Building the Blame

2018 ◽  
pp. 73-97
Author(s):  
Robin Marie Averbeck
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Culture Of Poverty ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
Racial Liberalism ◽  
Black Poor ◽  
Moynihan Report

Chapter 4 explores the fate of the idea of a culture of poverty, tracing how it went from an idea articulated mostly by liberals for ostensibly liberal reasons to being a popular idea on the neoconservative right. It particularly explores how Daniel Patrick Moynihan contributed to this conservative version of the culture of poverty by his refusal to recognize the problems with the Moynihan Report and his engagement with neoconservative outlets and authors. Critiques of the culture of poverty articulated by leftists and civil rights activists are also explored, contrasting their emphases to that of Moynihan and other liberals and neoconservatives. The work of Edward Banfield is presented as the culmination of an idea which, while it originally tried to justify helping the black poor, ultimately ended up assisting a reactionary turn against them. The chapter argues, however, that this potential was built into the culture of poverty idea as articulated by liberalism, embedded as it was in racial capitalism. As it concludes, racial liberalism is liberal racism.

A Culture of Poverty

2018 ◽  
pp. 52-72
Author(s):  
Robin Marie Averbeck
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Family ◽  
Culture Of Poverty ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Black Poverty ◽  
Moynihan Report

Chapter 3 traces the history of the idea of a culture of poverty while unpacking its racist content. Of particular importance is Daniel Patrick Moynihan and his report on the black family, known as the Moynihan Report. Chapter 3 explores how Moynihan distilled various tropes and memes in articulating a theory of black poverty that placed the primary blame on the supposed pathologies of the black family and community. Chapter 3 also explains the background of that idea and how the various versions of it differed, looking at the writing and work of Oscar Lewis, Michael Harrington, and Kenneth Clark among others. Also emphasized is how the culture of poverty idea allowed liberals to sidestep the issue of the role of capitalism and the market in black poverty, making it very effective for maintaining racial capitalism even during the height of the challenge from below the civil rights movement presented.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
pp. 98-104
Author(s):  
Robin Marie Averbeck
Keyword(s):  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Great Society ◽  
Culture Of Poverty ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
The Social ◽  
Transformative Politics ◽  
Black Poor

The conclusion connects the historical significance of Great Society liberalism to contemporary politics. In particular, it highlights how the abandonment of the black poor and the rise of mass incarceration were assisted by the idea of a culture of poverty, which ended up justifying harsher and more punitive measures to deal with the social fallout of the intergenerational poverty racial capitalism produced. It concludes with an argument that in order for the left to work towards a truly transformative politics, it must abandon the idea that certain liberal tenets can be used to achieve radical ends.

Racial Liberalism, the Moynihan Report & the Dædalus Project on “The Negro American”

Daedalus ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 140 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Geary
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
The United States ◽  
Johnson Administration ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
Racial Liberalism ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Moynihan Report

In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an official in the Johnson administration, published The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, better known as the Moynihan Report. He was influenced by his participation in two conferences organized by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in the mid-1960s, as well as two issues of its journal Dceda-lus, on the topic of “The Negro American.” Arguing that the “damaged” family structure of African Americans would impede efforts to achieve full racial equality in the United States, the Moynihan Report launched an explosive debate that helped fracture a fragile liberal consensus on civil rights. Geary examines the report alongside the Dcedalus project, establishing its roots in the racial liberalism of the mid-1960s and connecting it to efforts by liberals to address the socioeconomic dimensions of racial inequality. He considers the close relationship between scholarship and public policy that existed at the time and reflects on the ways liberal ideas about race have changed in the decades since.

The Department Store Movement in the Postwar Era

2019 ◽  
pp. 116-147
Author(s):  
Traci Parker
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Department Store ◽  
Community Leaders ◽  
Department Stores ◽  
Preliminary Testing ◽  
White Community ◽  
Racial Liberalism ◽  
The Relationship

Chapter 4 considers the department store movement and the birth of a modern middle-class consciousness in the 1940s and 1950s. Department stores remained key battlegrounds and took on greater significance as black purchasing power had reached an unprecedented level of $8-9 million by 1947 and the relationship between consumption and citizenship had changed. For the most part, the department store movement remained a fight for jobs in the immediate postwar era, taking on consumer issues as it saw fit. This phase of the movement marked a period of preliminary testing that would eventually lead to militant protests in the 1950s and 1960s. Under the leadership of the National Urban League (NUL) and American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the movement relied on intercultural education and moral exhortations. Emblematic of racial liberalism and the early civil rights movement, the NUL and AFSC believed that if respectable blacks and white community leaders simply asked store officials to hire African Americans in sales and clerical, they would, and after that “their attitude about integrated workplaces and African Americans generally would change,” helping them “topple barriers in other industries and locations.”

The Obama Coalition

2020 ◽  
pp. 143-164
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Corrigan
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Barack Obama ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Change Over Time ◽  
Racial Liberalism ◽  
Black President ◽  
Over Time

While the tensions between white hope and black despair were a dynamic that characterized politics in the Long Sixties, their structure is recursive. That is, the (positive and negative racial) feelings that undergird racial liberalism did not stop emerging and receding after law and order campaigns destroyed civil rights and Black Power organizing in the mid-70s. Nowhere is this clearer than in the entrance and disappearance of the so-called “Obama coalition” in 2008 to elect Barack Obama as the first biracial/black president in U.S. history. In considering how hope continues to be inextricably linked to rage, contempt, and despair, this brief conclusion considers hope as an ironic discourse of liberalism, particularly as it is racialized. The birth of Afro- pessimism as a coterminous discourse with what we now call the “post-racial” Obama coalition is important because it demonstrates how black feelings in the Long Sixties continue to shape national political discourse, demonstrating how affective politics are iterative as well as how they change over time.

