Colin Powell: A Flight from Power?

...This fourth generation is the first whose members range across all the businesses and professions and function alongside their white counterparts in mainstream American life and institutions (see accompanying table).Yet the same America that has attenuated its longstanding racist patterns enough to bring a full-fledged black bourgeoisie into existence—pushed and shoved all the way, of course, by the civil rights activism of blacks and our white allies—is hardly the colorblind paradise that conservatives describe to us...

...Despite all the ambiguities, I was willing to contemplate giving him my vote...

...Readers and librarians who wish to receive a copy of the index for Volumes 41 and 42 of Dissent (Winter 1994 through Fall 1995) may write to Dissent, 521 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1700, N.Y., N.Y...

...This is true mainly because a viable access to bipartisan electoral patterns has been denied African-Americans by the Republican party for more than thirty years...

...This issue will increasingly become a critical marker, a dividing line between competing intellectual orientations, in the black community...

...Reprinted with permission...

...in the past thirty years a full-fledged black political class has evolved (eight thousand elected officials and four times that many appointed administrators and technicians) along with a broad-gauged class of professionals and businesspeople...

...Indeed, General Powell and his cohort of African-Americans in the Armed Forces officer corps (12 percent of the corps today) have contributed to a growth spurt in black power seeking...

...At the same time, the need to challenge the persisting pariah status of blacks in American society requires also an ethnic-bloc dimension in black politics...

...Farrakhan and his twenty thousand Nation of Islam followers won high visibility through the March...

...For perhaps half of white Americans, Powell as a possible president radiated an aura of discipline, moral uplift, up-by-the-bootstraps ambition that many Americans find eminently appealing, especially because their typical view of black American realities is one of social disorder and criminality...

...But white ethnic groups like the Irish, the Jews, and the Italians, have exhibited a very strong power-seeking impulse—with all the character traits necessary to a focused pursuit of power-by-any-means-available...

...it is the power-jousting that matters...

...This situation has only been exacerbated since the 1994 election...

...The pattern of prejudice in American life still allows many whites, maybe the majority, to view African-Americans through the prism of the poorest segment of the black community...

...It will also remain a historical question whether Powell as the first black president would have had the political strength and will to liberalize the Republican party's dominant form of conservatism, which works through cynical attacks on unions, feminists, the welfare system, black civil rights...

...Dilemmas of the Powell Phenomenon My own variant of pragmatic progressivism enabled me to consider supporting a Powell Republican candidacy, so I said to myself: "Alright, damn it, I will swallow some of my progressivism for a moment just to give a black military hero the chance to function as the whites' Great Black Hope...

...In the aftermath of the Million Man March last October, we have entered what I call an Afro-activist phase, in which the main political focus is on fusing the black equalization leadership function with community uplift...

...And the denial has persisted despite the broad incorporation of blacks, represented by the new political class, into the American system...

...For the most part, Republicans have preferred to indulge in cynical backlashing in their electoral appeal to white voters...

...For Frazier, the black elite self-image revolved around a form-deferring persona, an intense and even neurotic attention to the appearance of things...

...Even small responses like a system of scholarships funded by right-wing foundations for highachieving poor black school children or a set of grants to assist significant programs of neighborhood uplift would make a difference...

...This last point is what would have distinguished a Powell campaign from previous efforts like those of Jesse Jackson...

...For Frazier, this amounted to a defect in the character of the black elite, a defect rooted in historically established racist patterns...

...Nonetheless, deference to form and anxiety about public life continue to play a large part among the black bourgeoisie...

...The New York Times columnist Bob Herbert had a similar response to Powell, observing that Powell was a good man "hanging out with the wrong crowd...

...The choice of Kweisi Mfume last December as the new executive director of the NAACP should help to consolidate this preference, for Mfume was an early proponent (since 1993) of the fusion of black equalization and community uplift campaigns...

...As an African-American reared among the middling middle class, I had known about these kinds of status shifts via marriage among black folks, but it was during my years at Lincoln (1949-1953) that I became fully cognizant of this pattern...

...By contrast, conservative elements among the black intelligentsia insist upon the incompatibility of biracial and Afro-activist politics...

...Win or lose doesn't really matter...

...He thus emphasized the continuing need for some form of affirmative action...

...Powell and the Black Bourgeoisie The Post article helped me place General Powell's missing will to power in a frame of reference that reveals something larger about the character of key segments of today's black bourgeoisie: a generally weak power-seeking impulse...

...SPRING • 1996 • 75...

...Black folks in America today need the experience of seeing one of their own jousting for power with the whiteboys...

...I will do this even though I am not sure about the outcome with regard to the basic needs of poor blacks...

...Please include 55 cents postage...

...Elite commitment in the black upper class is fulfilled through deference to family, church, social status, and consumerist patterns...

...I have often challenged conservatives who talk about their concern for the black poor to stop talking and act, to fashion a conservatism with a human face...

