Racial Politics and the Clinton-Guinier Episode
Plotke, David
Q.Mr. President, could you just give us an idea of what part of her writings you really have trouble with? A. Yes, I can give you an idea. In the Michigan Law Review, there was an article, Lani...
...and others...
...Guinier was experienced in civil rights litigation and politics and was also a family friend...
...Now racial themes are woven tightly together with nonracial elements in such a way that it is rarely accurate simply to characterize a discourse as racist...
...Her characterizations of the racial situation tend to be sweepingly negative, and give the impression that little has changed since the early 1960s...
...If blacks now organize themselves and vote to elect a (black) representative to a city council or county board of supervisors and then always lose on a six-to-one vote along racial lines, this pattern does not seem fair, even if it is proper in procedural terms...
...Imagine one thousand voters choosing ten representatives...
...Her treatment was tough but not brutal, especially by current standards...
...Not surprisingly, Guinier's harshest critics had heard all they needed by this point to decide she was out of bounds...
...In content, political choices refer to shared notions of justice that are not open to just any interpretation...
...Let's presume he was telling the truth...
...To represent a minority social group that is geographically concentrated, a good means is district representation...
...The problems she met in gaining a position for which she was well qualified are broad problems of the radical democratic left in public argument...
...a Senate debate was what he wanted to avoid...
...And they will do better as the extent of white fragmentation increases—the more white parties, the farther the black vote will go...
...First, she—I mean not only Guinier, but her allies and defenders—might have shown Clinton that the political cleavage around her nomination could be rapidly reshaped...
...Radical democrats are deeply divided about 230 • DISSENT Racial Politics politics...
...But without stipulating a plausible goal, and reasonable ways of attaining it, advocates of new electoral procedures are vulnerable to charges that they aim for a permanent regime of racial supervision and redistribution...
...4 Clinton judged Guinier's positions to be undemocratic, using terms similar to those of TNR...
...But imagine another group [y] in the same electorate...
...Issues of fairness would arise if the answer to the second question were clearly yes and political outcomes were often produced by mainly racial concerns...
...Such notions too often reject any real distinction between social and political life, and lead to a moralistic political style focused on whether 228 • DISSENT Racial Politics one or another position is authentic and sincere...
...It was once accurate to say that labor was Democratic and thereby to name not only the official stance of the trade unions but the orientation of large parts of the working class...
...The Republican victory in the 1994 elections had a distinct racial character...
...In making her case for "interest representation" she begins by claiming that, "The term 'interest' refers to self-identified interests, meaning those high salience needs, wants, and demands articulated by any politically cohesive group of voters...
...They are not wholly isolated, in the sense that millions of other people have similar views, especially on social and economic policy...
...The idea that expanding the number of black representatives is desirable holds up because of its particular features...
...Exclusion and marginality are not the right words for this situation, which is one of slowly diminishing racial domination...
...Advocates of expanded minority representation should aim for balanced judgments about current inequalities...
...Thus under conditions of sharp racial polarization, Guinier's proposed reform would have mainly negative results...
...Carter also neglects to mention the attacks on Guinier in the the New Republic...
...During and after this episode, one argument used by Guinier and her advocates was that her nomination was desirable because she would Racial Politics Narrow Legal Legal Equality Equality of Equality and Equality of Opportunity and Opportunity Redistribution Economic and Reaganism Republican Right Center Social Policy [1 ] Republicans [2] [3] Democratic Democratic Clinton and Gore Chicano and Neoliberalism Center-right [4] [5] Asian-American groups [6] Democratic AFL-CIO Black Caucus and Welfare Statism NOW [7] [8] [9] 1 Two Axes of Political Conflict in the 1990s 222 • DISSENT Racial Politics insist on straightforward discussion about race...
...It does not justify her move, and opens her to the criticism that she is seeking to gain advantages for particular political views because of prior and ongoing discrimination against some of the people who hold them...
...They are partly a function of the properties of political choices themselves...
...The only alternatives that seem to get theoretical attention are unmitigated racial domination and thoroughgoing equality...
...No market-like political competition seems likely to clear away unjust inequalities in the near future...
...Looking again at Figure 1 makes clear how hard it is to distinguish the two interpretations, given where most blacks are located in contemporary politics...
...They (we) affirm discourse and deliberation, and also want to protect against "unfair" outcomes...
...I have given each cell a name corresponding to a real political current (thus cells 3 and 7 are vacant...
...Thus while Guinier does not reject redistricting measures aimed at producing black representatives, she stresses procedural changes in how representative bodies are constituted...
...L. Rev...
...And her very presence on the political scene was doing nothing but causing Clinton trouble by spurring Democratic factionalism and opening his fragile coalition to Republican inroads...
...What is going on...
...Representation is a crucial good in liberal and democratic polities...
...For a prospective civil rights appointee in the Justice Department (or her advocates) to say that her positions should not be taken too seriously because they appeared in the Michigan Law Review is like a controversial State Department 224 • DISSENT Racial Politics nominee saying her work should not be scrutinized excessively because she was writing in Foreign Affairs...
...One is the conventional left-right axis on social and economic policy...
...Guinier's argument leads to proposals that black elected officials have a veto on what they deem vital issues...
...Democratic Dilemmas in Racial Politics In discussing the problems that helped stop Guinier's nomination I have tried to suggest positions that might be more politically viable while remaining committed to equity in racial politics...
...Sometimes outcomes are unexpected results of procedures...
...This could be true if by interests one meant the general political interest of social groups in attaining representation...
...It is extensive, especially at higher levels...
...emphasize inequality and exclusion as the main forms of domination...
...Editorial, "Withdraw Guinier," the New Republic, June 14, 1993...
