JESSE JACKSON AND BLACK POLITICS: WHAT IS HIS TRUE ROLE IN AMERICAN POLITICS?
Kilson, Martin
With this article we continue our discussion of the Jackson phenomenon in American politics. For other points of view see comments and reviews by Joseph Clark (Summer 1984), Julius Lester (Winter...
...1. Jesse Jackson and Solidarity Politics THE MOST PROMINENT AND SOPHISTICATED instance of solidarity crosscurrents is associated with Reverend Jesse Jackson...
...215...
...At the same time, that sector of Jackson's constituency that is linked to the system has an instrumental relationship to Jackson's politics...
...Yet this does not necessarily negate their appeal...
...Similarly, our most prominent black solidarity politician, Reverend Jesse Jackson, is linked to extensive capitalist enterprises through his brother Noah Robinson, who, according to data in the April 1986 Black Enterprise, has a Wendy's franchise that in 1985 ranked third nationally in profits, put at $2 million...
...This means that new processes making for political inclusion and equal mobility occur unevenly for various groups...
...By contrast, I view Jackson's politics as an avenue of systemic adaptation for sizable numbers of alienated blacks...
...Thus Jackson sits at the command center of his movement, flanked on one side by cathartic networks (his system-debunking constituency) and on the other side by realpolitik networks (a system-inclusive constituency...
...Utilizing national Democratic primaries as its main framework, Jackson's ritual-rebellion politics appeals to two constituencies—one systemopposed, the other system-linked...
...It is increasingly realistic to see a convergence of blacks' redistributive policy concerns with moderate and liberal whites' needs so that new political alliances can be formed—shortrun, perhaps on a case-by-case basis, but alliances nonetheless...
...Does his private (self-serving) agenda contradict his public (other-serving) agenda...
...This, too, is what the militant antiabortion and antifeminist agitation among Irish Americans has been about—traditionalist strata seeking greater order and control vis-a-vis the new freedoms and new life-styles introduced by post-industrial society...
...Here are some starting points for grappling with this important matter...
...3) It provides gradual legitimation of the established system's basic structure by encouraging alienated blacks to find their own equivalent water-level, as it were...
...and from today's vantage point such a strategy is best viewed as a repackaging of blacks' redistributive concerns...
...The Jackson phenomenon is a current example...
...Each group's advance is, then, followed by a return to integration within the system...
...2. Blacks' Future Coalition Options WE CAN SEE much political significance in the overlapping time frames of black and white solidarity crosscurrents...
...This must include repackaging its redistributive economic concerns in ways that tie in with the emerging transethnic strategies of the black political class...
...In the long run the black political class— functioning through the Congressional Black Caucus, the associations of black mayors and local officials—must help to liberalize the moderate sector of white voters, a sector now cleverly manipulated into the Reaganite Republican electoral coalition...
...When activated and packaged by a charismatic leader, this anti-establishment militancy takes on the dimensions of a ritualistic rebellion with a special appeal to those AfroAmericans who consider the American power system stubbornly negligent of black claims to parity...
...The metamorphosis of black politics from protest to mainstream (nearly 7,000 elected officials and several times that many appointed officials and technicians) is steadily tripped up by political crosscurrents from what I would describe as black solidarity forces (hence my phrase: solidarity crosscurrents...
...Because black solidarity crosscurrents contain a powerful and appealing political symbolism...
...All ethnic groups have felt its force in some measure...
...On the other, its spokesmen reveal their fidelity to the established system's overall capitalist structure...
...But Reed's analysis differs from mine in that he sees a discrepancy between Jackson's charismatic style and the requisites of an effective black politics as harmful to black needs...
...Solidarity crosscurrents appearing among Irish, Jews, Italians, WASPS, etc., tend, after a time, to serve conservative and defensive purposes (that is, socially restorationist and establishmentarian goals...
...But I am less concerned with answering these questions than with locating the Jackson phenomenon in American political culture...
...For other points of view see comments and reviews by Joseph Clark (Summer 1984), Julius Lester (Winter 1985), Peter Connolly (Winter 1987), and David Garrow (Winter 1987).—EDs...
...attorney in Georgia, supported sanctions against South Africa, the extension of the Voting Rights Act, and the Martin Luther King, Jr...
...Black solidarity crosscurrents mainly serve liberal and offensive goals (that is, broadening and strengthening black mainstream politicization...
