with older black organizations (civil rights groups and churches), many of whom are in close touch with the political desires of the general black population. In particular, the black church has often adapted more quickly to political events than other black institutions because its decentralized structure has made it flexible and responsive to demands for political activity. Black min- isters frequently serve as "brokers," bringing together the diverse elements within a local black community to reach common ground for collective action (Nelson, 1987~. The autonomy and reach of the black church made it the natural organizational framework for the civil rights movement in the South (see Chapter 4; Morris, 1984) and more recently enabled it to play a key role in Jesse lackson's 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns. The im- portance of the black church as an organizational base may be undergoing something of a renaissance at present, due to its participation in electoral politics, lobbying on South Africa, and local-level activity related to eco- nomic development in the black community. The question of how to assert black interests through coalition activity, as opposed to more autonomous organization, is likely to spark intense politi- cal debate in coming years. At the federal level, coalition activity (within the black community and between it and the rest of society) appears both necessary and inevitable. It is aided by the political resources accumulated by black congressmen as they acquire seniority. And as blacks become more skilled and influential in presidential nomination politics, this arena may present an increasingly important outlet for black attempts to take a role in setting the national legislative agenda. At the local level, however, blacks have shown signs of an increasing 246
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICIPATION tendency to resort to protest politics. The fights over Howard Beach, the school chancellor position in New York, and the Chicago mayoral succession of 1987 suggest that church and community organization leaders may be trying to pursue a much more explicitly confrontational political strategy and thrust it on more mainstream black leaders. In recent years, these two forces have frequently coalesced in electoral campaigns (e.g., the Jackson presiden- tial campaign of 1988, which drew much stronger support from black elected officials than did his 1984 campaign) and have helped to stimulate a dramatic increase in black voter participation. In Chicago in 1983, for example, social movement activity to protest cutbacks in welfare programs provided the nucleus of organizational support for Harold Washington's mayoral victory (Woods, 1987), and the same phenomenon of a social movement in electoral form could be discerned in Jesse Jackson's 1984 presidential campaign. Protest has played a central role in black political activity precisely when aspirations crystallized at the grass roots level have not been given a favorable place on the agenda of the wider polity. As Lipsky (1968:1145) has said: "The 'problem of the powerless' in protest activity is to activate 'third parties' to enter the implicit or explicit bargaining arena in ways favorable to the protesters." Thus, black protest has often coincided with other, more conventional, forms of participation that serve to resolve conflicts that would not have been placed on an agenda without the protest activity. The concept of confrontation to initiate negotiation was the strategic core of the civil rights movement. As the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Ir., posed the question in his celebrated letter from the Birmingham jail (King, 1964:79~: You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to dramatize the issue so it can no longer be ignored. If disaffection with the slow pace of change accruing from electoral politics begins to set in at the grass roots level and if some leaders begin to cast increased doubt about the efficacy of mainstream participation as opposed to more confrontational strategies, the result could be a greater debate within the black community. Black political interests are not exclusively concerned with gaining power in the public sector. Blacks have also shown disaffection with their pace of advancement in occupying positions of power in the corporate world, in influential law firms, and in other areas of the private sector. While data on this subject are difficult to obtain, we present some illustrative data on black . . . . . par~aapat~on In the private sector. Law firms are an important link between the public and private sectors in America. The largest Washington, D.C., firms, in particular, specialize in a law practice that is virtually indistinguishable from lobbying (Green, 1975). The Washington Post surveyed the 14 Washington firms with more than 100 247
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY attorneys on staff and found that blacks were 18 of the 896 partners, or 2.0 percent, and 51 of the 1,367 associates, or 3.7 percent (Marcus, 1986~. These percentages are similar to those for the United States as a whole. A survey of the nation's 250 largest law firms by the Natural Law Journal found that blacks accounted for 1,212 of the 16,530 partners, or 0.7 per- cent, and 499 of the 25,577 associates, or 2.0 percent. Black law students are far less likely than white law students to enter private practice. A survey of 28,702 graduates from 160 accredited law schools in 1983 (Marcus, 1986) found the following: All Kind of Practice Graduates Blacks Private 58.9% 32.4% Business 10.5 10.7 Government 11.4 23.3 Public interest 3.0 8.2 Coroorate positions are not only important in directing . .. . .. . ~ . . .. . .. economic affairs, -or ~ but also as symbolic indicators of increasing black participation in the cor- porate sector. They represent points of access and influence on government and other private-sector activities. According to the annual survey of the nation's 1,000 largest business companies by Korn/Ferry International, a leading executive recruitment firm, the percentage of corporate boards with one or more minority members rose from 9.0 percent in 1973 to 29.5 percent in 1986. Minority members were most prevalent on the boards of retailers, 55 percent of which had minority representation, closely followed by banks and other financial institutions, 53 