...By almost any definition, politics entails collective decisions on many indivisible goods (should the United States invade Haiti or not...
...Due to this change in assumptions there are now four group [x] candidates rather than one...
...First, there is nothing wrong with posing alternatives to standard electoral procedures...
...Before I take up one example, it is worth noting that some criticisms made of her work in this area are off base...
...Guinier's formulations lack Marxist referents...
...If they simply say "let's talk about race" they are likely to be viewed by Democratic centrists as endangering an already weak Democratic coalition...
...The New Republic opposed her nomination in an article by Abigail Thernstrom and an editorial...
...In another conception, we are trying to enhance the strength of particular political ideas...
...But no one can be guaranteed an equal share of political outcomes in a system of open political deliberation and organization, even if everyone has an equal role in decisions...
...2. Strong measures should be taken to increase the presence of blacks, with the eventual aim of making their numbers roughly equivalent to the percentage of the national population that is black...
...Clinton would have seen that as a fight he would surely win, one that might even help him...
...The other is about racial politics, where the main choices are narrow legal equality (the Reagan-Bush position...
...In form, political choices are often indivisible, severely time-constrained, momentous, cumulative, and irreversible...
...and full legal equality, strong efforts at equal opportunity, plus redistributive efforts across racial lines...
...Like similar formulations by other theorists, however, they tend to reduce the political to the social...
...It is now even more accurate to say that African-Americans are Democratic...
...She is at odds with critics who think that the Act has been turned into a quota system...
...Is repeated losing the result of racism or of unpopular positions...
...o The author wishes to thank Thomas Cavanagh and Michael Walzer for comments and editorial suggestions...
...To represent a minority political view, some form of proportional representation is effective...
...There was a sharp decline in white support for Democrats from 50 percent in 1990 to 42 percent in 1992, while black support declined only from 89 percent to 88 percent...
...To see the problem that would arise with cumulative voting in an actual setting, all that is necessary is to modify the assumption of a single candidate and instead assume that while all members of group [x] will vote for candidates who belong to that group, political ambition is as widely distributed among group [x] as elsewhere (thus many candidates) and members of group [x] are not wholly politically united (thus bargains have to be struck...
...To hear that Guinier was a politically safer figure than people somewhat to her left (say Patricia Williams or Cornet West) was to hear nothing of interest to an administration seeking to mute racial conflict as much as possible...
...Then blacks will at least be represented in proportion to their numbers...
...The number of black officials is much smaller than the proportion of the population that is black...
...2 Somewhat more surprising, and far more important politically, were the vehement critiques of Guinier by center-right and centrist Democrats...
...Moreover, it entails not thinking about the all-round application of principles that might first benefit the group one supports...
...But pointing out the unfairness will change little...
...Thus when she criticizes racial bloc voting by a majority, the implication is that fair political representation entails that minorities win political battles in rough proportion to their weight in the electorate...
...Part of this may be contextual: it must be tedious as a black intellectual to feel pressured to begin every commentary with an acknowledgment of racial change...
...The aim should be to devise procedures that will elect more blacks, but not any blacks, or at all cost—the aim is to elect blacks whose political views resemble those of the black electorate...
...It divides current American politics with two axes...
...Her articles are written in decently clear and sometimes powerful English and require no apology for being too technical or full of jargon...
...Think about the following ways in which one might address the number of blacks in the House and Senate...
...Her emphasis on racial inequalities in political representation is legitimate, if overstated...
...So far so good...
...They can be persuaded of the merit of other positions, or something new and compelling can be built through dialogue...
...3 Abigail Themstrom, "Guinier Miss...
...If there is little to admire in Clinton's performance, Guinier and her allies contributed to their defeat...
...She proposes that blacks are a minority political group who need to secure a SPRING • 1995 • 231 Racial Politics larger presence in public life...
...Without any signs of this reshaping, Clinton was not being weak in withdrawing the nomination...
...Appreciating why leads straight back to the dilemmas of the Democratic center...
...He was practicing one of the trickier parts of a policy on racial matters that has been pushed by Democratic centrists and in a different form by some social democrats...
...If Clinton were Reagan or even Bush, his not having read a key nominee's writings would get little attention...
...Racial preferences should be proposed in forms that are plausibly self-limiting...
...The result is conceptual tension and ambivalence—and proposals like Guinier's for interest group vetoes that are easily attacked as antidemocratic...
...To square her notion of identity with a commitment to procedural fairness, Guinier claims that interest representation is nonsubstantive...
...There is not an unchanging racial exclusion based on sheer domination accompanied by racial hatred...
...Although he is not only entitled to his views on these matters but obligated to have views, the process was embarrassing...
...But the inequality is uneven, and does not prevent blacks from participating in politics or from achieving substantial success at the local level...
...Second, posing local alternatives to simple majority rule is not in principle antidemocratic...
...But many of her critics consider anything beyond the fourth approach to be a quota, with the partial exception of mild versions of the third...
...Today political relations between "blacks" and "whites" are asymmetrical, and unfairly so...
...If Clinton were privately more positive about Guinier's work than he said, he would have had good political reasons for acting as he did...
...These measures should include changes in electoral procedures, including voting rules and districting, and might include legal requirements for political parties (for example, no public financing if serious candidates are all white...
...And she differs with defenders of the Act who, she believes, are too easily satisfied with measures that increase the number of black officeholders through redistricting, without enhancing participation or the quality of representation...
...127-136...
...Then imagine that group [z] has two hundred and fifty members and six candidates—each one will receive over four hundred votes...
...This argument skillfully bridges conventional political divisions...
...Clinton's anxiety about sustaining his coalition is only part of the story...
...If this is true, there would be a prompt and usually effective white response to black strategic voting—most black candidates would be defeated by white bloc voting...
