Problems of Black Politics

...But what is first required is a fierce effort to galvanize the housing issue politically, a task waiting for watchdog activists...

...Congressional districts were also exhibiting transethnic penetration by 1986—by Katie Hall in Indiana's First Congressional District (20 percent black...

...And this is as it should be, given the structural depth of 526 • DISSENT TABLE 1 FAMILY INCOME: 1986 Black White Families Families Over $50,000 I 8.8%1 22.0% $35,000—$50,000 I 12.4%I 20.6% $20,000—$35,000 24.3% I 28.5% $10,000—$20,000 24.5% 18.6% I Under $10,000 I 30.2% I 10.2% I Median $17,604 $30,809 Source: Bureau of the Census...

...Some 82 percent of black respondents said a young black person can advance despite racism, compared to 18 percent who responded negatively...

...What is more, major capital mobilization and formation on behalf of an expanding black capitalist sector has been closely linked to black governance in such cities...

...An inkling of how working-class and poor whites can adjust to black leadership has come out of the bitter coal miners' strike in Virginia, where white strikers have invited Jesse Jackson to address rallies and walk picket lines with them...

...And though plutocratic conservatives evolved first among a section of high-status WASPs (1880s-1950s) and were joined via Nixon and Reagan in the 1970s1980s by the upper strata among white ethnic groups—including a Jewish section—they continue their indifference to black aspirations...

...The Jackson phenomenon is a crucial part of this activism...

...9 Joseph Epstein, "The Joys of Victimhood," New York Times Magazine (July 2, 1989...

...Watchdog activists can play a role in galvanizing working class and poor families around the education issue, in criticizing the indifference of many black politicians to the crisis in education, and in politicizing that crisis at election time—something still lacking in most cities headed by black mayors...

...72 percent said they "favor" tuition tax credits...

...While this task must be addressed by black politicians themselves, its mobilization as a political concern will depend on a new element in AfroAmerican political leadership—watchdog activists...

...More recently, a study of housing department records in Washington revealed that former deputy mayor Curtis McClinton was a senior partner in the Southeast Limited Partnership Inc., which leased space to the city for homeless families at $2,662 monthly rent per unit...

...2) attract funds and volunteers from affluent white voters...

...Countering Self-Serving Elites...

...6 Peter Eisinger, "Black Mayors and the Politics of Racial Economic Advancements," in Harlan Hahn and Charles Levine, eds...

...New Diversification Over the twenty years since the urban riots, something like the Kerner Report's prediction of a split in American life between blacks and whites has evolved within black American society as well...

...Thus a 1985 poll by American Enterprise Institute—contrasting a black "leadership" sample with a "national" black sample— revealed that while 66 percent of the "national" sample said blacks are "making progress," some 61 percent of the "leadership" sample said blacks were "going backwards...

...Here, the political role of Jesse Jackson takes on a special significance...

...Yet we may hope that some watchdog activists will emerge in due course...

...Over the past twenty years of black political advance, a huge power imbalance has come into being through the increase of class benefits as against public benefits in black communities—an imbalance that is often sharpened through corruption and illegality...

...clear that the black political class is no more immune from lawbreaking and norm-flouting than the white-ethnic political manipulators who preceded it in power...

...Still, there's a first time for everything...

...This begrudging inclusion of blacks into the American social contract underlines the crisis of decency at the core of American conservatism...

...This kind of ethnocentric solidarity is both misplaced in a pluralist democracy and politically counter-productive...

...For politics remains the most available sphere for transethnic penetration by blacks, as it was in an earlier era for white ethnics like the Irish (penetrating WASP-dominated positions from the 1890s to the 1930s), or for the Jews (penetrating WASP and Irish dominant milieux from the 1930s onward...

...Today's black stratification comprises sharply different classes—a coping stratum made up of blue- and white-collar workers, professionals and managers, business people and wealthy entertainers, and a noncoping stratum made up of weak working-class families, hardcore poor families, and an underclass...

...Jackson's combination of black politics and general egalitarian politics is, at least over the long-run, intrinsically transethnic...

...Finally, some 53 percent of the "national" sample opposed busing for school integration, while 68 percent of the "leadership" favored busing...

...and in the worst rustbelt cities like Newark, Gary, East St...

...A tour I took recently through West Philadelphia revealed blocks of essentially solid brick-and-stone housing in various states of decay...

...This diversification of attitudes continued into the 1980s...