percent. Company size appears to improve minority representation: 51 percent of corporations with $5 billion or more in revenues, and 44 percent of those with $1 billion or more, had minority board members (Korn/Ferry International, 1987~. grimmer (1985) estimated from the 1984 Korn/Ferry survey that about 19.7 percent of firms have at least one black director. There were approxi- mately 125 black directors on the boards of the 633 firms responding. This was about 1.5 percent of the total number of directors. But the average black director holds 3.8 directorships. Thus, the entire universe of black corporate directors probably comprises no more than a few dozen individuals. The EEOC estimated in 1982 that 4.3 percent of all corporate "officials and managers" were black. At the fortune 1000 companies, however, black advancement into managerial ranks has been small. In 1979, only 3 of these companies' 1,708 senior executives were blacks; the number had risen to 4 of 1,362 in 1985 (Korn/Ferry International, 1987:Table 24~. Black execu- tives have been disproportionately laid off during corporate restructuring moves since 1984. One reason is that black executives often work in equal employment opportunity compliance and other minority-related areas; these jobs do not have much immediate impact on profits and are often the first to go during cutbacks. 248
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICIPATION LOCAL BLACK GOVERNANCE For purposes of analysis, it is useful to distinguish the dynamics of black participation in the public policy process at the federal level from those prevailing at the local level. At the federal level, black interests are usually expressed in concert with white allies, making it difficult to assess the inde- pendent contribution of black political influence to the outcome. At the local level, blacks are increasingly situated in positions of authority that permit considerable discretion in policy decisions, although black mayors, like most mayors, often find significant limitations on their freedom to maneuver due to political and economic constraints. A mayor may be a chief executive, but if patronage is controlled by a party chairman, or taxing authority is possessed by a board of estimate, then the mayor may be just one of many participants seeking a favorable outcome. The power of a mayor, whether black or white, is partially conditioned by the local governmental structure (e.g., a strong mayor or a council-manager form of government), but the unofficial channels of influence-such as cam- paign activists and contributors, downtown business interests, and the me- dia-may be more important in affecting decisions. Thus, the mere existence of black elected officials cannot be equated with political power (Iones, 1978). After an election, the forces responsible for mobilizing the black constitu- ency in support of a black candidate often disband, leaving a black official with a fragile base to generate support for policy initiatives (Curvin, 1975; Nelson, 1978~. At the same time, the fragmentation of authority within city governments and the leverage held by business interests and the media may be more powerful political forces with which a mayor must contend. Alien- ating these interests may lead to a mayor's appearing impotent and ineffec- tive; catering to them leads to charges of "selling out" from black constitu- ents. Either way, a policy-making base can be difficult to maintain over a sustained period of time even though an electoral base may appear to be secure. Noting these considerations, most of the literature on black governance has stressed the limitations of black influence in the policy process (see, e.g., Nelson, 1978; Preston, 1976; Walton, 1972~. These conditions are ag;gra- vated by the nature of the cities in which most blacks come to power. Although cities such as Washington and Newark have shown recent signs of some revival, most of the cities with black mayors have a declining employ- ment and revenue base; inadequate educational systems, housing, and health care; and a large proportion of the population receiving public assistance. Because local governments are in competition with one another to attract new businesses and residents while retaining existing ones, they are not inclined to increase taxes enough to pay for any significant degree of income redistribution (Peterson, 1981~. The inadequacy of the revenue base con- strains local officials from pursuing some policies-for example, tax in- creases-that might discourage businesses from locating in the jurisdiction; 249
A COMMON DESTI NY: BLACKS AN D AMERICAN SOCI ETY indeed, attracting jobs to the local area is often considered the chief criterion of success for local officials. To the extent that black officials must heed such realities, black constituents may begin to fear cooption and reduced account- ability on the part of black officials. . Black local officials must bargain not only with the private sector, they must also bargain with other public officials who often have access to a far superior revenue base. For example, state governments play a major role in welfare expenditures; the federal government is the primary source of funds for public housing; and most major redevelopment projects come about as a result of matching funds or tax subsidies from the federal government. Thus, the need to obtain resources constrains local black officials and requires accommodation with actors and interests independent of the black commu- nity. This complex of pressures gave rise to the seeming paradox by the early 1980s of increasingly conservative fiscal policies at the municipal level at a time when black electoral representation was surging In major Sties across the country (Clark and Ferguson, 1983:144~. The clearest impact of black representation is on hiring and appointment policies in municipal governments. Having a black mayor increases both the black share of the municipal work force and the level of positions to which blacks are appointed (Eisinger, 1982; Moss, 1986~. These changes are some- times quite dramatic after the election of a black mayor. Between 1973 and 1980, for example, the black share of administrators rose from 13 to 35 percent in Atlanta and from 12 to 41 percent in Detroit (Eisinger, 1984:252~. It is almost universally believed that black representation improves the delivery of city services (such as police and fire