...He also took responsibility for withdrawing the nomination, after reading several of Guinier's articles...
...This model might be appropriate 232 • DISSENT TIMES BOOK S The explosive debate surrounding the controversial bestseller, The Bell Curve HIS1ORY, D ()PINIONS Edited by Russell Jacoby and Naomi Glauberman Lauded by some, loathed by others, discussed by all, The Bell Curve has sparked a nationwide debate on race, class, and intelligence...
...These features were symptoms of a real political dilemma...
...Guinier was accused of racial polarization when in her view she was simply naming a racially divided social and political reality...
...The argument is, as Guinier's case showed, a probable loser outside the confines of left-ofcenter political and intellectual circles...
...If we want to reshape political procedures to increase the presence of members of certain groups in offices, what are we doing...
...Guinier doesn't take much analytical account of this situation...
...Proponents of measures aimed at expanding minority political representation need to show how their proposals would lead to that result without creating immovable new institutions...
...Trying to build coalitions can allow minority groups to exit from the ghettos into which they were forced by political domination...
...This self-effacement didn't get far...
...This is a contentious area for the postMarxist left...
...and "No Two Seats: The Elusive Quest for Political Equality," 77 U. Va...
...Clinton was the crucial figure in stopping the nomination of Guinier...
...Thus the attempts at health care and welfare reform are the Clinton administration's racial policies...
...one might conclude in every case that the costs are too great...
...Second, Guinier and her allies could have shown Clinton that a fierce intra-Democratic fight would be worthwhile because of the political advances that her nomination would encourage...
...The problem is that political minorities—groups whose views and programs have the support of less than half the voters—do not deserve special treatment as such...
...Democratic and procedural improvements should be tightly linked...
...Yet in the two decades since the Voting Rights Act passed there has been a major and historically unprecedented growth in black political participation and in the number of black elected officials...
...Guinier's main proposals are considered and well argued...
...This result will intensify tensions among Democrats concerning racial politics...
...In this view the road to racial equity requires depolarization...
...He then acknowledged being unfamiliar with her ideas...
...They believe that the second and most versions of the third lead in practice toward the first...
...Guinier, Tyranny of the Majority, p. 104...
...full legal equality plus support for measures aiming at more equal opportunities...
...The irony of the Guinier nomination process was how quickly it seemed to confirm this view...
...L. Rev...
...In this situation any vote share above 1/(1 + s) where s equals the number of seats guarantees a seat—in this case, group [x] has 1/10 of the votes and only needs 1/11 to make sure of winning a representative...
...These are open to renegotiation in American politics, and have changed at a number of points in the past...
...SPRING • 1995 • 225 Racial Politics Against most of her critics, it was reasonable to affirm the enduring reality of racial inequity...
...Most democratic states seek to foster stability in ways that value some votes over others in specific contexts in order to sustain a regime that upholds a broad commitment to equity (for example, the Senate in the United States...
...But it is simply wrong regarding how candidates arise and how large, diverse groups act in electoral competition...
...It is clear from what Guinier has written that if the Clinton administration wanted to build ties to politically active black intellectuals, Guinier would be a good choice, one improved by her personal qualifications...
...To support Guinier was to favor a necessary if difficult national conversation...
...She was not just the most confirmable among dozens of plausible nominees...
...This figure is open to debate...
...she looked forward to assuming a new position...
...It is wrong to think about political outcomes as distributive shares, while the proper remedy for losing is building a winning political force...
...Where Are We Now...
...Expanding the number of majority-black districts may increase the number of black elected officials, but it can also create new political ghettos where a lack of competition and declining participation combine to decrease the quality of representation...
...It can encourage divisions within majority groups when sections of those groups consider previously stigmatized alliances...
...But those who favor downplaying racial politics in favor of universalist social reform can find little comfort, as the administration mainly pursued their policy without producing either reform or electoral gain...
...Why Was Guinier Defeated...
...What seems lacking is a serious effort to imagine how one's proposals will be heard by likely opponents and how the proposals would work in practice...
...It gained little credit for Clinton...
...We also expect political ambition to be widely distributed over the entire population...
...Once again, each voter has ten votes—if all the votes from members of group [x] go to these candidates, they will average two hundred and fifty votes each...
...Cohen and Michelman were on solid ground in criticizing a misreading of Guinier's work by Carol M. Swain, "Black-Majority Districts: A Bad Idea," New York Times, June 3, 1993...
...If he had believed that this line could be redrawn soon (moved in a northwest direction in Figure 1), so the bitter fight would do less damage in intra-Democratic relations, he might have allowed the nomination to proceed to a Senate debate...
...There is further trouble for the democratic left in this territory: a collision between a view of politics as the articulation of identities and a view of politics as deliberation...
...The massive Democratic defeat is likely to strengthen Clinton's preference for a racial politics of silence and indirect amelioration...
...1991...
...Today "black" or "African-American" designates both a dominated social group and a distinctive political group...
...other times they reflect differing skills...
...If each voter has ten votes, and the members of group [x] pool all their votes for one candidate, he or she will be elected...
...These measures will benefit blacks more than race-specific efforts, and will also build interracial ties useful in shaping a less divided politics...
...On this basis she recommends cumulative voting so that minorities could concentrate their votes...
...For a critique of Guinier's work as that of a "harsh and confrontational partisan" see Charles Fried, "President Clinton Won't Give Me a Job Either," Reconstruction, Volume 2, Number 3, 1994, pp...
...Another local model would replace districts with at-large seats for all offices, but add a further requirement...
...The overwhelming (left) Democratic commitment of blacks routinely seems to validate the idea of a shared identity that fuses political views and social experiences...