...This is especially so in the strategically crucial South—itself now balanced between parties—where moderate and liberal white voters combined with black voters to help return the U.S...
...It both rationalizes and transforms Jackson's politics, aiding in the delicate task of disciplining it and harnessing it to mainstream politics...
...Typically, these black solidarity crosscurrents appear as episodic responses to particular situations...
...They are quite American in character, for after entry into mainstream politics most ethnic groups acquire political and social interests (and anxieties) that are susceptible to solidarity-type politicizing...
...Such groups, because they are ideologically at ease with the main patterns of American society, seldom integrate their bread-and-butter claims with systemic claims...
...the cathartic networks require protracted adaptation to the system...
...The skill or lack of skill with which Jackson calibrates these coexisting and competitive networks determines the gains he achieves or fails to achieve...
...More important, however, has been the shrewd dovetailing of redneckWASP, Catholic, and Jewish solidarity crosscurrents into the right wing of national politics...
...Indeed, without a perpetual recurrence of this dynamic, the capacity of the American system to correct differentials of mobility and power (a remediation that is typically steadystate rather than one-time or revolutionary) weakens enormously...
...But if the system is not to rigidify against new claimant groups (blacks for example), then it must constantly be nudged or assailed through political pressures...
...The realpolitik networks are already committed to the system but demand greater inclusion...
...WHAT IS THE POLITICAL FUNCTION Of this ritual rebellion...
...Source: The New York Times (November 6, 1986) tance of plutocratic patterns in our political economy—it must be pursued nonetheless...
...Because of their tendency to sharpen confrontation positions on redistributive policy issues, black solidarity crosscurrents are under special obligations in this process...
...This is a key sector in ritual-rebellion politics...
...Given his deployment of a black ethnic appeal, does he not weaken the mainstream Democratic alliance which, to win elections, must attract moderate whites...
...As shown in Table 1, when joined by an 85 percent-plus black vote, there are enough moderate white votes to elect Democratic Senate candidates in Alabama, Louisiana, and North Carolina (and also in the largest Western state, California...
...Robertson, leader of the wealthiest and largest right-wing religious-political organization, is mounting a bid for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination...
...After all, Jackson's ritual-rebellion politics is conducted through establishment agencies and institutions— party processes, electoral arrangements, etc...
...Nor is this pattern of legitimation for estranged sectors uncommon in American political culture...
...There are several long-run political functions to this rebellious pattern: (1) It provides a crucial outlet for alienated sentiments among Afro-Americans...
...Functionally, however, his political style supplies a powerful stimulus or encouragement to a major part of his constituency which, because it is emotionally estranged from the system, needs this expression for its ongoing politicization...
...For this function is typically shortchanged in American political culture, 213 owing to a deep-rooted tendency for claimant groups (e.g., labor, farmers, small businessmen, the women's movement, etc...
...In the short run, the white solidarity crosscurrents are hostile toward 1960s-1970s inclusionary and government redistributive trends—trends that have been crucial for blacks during the past twenty years of sociopolitical mobility...
...The political posture of these black solidarity groups is usually anti-establishment, offering social proposals that are more egalitarian than mainstream politics...
...Although there is no intrinsic reason to expect constant or major successes from Jackson's ritual-rebellion politics, Jackson's effort does contribute fundamentally to broadening the pluralistic politics of American society...
...On the one hand, it expresses alienation from an established system...
...Examples include the off-and-on attempts to form an independent black party, or the political assertions of ethnocentric groups like the Black Muslims, of which the Farrakhan faction has recently been the most visible...
...They convey an oppositional style that generates a powerful aura...
...But whites and blacks differ here in some fundamental respects...
...A decade ago Charles Hamilton was one of the first analysts to recognize the need for "deracializing" the redistributive policy concerns of blacks...
...Jesse Jackson as a leading left-of-center political force is again receiving a lot of attention...
...212 For example, the militant Black Muslims, during their heyday under Elijah Muhammad in the 1960s and 1970s, were extensively involved in small businesses and propagated a gospel of aggressive capitalist enterprise...
...This phenomenon is understood well by the best leftist critics of American society, such as C. Wright Mills, William Domhoff, Peter Baratz, Michael Parenti, Michael Harrington, and John Gaventa...
...According to Washington Post columnist David Broder, even the moderate Republicans in the South, looking toward the post-Reagan era, understand the need to garner their share of black votes...
...There remains the task of nudging, pressing, and even assailing the stand-pat elements in the American power structure around the many redistributive inequities facing black Americans...
