LETTERS
James T. Campbell's Summer 2002 review of Glenn Loury's The Anatomy of Racial Inequality is disappointing in its refusal to seriously engage Loury's ideas. Loury's central argument that racial...
...NOTE: The writer refers to a public forum on "Patriotism in a Time of War" that featured Michael Kazin, presenting material from his article in the Fall 2002 issue of Dissent ("A Patriotic Left") and Joanne Barkan and Jim Sleeper presenting the material that appears in the current issue...
...Among the broad range of progressive publications, the American Prospect is closest ideologically to Dissent...
...the sit-in movement, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act, affirmative action, and every other political movement or public policy designed to redress racial inequality...
...I found the book disappointing...
...At the same time, however, other regular contributors to ITT favor some form of third party politics or anarchism...
...In my view, there is an urgent need for progressive intellectuals to be more involved in discussions about concrete political strategies for the left...
...But even DSA has been surprisingly inconsistent in its stance toward third parties and on supporting necessary military interventions...
...Stripped of the social science veneer, this is precisely the argument that conservatives have advanced against desegregation (remember Dwight Eisenhower's disquisition on the human heart following Brown v. Board...
...This perspective on affirmative action is certainly not incoherent...
...In These Times has, for the most part, been more consistent than the Nation in its stance toward the Democratic Party—with Joel Bleifus's strong editorials on Nader and the Democrats being an excellent case in point...
...How should the AFL-CIO relate to these organizations...
...We would love to carry the journal of a labor organizer, reflecting on the day-today difficulties of the job...
...In his most extreme formulations, stigma becomes a kind of timeless, irreducible quotient, so enmeshed in our processes of "social cognition" as to render all efforts to combat racial inequality foredoomed...
...Still, there are a lot of articles of the sort that Ken wants to see in the magazine that we would be happy to publish, if we could find them...
...Much of Campbell's review is driven by his low opinion of Loury's past political activities and of black "conservatives" in general (a term that hardly ever really applied to Loury...
...Developmental approaches can thus avoid the stigma associated with conventional affirmative action policies...
...Not Enough Dissent Editors: Your October 7 panel discussion [see ed...
...Discussions of this sort would include figuring out what organizational forms are needed to create an identifiable progressive wing of the Democratic Party...
...As economist James Heckman has noted, there is little evidence that contemporary labor market discrimination can explain much of this inequality...
...But while the two magazines often feature the same writers, Dissent identifies itself as a democratic socialist publication, which places it to the left of TAP—an important distinction...
...However, the overall political situation is so grave, and the internal crisis on the left is so severe, that the broader progressive movement (Dissent included) needs to consider all sorts of new approaches...
...Hence it can only play a very limited role in helping the left to become more cohesive...
...Dissent has the potential to provide such a home for countless leftists who are currently lost, confused, or adrift...
...Liza Featherstone's description of the campus campaign against private prisons (Fall 2000) analyzed the "boycott strategy" adopted by the students...
...These kinds of discussion are obviously worthwhile, and Dissent already does them extremely well...
...But they are, for the most part, more specific in nature than the kinds of articles that Dissent typically publishes...
...The distinction is that one targets resources to improve the qualifications of disadvantaged groups while the other alters selection criteria...
...I can't say much about physics, but in debates about race and poverty I stand by my statement about thought experiments (which Durlauf misquotes...
...There are good reasons to think that stigma can explain at least some of these differences...
...But there I go being ironical again...
...Glenn Loury was an important, if idiosyncratic, participant in the Reagan-era assault on the so-called "black underclass," precisely the group he now professes to champion...
...But I was uneasy with Loury's tendency to reify the concept, as well as his denigration of other explanatory factors (including the continuing reality of formal racial discrimination in the United States...
...one of the occupational hazards of being a historian is believing that what people said and did in the past matters...
...In other recent writings, Loury has argued in favor of what he calls "developmental" as opposed to "procedural" affirmative action...