...About 90 percent of blacks who vote choose the Democratic party, and perhaps 60 percent to 70 percent of blacks who vote identify with the left of the Democratic party...
...Guinier wants the Voting Rights Act and other civil rights legislation to be opened up as means of changing procedures and outcomes as well as numbers...
...Unsurprisingly, Guinier's positions were deemed unacceptable by almost all Republican political figures who commented...
...In this case, such adjustments would mean abandoning the muted but powerful racial appeal that Republicans make to whites, and the ensuing losses would probably far exceed gains among black voters...
...When blacks make up over 10 percent of the population and less than 2 percent of elected officials, the situation definitely merits attention and seems likely to be unjust.' Not all distributive differences warrant public concern...
...and the means of reduction is a concept of identity rather than one of class interest...
...It is as much a story about Clinton and the shape of racial politics as about Guinier...
...For Guinier's proposals to produce the outcome she intends, blacks have to be cohesive and whites dispersed...
...Guinier is smart and competent, but she would be a disastrous political appointment...
...She would impose racial criteria on procedures—for districting and candidate selection—that should be race-neutral...
...Her writings allow this interpretation, but they also allow the one for which she was criticized: a good black representative is authentic insofar as he or she expresses the political views that are part of a previously defined black identity...
...This is a common feature of contemporary racial politics, as political forces based in mainly black communities are part of a centrist Democratic coalition...
...We could just have a department of political accounting...
...The preceding account should help make sense of why the Clinton-Guinier episode seemed so full of misunderstanding and confusion...
...If AfricanAmericans in office are understood to have relatively fixed political positions that express black social and cultural identities, they will be acting responsibly when they seek the goals those identities designate...
...Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Black Elected Officials: A National Roster, 1993...
...These schedules should have a plausible basis in the forms and logic of the proposed program...
...Her position indicates measures that lie between 2 and 3. When she conceives legal mechanisms (court action and laws about election procedures) as the way to change the size and quality of black representation, her views exemplify the second approach...
...1. State delegations will not be seated unless the percentage of black members is greater than or equal to the proportion of blacks in the state population...
...Yet its underlying conception of politics is wrong...
...But those who advocate policies that apply racial criteria to electoral procedures need to specify a threshold of outcomes past which legal regulation would not be needed...
...The defense on grounds of obscurity was a minor embarrassing moment in this episode...
...Alternatively, such losses can be seen as due to their lack of political power and the unpopularity of the political views they advocate...
...But to criticize Guinier's proposal neither invalidates her efforts nor rules out other approaches...
...Thus an effective critique of many affirmative action schemes—the current pattern registers people's real preferences and should not be disturbed without a very strong showing of discrimination— is on much weaker ground regarding the composition of representative bodies than of symphony orchestras, say, or dental schools, or plumbers' unions...
...Republican opposition by itself would have been of modest concern or perhaps even attractive...
...Clinton is an ambivalent political figure who is highly sensitive to political pressure from any direction, but especially from right of center Democrats...
...Why were Guinier and her political allies in the civil rights community and on the legal left defeated...
...Perhaps, as she later suggested, "authentic" is merely a synonym for accurate, as in a more or less accurate representation of the views of constituents...
...Its candidates will average three hundred votes and lead all of group [x]'s candidates...
...Intra-Democratic argument has long counterposed universalist to race-specific policies as means of making major changes in racial politics...
...Available in Paperback...
...But in her discussions of identity and authenticity, both terms refer to the political interpretation of a social group's experience— the resulting "interests" are unavoidably substantive...
...Two paragraphs later, she continues her argument by naming a social group rather than a political group: "For example, in a 25 percent black jurisdiction with four at-large representatives . . . " 9 This unexamined shift illustrates the double presence of "blacks" as a social group and a political group in her analyses...
...Thus if there were ten offices to be filled via at-large procedures, a candidate might be required to obtain 20 percent of the vote in at least seven of ten "districts...
...If it seems commonsensical that Clinton would want Guinier around, this judgment is wrong...
...If it means that groups have a right to seek to gain their interests without facing discrimination, it reduces to the first point...
...3. Strong measures are necessary to increase the presence of blacks, but these should be undertaken on a voluntary basis by parties and other political organizations, along with strict federal scrutiny of electoral practices that have racially exclusive effects...
...Democrats are continually vulnerable to white racial appeals by Republicans, appeals that are likely to jeopardize all their political efforts...
...This is not a peculiar defect of Guinier's work but a common trope in radical democratic critiques, such as those concerning gender inequality...
...Her view is that the Voting Rights Act as conventionally understood has been played out as a major means of generating racial equality in politics...
...The figure I suggest is 50 percent of the overall number of offices: if a socially distinct minority subject to previous or ongoing forms of political discrimination makes up 10 percent of the population, efforts to alter electoral procedures might properly end when that group's members occupy 5 percent of all offices...
...The sharp attacks were not highly personal...
...One is the concern with the political fate of minorities that has been widespread since the onset of mass suffrage: how can means be found to prevent majoritarian procedures from becoming tyrannical...
...This style discourages modes of political argument where reasons have to be given and criticisms met...
...and are uneasy with liberal universalism—unwilling to abandon its egalitarian force but suspicious that it masks rather than undermines inequality...
...But it is no surprise that proposals from the Black Caucus/ NOW cell don't often pass in Congress...
...And her position was weakened by failing to show Clinton one of two things that might have changed his mind...
...What is the scope and meaning of racial inequality in politics...
...The main problem is that Guinier and other radical democrats seem to reject the dimensions of politics that have to do with power, conflict, uncertainty, and innovation...
...One model is a mixed local system combining district and at-large elements...
...Under attack, Guinier made an ambivalent defense of her own writings as not really so controversial—after all, her proposals for changing electoral procedures were hypothetical and were published in obscure journals in technical language...