protection, trash collection, schools, and road repair) in black neighborhoods, but most of the evidence is qualitative in nature (e.g., Keech, 1968; Lawson, 1976; Price, 1957; Wirt, 1970~. Similarly, police harassment of blacks and the use of deadly force are believed to decline when black representation on the police force goes up. Several cities have seen large increases in the percentage of black police officers after a black mayor is elected (see Chapter 9~. In terms of municipal policy expenditures, black representation clearly results in increased spending on health care (Gruber, 1979; Peterson, 1981~. Another study found that cities with black mayors and black city council representation spend more on health, housing, and education, although the findings were weak and somewhat inconsistent (Kirnig and Welch, 1980:Ch. 6~. A third study modeled the process underlying spending increases by city governments and found the critical link to be the presence of a strong mayor supportive of social programs. The presence of a sizable black electorate, and the level of black political activity, predicted the presence of such a mayor, but they were not independently associated with the spending outcomes (Clark and Ferguson, 1983:Ch. 5~. There is also considerable evidence from case studies that black mayors place a high priority on municipal contracting with minority firms (K]son, 1987~. The promotion of black-owned businesses was seen as "very impor- tant" by 86 percent of black elected officials, and 71 percent considered it 250
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICIPATION "very important" to encourage the hiring of black corporate managers in white-owned businesses (Conyers and Wallace, 1976:28~. This emphasis on black entrepreneurial opportunities is not without its detractors. Rich (1982:217) complained: "The new patronage system is a spoils system for the middle and upper classes. The benefits of the new system are not availa- ble to the working class." Noting this tension, KUson (1987:111) predicted that the question of whether to emphasize opportunities for black profes- sionals or more broadly based redistributive policies "will in time become a central focus of political contest in black politics." He also considered the development of a strong black economic base to be an essential ingredient for the growth of black political power (see also Hamilton, 1976~. Overall, fiscal and political constraints make large-scale spending programs unlikely at the local level. Black representation at the municipal level seems to have the greatest leverage over delivery of basic city services, which can improve the quality of life of black constituents in very straightforward (and relatively noncontroversial) ways. The major share of the benefits from black local governance may have helped produce the new black middle class through government employment opportunities and minority contracting. This is not a new pattern-it has been commonly observed among white ethnic groups as they made their first breakthroughs in local governance (KUson, 1987; Wolfinger, 1973:Ch.3~. To extend the benefits of the elec- tion of black officials more fully to black working-class people, Kilson (1987:131-132) saw a need for black political leaders to deal with three major problems: crime, public education, and housing. Coalition activity has aided blacks and other minorities when congruent interests and preferences make it possible. A study of 10 cities in northern California found that black representation per se was not clearly related to policy outcomes; the critical factor was black participation in majority gov- erning coalitions with white liberals and Hispanics on city councils. In cities with this feature of black and Hispanic "incorporation," there was serious consideration or adoption of policies favored by minorities with regard to police-civilian review boards, minority contracting, and minority hiring by city governments (Browning et al., 1984:Chs. 4-5~. The most fiscally healthy level of government-the states-is also the level at which blacks have tended to be least successful in exerting political influ- ence. The southern states, where half of the black population resides, con- tinue to spend the least on education and other basic social services. The election of black state legislators, and the expansion of statewide black lob- bying efforts, is likely to be an increasingly important arena for black politics. Such a focus implies close attention to the redistricting and reapportionment to take place after the 1990 census. THE FEDERAL POLICY PROCESS It was not possible here to study comprehensively the entire range of federal policy. Rather, we have singled out four areas-foreign policy, anti 251
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY poverty policy, minority business enterprises, and tax reform-for a brief examination in terms of recent black participation. Foreign Policy Concerns of the black population have traditionally been considered min- imally important or excluded altogether from the realm of foreign and mili- tary affairs. Blacks were thought to exhibit little awareness of or desire to participate in foreign policy controversies (Hero, 1969; Morris, 1972~. There has been a marked change in recent years. As Jackson (1987:2-3) noted: Blacks' growing interest and involvement in U.S. foreign policy-as political activists, diplomats, and especially as lobbyists-constitutes one of the gen- uinely new features of Afro-Arner~can development since 1940. Blacks have sought to influence U.S. policy on Africa in much the same way that Jews have sought to influence policy toward Israel and Americans of Irish, Greek, and East European descent have tried to influence policy toward the areas of their interest. The three major objectives of black partic- ipation in foreign policy since 1940 have remained consistent: first, support for the national self-determination of African peoples; second, material assis- tance for the economic development of independent African nations; and third, a specific manifestation of the other two, elimination of the apartheid system in South Africa (Jackson, 1987:5-6~. One of the major policy breakthroughs for blacks during the 1980s has been the adoption of U.S. sanctions against South Africa. The success on this issue demonstrates the variety of avenues available for black political leverage in the