...A 1986 ABC NewslWashington Post poll, which asked blacks whether they had suffered personal discrimination, found the following: Some 75 percent experienced no discrimination in "getting a quality education...

...What is to be done...

...Clearly, correcting this tilt of benefits toward black elites should be high on the agenda of a new progressivism in black politics...

...What Holman and other black leaders might have said was that not enough whites were yet ready for a transethnic black as governor of California, just as not enough WASP voters in 1928 were ready for a transethnic Irish politician, Al Smith, for the presidency...

...Again, it is truly a scandal that twenty years after being incorporated into the political system the black political class has not developed a strategy to reverse the production of inadequately educated working-class and poor black students by city school systems...

...One is the failure of the politicians' own constituencies to appreciate their political maturity...

...This enables the transethnic politician to do several rather difficult things: (1) allay anxieties of middle-class whites who value the evidence of skill-and-efficiency that this style conveys...

...A similar immaturity on the part of the black leadership toward the politics of transethnic penetration surfaced in May 1986 among black legislators in Pennsylvania...

...Similarly, 83 percent of the "national" sample said "yes" to prayer in public schools compared to only 40 percent of the "leadership" sample...

...Each group's advance is, therefore, followed by a return to a relative establishmentarian convergence with the system...

...4 Some political benefits, or payoffs, take the form of aggregate or public benefits, such as better crime protection and better schools in black communities...

...This looms as an enormous achievement when it is noted that Burns was the only Democratic candidate to win in both the white-dominated southern part of the state and the more racially mixed upstate section...

...The answer lies elsewhere—in a failure of will and moral purpose at the heart of American conservatism, especially a stubborn failure to shed the infantile phobias governing the white conservatives' perception of blacks...

...also makes it...

...Among the many payoffs flowing from this friendship was a city-induced bid for Hagans to participate in developing a $300-million project near the Metro Center subway stop downtown...

...2 L the new black stratification—both between the coping and noncoping strata as well as among segments of each—are the seeds of an evolving diversification of political attitudes and personal evaluations of life chances...

...The message, with roots deep in American conservatism's past, is that at no point in the twentieth century have claims by black people—whether in Africa or the Western hemisphere—for political and social parity gained active support or sympathy from American conservative leaders and intellectuals, religious or secular...

...To date, only 530 • DISSENT when political need dictates, does this regulatory clout operate for working class and poor blacks...

...and (3) upper-stratum or upper-class (professionals, managers, capitalists, wealthy entertainers, and so on...

...The other concerns political apathy and reaction among the white poor...

...Carl Holman, head of the Urban Coalition, depicted it as the result of "racismasusual...

...and by Ronald Dellums in California's Eighth Congressional District (21 percent black...

...It is reasonable to believe that a combination of public and private sector strategies, sparked by the black political class, could rehabilitate decaying housing...

...There are two basic groups of issues related to black American politics that can help forge a new progressivism...

...It has also spawned in turn a new differentiation of black political attitudes...

...While their long-run goal should focus on democratizing city governance, they should also pursue a short-run agenda associated with several fundamental needs of lower-strata urban blacks: (1) They must monitor the delivery of basic services, such as crime management and police...

...An exemplary instance is L. Douglas Wilder, the first black lieutenant governor in Virginia—and also in the twentieth-century South—who is currently the Virginia Democratic party gubernatorial candidate...

...We can't isolate ourselves in enclaves and retreat, leaving vast areas totally untapped and unchallenged...

...According to Peter Eisinger, a major analyst of Atlanta, "[Dlata for Newark, Detroit, and Atlanta show plainly that black participation in publicpurchasing contracts has swelled from virtually nothing at the beginning of the 1970s to a substantial share by 1980...

...Blacks and the Crisis of American Conservatism Throughout this decade a major part of American conservatism—especially that associated with Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority—has openly embraced the regime in South Africa...

...But for the liberal minority among WASP elites—joined, of course, by liberal elites among Catholics and Jews—black American claims would have never reached such federal legislation as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the War on Poverty programs...

...free or reduced-price lunches (50 percent black household recipients, 44.5 percent Hispanic, 16 percent white...

...3) Finally, while the housing crisis affecting a large segment of the black lower stratum requires federal intervention, there is much that can be done by the black political class...

...Some 600,000 eligible black voters failed to register for the gubernatorial election, a failure enormously costly to black politics locally and nationally...