...An overview of this growth is available monthly in Earl Graves's fine journal, Black Enterprise, now in its twenty-fifth year...

...Whether African-Americans fully recognized it or not, Colin Powell's aborted presidential campaign for the Republican nomination was the best opportunity Black America has had in this century to normalize its electoral status...

...That Powell represented at least an opening toward some new political possibilities for black folks was, I think, both an empirical fact and an ambiguous reality...

...So the idea of the whites' Great Black Hope takes on a possible transformative meaning...

...In Philadelphia, for example, my nephew— Thomas Kilson Queenan—who is an architect and holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business, participated in the massive middleclass groundswell around the March...

...Elite commitment is not found in power seeking...

...I was preparing to drive from Cambridge, Massachusetts to my alma mater, Lincoln University, near Oxford, Pennsylvania, the day last fall that General Colin Powell announced his exit from what was a kind of presidential campaign...

...it recalled the role of social status in defining the relationship of certain successful black couples—where the man moves up through marriage, from the lower class or middling middle class into the real black bourgeoisie...

...But such a growth of biracial politics does not, in my view, preclude the continuance of some features of black ethnic bloc and civil rights politics—which was always to some degree biracial in character and would have been much more so had white Americans been more forthcoming...

...Powell might have generated a conservatism of this kind . . . or he might not...

...Powell as president just might, through his exceptional leadership style, have helped to transform the chaotic realities of African-American life...

...And so it was the chance of a quantum leap in power seeking that excited me (and many other members of the SPRING • 1996 • 71 Race and Politics black intelligentsia) about the prospect of General Powell mounting a fullscale presidential campaign with a real possibility of success...

...What should be the trajectory of black politics in this schizophrenic American milieu that is Negrophobic and pluralist at the same time, where blacks are now both "insiders" and "outsiders...

...The Post's argument was familiar...

...It also prompted a search for a satisfactory explanation...

...In his book Polish -American Politics in Chicago, Edward Kantowicz has identified a similarly weak impulse among Polish-Americans...

...So it was rather sad that he didn't have the thirst for raw and messy power...

...This complementarity was even recognized, at least in outline form, by Powell himself, who made it clear that he did not think that American society was yet a colorblind society...

...Biracial/Afro-Active Politics Viewed in historical terms, we are now in the fourth generation in the life history of the black bourgeoisie (assuming its emergence in sizeable numbers in the period 1890-1920...

...UMI), the Social Sciences Index, and the Social Science Source...

...Had he run, Powell's impact on the middle-class and elite sectors of AfricanAmerican society would have been enormous...

...None have succeeded...

...This problematic dimension of a Powell candidacy did not go unnoticed among ordinary blacks...

...Sad that he is still, in many ways, a bourgeois gentleman...

...His decision not to run for the Republican nomination both surprised and disappointed me...

...The new biracial politics associated with the Powell phenomenon should be viewed as complementary to Afro-activism...

...Rather, the crucial feature was the overwhelming prominence in the march itself of the new grassroots black middle-class and its occupational associations and networks: black lawyers, dentists, engineers, computer scientists, doctors, scholars, accountants, money managers, businessmen, corporate managers, among many others...

...Since Frazier's critique, there has been an important shift toward a power-seeking orientation among American blacks...

...I began with the Washington Post's account of Powell's withdrawal, which stressed the authoritative role that Alma Powell has played in her husband's life from the start of their marriage until this critical decision...

...Black folks are still, also, pariahs in American life, and the deep crisis of the onethird of black households that are poor (and perhaps superfluous to the new global capitalism) reinforces this pariah status in strange and powerful ways...

...9 '94 PCT OF TOTAL IO-YEAR CHANGE '94 WEEKLY PAY Fern BIk Hisp Fern BIk Hisp Male Fern 43% 7% 5% 28% 38% 58% $797 $541 62 12 5 42 14 114 930 634 28 5 6 49 7 6 33 150 84 889 598 34 3 4 50 -7 105 1027 631 80 5 4 30 -16 111 850 581 45 8 8 485 375 51 6 9 23 57 67 534 384 54 9 5 25 40 56 718 524 52 9 4 27 64 52 724 545 55 3 5 31 10 21 534 486 7 6 1 616 34 6 6 19 38 226 886 737 48 7 5 817 531 65 12 6 17 5 52 705 580 67 3 5 508 46 13 4 16 31 27 819 630 62 9 6 33 93 91 571 64 9 2 37 2 4 64 -6 59 902 53 7 4 9 18 60 809 623 41 4 3 17 1 4 56 -42 3 765 22 11 3 20 110 27 53 3 3 8 155 314 11 9 3 76 64 220 550 68 14 8 26 12 161 764 618 13 4 5 115 311 275 92 14 2 -3 -11 50 549 47 4 3 20 -21 18 49 5 4 6 69 157 671 583 8 4 3 34 42 50 907 785 25 3 3 53 43 94 1237 917 82 10 4 -2 28 95 579 34 7 4 9 20 61 874 738 32 10 6 15 59 126 31 4 2 54 19 -27 773 663 38 3 4 34 -10 116 963 28 5 5 41 -46 59 22 4 5 39 -16 2 1063 815 54 6 8 59 8 5 7 -12 104 740 567 63 5 4 30 -18 70 530 94 9 3 -2 22 61 709 680 67 4 7 17 -13 508 69 24 7 8 31 40 564 497 43 5 3 16 6 61 890 771 86 10 4 1 3 68 650 621 98 11 5 -1 -8 59 375 56 8 4 9 -1 60 728 664 84 7 4 -1 -42 137 619 74 8 5 -3 54 29 652 630 Copyright ~995, USA Today...