...But Guinier and her supporters did not seem to be close to having promising solutions to racial inequity that would have warranted a costly fight with center and center-right Democrats...
...Mark Tushnet, "Who Cares About Voting Rights?," Boston Review, June-September 1994...
...Clinton's failed nomination symbolizes other radical democratic efforts that flounder partly due to their insularity...
...We can try to temper the wild, dangerous, and surprising features of political conflict, but there is no way to get rid of them...
...District forms would provide a floor below which territorially concentrated groups would be unlikely to fall, while at-large seats would encourage coalition formation...
...On the other hand, there really is no remedy for losing in a reasonably open political contest, except that a loser should be able to fight again and have the option of forming coalitions...
...The alternative logic, one of building majorities in a diverse society, also has problems...
...That seems to be her point...
...What about the moves Guinier suggests...
...In 1993 African Americans made up 8,015 of the 467,196 elected officials in the United States, or 1.61 percent...
...Thus it includes lots of losing, by people deeply convinced of the merit of their position...
...If deliberation differs in any major way from bargaining, it must mean that representatives engaged in it can arrive at positions they did not start with...
...4 Stephen L. Carter, "Foreword," to Lani Guinier, The Tyranny of the Majority: Fundamental Fairness in Representative Democracy (The Free Press, 1994): vii—xx...
...While often condescending, this criticism is effective because it focuses on a real weakness—a seeming lack of balance in making judgments...
...These trends are not certain to continue, however, and even if they did it would be decades before large inequities disappeared...
...The political views of blacks do not deserve to guide public decisions because of past or present racial domination...
...It amounts to a local adaptation of the principles that justify an electoral college in presidential elections, forcing candidates to seek support from different states and regions rather than trying to win an overall majority by piling up huge margins in limited areas...
...If it means that groups have a right to a certain portion of victories in political conflicts, it entails a notion of "fair" outcomes beyond whatever results from fair procedures...
...In one conception, we are opening political institutions to participation by members of excluded social groups...
...In electoral competition, it is very unusual for 90 percent of any group to choose a single party...
...She was charged with favoring quotas and racial polarization, and Clinton withdrew the nomination before the Senate debate...
...Clinton claimed, after all, that he was nominating a long-time friend...
...New York Times, November 13, 1994...
...She argues as if any policies that might be justified in the situation of the early 1960s are justified still because inequalities remain...
...Thus representatives engaged seriously in deliberation are unlikely to remain "authentic" representatives of particular groups for very long...
...Losing and Fairness The subtitle of Guinier's book—"Fundamental Fairness in Representative Democracy" —links ideas about fairness to expectations about the results of political contests...
...The certainty of this designation does as much as a hundred articles to show the rigid character of racial categories in the United States, so that no one who wants to talk about them can be fairly charged with calling them forth...
...A few points should suffice to show that this unqualified rejection is not reasonable...
...Republicans are free to decide when to play the card of racial preferences, against which centrist and left Democrats lack any effective defense...
...9 Guinier, Tyranny of the Majority, p. 94...
...He quickly came to see her political views as disruptive of his own project and had no trouble choosing that project over friendship, making his choice in a clumsy way...
...If only a sixth of black voters were willing to bear this burden, it might change the overall situation...
...If black political forces are on the far left of a winning coalition they should expect what the far left of winning coalitions usually gets, which is as little as centrist forces think they can safely provide...
...that each group has a right to have its interests represented, and 2. that each group has a right to have its interests satisfied a fair proportion of the time...
...Thus the key to his decision was the opposition of TNR and Thernstrom, and the forces with which they were identified...
...But the modesty of the payoff is mainly a political problem, due to real differences within the coalition, rather than a racial problem...
...The deciding point is not the necessarily benign results of a coalitionbuilding approach, but the worse results of treating political outcomes as distributive shares...
...Clinton regarded Guinier with respect and even affection...
...And changes in electoral procedures should be considered both in terms of whether they are consistent with a democratic regime (Guinier's mostly are), and in terms of their likely results for the choices of all relevant political agents...
...Yet the burden of argument now lies on people who want to challenge racial inequities directly...
...Referring to legally protected minority groups, Guinier proposes the following standard for evaluating decision-making rules: "1...
...It is probably a good idea to get rid of notions of identity that presume tight links between social experience and political views...
...In case readers missed the point, the headline at the top of the cover was: "The Guinier Nomination: A Clinton Betrayal...
...This story merits reexamining because the tensions that propelled it play such a large role in American politics...
...1077 (1991...
...Yet making clear that political positions are arguments about what social groups need can reduce dubious claims about authenticity and encourage more useful debate...
...There is a reasonable empirical basis for this identification, but the relative political unity among blacks is by no means absolute...
...She was the target of a fierce political attack from several forces...
...This is because high levels of black support can be presumed, while efforts to increase or even publicly affirm that support can have countermobilizing effects...
...If it does work, in the sense that a minority group can form part of a winning political force, the center of that coalition may be so far away from the minority that the latter's benefits are very modest...
...How could this be open to debate...
...The political concentration of blacks intersects the complex relations between political and social identities to produce tangled formulations that played a role in hurting Guinier's SPRING • 1995 • 227 Racial Politics nomination...
...But this account depends on a highly unrealistic assumption: that only one candidate who belongs to group [x] will get all the votes of members of that group...
...Thus one reason the episode was so awkward was that it brightly illustrated a criticism black intellectuals and professionals make of their white colleagues— that with regard to the actual work and ideas of the former, the latter are condescending and uninterested rather than engaged and seriously critical...
...1413 (Nov...
...So: a black identity designates the way black people interpret their social experience in making political arguments and claims...
...What they deserve is a fair chance to fight again...
