Abstract
The problem of racial inequality in America, and the way the parties have responded to that problem and dealt with it, has for long posed an important test for our party system. In this chapter we describe and analyze how well the parties have done. We could have focused on other minorities (Native Americans, Hispanics, and so on). Or we could have addressed any number of policy areas in the same way: health care, the environment, education, taxation, welfare, or foreign affairs. We chose the race question because of its historical significance and contemporary salience. It is a critical issue dividing us, representing a major ideological cleavage in our politics. Our objective is to discuss the state of racial inequality, how well the parties have faced the issue, and the possible strategies that might be utilized to achieve greater progress.
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Notes
Thomas West, Vindicating the Founders, (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), 5.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835. Quoted in Donald Kinder and Lynn Sanders, Divided by Color (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 11.
W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Vintage, 1903), 1.
Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1944), 1.
V. O. Key, Jr., Political Parties and Pressure Groups 3rd ed. (New York: Crowell, 1954), 132.
Cornel West, Race Matters (New York: Random House, 1994), 155–56.
We have relied a great deal on the historical scholarship of John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1974), for many facts and insights presented in this summary.
Edward G. Carmines and James A. Stimson, Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989). Their historical account is relied on greatly here, 27–58.
Ibid.
Michael C. Dawson, “Black Power in 1996 and the Demonization of African Americans,” PS 29 (September 1996): 456–61.
Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro, Black Wealth/White Wealth (New York: Routledge, 1997), 12–13.
Sheldon Danziger and Peter Gottschalk, America Unequal (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 90.
Ibid., 86.
For an elaboration of this theory, see Stephen Burman, The Black Progress Question (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1995), 213–16. See also Danziger and Gottschalk, America Unequal, chap. 5, “Why Poverty Remains High.” They disagree with those who blame the black family structure as the main reason, and also develop a theory on the economic changes that have accompanied demographic shifts.
Angus Campbell, Gerald Gurin, Warren E. Miller, The Voter Decides (Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson, 1954), 10, 191–92, 197.
Rosenstone and Hansen present data suggesting that by 1968/72 the turnout was 67 percent (increase of 35 percent over the fifties.) They also report a decline of about 13 percent 1972 to 1988, to 54 percent. However, NES data on the reported vote do not agree with this level of decrease, suggesting a 66 percent turnout in 1964–1968, 65 percent 1972–1976, 64 percent 1980–1988, and 67 percent again in 1992. These authors, however, question the calculation of the turnout in a lengthy footnote. See Steven J. Rosenstone and John Hansen, Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America, (New York: Macmillan, 1993), 58, fn, 220–23.
Robert Putnam, The Comparative Study of Political Elites (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1976), 171.
Donald Matthews and James Prothro, Negroes and the New Southern Politics (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1966), 177.
James H. Svara, A Survey of America’s City Councils (Washington, DC: National League of Cities, 1991).
Katherine Tate, From Protest to Politics (Harvard: Russell Sage Foundation, 1994), 179.
Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), 183.
Arthur H. Miller and Bruce E. Gronbeck, eds., Presidential Campaigns and American Self Images (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994), 202–5.
Donald Kinder and Lynn M. Sanders, Divided By Color (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 107.
Charles Tilly, Durable Inequality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 245–46.
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Eldersveld, S.J., Walton, H. (2000). The Party System and the Race Problem. In: Political Parties in American Society. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-11290-3_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-11290-3_16
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