...There are numerous other journals on the left, some more influential than others, but I won't spend any time discussing them here...
...It is an important contribution as social scientists try to understand why racial inequality has proven to be so intractable...
...But on the two key issues that currently divide the left— working within the Democratic Party and supporting just military interventions—it is all over the place, depending on whose articles you are readDISSENT / Winter 2003 109 ing...
...If Dissent were to regularly run articles on strategies for the left, it would not mean eliminating all of the more theoretical pieces that Dissent so excels at...
...For starters, I would urge you to consider altering somewhat Dissent's mission...
...it cannot take the place of a movement...
...This leads to nonsensical assertions such as the one that thought experiments are "a misbegotten offspring of rational choice theory...
...Loury's arguments are hardly uncontroversial...
...An Expanded Role for Dissent Editors: What follows are some thoughts about how Dissent might play a more proactive role in the ongoing effort to construct a more relevant left in the United States...
...By doing so, I think you/we will be providing an invaluable service for the left...
...Right now, there is no serious political movement operating across the full range of issues that should be of interest to the left...
...Why not have a regular section called "Strategies for the Left," or "Getting From Here to There" or something to that effect...
...If the ideologists of the market, the defenders of global capitalism, win the debate about how social forces work, in whose interests they work, and with what long-term effects, there won't be much that left-wing organizers will be able to do...
...perhaps we should publicize the fact that we are doing it and feature more debates about the strategy and tactics of the left...
...We need to marshal our intellectual skills to focus on such concrete and perennial questions as, "How can the left finally become greater than the sum of its parts...
...While engaged intellectual reflection will always be an essential form of political activism—with all of the many dire problems now facing humanity, we need a new paradigm...
...We have to be a magazine of sustained intellectual reflection, recalling, elaborating, re-inventing the idea of a democratic and egalitarian society...
...But a political and intellectual magazine cannot be a movement...
...foreign policy (although many on the left would dispute this), while TAP is often more liberal than left in its analysis...
...In the context of higher education, for example, one might start by asking why we do not hear more lamentations about the "stigma" and psychological "damage" we inflict on alumni children, student athletes, or the scions of America's wealthiest families, all of whom benefit vastly more from preferential admissions policies than do AfricanAmericans...
...An open question is how one can empirically assess the effects of stigma for overall levels of inequality...
...To be clear, there is no scholarly consensus on this question...
...Just how and why did the broader left "fall asleep at the switch" and allow the Workers World Party and its front groups to exert so much harmful influence on the antiwar movement...
...Surely there must be some dissenters, even within your own ranks, who cannot accept the idea of patriotism as a response to the threatening situation we all face...
...Instead, they might be about how best to reach out to the Naderites...
...By this, I do not mean theoretical discussions about what the left should be all about, or about what positions to take, or about what kind of rhetoric we should use...
...These discussions would not be Gore v. Nader type debates...
...If "economic reasoning" means treating individuals in contextual vacuums, without regard for history, politics or social structure, then I plead guilty...
...It should be noted, though, that Mother Jones is far and away the most widely read magazine on the left, albeit one that doesn't stand for any particular strategy/ideology...
...and Jeffrey C. Isaac's long, thoughtful, worried analysis of antisweatshop organizing (Fall 2001) provides an admirable model of how intellectuals can engage with politicson-the-ground...
...How ironic that in the midst of a groundswell of opposition to the administration's war plans and its cynical use of patriotism to hide its many abuses, Dissent should choose to move to the right and become part of the jin jingoistic parade...
...What about the Campaign for America's Future...
...Perhaps most important, this new section should feature articles that discuss reconnecting the organizational dots on the left...
...We have had quite enough of those by now...
...This claim will be news to students of physics...
...We would welcome the articles he suggests about how to pull the followers of Ralph Nader into a wider and more effective left politics, about Noam Chomsky's influence among students, about leftist media of all sorts...