...q Index 1994 - 1995 Dissent is indexed in Academic Abstracts, the Infotrak Academic Index, Magazine Article Summaries, the PAIS Bulletin, University Microfilms, Inc...

...In contrast to this, there is (or might be) a pro-active conservatism, focused on using the resources of both the public and private sectors to address the needs of the black poor and the poor in general, the problems of massive joblessness, deindustrialized cities, underdeveloped neighborhoods, and so on...

...Whether enough white voters could have been mobilized to give Powell the chance to act out that transformative role will now remain one of those big historical questions...

...As deputy treasurer of the city, he helped persuade Mayor Rendell and many city officials to support the organizational effort, making possible a sixtythousandmember delegation from the Philadelphia area...

...This black response suggests that Herbert's unease about Powell's capacity, as a Republican president, to humanize what Powell himself called the "too harsh" features of the GOP's "Contract With America" was widely shared...

...This new Janus-faced status means, above all, that a growing emphasis on biracial politics is fully in order: African-American candidates should appeal to white and other non72 • DISSENT Managerial and Professional Occupations Held by Women, African Americans, and Latinos, 1994 OCCUPATION EXECUTIVE/ADMINISTRATIVE Administrators, education Administrators, protective services Financial managers Mgrs, marketing, advertising, pub relations Mgrs, medicine & health Mgrs, food serving & lodging Mgrs, properties & real estate Management-related occupations Accountants & auditors Buyers, whlsl & retail, not farm Construction inspectors Management analysts Other financial officers Personnel, training, & labor relations Underwriters Officials & administrators, public admin Personnel & labor relations managers Postmasters & mail superintendents Purchasing managers PROFESSIONAL SPECIALTIES Actors & directors Architects Athletes Authors Clergy Counselors, educational & vocational Dentists Dietitians Economists Editors & reporters Engineers Lawyers Librarians, archivists, & curators Mathematical & computer scientists Musicians & composers Natural scientists Pharmacists Photographers Physicians Physicians' assistants Psychologists Public relations specialists Registered nurses Religious workers Social workers Teachers, college & university Teachers, elementary school Teachers, pre.K & kindergarten Teachers, secondary school Teachers, special ed Therapists Source: USA Today, May 15, 1995...

...Neoliberals and conservatives who today proclaim the virtues of biracial politics as if they invented it are just disingenuous in this matter...

...Nonetheless, an ambitious expansion of biracial appeals by black politicians is now necessary...

...I suspect that General Powell doesn't understand this...

...that's what can happen in a pluralist democracy when ethnic groups such as blacks, Irish, Jews, or Italians mount grab-bag coalitional events...

...But polls continue to show the overwhelming preference of black Americans for, say, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) over the Nation of Islam...

...There have been many previous efforts at a similar fusion, beginning with Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association around 1918...

...10017...

...General Powell embodies a different set of characterological traits, first described by E. Franklin Frazier forty-three years ago in his Black Bourgeoisie...

...SPRING 9 1996 9 73 Race and Politics black constituencies and actively seek bipartisan support on issues of concern to the black community...

...The crucial feature of the Million Man March was not what the media (among them, Dissent) highlighted: namely, the prominence of the antiwhite, xenophobic figure of Minister Louis Farrakhan...

...A black professional with a serious commitment to civil rights issues, Powell was also, as Boston Globe columnist Derrick Jackson astutely com74 • DISSENT Race and Politics mented, "the Whites' Great Black Hope...

...Most polls showed that, in a matchup with President Clinton, only about one-third of blacks favored Powell (compared to about 55 percent of whites...

...Powell as a Biracializing Leader At this moment, the possible parameters of a serious biracial politics among African-Americans are still sketchy...

...As Herbert saw it, "in Powell's case, the wrong crowd is a political party that believes deeply in policies deliberately crafted to hurt the poor, racial and ethnic minorities, and the working classes...

...But he resolved my ambivalence with his own, by revealing an old defect of character: this upwardly mobile member of the black bourgeoisie, like many others, was unwilling to seize the opportunities and accept the risks of political power...