...During the debate about her nomination she was identified as black, though one of her parents is African-American ("black") and the other Jewish-American ("white...
...and insularity in procedural proposals...
...The reason for this surprising outcome is that most proportional representation systems reward the largest cohesive minority...
...Guinier was defeated mainly by centrist and center-right Democrats who effectively pressured an ambivalent Clinton...
...Contributors include: Charles Lane, Stephen Jay Gould, Ellen Willis...
...it results from an interplay of decision rules that combine to provide an equal voice to citizens in stable conditions of open political competition...
...Her commitment to shape procedures so as to achieve substantive political results makes her proposals effectively antidemocratic...
...At any moment it is in the short-term interest of most white Democrats to say as little as possible about race...
...Talk about race...
...These positions are SPRING • 1995 • 233 Racial Politics at best starting points for debates about policies, given the difficulty of the current situation in racial politics...
...Are there racial elements in the rejection of left-Democratic policies, that is, do many whites who might otherwise find positions in cell 9 acceptable reject them because of a perception that these are "black" positions...
...Numerous experiments with local electoral procedures might be reasonable...
...This position looks like special pleading for particular political views, which merit attention and even acceptance because of the deep connections of their advocates to a significant group of people...
...4. Black candidates and voters should face 226 • DISSENT Racial Politics no legal or customary measures that impede the exercise of their rights to vote and run for office...
...Guinier is critical of mainly territorial formulas...
...The problem is that for Guinier's proposal to work well, key conditions need to be virtually the opposite of those specified in her argument...
...Participants may have strong preferences for policies that they cannot persuade others to regard as just...
...I refer to Guinier's work, but not to provide another review of her book.' The point is to assess how her approach, and by implication the approach of the radical democratic left, fared in the political combat over her nomination...
...It might take only modest adjustments in Republican policies to gain another 10 percent or 15 percent of the black vote...
...In the Michigan Law Review, there was an article, Lani analyzed the weaknesses of the present remedies available under the Voting Rights Act, and many of her analyses I agree with, but seem to be arguing for principles of proportional representation and minority veto as general remedies that I think inappropriate as general remedies and anti-democratic, very difficult to defend.' In 1993 Bill Clinton nominated Lani Guinier, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, to head the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department...
...Maybe he was lying—he had SPRING • 1995 n 221 Racial Politics read her work and hoped she would get through without a stir, but given mounting resistance he decided that feigning ignorance would be the best way to back off...
...anything over 60 percent is a strong party constituency...
...A democratic polity is nowhere only a majority-rule regime...
...It encourages the idea that there is one true way to interpret the shared social experiences of blacks, and that this interpretation defines a black political identity...
...What he won by avoiding wrenching arguments with centrist and center-right Democrats about race was mostly lost by appearing disloyal and easily pressured...
...To make political advances they need to be able to say, "let's talk about my proposal for reducing racial inequality without racial polarization...
...In political representation there are modest trends toward greater equality...
...10 The second point could be interpreted in two ways...
...6 The goal is to produce more policy outcomes that black voters prefer, in conditions of expanded black political participation...
...To downplay his role is to evade reflection on the costs of the predominant centrist Democratic approach to racial politics— to enforce civil rights laws in a moderate way and hope that universalist social reforms will succeed well enough to sustain black commitments and slowly depolarize race relations...
...It is a resource for defining the terms on which other resources are distributed, and the procedures through which distributive decisions are made...
...She develops these proposals at length and puts them near the center of her arguments...
...Unless one considers Clinton's overall position, his actions toward the Guinier nomination seem even more maladroit than they were...
...Imagine a different alignment, with Guinier's opposition coming from the far right and center-right Republicans (cells 1 and 2) along with a handful of conservative Democrats...
...Here was an evidently competent and well-intentioned nominee who wanted everyone to join her in talking frankly about racial politics...
...This would add new antimajoritarian devices to a political system already full of them...
...The Clinton-Guinier episode had a disappointing outcome...
...Neither was expected to read...
...It has one hundred and fifty members, and five candidates...
...First, no one believes that electoral procedures are arrived at through the most open of market-like means...
...Later complaints about mistreatment discouraged political thinking about what might have been done differently...
...When his administration cannot provide such policies, the result is failure in racial politics as well as in the policy areas in question...
...Guinier clearly did not favor the first approach...
...The burden of argument is now on the left in these matters, and neither Guinier nor her allies came close to an adequate response...
...That seems to be a good result...
...This move is compelling against the background of two strains in modern political thought...
...If blacks had more diverse political views, would they gain greater representation among elected officials...
...Second, we should want adequate political representation of all parts of the population, defining "part" as a group with social features that make it a plausible and likely site of political interpretation (Chicanos, say, but not tall people...
...Guinier aims to overcome this dilemma by applying the notion of fairness to political outcomes...
...In the context of racial politics since the passage of the Voting Rights Act, this is an understandable move...
...A majority-building approach is inadequate without strong antidiscrimination efforts...
...For critics, any such view has quota-like effects in restricting choice and creating new inequalities...
...This will be encouraged by winning universalist measures such as health care reform...
...Much of its theoretical work has criticized the determinism of Marxist views of the relation between social and political categories, crucially regarding class...
...This argument didn't get anywhere, partly because it was strategically naive...
...I put the question this way, rather than asking why she was treated so badly...
...This collision is loud in the area of representation, precisely where Guinier's work is focused...
...Ties with people like Guinier would seem to be an important way of engaging younger black intellectuals while keeping a distance from those who have marked out positions well to her left...
...For such deliberation to get anywhere representatives must enjoy considerable autonomy from their constituents: they are not bound merely to register existing preferences...