...Ethnic solidarity crosscurrents as a mode of sustaining political pressure are hardly limited to blacks...
...to press for particular bread-and-butter claims rather than systemic ones...
...2) It sustains real political intercourse at any given time between mainstream politics and those blacks who experience the pangs of alienation, even if such political intercourse is ritualistically denigrated...
...In this respect his politics can be seen as an extension of the civil rights movement's earlier expansion of pluralism in American society...
...Certainly there are large numbers of white Americans whose concerns make them potential allies in a blackinfluenced process of gaining more attention for distributive inequities in American society...
...Senate to Democratic control...
...Their style of action may strike one as more important than the sometimes overblown purposes they purport to serve...
...There are numerous concerns about Jackson: Does he have a legitimate function in black American politics...
...Jerry Falwell, Jim Baker, Jimmy Swaggart, Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson—all clergymen— demonstrate the influence of charismatically articulated solidarity crosscurrents...
...The particulars of the Jackson style need not detain us here...
...The rebellious element in black solidarity politics is highly selective...
...If the results of the 1986 elections do indeed suggest that the Democratic and Republican parties are now splitting the white vote down the middle (exit polls recorded 33 percent of white voters claiming Republican identification, 39 percent Democratic, and the remainder Independent), then the emerging role of black voters as a balance of power should help achieve a transethnic repackaging of redistributive policy concerns...
...Simply put, the new obligations of Jesse Jackson's movement involve taking on a greater pragmatic definition...
...They project group-unifying images—images associated with blacks' traditional status as victims and general marginality...
...and the two together supply the dynamic of Jackson's politics...
...Jackson's appeal has antisystemic overtones, often leftist or progressive...
...A legitimate function in American politics...
...And this, given the past decade of successful right-wing politics, is of course unfavorable for public policies that advance black needs...
...Even such emotionally estranged groups as the Black Muslims find their "legitimating" water-level...
...The importance of this function—the broadening of pluralistic politics cannot be overemphasized...
...This is precisely what the general neoethnicity trend among white ethnics since the late 1960s and 1970s, spearheading the right-wing victories under Reaganite Republicanism, has been about...
...Commenting on Republican Senator Mack Mattingly's reelection campaign in Georgia, Broder observed that "Mattingly endorsed Larry Thompson as the first black U.S...
...Politically, such solidarity crosscurrents often seem more residual than fundamental...
...It is quite nonrevolutionary, no matter how disruptive it may appear to be...
...This year [1986] he plans to open headquarters and do targeted mailings in black neighborhoods...
...In style they are often militant, and they are usually under charismatic leadership, sometimes secular but often quasi-religious...
...They are described in Adolph Reed's recent book The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon (reviewed in the Winter 1987 Dissent), which offers a provocative analysis and solid data on Jackson's politics...
...This task is one in which Jesse Jackson and other black solidarity critics of mainstream black politics have a legitimate role to play...
...Thus, what I call the ambivalent posture toward the established system—employing antisystem rhetoric while sharing the system's politicaleconomic values—clearly characterizes the ritual rebellion of black solidarity politics...
...birthday bill...
...all of this under the charismatic guidance of President Reagan...
...While this task is hardly easy—given these voters' quiet accep214 The Black Vote in Four Senate Races Whites, others Blacks Alabama Percent of total 79% 21% Shelby (D) 38 88 Denton (R) 61 7 Louisiana Percent of total 69 29 Breaux (D) 39 85 Moore (R) 60 12 North Percent of total 82 16 Carolina Sanford (0) 43 88 Broyhill (R) 56 8 California Percent of total 90 9 Cranston (D) 47 82 Zschau (R) 50 10 Based on CBS News Polls conducted Tuesday in Alabama with 1,300 voters, in Louisiana with 1,158 voters, in North Carolina with 1,171 voters and in California with 2,544 voters...
...These solidarity crosscurrents took the form of expanding Zionist-Jewish perspectives among Jews, a tendency related not merely to Israel's needs but to anxieties over the societal fluidity caused by post-industrial changes—a shift essentially cosmopolitan, antiparochial, and life-style-innovative...
...Since the early 1970s, WASP culture— mainly its redneck-WASP variant—has outstripped other white groups in prominence and political effectiveness, skillfully deploying such crosscurrents at the local and national levels to favor establishmentarian and right-wing politics...
Vol. 34 • April 1987 • No. 2