...For example, whereas between 1972 and 1974 minority firms gained only 2 percent of $472 million in public construction contracts in Chicago, this white power exclusion of black entrepreneurs ended with the election of Mayor Harold Washington in April, 1983...

...This collapse of black Americans' earlier homogeneity in political attitudes and personal evaluations will surely spawn new directions in black politics...

...The rationale underlying an evolving new direction in politics among black Americans is simple enough, namely, black concerns are enhanced as black inputs into American politics are spread across interest groups in the system as a whole...

...The organization of New Jersey's black votes for Kean was spearheaded by a brilliant black Republican politician, Leonard S. Coleman, Commissioner for Energy in Governor Kean's first administration and Commissioner of Community Affairs in his second administration...

...Hagans was a close personal confidant of Mayor Marion Barry— "a friendship . . . forged before Barry took office in 1979," according to the Washington Post...

...The moral lapse in American conservatism's stance toward our racist legacy is apparent in Joseph Epstein's recent claim that black Americans are not valid victims of racist exclusion and oppression...

...Should you clear your throat and announce that there are historical reasons for some of these things...

...State legislative and executive offices were experiencing black transethnic penetration by 1986 too...

...Speaking of what he saw at Dachau, he said, "[W]hat unbelievable crimes had been done in the name of my . . . generation and . . . what guilt, knowingly and unknowingly, our people had brought upon themselves...

...This major failure of black leadership can no longer be tolerated...

...Say you are sorry it ever happened...

...In short, the diversification of blacks' attitudes, voting patterns, candidacy, policy concerns, and so on, "Americanizes" the black political profile (just as a similar diversification "Americanized" the JewishAmerican profile in the 1970s...

...Reagan also slashed basic programs of interest to blacks, such as food stamps (26 percent black household recipients, 19 percent Hispanic, 6.5 percent white...

...Other polls such as Gallup for the same period found 41 percent of blacks replying "in favor" to the death penalty...

...They argue that today's whites (white men, since affirmative action benefits white women) FALL • 1989 • 533 would have to surrender some measure of upward mobility in favor of blacks, even though they were not direct perpetrators of racist crimes from Reconstruction to the 1960s...

...Above all, they function through a black political class (some 6,800 elected officials) whose strategic position—especially the twenty three congressional representatives—has an impact on both public and private powerstructures disproportionately in favor of the "have" rather than the "have-not" sector...

...They rejected a white female legislator's application for membership in the black legislative caucus, despite the fact that her state assembly district is 30 percent black...

...Typically, it is this poverty that activists and leftists (black or white) focus on...

...The successful entry of blacks into political life over the past twenty years inevitably produced differences with regard to political and social benefits...

...Parochial conservatives evolved first among lowstatus WASPs (1880s-1950s) and were joined via the Wallacite movement in thq 1960s by working-class and middle-class white ethnics...

...In Boston, for example, surveys show that some 25 percent of Irish families are working poor, with around 15 percent at poverty level...

...while other benefits are strictly private or class benefits, such as cabinet appointments, contracts to businesses, zoning variances, tax abatements, influence peddling, and so on...

...Yet numerous problems confront a transethnic penetration of politics by blacks...

...No serious political analyst applies this formulation to, say, indemnities imposed on the German state for the destruction of property, careers, and lives during World War H. German politicians and citizens who did not commit the atrocities of the Nazi state have accepted their liability in international and civil law restitution...

...Still, there were signs of new political directions evolving even in the darkest days of Reaganism...

...No segment of black leadership in this century has had much success, if any, in forging coalitions with poor whites, though the Southern Tenant Farmers Union during the 1930s did achieve a brief linkage of black and white farmers...

...At the time of his death in a plane crash he was also a member of the board of directors of District Cablevision Inc., a firm vying for the lucrative cable franchise in the District...

...65 percent said they "favor" or were "unsure" regarding subminimum wage for teenagers, and 54 percent said "increase" or "unsure" when asked about defense spending...

...q Notes I See Monthly Labor Review (June 1982) p. 30...

...2 See Martin Kilson, Politics of Inclusion: Blacks in American Political Culture (Forthcoming...

...8 For a case study of a successful neighborhood revitalization program in Chicago put in place by an interracial coalition—a middle-aged white banker, a white female activist and organizer, and two black community technicians —see David Osborne, "A Poverty Program That Works," the New Republic (May 8, 1989...

...Louis, and Chester (Pennsylvania), the proportion hovers between 35 and 40 percent...