...I think this idea is a canard, but insofar as some people believe it, the solution is surely not to surrender the policy but to join the argument, to do a better job explaining and defending its logic and necessity...
...The debate continues in the Spring Arguments section...
...But we need more than this...
...DISSENT / Winter 2003.III...
...How can the Progressive Caucus on Capitol Hill play a more active role on the left...
...Why has Noam Chomsky become the single most important figure on the left...
...Research by psychologist Claude Steele on stereotype threat has shown how the test performance of AfricanAmerican students can be adversely affected by stigma of the sort Loury discusses...
...On the question of affirmative action, I thank Professor Durlauf for making explicit an idea that Loury only implied: that affirmative action itself stigmatizes black people...
...Furthermore, Dissent takes a consistently anti-imperialist approach to U.S...
...But given our resources and given the limited significance of today's activism, Dissent's focus will be, has to be, elsewhere...
...Let me take his concerns in turn...
...and (c) it has taken a very forthright position in favor of necessary and just military interventions...
...To some extent, we agree with Ken: we have tried to do some of what he wants the magazine to do, and probably can and should do more...
...Related discussions would look at the following sorts of questions: Is USAction pursuing a strategy that is leading anywhere...
...If it does so, the pages of Dissent can become an important forum for developing new and creative ideas and strategies for the day-to-day campaigns and struggles that lie ahead...
...It is arguably the most important journal on the left...
...a home that continues to express the view that even though the United States is an imperialist power, U.S...
...His views deserve better than to be treated with an irony bordering on contempt...
...By being a strong advocate for all three of these positions, Dissent stands out from all other tendencies on the left...
...We hope that this discussion will stimulate the production of more and better examples...
...David Morse's account of Seattle, 1999 (Summer 2001) dealt not only with the media coverage of the demonstration, but also with the strategy and tactics of the demonstrators...
...Why, I wonder, were there not more voices of protest from the audience...
...Comments heard after the meeting ended indicated that others shared my reaction...
...We need to provide a toughminded analysis of the divisions within the movement against a war with Iraq...
...Such an article might discuss specific ways to educate and organize groups of progressive students on campuses to evaluate the consequences of supporting third parties...
...STEVEN N. DURLAUF Madison, Wisconsin James T. Campbell Replies I am sorry that Professor Durlauf found my review of Glenn Loury's The Anatomy of Racial Inequality disappointing...
...b) it sees the progressive wing of the Democratic Party as the most strategic avenue for effecting change...
...It seems to me that Dissent occupies a distinct niche on the left and within the left press because: (a) it is a voice for democratic socialism/social democracy...
...It also seemed appropriate, given the emphasis that Loury himself has placed on his political "rehabilitation," to ask just how thorough his conversion has been...
...Economists Derek Neal and William Johnson have shown how on the order of 75 percent of black/white wage differences are associated with differences in educational attainment, at least as measured by test scores...
...Campbell also seems motivated by an animus toward economic reasoning...
...Campbell also faults Loury for not vigorously endorsing affirmative action, which Loury's arguments are claimed to commend...
...Over the long haul, the left's ideas are more important than its strategies...
...KEN BROCINER Somerville, Massachusetts Mitchell Cohen and Michael Walzer Respond Ken Brociner's letter raises important questions for Dissent...
...Events are rapidly moving in the wrong direction...
...And again, all this could be accomplished by simply adding a regular section to the magazine...
...we will post the letter on our Web site and invite other editors (and readers) to respond...
...How can it help create a more organic link between left-wing intellectuals and progressive movements that are out there organizing on a daily basis...
...What do the left media need to do to become more influential...
...Although I don't claim to have any answers to these questions, I do have some suggestions that I hope may help to stimulate some discussion and fresh thinking among the editors and board of Dissent, as well as among its readers and subscribers...
...Perhaps they were in shock...
...Dissent is the premier intellectual journal on the left today...