...2 The attack on Guinier's writings came first from Republicans and the far right, as in Clint Bolick, "Clinton's Quota Queens," Wall Street Journal, April 30, 1993...
...8 For reviews see Cass R. Sunstein, "Voting Rites," the New Republic, April 25, 1994...
...Given a conception of identity as a fusion of social and political elements dominated by the former, this sort of losing is read as the enforced marginalization of blacks...
...If such proposals are not antidemocratic in spirit, they are nonpolitical...
...5 Joshua Cohen and Frank Michelman, Letter to the Editor, New York Times, June 13, 1993...
...quotas and preferential treatment...
...Those who find this stance unattractive both on principle and on strategic grounds need to think of something better to say about how racial equity can be achieved...
...But even playing with this idea makes clear the difficulty of the current situation in racial politics...
...No proposal is thereby justified...
...Clinton portrayed himself not as a victim of Republican pressures but as a serious and disappointed reader of his nominee's work...
...It links the antimajoritarianism developed by those concerned that the masses would band together and destroy privileged elites with a post-Rawlsian effort to expand the range of distributive justice as far as possible into politics...
...Her nomination was attacked...
...Yet neither had read the work of someone they regarded as a friend and colleague for many years, even though her work concerns major issues that have frequently engaged both of them...
...Now—in one volume—essays by more than eighty leading scholars and writers span the spectrum of opinion...
...It is easy to sympathize with a certain reluctance to repeat conventional statements about how much reform has occurred...
...Racial inequality is not mainly a legacy of prior patterns of exclusion, but of ongoing patterns of racial politics influenced by other forms of inequality (as of economic resources...
...If blacks have a policy veto in some areas, why not Catholics in others...
...But if saying as little as possible about race makes short-term sense, it leaves open a wide field for Republican efforts...
...For them, any change of electoral forms aimed at expanding the number and "quality" of black officials is an illegitimate interference with voters' preferences and a de facto quota...
...Racial preferences in public policy should be self-limiting...
...But to motivate her proposal Guinier depicts whites as persistently antiblack and apt to form alliances on that basis...
...She said she did not favor them...
...6 My claims about Guinier's positions are based on her book and several of her articles, especially "The Triumph of Tokenism: The Voting Rights Act and the Theory of Black Electoral Success," 89 U. Mich...
...His role is often downplayed or absent in commentaries on this episode, such as Stephen Carter's introduction to Guinier's book, The Tyranny of the Majority...
...She was surprised by the sudden turn against her and attributed it to right-wing pressure and Clinton's unclarity...
...The situation is now close to an unspoken Republican ideal, with a huge gulf between white and black voting (46 points) and a strong Republican majority among whites...
...Guinier was accused of favoring quotas...
...Even with measures against racial discrimination, efforts to build majority coalitions by political minorities linked to racially defined social groups can be frustrated, partly on racial grounds...
...On the one hand, it seems unfair that decades of political exclusion of blacks be followed by SPRING • 1995 n 229 Racial Politics decades of political marginality...
...Thus the notion of "class interest" was rejected because of how it translated social into political terms without opening any space for political argument...
...The connection drawn by Guinier (and others) is that political outcomes should be fairly distributed, registering the equality of individuals and a right to equal influence...
...The other is concern with distributive justice...
...Thus we should now entertain a wide range of proposals about reshaping institutional procedures...
...Clinton could fill pages with topics he would rather move to the top of the public agenda...
...Through her use of identity, Guinier combines elements of these conceptions...
...It leaves her position open to criticism as hyperbolic and excessive: doesn't she appreciate how much has changed...
...a white countergroup would certainly form...
...So there is nothing wrong with advocating change in electoral procedures, if proposals are made in mainly neutral ways (for example, let's achieve greater stability, rather than let's make sure I am always reelected...
...This is a hard condition to meet with political offices, where there is no full cognate of the market...
...One could fill pages insisting that Guinier's work does not involve support for quotas because she rejects the first approach and the most stringent versions of the second...
...Talking about race should not be equated with inciting racial polarization...
...He wanted to prevent a loud nomination fight that would deepen divisions in his coalition...
...Though the content is distinctive, this is a familiar and legitimate model of interest representation...
...There should be clear schedules not only for the achievement of distributive goals but for the dismantling of the means by which those goals are achieved...
...He did...
...Lani Guinier was not mainly a victim in this episode but an important political actor who lost...
...Then imagine that one hundred of the one thousand belong to a distinct group [x] interested in electing its own members...
...The table below points to those reasons...
...When parties that want to win overlook such opportunities, there is usually a reason...
...A majoritybuilding approach may not work when a minority is as politically concentrated as blacks now are...
...It provides no support for claiming that a stronger advocacy of racial redistribution or even of expanded debate about race would have electoral benefits...
...Clinton made clear from the start that he was appointing not only a respected civil rights lawyer and scholar but a friend...
...Hers is a distinctive conception, advanced in a responsible way...
...In conditions of severe racial polarization, blacks would never be the largest cohesive minority...
...If basic political positions are not adopted on mainly racial grounds, there is a real dilemma...
...A course that promised an intra-Democratic war over racial policies could hardly appeal to Clinton in 1993, as he labored to present himself as a new Democrat...
...today: judging the extent of the need for change...
...The extraordinary electoral situation of blacks in the United States today makes it hard to distinguish these two aims...
...This tendency results first from understanding political representation as a means of expressing social identities and, second, minimizing the effects of losing by treating political outcomes as shares of a pie...
...Clinton has shown little interest in finding a way to escape this dilemma other than through the long-term and indirect effects of improved public policies...
...Changing this situation will require conceptual and political innovation beyond anything now on the political scene...