...Though they package themselves as helpinghand or samaritan groups—and a few branches of "Black Greeks" do have small tutoring and voter registration programs—for 90 percent of their activity and resources "Black Greeks" are mostly a black-bourgeois affair, pretty much as E. Franklin Frazier portrayed them thirty years ago in Black Bourgeoisie and as Spike Lee scathingly lampoons them in his brilliant film School Daze...

...Yet serious progressives should take care not to minimize the enormous achievement of coping stratum black households in the face of begrudging racist American patterns...

...Why this crisis at all...

...This enormous shift in perception is captured in a 1985 American Enterprise Institute poll that asked, "If a young person works hard enough, do you think he or she can get ahead in this country, in spite of prejudice and discrimination, or that he or she doesn't have much of a chance no matter how hard he or she works...

...Donaldson is alleged to have stolen over $2 million but he pleaded guilty to $200,000 and further inquiry ceased...

...Above all, the demeanor of the transethnic politician should be pragmatic and/or technocratic...

...and some 57 percent said they faced no discrimination in "getting equal wages for a job...

...In the long run, transethnic political engagements require a steady growth in the number of white voters who can shed race-bound preferences and are ready to experiment with transethnic politics...

...But, in general, this is not an automatic "conversion" for black Americans, any more than it has been for white ethnic groups...

...5 Wilbur Rich, "The Impact of Public Authorities on Urban Politics," in Michael Preston, ed...

...7 Peter Eisinger, The Politics of Displacement: Racial and Ethnic Transition in Three American Cities (Academic Press: New York, 1980), p. 164...

...Though these instances of capital formation for emerging black capitalists reveal a typical pattern, there are also numerous instances of gigantic wealth accumulation associated with the new black governance...

...Furthermore, in both Atlanta and Detroit the participation of black firms in city contracting and purchasing spiraled in the late 1970s...

...and 52 percent said "no" to legal abortion if married...

...In short, figures with the attributes of a Martin Luther King...

...There is now a generalized capability among coping stratum blacks to fend for themselves— through trade unions and a plethora of professional associations and black bourgeois networking, aspects of which can be found in the pages of the business magazine Black Enterprise and in a catalog of some two hundred black professional associations—most founded since 1970—called A Guide To Black Organizations (1984) produced by the Philip Morris Public Affairs Department...

...60 percent experienced no discrimination in "getting a job...

...Developing Watchdog Activists...

...For example, some 50 percent of blacks replied "harmful" or "unsure" to welfare programs...

...Such a politician must appeal across ethnic boundaries as a matter of course— sometimes rather hostile boundaries...

...This leads me to ask: What manner of people are American conservatives anyway, both old and new, if they cannot admit America's debt to injured millions of black folk—injured under the color of law and state authority—and come up with ideas, norms, and structures to get on with task of paying for it...

...534 • DISSENT...

...But among other black politicians— especially civil rights figures—a lot of immaturity characterized responses to Bradley's defeat...

...This disgraceful posture towards apartheid is deeply disturbing...

...Middle-class and elite blacks and their associations have to be jolted out of their indifference, and white middle-class groups, the decent ones among liberals and even some conservatives, have also to get mobilized around the housing issue—a "natural" for watchdog activists...

...Linkages with white bourgeois structures also aid coping stratum blacks, for most black professionals and managers now work in a white milieu...

...The watchwords of transethnic politicians are political maturity and sophistication...

...Young white professionals, in fact, are already surfacing in cities like Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, and elsewhere to provide banking skills for neighborhood programs on housing rehabilitation or industrial relocation, among other things...

...The lacunae in the reverse-discrimination argument can be answered in the acute observation of the great German writer Ginter Grass...

...I dare say Joseph Epstein would not indulge this unseemly rhetorical wordplay with, say, the vicious history of anti-Semitism in the West and the Holocaust...

...Furthermore, self-criticism should have been the main focus of the black leaders' response to Bradley's near-miss...

...It will require the very best of black leadership, people with skills and gifts of moral suasion, people who can forgive (if not forget) white racist transgressions...

...In reality, however, there are some thirty-six million poor people, about 25 million of them white, located in border states and in the South, but increasingly spreading around the country...

...When Los Angeles Mayor Thomas Bradley failed in his 1982 gubernatorial campaign, he squarely faced his situation—losing by 52,000 votes out of 7.9 millions—by refusing to indulge in wound-licking rationalizations of his defeat...