face of a presidential administration that was strongly opposed to blacks' policy preferences. Success on this issue is all the more remarkable given the traditional latitude enjoyed by presidents in the conduct of foreign affairs. Blacks and their allies exerted pressure on four major fronts: during the 1984 presidential campaign, highlighting the significance of black partic- ipation in the Democratic coalition; in Congress, demonstrating the impor- tance of senior black members; in city governments, which were responsive to the growing black electorate; and in grass roots activism. The Reagan administration had pursued a policy of "constructive engage- ment" with the South African regime from 1981 to 1985. This policy became increasingly controversial as protests against apartheid escalated in South Africa and a state of martial law was declared. TransAfrica (see Chapter 4) had been laying the groundwork for congressional legislation with several years of lobbying after its success in persuading the Carter administration and Congress to support sanctions against Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The sanc- tions issue was given a major boost by Jesse lackson's 1984 presidential campaign, which elevated support of sanctions to the status of mainstream Democratic party policy. The "Free South Africa" coalition, with its pro- tests outside the South African embassy in Washington beginning in late 252
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICIPATION 1984, also catalyzed grass roots activism at colleges and in cities throughout the country. In recent years, there have been the congressional overrides of President Reagan's veto of sanctions and a rise of divestiture of South African-related holdings by government pension funds and university endowments. Several major corporations left South Africa in 1986 and 1987, partly because city governments have responded to lobbying by refusing to do business with firms that have a presence in South Africa. This exodus may accelerate as a result of the federal budget package passed in late 1987, which increased taxes on American corporate subsidiaries remaining in South Africa. The influence of black Congressman Charles Rangel of the Ways and Means Committee in the House-Senate budget conference was a crucial factor in securing the adoption of this measure. However, some observers believe that the antiapartheid campaign is beginning to suffer from the "lack of a popular post-sanctions agenda" (Jackson, 1987:32) and the dissipation of the move- ment's base of college students, clergy, and trade unions following the rapid initial victories on divestiture and imposition of sanctions. Antipoverty Policy Blacks have been stalwart members of a broad-based coalition to alleviate poverty through redistributive policies since the Great Depression. The fed- eral government began to address the problems of poverty during the New Deal period and greatly expanded its activity in this sphere during the Great Society of the Kennedy-Iohnson years (1961-1968~. Today, there remains considerable controversy over the nature of this commitment as well as its scope. Poverty is not merely an economic problem, but also a political problem related to the distribution of society's goods and resources by the public and private sectors. Given the widespread American belief in free enterprise, the private sector is expected to be the primary creator of jobs. Blacks advocated full employment as being preferable to relief during the New Deal, and recently that tradition was reflected in black support for the Humphrey- Hawkins bill mandating a federal full-employment policy (an ineffectual version of which became law in 1977; Hamilton and Hamilton t1986]j . In reviewing; the public dialogue over antipoverty oolicv since the early ~ 1 ~ 1 J 1 J J lYOUs, there Is a string continuity In the terms ot the poetical debate. Three major problems have been continually addressed: structural unem- ployment (that is long-term job loss due to the disappearance of job catego- ries, in contrast to the fluctuations of the business cycle); the inadequacy of public schooling; and the fear of creating poverty dependency or a perma- nent welfare class. Four major kinds of social spending programs have been designed to alleviate poverty: social insurance, such as Social Security and Medicare; means-tested cash assistance, such as Aid to Families with Dependent Chil- dren (AFDC); means-tested in-kind benefits, such as food stamps; and hu 253
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY man capital development programs, such as Head Start and the Job Corps. Social insurance payments have shown steady growth, with Medicare in particular showing dramatic increases since the mid-1970s. Means-tested cash assistance has declined in real terms since about 1970; for example, the inflation-adjusted level of AFDC benefits declined by 30 percent between 1972 and 1986 (see Chapter 6~. However, this decline has been partly counteracted by an increase in the provision of in-kind benefits during the same time span. Because job training and other human capital benefits are not legally defined as entitlements, spending for them appears to be the most sensitive to the prevailing political climate. They were supported by most presidential administrations from 1961 until 1980 and then sharply reduced under President Reagan (Burtless, 1986; Ellwood and Summers, 1986~. There is a cliflicult trade-off between the political popularity of specific programs and their efficiency in alleviating poverty. Simply put, the most popular programs-the social insurance programs-are the most broadly based, the most expensive, and the least effectively targeted toward the poor. They are popular not merely because of their universal coverage, which diminishes the appearance of income redistribution, but also because they tap into a widely shared American core value: a sense of entitlement earned through personal contributions in the form of payroll taxes by employed workers. The human capital programs-which take the form of education and job training-have enjoyed considerable support. The Head Start program is highly regarded by most policy experts as well as the public, and the Job C.mrmc ho ~1~ eni~ve`1 come .c~'cc~e.c.c With. these exceptions, the targeted education and training programs have been quite controversial, and at least one (the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, CETA) became a favorite target of negative anecdotes about government scandal and ineffi- ciency before it was terminated in 1981. The most efficient programs for alleviating poverty, the means-tested trans- fer programs, are the least popular, probably because many people believe they violate core values about aiding the "undeserving poor." There is also the political problem posed by the programs' clientele: although most AFDC and food stamp recipients are white, a disproportionate percentage of blacks are recipients and have become a target of resentment for many taxpayers. The antipoverty programs have relied on a politically fragile base of support. With the exception of the protest activity of the National Welfare Rights Organization in the early 1970s, and sporadic activities in various cities, there has been little organized grass roots demand for antipoverty programs from the recipients or potential recipients. This passivity is partly a function of the somewhat adversarial relationship between many clients and their local service bureaucracies; partly because the recipients have many socioeconomic charac- teristics that generally are associated with low levels of political participation and involvement; and partly due to the ambivalence many clients feel about welfare dependency, which makes many recipients less enthusiastic advocates for their programs than, say, Social Security beneficiaries. ^rv^~v~v~ ~]~ 254
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICIPATION As a consequence, the traditional "iron triangle" relationship of lobbyists, congressional committees, and federal bureaucracies has never flourished for antipoverty policy. A 1986 National Election Studies survey found 61 per- cent of whites and 49 percent of blacks agreeing that most recipients of public assistance could get along without it. Program advocacy has been dominated by organizations of social workers and networks of policy special- ists in universities, think tanks, foundations, federal agencies, and the White House. Lacking a potent electoral base, the programs have attracted rela- tively little consistent congressional support (other than from the Congres- sional Black Caucus), leaving them highly vulnerable to reductions (Heclo, 1987; Levitan, 1969~. The one major exception to this pattern is the Food Stamp program, which was enacted at the behest of farm-state senators George McGovern of South Dakota and Bob Dole of Kansas and has contin- ued to enjoy strong support from a bipartisan bloc of big-city and rural members of Congress. Minority Business Potty Minority business enterprises have had more support within the political system than have the broad antipoverty programs. The early lodging of these activities in the Small Business Administration (SBA), a relatively popular agency, and the accession of a black chair of the House Small Business Committee (Parren Mitchell of Maryland) may have enhanced their ability to survive continuing controversy. While minority entrepreneurs are far less numerous and less affluent than their white competitors, they nonetheless contribute to the political support necessary to keep the program alive. To the extent that logrolling is involved in the passage of small business appro- priations, minorities have enjoyed some bargaining leverage in the preserva- tion of the targeted programs. The impetus for the federal initiative in this area appears to have come from the National Urban League. Whitney Young, then the league's execu- tive director, made black business opportunity a centerpiece of his "Marshall Plan for the cities" proposal in 1963. Shortly afterward, the federal govern- ment's small business activities were expanded to target minorities for the first time as part of the Johnson administration's "War on Poverty." As for other parts of the antipoverty effort, there appears to have been lircle con- gressional pressure or influence responsible for this innovation; White House staffers apparently devised the program on their own. The Economic Op- portunity Loan Program was housed in the newly created Office of Eco- nomic Opportunity (OEO) in late 1964, and it targeted loans at businesses involved in hiring the socially disadvantaged, with particular emphasis on minority entrepreneurs. This program was transferred to the SBA in 1966, and the Minority Enterprise Small Business Investment Company (MESBIC) program was initiated the same year. 255
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY Expressing concern about the wave of civil disturbances in 1967, the Southern Leadership Conference proposed an increased federal role in stim- ulating the growth of black business. President Johnson responded with the test cities program, which directed the SBA to obtain contracts from federal agencies and subcontract them on a noncompetitive basis to firms that hired unemployed and underemployed workers. However, the contracts were not explicitly reserved for minority-owned firms. To distinguish its program from what was termed the failure of the War on Poverty, the Nixon administration wished to devise an alternative to direct government hiring and training of minorities. Thus, federal policy became oriented toward fostering "black capitalism," and the early 1970s witnessed the most rapid expansion of the minority enterprise program (Bates, 1986~. Through executive orders in 1969 and 1970, Nixon estab- lished the Office of Minority Business Enterprise (OMBE) and assigned it to the SBA. Unlike many of the antipoverty efforts that were abandoned when Nixon dismantled OEO, the minority enterprise program thereby became associated with an agency that enjoyed considerable support in Congress. White owners of small businesses began to complain that the minority enterprise programs gave an unfair advantage to their minority competitors and lobbied to restrict the programs. Many minority enterprises, it was charged, were little more than white-owned and managed "front" firms with token black representation. Media exposes and congressional hearings brought to light accusations of fraud and mismanagement. Responding to these criticisms, the SBA suspended awards under the program in 1977 pending a comprehensive review. At that time Congressman Parren Mitchell was emerging as a major force on the House Small Business Committee. Under his initiative, Congress passed a requirement in 