Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are
most nearly touched—criticism of writers by readers, of
government by those governed, of leaders by those led—this is the
soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society.
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903
Although this essay appears very close to the most consequential
presidential election since 1980, it was written months before during
the week that former President Ronald Reagan died. The great majority
of the U.S. media praised Reagan without any critical
reflection—calling him the greatest president of the twentieth
century, the man who brought hope and optimism back to America, the
president who united the people. As one commentator mentioned, it was
as if the nation itself had a case of collective Alzheimer's.
Reagan deeply divided the nation and particularly on matters of race
this division is very much still with us.
Reagan himself was a racial polarizer throughout his political
career. His drive for the governorship of California in the middle
1960s was significantly fueled by his opposition to the state
referendum that called for open housing. He opposed the 1964 Civil
Rights Act as well as the 1965 Voting Rights act. He opened his
campaign after receiving the Republican nomination in 1980 in
Philadelphia, Mississippi, which was the site in 1964 of the brutal
murder of civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and
Michael Schwerner. While remaining silent during the speech about the
murder of the civil rights workers, Reagan announced his support for
“states rights”—the racist code words that had been
used to justify in turn slavery, secession from the Union, Southern
segregation, and the often violent opposition of Southern racists to
the civil rights movement, civil rights legislation, and court
decisions such as the then relatively new Brown v. Board
of Education decision. While in office, he vetoed the 1988
extension of the Civil Rights Act while trying to win tax exemptions
for Bob Jones University, which had openly racist policies. Nobel Peace
Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu had nothing but contempt for the
Reagan administration's policies on South Africa stating,
“In my view, the Reagan administration's support and
collaboration with it is equally immoral, evil and totally
un-Christian” (quoted in Jackson 2004).
On another occasion, after Reagan had spoken in favor of the apartheid
government in 1986, Tutu exclaimed in disgust, “Your president is
the pits as far as blacks are concerned. He sits there like the great,
big white chief of old” (quoted in Jackson
2004).
Public opinion studies repeatedly demonstrated that a large majority
of White Americans agreed with the current assessment of Reagan in the
media as the great optimistic communicator who brought hope back to the
nation. There were of course some critically important exceptions such
as the gay and lesbian communities who were particularly bitter about
the administration's gravely dilatory AIDS policies as well as its
many anti-union stances, but by and large White America embraced the
“Gipper.” African Americans overwhelmingly had come to the
same conclusion as that of Bishop Tutu. Deep Black opposition to Reagan
fueled Harold Washington's successful 1983 campaign to become the
first Black mayor of Chicago as well as the highly visible and,
particularly in 1988, surprisingly strongly supported bids of Jesse
Jackson for the Democrats' nomination for president. Indeed,
scholars have shown that Jackson and Reagan defined the racial
polarization in the electorate. It would not be overstating the case
that a large majority of the White electorate loathed Jackson just as a
great majority of the Black electorate constituted Reagan's
bitterest foe.
The legacy of Reagan's racial polarization can be found in many
arenas today and the first volume of the Du Bois Review
(henceforth DBR) has focused by coincidence on many aspects of
that legacy. In the first issue we published several articles which
documented the continued deep divide of racial polarization in public
opinion as well as a lead article that documented the depth of
continued racial segregation in the nation and the physiological,
behavioral, and health-related toll it takes on African Americans. In
this issue we highlight other aspects of the legacy of racial
polarization and politics. Under Reagan, the life chances of Americans
became more unequal at an accelerated rate. This was particularly
noticeable in income and employment statistics, but was by no means
limited to the economic arena. During the 1980s, whatever progress
Blacks had made on a number of fronts came to a halt. Articles in this
issue of DBR highlight how some of these racial differences in
life chances play out today. In a major assessment, Linda
Darling-Hammond documents and analyzes the continuing disparities in
educational opportunities across the color line, showing how recent
testing and “accountability” policies are working to widen
rather than narrow those disparities. Likewise, the article by Arline
Geronimus and J. Philip Thompson highlight the continued racial
inequities in health outcomes and how these, too, are profoundly shaped
by public policies long insensitive to the particularities of Black
communities.
Another of the central legacies of Reagan-era Republican electoral
tactics was the use of racial code words (e.g., the “welfare
queen” anecdote from the 1980 campaign) that evoked anti-Black
sentiment as a means of forging a winning national electoral coalition.
Building on the lessons of both segregationist former governor of
Alabama, George Wallace, as well as Richard Nixon's
“Southern Strategy,” these racial tactics were perfected in
the Reagan era and utilized by both Bushes' presidential campaigns
notably infamously in the elder Bush's Willie Horton campaign ads
in 1988. The article by Luis R. Fraga and David L. Leal highlights how
racial tactics are used by both political parties particularly with
reference to Latinos in this era's more complicated racial
terrain. Katherine Tate provides us with a provocative article that
argues that the conservative legacy of the last quarter century has had
more of a conservative influence on some sectors of African American
opinion than some authors (such as one of us) have argued. Be that as
it may, just as in the Reagan era, Black dismay with the sitting
conservative president is deep, bitter, and ferocious. Black approval
of George W. Bush in the spring of this year was measured by some
reputable pollsters at 8%. And, further elucidating these themes in
this issue of DBR, Hanes Walton reviews recent books on race
in public opinion and American political behavior.
Another key legacy of the Reagan era involved the crafting of social
policy not premised on ideas about the basic structures of opportunity
and constraints facing individuals and communities, but rather on ideas
about the choices and cultural affinities of individuals. During the
Reagan era this thrust was most prominently exemplified by Charles
Murray's hotly contested anti-welfare tract, Losing
Ground (1984). In this issue of
DBR we launch the first of an occasional series of special
“State of the Discourse Symposia” that focuses very much on
this paradigm for social analysis. We have two very distinguished
scholars, historian Alice O'Connor and political scientist Rogers
Smith, reviewing the impact of two of the leading conservative
interventions in the scholarship of race. This is particularly fitting
because the work of both Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom and of Dinesh
D'Souza is representative of the conservative theorizing on race
that provides the intellectual and even more so, the rhetorical,
foundation for the racial policies of conservative politicians since
the infamous Fairmount Conference at which what became the Reagan
governing team announced their radical shift in policies of race.
The spread and influence of “cultural” analyses of race
and inequality now cut across many domains of inquiry. Thus, Prudence
Carter reviews how race and culture shape contemporary debates about
educational outcomes for African Americans and Latinos. Alford Young
examines three recent ethnographies that move beyond simple portraits
of cultural pathology when analyzing the fabric of life in low-income
Black communities. And Mia Tuan's “State of the
Discourse” essay examines how processes of assimilation may break
down distinct ethnic group cultures and identities in many instances
and yet, in some cases, steadily mark the members of particular groups
as not quite full citizens.
As usual, we have cutting-edge articles advancing racial theory.
Distinguished historian and ethnic-studies scholar Ramón
Gutiérrez provides a long overdue treatment of what the powerful
Chicano and Black Power movements did both to advance internal
colonialism theory and teach us about the contours of race in the
United States. Michael Hanchard and Erin Chung continue our practice of
international, broadly comparative, and critical analyses of how social
scientists engage in theorizing and in empirical research on matters of
race.