...The goal of such an imperative would be to intertwine the leadership of black and white sociopolitical institutions...

...For these New Right historians a major limitation of affirmative action is that, as a form of restitution, it exacts an unfair price...

...Prominent among the numerous criminal politicians in Washington was Ivanhoe Donaldson, close to Mayor Barry for many years—and, alas, still close following his release from prison this year—imprisoned for allocating some $200,000 of job training funds to private use...

...The importance of extending inclusionary forces cannot be overemphasized...

...In cities like Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Chicago, at least 50 percent of high-level occupations held by blacks are in the public sector...

...But neither the New Right nor the broader ranks of American conservatism will grant our racist (and sexist) legacy equal status with these other moralstructural imperatives in American life...

...Surely American conservatism has had and now has more than enough talented thinkers to articulate a politics of fairness, even if within establishmentarian boundaries...

...Groups like Fair Share and ACORN are prototypes of this kind of watchdog activists now required in black urban communities...

...To date, it has done very little...

...An instance of this moral gap in the soul of American conservatism's posture toward black Americans is to be seen in a recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education...

...More class-linked black voting can be expected, as well as more bipartisan political behavior...

...Forging a New Progressivism The political vacuum following the collapse of Great Society progressivism forged during the Kennedy-Johnson era is still with us...

...3 Public Opinion (August-September, 1985...

...532 • DISSENT Outreach to the White Poor A major assist for a new progressivism can be created, I believe, through a black-led movement to awaken the white American poor...

...In suggesting an important new progressive role in black politics for political activists, let me elaborate the qualities required...

...Above all, black politicians must increasingly articulate political methods, goals, and rhetoric that are unmistakably inclusive, not exclusive...

...3) and simultaneously appear loyal to, or at least not fickle about, basic black policy concerns...

...Have New Right intellectuals lost all sense of decency when treating black concerns...

...Ronald Burns, for instance, faced this burden and overcame it when he ran for comptroller in Illinois in 1978...

...This right-wing assault on programs serving basic black needs produced few black votes for Reagan...

...They have remained cool toward the parity claims of blacks, here and abroad...

...Although the number of employed blacks increased by 1.3 million (17.3 percent) between 1972 and 1980, the largest gain was in white-collar jobs (nearly 1.2 million or 55 percent) and the sharpest increases were in professional/technical (354,000 or 55.4 percent) and managerial/ administrative jobs (168,000 or 69.1 percent...

...That intelligent thinkers like Charles Fried, Nathan Glazer, and James Q. Wilson have failed to raise the moral vision of American conservatism on this fundamental issue vis-à-vis affirmative action is disturbing in its callousness...

...A new diversification of black political attitudes first surfaced in a 1980 poll by Data Black, a black-owned polling firm...

...By 1986 some 46 percent of black households were earning middle-level incomes of $20,000-plus and another 25 percent a basic working-class income between $10,000 and $20,000, thereby putting some two-thirds of black households in the coping stratum income rank...

...Their indifference has its roots, of course, in the bitter tradition of white racism...

...One example is Theodore Hagans, the black developer in Washington, D.C., who was chosen by black politicians in 1975 as chief developer of the $500 million Fort Lincoln New Town in the northeast section of Washington...

...One is linked to black concerns—the accountability of black political elites to their black constituencies...

...3 A growing diversification of attitudes within black America seriously affects personal evaluations...

...Like the Great Depression, and like floods, drought, and tornadoes that ravage our farmers and local communities, surely our racist legacy must also be seen as demanding moral and material attention and resources from the national community...

...Fortunately, a small cadre of transethnic black 528 • DISSENT politicians has been forming for at least a decade...

...In general, political benefits, using Charles Hamilton's classification, are of two types: "divisible benefits" and "indivisible benefits...

...What are you supposed to do," Epstein asks, "if someone blames you for slavery, a hideous institution, to be sure, but one defunct for more than a century...

...This, in turn, enables black and white Americans to link their political fortunes...

...poverty—black and white—and the indifference among American power elites towards eradicating it...

...While about 23 percent of blacks were in poverty by the late 1960s, this proportion reached 30 percent by the late 1980s...

...This argument is, however, utterly false...

...This poll— conducted by psychologist Kenneth Clark— found a steady differentiation of attitudes among blacks during the late 1970s...

