Letters
Editors: Martin Kilson's article, "Colin Powell: A Flight from Power?" (Spring 1996) argues that Powell's decision not to run for president reflects an ambivalence toward power-seeking among the...
...Jesse Jackson's introduction of the singlepayer proposal in the Democratic party platform, for example, was a result of his campaign commitment to emphasizing class-based programs as a strategy to mobilize the working class and popular movements, not just the marginalized, the vulnerable, and the poor...
...We reserve the right to edit letters down to fit our space and to choose which shall be printed...
...Their achievements should have removed for all time the image of "bourgeois gentlemen" that Frazier pinned on the African-American middle class...
...Instead, he has refused the second spot, spoken out for affirmative action, and made it clear that his heart is with those Republican moderates who protest the party's shift to the right...
...I write these comments in the postRepublican convention period, so we are all now too aware of how the normal "moderate Republican" behaves toward serious egalitarian ideals and practices...
...He heartily supports Dole even though Dole is against affirmative action and turned down an invitation to speak before the NAACP...
...The president should have encouraged a strong singepayer movement and proposal so that the Clinton proposal could have been the compromise, center proposal...
...Raphael Sonenshein's marvelous study of Mayor Thomas Bradley of Los Angeles places him among the top ranks of urban political analysts...
...To Letter Writers • We welcome succinct letters from our readers...
...So one listens closely to his commentary on anything one might write on African-American political patterns...
...I'm afraid that Derrick Jackson, writing in the Boston Globe on August 14, is correct: Powell can dream that he has influence in the party...
...Spring 1996) argues that Powell's decision not to run for president reflects an ambivalence toward power-seeking among the African-American middle class...
...We regret an editing error in the sentence in Mitchell Cohen's introduction (Summer 1996...
...In deeply divided cities, these middle-class politicians were hardly afraid of "raw and messy power...
...They often came out of the AfricanAmerican middle class, and fought against huge odds to empower the African-American community...
...And in general I liked Sonenshein's reactions to my analysis of Powell's quasi-presidential campaign that ended too soon...
...In this sense, he differs from the shameful Clarence Thomas, who gained a Supreme Court spot by playing the game of the Republican right wing...
...Baltimore, Md...
...In 1992, Bill Clinton included the single-payer option in his otherwise large-insurer-oriented plan because of the large mobilization around a single-payer proposal...
...It is, then, precisely because of Powell's unique version of a liberal or moderate Republican demeanor that, as I remarked in my article, "I [would] 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...
...Letters will not be returned to senders unless they are accompanied by stamped, selfaddressed envelopes...
...However, he misconstrues my analysis of Powell...
...Powell has, quite simply, refused to be used by the Republicans...
...was not properly credited...
...Santa Monica, Calif...
...My characterization of Colin Powell's political stance as a kind of throwback to the Frazierian paradigm of what I call the "form-deferring" bourgeoisie is not meant to be a general formulation about the current cohort of elite African-Americans...
...So if you want to write about something that you like, or dislike, in or about Dissent, please do it quickly...
...He is correct in underlining the powermustering savvy of the political-class sector of the new black elite...
...He states that one of the reasons the singlepayer proposal failed was that its proponents put too much emphasis on the problems of the uninsured and not enough on the problems of the average insured person, and on the ways in which a single-payer program could have resolved them...
...Richard Hatcher, Carl Stokes, Kenneth Gibson, Maynard Jackson, Coleman Young, Tom Bradley, and Harold Washington were great politicians in the heat of the arena, supported by the vast majority of all African-Americans, whether working class or middle class...
...But if current nominee Bob Dole cannot get into the main party platform a simple statement that the party can tolerate those who support a woman's right to choose an abortion, Powell can forget it on affirmative action...
...I believe that this interpretation is wrong, both about Powell's calculations and about the African-American middle class...
...He is in the same camp as Governors Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey and William Weld of Massachusetts, who are shrewdly playing for the year 2000...
...But we are in a post-convention era and I am sure that Sonenshein would agree with me that there are now good grounds for questioning my pre-convention optimism about Powell as a unique version of the liberal Republican...
...Dated theories of the African-American middle class are less useful in understanding Powell than in viewing him as a socially liberal, moderate Republican who favors civil rights...
...If Whitman and Weld are shrewd card players, why dismiss Powell as being afraid of power...