Black Workers Matter

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael K. Honey
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Community ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Black Workers ◽  
Black Freedom Struggle ◽  
Freedom Struggle ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
Working People ◽  
Difficult Terrain

What happened to Martin Luther King’s dream of economic equality in Memphis? For most of the city’s history, 80 percent or more of the black community has consisted of black workers. Slavery set the terms of cheap labor as the measure of profitability in Memphis, and white economic elites have pursued that measure of profitability ever since, but not without resistance from black working people. Drawing on the last thirty years of research on Memphis labor and race relations, this essay surveys the struggles of black workers and the black community as a whole for economic advancement. After documenting decisive, powerful advances for African Americans in Memphis during the “long civil rights movement” from 1934 to 1968, the essay surveys the fate of the black working class and poses questions about the legacy of the freedom struggle in the fifty years since 1968, during which time more educated and politically involved people have advanced, while the fate of undereducated, underpaid, or unemployed working people has worsened. The legacy of the black freedom struggle in Memphis continues in the increasingly difficult terrain of America’s racial capitalism in the twenty-first-century global economy.

Integration or Separation? Malcolm X’s College Debates, Free Speech, and the Challenge to Racial Liberalism on Campus

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 1033-1059
Author(s):  
Garrett Felber
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Cumulative Effect ◽  
Youth Participation ◽  
Malcolm X ◽  
Nation Of Islam ◽  
Student Union ◽  
Racial Liberalism

Abstract Malcolm X participated in over thirty speaking engagements at prominent colleges and universities between 1960 and 1963. His popularity on campuses coincided with a new epoch of civil rights struggle as students became involved in Freedom Rides and sit-in campaigns to desegregate lunch counters and interstate travel. Most invitations were debates on the topic “Integration or Separation?” which pitted Malcolm against an integrationist opponent. The insertion of racial separatism into a discourse that took integration as an unquestioned aim of the movement pushed students to question and defend their own understandings of racial liberalism. Nearly a dozen invitations were extended by NAACP student chapters that had been revitalized amid the new flurry of student involvement. Years before the founding of the first Black Student Union (BSU) at San Francisco State, these chapters were far more ideologically diverse and active than their forbearers, and often invited Malcolm X to speak out of a commitment to students’ rights to free speech and academic freedom. When administrations blocked and cancelled his visits, students became politicized around issues of academic liberties, thereby situating the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X at the nexus of early debates within the student free speech movement. These became part of the early challenge to university paternalism. While these debates and lectures have often been discussed individually, this essay looks at their cumulative effect by situating them during the emergence of student radicalism on campus and the growth of youth participation in the civil rights movement.

Politics in Other Ways

2019 ◽  
Vol 88 (2) ◽  
pp. 262-287
Author(s):  
Maki Smith
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Grassroots Politics ◽  
Racial Liberalism ◽  
Racial Harmony ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The City

This article explores the ways that Seattle’s Asian American—and in particular Japanese American—community negotiated the shifting terrain of racial politics in the late 1960s and early 1970s. While Seattle’s city leaders—and indeed many in the civil rights establishment—heralded the city for its racial liberalism, a young cadre of activists organized across racial and ethnic boundaries and challenged established leadership to articulate a robust, anti-racist, working-class multiracial politics. Significantly, the rise of Black and Asian anti-racist solidarities exploded the city’s narrative of exceptional racial harmony in an age of social crisis. Activists adopted a capacious definition of community that could acknowledge specific identities while simultaneously coalescing around a shared sense of injury. They also practiced a form of grassroots politics that was flexible and improvisational, that was enacted both within and outside established organizations and channels, and that ultimately blurred the distinction between moderation and radicalism.

New Deal Liberalism and Racial Liberalism in the Mass Public, 1937–1968

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Schickler
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
Economic Liberalism ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
White Voters ◽  
Racial Liberalism ◽  
Party Elites ◽  
The New Deal

Few transformations have been as important in American politics as the incorporation of African Americans into the Democratic Party over the course of the 1930s–60s and the Republican Party's growing association with more conservative positions on race-related policies. This paper traces the relationship between New Deal economic liberalism and racial liberalism in the mass public. A key finding is that by about 1940, economically-liberal northern white Democratic voters were substantially more pro-civil rights than were economically-conservative northern Republican voters. While partisanship and civil rights views were unrelated among southern whites, economic conservatives were more racially conservative than their economically liberal counterparts, even in the south. These findings suggest that there was a connection between attitudes towards the economic programs of the New Deal and racial liberalism early on, well before national party elites took distinct positions on civil rights. Along with grassroots pressure from African American voters who increasingly voted Democratic in the 1930s–40s, this change among white voters likely contributed to northern Democratic politicians' gradual embrace of civil rights liberalism and Republican politicians' interest in forging a coalition with conservative white southerners. In attempting to explain these linkages, I argue that the ideological meaning of New Deal liberalism sharpened in the late 1930s due to changes in the groups identified with Roosevelt's program and due to the controversies embroiling New Dealers in 1937–38.

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