...Thus, in overall occupational terms, some 55.3 percent of employed blacks were white-collar workers by 1980 and some 6.8 percent were stable blue-collar workers, placing some twothirds (62 percent) of employed blacks in a job market that can be termed coping strata.' A similar coping stratum expansion of the black social structure occurs along income lines...

...Reading in Urban Politics (New York, 1984) p. 252...

...Without its continuation, our ability to correct systematic deficiencies in mobility, equality, and power weakens enormously...

...by Alan Wheat in Missouri's Fifth Congressional District (20 percent black...

...Although the rhetoric surrounding the political advances of any claimant group is robustly optimistic, political realism requires a more measured perspective...

...It takes a curious mindset to deny to black Americans a valid victim status in the context of America's past, in the same way that it takes a twisted mindset to deny victim status to the Irish in the context of English history, or to Armenians in the context of Turkish history...

...Equally scandalous is that no major segment of the black intelligentsia (journalists especially, but academics too) has taken up the crime issue, mobilizing and crusading around its regulation as they did with the issues of civil rights and political empowerment in the 1950s and 1960s...

...But if the system is not to rigidify against new claimants (blacks and Hispanics for example)—which is a current backlash goal of the New Right—then it must be constantly nudged by political activism...

...Overall, the dynamics of political benefits accompanying black governance fits the candid formulation of Wilbur Rich, a major analyst of Detroit politics: "The new patronage is a spoils system for the [black] middle and upper classes...

...As transethnic patterns evolve, black politics must encompass the concerns of Hispanics, women, farmers, white ethnics— that is, it must increasingly dovetail with those other groups that confront comparable needs stemming from the globalization of the American economy and the crisis of deindustrialization...

...Indeed, middle-class black students (and workingclass youth, alas) on campuses at both black and white colleges are reviving ordinary hedonistic associations such as Greek-letter fraternities and sororities ("Black Greeks...

...This is what Virginia's Wilder had in mind when he said, "Blacks cannot wait until there is a majority in a district or region to dream of running for office...

...Above all, it has been the rise of the New Right in American politics under Ronald Reagan's leadership that has slowed the spread of new directions in black politics, such as more bipartisanship...

...Washington, D.C...

...After some twenty years of black political incorporation, it is a scandal that no section of the black political class in this country has given serious attention to the high crime rates in black communities—typically FALL • 1989 . 531 black-on-black crime...

...That black college students and young professionals have not come forward to become watchdog activists is pathetic...

...73 percent experienced no discrimination in "getting decent housing...

...The New Black Politics (Longmans: New York, 1988), p. 217...

...subsidized or public housing (24 percent black household recipients, 11 percent Hispanic, 8 percent white...

...In Reagan's first term he led an assault on basic civil rights, such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965...

...8 A few black churches in major cities have turned to neighborhood activism too, though, in light of the black churches' crucial role in the civil rights mobilization a generation ago, it is baffling that black churches have not responded comparably to the multitude of urban crises...

...As black-is-beautiful and anti-whitey militancy waned in the late 1970s and early 1980s—seemingly having satisfied a cathartic need among black youth and many adults—no sustained form of black activism, with some sense of serious political concern, has emerged...

...This characterization was overdrawn if not just plain wrong, for close to three million whites did vote for Bradley...

...Hagans chaired Barry's extravagant inaugural party in 1979...

...The Transethnic Imperative In the years ahead what I call a transethnic imperative will increasingly inform black American life in general and its politics in particular...

...The initial focus of an emergent black transethnic politics must be to transform black elected officials into politicians elected by multi-ethnic votes, not simply black votes...

...This discrepancy between public and class benefits will in time become a central focus of contests in black politics...

...that is, they are (1) working-class (working poor or stable blue collar...

...See Table I) Yet this advance of some two-thirds of black households (70 percent, in fact) to the coping-stratum ranks, where some 90 percent of white households reside today, has been counterbalanced by an expansion of poor black households...

...By 1986 this new breed of black politicians already had tested their skills—as mayors in Spokane (1 percent black), Pasadena (20 percent black), Roanoke (22 percent black), Charlotte (27 percent black), and Los Angeles (20 percent black...

...4 Charles Hamilton, "Political Access, Minority Participation, and the New Normalcy" (unpublished paper, 1984) p. 25...

...5 Though white power structures (firms, banks, insurance companies, retailers, and so on) prevail as the owning classes in cities, the new black political class and its black bourgeois networks nonetheless exercise significant political and economic clout through the mayor's office, councillors, zoning and licensing boards, and so on...