...All these topics are really worth exploring...
...Such an eclectic mix has its strengths, but helping the left to achieve ideological coherence and political unity is not one of them...
...interventions are sometimes worth supporting (while always strongly pressuring the government to refrain from military tactics that needlessly expose civilians to the horrors of war...
...History matters...
...gedankenexperiments have an honored place in twentiethcentury science...
...Please cancel my subscription and remove my name from your mailing list...
...This is a curious criticism given Loury's central preoccupation with stigma...
...note] on patriotism evoked strong reactions: dismay at its format and outrage at its content...
...And at the same time, how can Dissent more effectively serve as a political home for leftists who are turned off by the Nation's all too frequently strident and dogmatic columnists, letters, and overall tone, and who are looking for a journal that has a coherent identity...
...In contrast, research on the role of per pupil expenditure differences as an explanation of educational differences is noteworthy in its inability to find strong effects...
...How should progressives relate to the Democratic Leadership Council...
...Dissent's primary critical role will be played out within that debate...
...Loury's central argument that racial stigma is a key explanation of black/white racial inequality is an original claim and one that deserves serious consideration...
...But it would mean being more selective about publishing articles that have limited usefulness and that are written in dense, academic language...
...Articles of this kind are not so easy to write...
...There are protests and demonstrations on particular questions that we should be "covering" both from close up and from a critical distance...
...Perhaps we should do this more regularly...
...Left intellectuals need to strike a new balance between analyzing on a relatively abstract level and offering analyses that could more directly affect politics and organizing in the here and now...
...What about the Nation...
...As far as progressive organizations go, Democratic Socialists of America comes closest to sharing Dissent's political orientation...
...Surely that is worth mentioning...
...The Progressive and Z are both on the far end of the left spectrum, and on the two issues that have so bitterly divided progressives, both have taken positions diametrically opposite to those of Dissent and TAP...
...And our response here is meant to be tentative, provisional...
...it cannot summon forth a movement by writing as if it exists...
...Let me be more concrete...
...There is the AFL-CIO, about whose internal politics and strategic options we should certainly be writing...
...Loury's thought experiments, like all successful types of such reasoning, are nothing more than a way of providing analytical clarity in developing specific lines of causality, in this case from particular social interactions (stigma) to particular social outcomes (inequality...
...There are a lot of unaffiliated leftists out there who are looking for an accessible intellectual and political home, a home that affirms the value of a democratic socialist perspective while also validating the belief that working within the left-wing of the Democratic Party is 110 DISSENT / Winter 2003 the only realistic electoral strategy available...
...This leads him to spend much of the review on irrelevancies concerning Loury himself, as opposed to his arguments...
...Dissent's primary strength lies in what it does stand for, philosophically and strategically, but its relative lack of influence raises a number of key questions: How can Dissent play a more relevant role in the real world of political change...
...MYRA RUSSEL New York, N.Y...
...Campbell is correct to point to differences in educational attainment as an important factor...
...One key similarity (especially for the purposes of this discussion) is that, like Dissent, TAP stands for a coherent political position...
...Yes, I devoted some attention—about a quarter of the essay—to Loury's unusual history...
...How can it serve as a more compelling magnet for progressives who consider themselves more left than liberal and, as a result, can't feel entirely comfortable with TAP...
...Whether this constitutes "an animus to economic reasoning," I cannot say...
...And since it isn't happening anywhere else that I can tell, Dissent should, in my opinion, take it on...
...I actually found the concept of stigma interesting and potentially useful, as I said in the essay...
...More broadly, I was struck by the singularly ahistorical way in which Loury deployed the concept—an ironic fate for an idea introduced to account for the weight of history...
...Dissent is very well situated to move in this direction...
...But for the left to prosper and grow, we need to substantially narrow the gap between intellectuals on the one hand, and activists and organizers on the other...
...Why was only one point of view presented...
Vol. 50 • January 2003 • No. 1