...Her legal and political arguments in the 1980s and 1990s are part of an emerging body of work produced by what SPRING n 1995 n 223 Racial Politics might be called a radical democratic or post-Marxist left in the United States...
...To win, candidates would have to receive a minimum vote in a number of geographical areas...
...Their opposition threatened to divide his tenuous electoral coalition...
...Both a companion and an answer to The Bell Curve...
...Even if procedures were as outcome-neutral as could be imagined and participants were equally skilled, outcomes could not be shared out...
...But if political outcomes could be distributed equally among legitimate groups, we wouldn't need a political system...
...Which of these policies is a quota...
...Hence Guinier's occasional references to "authentic" black representatives...
...Insofar as Guinier claims that political changes are required to include blacks fairly as a social group in American politics, the argument is unproblematic in principle (bracketing the question of what measures to employ...
...Here I consider four relevant features of arguments about race and politics in the U.S...
...Alan Wolfe,"Redesigning Democracy," New York Times Book Review, March 13, 1994...
...Blacks" should not be understood as an already political term, any more than "women," "Christians," or "Chicanos...
...3 Their arguments went as follows...
...There is a serious problem with the first approach...
...The Quota Mess What measures are now appropriate—and what costs are acceptable—to remove inequities in political representation between blacks and whites...
...Instead, proposals that aim to increase the number of black officeholders must also aim to enhance electoral outcomes in terms of shared values across racial groups (such as fairness in inclusion, accuracy in registering constituent preferences, improved political debate...
...Though he would prefer to put it in terms of transcending old debates, Clinton is not interested in encouraging talk about racial politics, because he thinks such talk will be divisive in ways that predictably hurt Democratic prospects...
...relations between political and social identities...
...Guinier's work is also located in the field of civil rights law, focused on the Voting Rights Act...
...But she often seems to be arguing something more: that blacks as a political group or as bearers of a particular political identity deserve special consideration and institutional reform to ensure their expanded presence...
...This assumption might be reasonable for voting in committees or perhaps for brief moments in legislatures...
...They said she might be North African but was most likely Italian...
...Efforts will always be made to claim that one or another political position is the genuine and natural position of a particular group...
...Whites need to be divided among themselves and not very interested in voting against blacks per se...
...It does not clarify what happened to claim she was "the target of a stunning campaign of caricature and misrepresentation...
...A powerful current in contemporary democratic theories stresses the value of open communication and deliberation in articulating issues and reaching generally acceptable outcomes...
...Guinier's trouble stemmed partly from how she did this...
...But it doesn't leave much room for deliberative processes...
...As a result, no candidates from group [x] win...
...But efforts to expand black representation will fail if they are made in terms of symmetry, that is, since whites spent decades changing electoral procedures to marginalize blacks, whatever blacks want to do to compensate for this exclusion is fair...
...How could one expect the appointment of someone responsible for interpreting and enforcing civil rights laws under the first Democratic president in more than a decade to be a process without strong polemics and efforts to do real political damage...
...234 • DISSENT Racial Politics Notes New York Times, June 4, 1993...
...Critics of Guinier were being hyperbolic, but not entirely dishonest...
...Taken with her radical democratic orientation, it makes her political defeat all the more significant...
...This is a problem with several of Guinier's proposals...
...Insularity Guinier's political defeat was not singular...
...This degree of racialization of politics does not generally exist, though debate in areas like welfare policy comes close...
...For example, several local electoral procedures might enhance black representation without so strongly inviting antiblack strategic efforts...
...When is it legitimate to advocate a racial redistribution of positions, and how can this be done without rigid quotas...
...These points open the door to proposals that might change the racial composition of elected bodies...
...Electoral rules have always aimed at both fairness and substantive outcomes, with their proponents often being unable to tell the difference...
...If American racial categories leave no doubt that Guinier is "black," her own work has several locations...
...Clinton should withdraw her nomination, on principled grounds and because it would hurt him politically...
...This policy implies avoiding people committed to talking about race...
...Procedural proposals have to be considered as though one's adversaries might be smart enough to employ them...
...We generally presume that everyone wants to be represented, and take extreme differences in levels of political participation as evidence of something other than differing preferences...
...Now the groups are racial and ethnic minorities and women, not classes...
...Yet doing so would have little effect on the result, given the widespread opposition to the second and third approaches...
...Eugene D. Genovese...
...This figure suggests that dropping Guinier was an easy choice for Clinton when the hostility of TNR and neoconservative Democrats (cells 4 and 5) crystallized...
...Several critiques of her views showed that their writers had read parts of her articles or at least a fairly reliable summary of them...
...Guinier is part of several networks of legal and political theorists who favor democracy rather than "socialism" as the ground of a critique of prevailing practices...
...Should blacks reduce their political underrepesentation by flocking to the Republican party...
...Racial Politics where the minority population is substantial and racial polarization is serious, requiring candidates to gain support across racial lines...
...In a talk on matters related to this article, I showed a picture of Lani Guinier from the cover of her book to a group of graduate students in Hungary, and asked them to designate her ethnicity...
...But her proposals would increase the salience of race and sharpen racial cleavages...
...And what grounds would exist for criticizing the famous practical veto exercised by leading business groups seeking a good "business climate...
...Thus, in a market context, racial preferences might clear the scene of racial monopolies, at which point the "natural" results of the new market would not call for further intervention—even if they were less than optimal from the standpoint of racial equality...
...Blacks' political positions are unpopular...
...To stay in office they will face a difficult choice between returning to their "authentic" positions or trying to initiate new relations with their constituents in which claims of authenticity have a diminished role...
...But that fusion is also a source of trouble for thinking about racial politics...
...But Clinton reads widely, and Hillary Rodham Clinton reads most of what he reads plus everything else...
Vol. 42 • April 1995 • No. 2