...and 53 percent of the "national" sample favored the death penalty compared to only 33 percent of the "leadership" sample...

...When compared with 1950 when barely 5 percent of black households fell within the middle-class and upper-stratum category, the social-political metamorphosis since the late 1960s or early 1970s constitutes a major transformation of black America...

...This represents a disaggregation of the rather simple black stratification of the 1900-1950s era, when most black families were weak working-class and hardcore poor...

...Scapegoating the nonwhite poor offers many whites— poor and nonpoor alike—the devastating illusion that poverty is primarily a problem for black and Hispanic folk...

...For most, or many, blacks today racial discrimination is no longer viewed as an insurmountable obstacle to self-advancement...

...Thus, in 1977 black firms claimed 16 percent of Atlanta's $227 million expenditure and in Detroit black firms cornered 20 percent of a $100 million expenditure, and this figure did not include "the fact that substantial spending— for repairs and maintenance, for example—is handled by individual departments and does not come through central purchasing...

...Fortunately, this mindless ethnocentric solidarity was rejected a year later by black legislators in North Carolina, who in March 1987 accepted the application for black legislative caucus membership of a white legislator representing a district with a 25 percent black population...

...First, while it is likely to evolve out of those who are politically aware among working-class and even poor families (union families particularly), recruits can also be expected to come from the progressive middle class, especially college students and young professionals...

...Something like this took place in New Jersey in 1984, where the Reagan-Bush ticket mustered 20 percent of the black votes, twice the national rate...

...In his reelection in 1982 Burns mustered a vote of 2,327,779, larger than that of the victorious Republican governor...

...Why, then, such a shallow and callous intellectual posture toward our racist legacy— a legacy steeped in violence, murder, mayhem, authoritarian coercion in the South, identity traumatization, and blood...

...In the short run, the growth of transethnic politics also depends in good part on the quality of black politicians...

...The failure of New Right intellectuals to undertake a response to our racist legacy is also disturbing in its crass indifference to America's finest contributions to democratic civilization— our pragmatism, our searching inventiveness with respect to the basic moral, institutional, and structural imperatives of a free and egalitarian —a fair—society...

...This was apparent during the 1984 election, especially at the state level, where a liberal or moderate Republican could package the Reagan-Bush ticket more suitably for black voters...

...2) Another area of concern to lower-strata blacks that watchdog activists must monitor is the poor performance of the education system...

...and Medicaid (26 percent black recipients, 20 percent Hispanic, 7.5 percent white...

...The reason is simple: Benefits of the class type typically outpace the public type, owing to the advantages of upper-strata constituencies...

...What are the future patterns in the growth of FALL • 1989 529 black transethnic politics...

...The stable working-class or blue-collar ranks, relatively well-paid, also expanded in 19721980, by 217,000 or 32.3 percent...

...Progressive white students and young professionals, already crucial in providing activists for Fair Share, ACORN, and similar local groups, can be expected to advance the watchdog function in black city politics...

...Of course, it is not easy for black leadership to undertake an outreach-to-the-white-poor movement...

...A Harvard historian and two other conservative (really New Right) historians published letters in the May 24th issue defending American conservatism's refusal to admit the need for affirmative action—a reform that can help redress the racist exclusion of blacks from opportunity...

...The changing composition of American conservatism in recent years has made little difference in its posture toward black people...

...Our various interest groups, because they are ideologically uncritical of the main trends in capitalist society, seldom package their breadandbutter claims in terms antithetical to the system...

...9 He opposes the civil rights movement's "appeal to guilt" on the spurious grounds that guilt "is entirely negative...

...Today some two-thirds of black households reside socially within the coping stratum...

...The same would turn up in black neighborhoods in Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, and so on...

...Its basic thrust is to broaden pluralistic forces...

...2) middle-class (white-collar workers...

...6 This pattern will occur in every city or state where black political incorporation takes place...

...Thus, while polls show that blacks as a whole still view American life in racial terms—usually at a two-to-one differential compared to whites— the expansion of the black coping sector of blue-collar and middle-class persons, along FALL • 1989 527 with the class-fissuring of black life, has produced growing differences in how AfroAmericans perceive or evaluate themselves...

...What is unique about the transethnic politician...

...The benefits of the new system are not available to the working class [not to mention the poor...

...This was a direct extension to the national party of black support for the state Republican party, whose candidate for governor in 1985—incumbent Thomas Kean— gained 56 percent of black votes...