1977 that 10 percent of federal contracts under that year's Local Public Works Act be set aside for minority business enterprises. The following year, a provision (Section 8Ed]4) was added to the Small Business Act that requires all companies bidding on federal contracts of $1 million or more to submit a plan for subcontracting to small businesses owned by individuals from disadvantaged groups "set-asides"; failure to submit such a plan automatically disqualifies the bid. This requirement vastly expanded the universe of federal contract work for which minority enter- prises could successfully compete. In 1979, OMBE was replaced by the Minority Business Development Administration (MBDA), which provides management services and technical assistance to program participants. A law passed in 1980 directed SBA to establish a system of "graduating" successful minority enterprises from the set-aside program after a certain period of participation. The program's advocates have generally opposed graduation provisions on the grounds that very few minority firms are eco- nomically viable without the set-asides. The Reagan administration at- tempted to emphasize the graduation process, but those attempts were opposed by Congress. Although the program remains controversial, its util- ity as a means of generating political support from black entrepreneurs is 256
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICIPATION sufficiently plain to politicians of both parties that it is likely to survive for the foreseeable future.4 Tactic Rim The tax reform enacted by Congress in 1986 offers a different example of black policy activities. The basic fight was between the business lobbyists trying to retain specific tax "loopholes," and an improbable coalition of supply-side conservatives and liberal policy analysts who applauded the prin- ciples of lower marginal tax rates and the elimination of tax distortions in investment decisions (Birnbaum and Murray, 1987), but there were also important black interests at stake in the battle. Different black leaders reached opposing conclusions as to where those interests lay. Two of the most influential black congressmen-Charles Rangel of Harlem and Parren Mitchell of Baltimore-played important roles on opposite sides of the debate. Rangel, one of the senior members of the House Ways and Means Committee, was one of the earliest and most vocal supporters of the concept of tax reform. Because many of his inner-city constituents depend on subsidized housing, he was instrumental in the inclusion of more advan- tageous depreciation rules for low-income housing in the House version of the bill (Rosenbaum, 1985), although this provision was deleted in the final legislation. But Rangel considered the main issue to be an opportunity to remove many lower income individuals from the federal tax rolls altogether through increasing the personal exemption and standard deduction. John E. Chapoton, then assistant secretary of the treasury, credited Rangel with persuading the Reagan administration that adjusting the earned income tax credit for inflation would make the bill more equitable and would improve its political prospects as well (Engelberg, 1985~. The final version of the legislation incorporated these changes. For Parren Mitchell, the benefit of reduced taxes was offset by the lower marginal rates on higher income taxpayers. The maximum effective rate in the final legislation was 33 percent, in contrast to the 50 percent rate prior to the 1986 reform. Mitchell reasoned that the difficulty in raising marginal rates in the future would make it impossible to fund major social spending programs, thus vitiating the ability of the public sector to meet the needs of the poor. , ~,7 , Each argument was credible among both black leaders and constituents. 13lack interest groups were generally not very active on either side of the issue, although some did testify in support of maintaining tax breaks for individual items deemed beneficial to blacks or those that would help gov- ernments serving black population centers (such as the deductibility of state and local taxes). In the final House vote on September 25, 1986, the 4. However, many observers believe that the Supreme Court's decision in City of Richmond v. J. A. Croson Company (Case 87-998, decided January 23, 1989) will place new limitations on the ability of local governments to operate minority business set-aside programs. 257
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY members of the Congressional Black Caucus voted in favor of the bill by a margin of 12 to 6. SUMMARY Black Americans did not seek their civil rights merely to enjoy equality on the basis of abstract principles of civic inclusion (see Barker, 1983~. They sought those rights because they believed that direct access to political insti- tutions and decision making through voting and increased elective represen- tation would lead to greater equality between blacks and whites. In terms of civil status this belief has been generally realized. There has been great improvement in blacks' civil status since 1940. Arbi- trary harassment and intimidation of blacks by legal authorities, "hate" groups, and unorganized private citizens are much less prevalent than prior to World War II, and incidents today are usually publicized and investigated, rather than ignored. Equal access to public accommodations is generally accepted as a formal right throughout the country, in stark contrast to the legislated segregation that was nearly universal in the South until the 1960s. Enforcement of black contractual rights to rent and purchase housing re- mains ineffectual. The democratic status of blacks has also seen dramatic change since 1940. Black voter participation in the South has risen from the negligible levels of the prewar period to a contemporary level that exceeds that of whites of similar socioeconomic status. As a result, the number of black elected offi- cials in the United States rose from a few dozen in 1940 to more than 6,800 in 1988. The number of black public administrators and judges has shown comparable increases. Nevertheless, blacks comprise only 1.5 percent of America's elected officials. Changes in black allocational status, although complex, have not led to equality with whites at levels commensurate to that achieved in civil status. Many of the changes stem from the evolution of the economy and the educational system (see Chapters 6 and 7), but political determinants have been important as well. The extensive development of equal opportunity law has improved the status of blacks (as well as that of women and other minorities) in education, employment, and business enterprises. Although blacks are disproportionately in the lower income brackets, they have also benefited from the extension of job training, health care, Social Security, and other cash and in-kind benefit programs provided by the public sector. In Chapters 6-10 we discuss changes in blacks' allocational status in several specific areas. In each of those chapters it is clear that black political partici- pation has been an important factor in the post-1940 determination of blacks' status. Equal access to schools, jobs, and medical facilities have fre- quently come to blacks only through political pressure on courts and legis 258