...liberals is the cause of their own demise...
...He is hallucinating that Republicans will cut corporate welfare and welfare for the wealthy . . . . It is easy for Powell the popular [African-American] private citizen to create the illusion that he can raise the party to his values...
...Kilson suggests that Powell "didn't have the thirst for raw and messy power...
...We are unable to acknowledge letters...
...I would suggest that my conceptualization of Powell's political persona as a kind of Frazierian throwback tells us somewhat more about the real Powell than does Professor Sonenshein's statement that Powell is merely another "moderate Republican who favors civil rights...
...ERRATA We regret that the article by Charles Taylor in the Summer 1996 issue ("A World Consensus on Human Rights...
...It predates the rise of African-American mayoral candidates in the 1960s and 1970s...
...It is difficult to believe that the Clinton proposal was the left-wing proposal, but that is how it was perceived...
...FALL • 1996 • 143...
...He can fantasize that he has moved it closer to being the party of Lincoln again...
...As chair of the single-payer ad hoc group within the White House Task Force, I could see the effects of mobilization in action...
...On page 9, first column, lines 11-12, should read: "according to him" (referring to Marx) not "according to them" (referring to the Austro-Marxists...
...But because we have a long "lead time for each issue, you have to send us your letter within three weeks after getting an issue of Dissent in order to get it into the next issue...
...I think much more of him because he has refused to jump at the 1996 opportunity—which is really a trap...
...Thus my comments about Powell as overly self-defined as a "bourgeois gentleman" and hesitant about "raw and messy power" applied to Powell alone...
...Powell has an egalitarian vision that requires the government to play a proactive role in closing the status and social mobility gap between blacks and whites...
...The single-payer proposal was defeated because the AFL-CIO decided to support managed care, which then became the "left" proposal (a fact not mentioned in Tomasky's article...
...With Kilson, I see Powell as a potentially historic figure, a credible, electable African-American presidential candidate...
...As senior health adviser to Jackson and as his representative on the Democratic party platform committee, I was unsuccessful in convincing Michael Dukakis to run on issues, such as a singlepayer system, that would mobilize the majority of the population, in particular the working class...
...A longer version will appear under the title "Conditions of an Unforced Consensus on Human Rights" in The East Asian Challenge to Human Rights, edited by Joanne R. Bauer and Daniel A. Bell (forthcoming...
...The main lesson of the defeat of the Clinton Health Care Reform is that, once again, the anti-left position of U.S...
...With the elimination of the left, however, the Clinton proposal became the "left," moving the whole debate so far to the right that not many in the grass roots of the Democratic party mobilized...
...The critique of the African-American middle class presented more than forty years ago by E. Franklin Frazier and approvingly cited by Kilson is very much out of date...
...Kilson gives Powell too little credit...
...Let the Republican party show that it is worthy of having him on its side...
...One could say Powell has already lowered his values...
...We witnessed Jack Kemp enter that convention as, in the words of Boston Globe columnist Derrick Jackson, "a bleeding heart (Republican]" 142 • DISSENT Letters and exit as a rightist Republican...
...I [would] do this even though I am not sure about the outcome with regard to the basic needs of poor blacks...
...Had Powell really been a "bourgeois gentleman," he would have legitimized the reactionary takeover of the Republican party by joining the ticket, attacking affirmative action, holding out for no substantive change in the party, and being grateful for the handout...
...He is wrong...
...It was adapted from a piece commissioned by the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs for its project on "The Growth of East Asia and Its Impact on Human Rights" and presented at a workshop on "Cultural Sources of Human Rights in EastAsia" sponsored by the council and held in Bangkok, Thailand, March 2426, 1996...
...Letters must be kept to about 500 words, typed, double-spaced, and carry the full address and name of the sender...
...The drafting of the single-payer option (in the White House bill) took place one week after the president received one million signatures supporting the single-payer proposal...
...Immediately after the signatures were received, the ad hoc committee, largely irrelevant until that point, became a group whose opinions were much sought after...
...They were also coalition-builders, expert in unraveling the biracial puzzle...
...Editors: Michael Tomasky's article "Why Health Care Reform Failed" (Spring 1996) contains a criticism of the left that is unwarranted...
Vol. 43 • September 1996 • No. 4