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A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY Karnig, Albert K., and Susan Welch 1980 Black Representation and Urban Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1982 Electoral structure and black representation on city councils. Social Science Quarterly 63 (March) :99-114. Keech, William R. 1968 The Impact of Negro Voting: The Role of the Vote in the Chest for Equality. Chicago: Rand McNally. Kendrick, Ann 1986 The Dynamics of Black Electoral Participation. Paper prepared for the Committee on the Status of Black Americans, National Research Council, Washington, D.C. 1988 The Core Economic Beliefs of Blacks and Whites. Paper prepared for the Com- mittee on the Status of Black Americans, National Research Council, Washington, D.C. . O., Jr. 1949 Southern Politics. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Kilson, Martin 1987 Report on Black Politics in Comparative Perspective-A Study in the Politics of Inclusion. Paper prepared for the Committee on the Status of Black Americans, National Research Council, Washington, D.C. Kinder, Donald R. 1983 Diversity and complexity in American public opinion. In Ada W. Finifter, ea., Political Science: The State of the Discipline. Washington, D.C.: American Political Science Association. King, Martin Luther, Ir. 1964 Why We Can't Wait. New York: Mentor. Kleppner, Paul 1982 Who Voted? The Dynamics of Electoral Tat, 1870-1980. New York: Praeger. Kluger, Richard 1976 Simple]?~stice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Snuggle for Equality. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Korn/Ferry International 1987 I(orn/Fer~y International's Executive Profile: A Surrey of Grrporate Leaders in the Eight- ies. New York: Korn/Ferry International. Kruman, Marc W. 1975 Quotas for blacks: the Public Works Administration and the black construction worker. I^borHisto~y 16(Winter):37-51. Lane, Robert E. 1986 Market justice, political justice. American Political Science Renew 80(June):383- 402. Laney, Garrine P. 1986 The Evolution of Equal Employment Opportunity Programs, 1940-1985. Paper prepared for the Committee on the Status of Black Americans, National Research Council, Washington, D.C. Latimer, Margaret K. 1979 Black political representation in southern cities: election systems and other causal variables. Urban Affairs Quarterly 15(September):65-86. Lawson, Steven F. 1976 Black Ballots: Motif kits in the South, 1944 1969. New York: Columbia Univer- sity Press. 264
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICI PAT10N Levitan, Sar A. 1969 The Great Society's Poor Law: A New Approach to Poverty. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press. Lipsky, Michael 1968 Protest as a political resource. American Political Science Row 62(December): 1 144- 1158. Marcus, Ruth 1986 For black lawyers, path to top is slow. Washington Post November 16:A1, A12- A13. Marshall, T. H. 1964 Class, Citizenship, and Social Development. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. Marx, Gary T. 1967 Protest and Prentice: A Study of Belief in the Black Community. New York: Harper & Row. Matthews, Donald R., and James W. Prothro 1963 Political factors and Negro voter registration in the South. American Political Science Reriew 57(June):355-367. McAdam, Doug 1982 Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970. Chicago: Univer- sity of Chicago Press. Meier, August, and Elliott Rudwick L J Cat )~ _ 1976 The origins of nonviolent direct action in Afro-American protest: a note on historical discontinuities. Ch. 14 in August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, eds., Along the Color Line: Explorations in the Black E'cterience. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Miller, Arthur, Patricia Gurin, Gerald Gurin, and Oksana Malanchuk 1981 Group consciousness and political participation. American Journal of Political Science 25:494-511. Morris, Aldon D. 1984 The Orifrins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Charge. New York: Free Press. Morris, Lorenzo, and Charles Henry 1978 The Chitlin' Controversy: Race Ad Public Policy in America. Lanham, Md.: Univer- sity Press of America. Morns, Milton D. 1972 Black Americans and the foreign policy process: the case of Africa. Western Political Science Quarterly 25 (September) :451-463. Moss, Philip I. 1986 Changing Public Sector Employment and the Occupational Advancement of Blacks, Women, and Hispanics. Paper prepared for the Committee on the Status of Black Amencans, National Research Council, Washington, D.C. Murray, Florence, ed. 1947 Negro Handbook, 1946-1947. New York: Current Books. Nelson, William E., Jr. 1978 Black mayors as urban managers. Annals 439(September):53-67. 1982 Cleveland: the rise and fall of the new black politics. Ch. 8 in Michael B. Preston, Lenneal J. Henderson, Jr., and Paul Puryear, eds., The New Black Politics: The Search for Political Parer. New York: Longman. 1987 The Role of the Black Church in Politics. Paper prepared for the Committee on the Status of Black Amencans, National Research Council, Washington, D.C. 265
A COMMON DESTI NY: BLACKS AN D AMERICAN SOCI ETY Newburger, Harriet B. 1988 The Impact of Federal Housing Programs on Black Americans. Paper prepared for the Committee on the Status of Black Americans, National Research Council, Washington, D.C. Nie, Norman H., Sidney Verba, and John R. Petrocik 1976 The Changing American Voter. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. O'Hare, William 1986 Racial composition of jurisdictions and the election of black candidates. Population Today 14(June):6-8. Parsons, Talcott 1965 Full citizenship for the Negro American? A sociological problem. Daedal?'s 94(Fall): 1009-1054. Peterson, Paul E. 1981 City Limits. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pettigrew, Thomas F. 1976 Black mayoral campaigns. Pp. 14-29 in Herrington J. Bryce, ea., Urban Gover- nance and Minorities. New York: Praeger. Pinderhughes, Dianne M. 1986 Political choices: a realignment in partisanship among black voters? Pp. 85-113 in The State of Black America, 1986. Washington, D.C.: National Urban League. Pinkney, Alphonso 1984 The Myth of Black J~o,gress. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Pomper, Gerald 1966 Ethnic voting in nonpartisan municipal elections. Public Opinion Quarterly 30 (Spring) :79-97. Preston, Michael B. 1976 Limitations of black urban power: the case of black mayors. Ch. 5 in Louis H. Masotti and Robert L. Lineberry, eds., The New Urban Politics. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger. 1984 The resurgence of black voting in Chicago. Ch. 3 in Melvin G. Holli and Paul M. Green, eds., The Making of the Mayor: Chicago, 1983. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans. Price, Hugh D. 1957 The Negro and Southern Politics. New York: New York University Press. Reed, Adolph L., Jr. 1986 The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon: The Crisis of Purpose in Afro-A mencan Politics. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Reed, John Shelton, and Merle Black 1985 How southerners gave up Jim Crow. New Perspectives 17(Fall):15-19. Rich, Wilbur C. 1982 The impact of public authorities on urban politics: challenges for black politicians and interest groups. Ch. 9 in Michael B. Preston, Lenneal J. Henderson, Jr., and Paul Puryear, eds., The New Black Politics. New York: Longman. Rosenbaum, David E. 1985 House panel votes to keep tax plan that aids housing. The New Fork Times, October 27. Rustin, Bayard 1965 From protest to politics: the future of the civil rights movement. Commentary 39(February) :25-31. Sears, David O., and Donald R. Kinder 1985 Whites' opposition to busing: on conceptualizing and operationalizing group conflict. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 48(May):1141-1147. 266
BLACK POLITICAL PARTICIPATION Seltzer, Richard, and Robert C. Smith 1985 Race and ideology: a research note measuring liberalism and conservatism in black America. Phylon 46 (June) :98-105. Shingles, Richard D. 1981 Black consciousness and political participation: the missing link. American Political Science Review 75 (March) :76-91. Smith, Robert C. 1982 Black Leadership: A Survey of Theory and Research. Institute for Urban Affairs and Research. Washington, D.C.: Howard University. Stanley, Harold M. 1987 Voter Mobilization and the Politics of Race: The South and Universal Suffrage. 1952 1984. New York: Praeger. ~ c/, Stekler, Paul Jeffrey 1982 Black Politics in the New South: An Investigation of Change at Various Levels. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Government, Harvard University. Stille, Alexander 1985 Little room at the top for blacks, Hispanics. National Law~o?~rnal (Dec. 23~. Tall, Delbert 1978 Minority representation on city councils: the impact of structure on blacks and Hispanics.SocialScienceQuarterly59(June):142-152. Thernstrom, Abigail M. 1987 Whose Votes Gaunt? Native Action and Minority Voting Bights. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Toles, Edward B. 1970 Report of black lawyers and judges in the United States, 1960-1970. Congressional Record (Sept. 2~: 30786-30788. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 1961 Voting. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. 1968 Political Participation. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 1984 A History of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 1965-1984. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. 1986 Minorities and Women in State and Local Government, 197~1984. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. Sterna, Sidney, and Norman H. Nie 1973 Participation in America: Political Democracy and Social Equality. New York: Harper & Row. Walters, Ronald W. 1988 Black Presidential Politics in America: A Strategic Approach. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press. Walton, Hanes, Jr. 1972 Black Political Parties. New York: Free Press. 1985 Invisible Politics: Black Political Behavior. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press. Weaver, Robert C. 1942 Federal aid, local control, and Negro participation. Journal of Negro Education 11 (January) :47-59. Weaver, Warren, Jr. 1964 Democrats report record total of 280 Negroes December 23. 267 In elective jobs. New York Times,
A COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY Weiss, Nancy J. 1983 Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Able of FDR Princeton, N.J. Princeton University Press. Williams, Eddie N. 1987 The Republicans' image problem among blacks. Rocks (November/December): 3-5. Williams, Juan 1987 Eyes on the Juice. New York: Viking. Williams, Robin M., Jr. 1970 American Society. 3d ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Wilson, James Q. 1973 Political Organizations. New York: Basic Books. Wilson, William Julius 1978 The Declining Significance of Ace: Blacks and Chan,gin,g American Institutions. Chi- cago: University of Chicago Press. Wirt, Frederick M. 1970 Politics of Southern Equality: Law and Social Change in a Mississippi County. Chicago: Aldine. Wolfinger, Raymond E. 1973 The Politics of Pto,gress. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. 1988 Looking for Mr. Politicus. Pp. 109-122 in Ian Shapiro and Grant Reeher, eds., Paver, Inequality, and Democratic Politics. Boulder, Colo., and London: Westview Press. Wolfinger, Raymond E., and Steven J. Rosenstone 1980 Who Votes? New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Woods, Daryl D. 1987 The Chicago crusade. Ch. 2 in Thomas E. Cavanagh, ea., Strategies for Mobilizing Black Voters. Washington, D.C.: Joint Center for Political Studies. Work, Monroe H. 1937 Ne,gro Yearbook: An Annual Encyclopedia of the Negro, 1937-1938. Tuskegee, Ala.: Negro Yearbook Publishing Co. Wright, Gavin 1986 OR Bath, New South: Resolutions in the Southern Economy Since the Civil War. New York: Basic Books. 268