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African Americans should only vote democrats

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African Americans should only vote democrats

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Although opinion polls currently put President Donald Trump’s approval among black voters at between 20 and 30%, most experts doubt that anything like that proportion of the black vote will go to Trump on Election Day. Yes, strange things happen in politics — remember the “blue wall”? — but the “black wall” of overwhelming support of black voters for Democratic candidates seems impermeable.

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The public representation of Black Republicans has certainly shifted under Mr. Trump’s leadership of the party. The social media personalities Diamond and Silk replaced Michael Steele, the Catholic former chair of the Republican National Committee. Former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke was more relevant than General Colin Powell. Candace Owens supplanted Condoleezza Rice. Internet celebrities have taken the place of the legislators, military leaders and judges who used to stand as the “face” of Black Republicans.

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As the entire nation grapples with issues relating to race and racial inequality, all kinds of organizations-from churches to businesses to neighborhood associations-are trying to demonstrate their commitment to racial diversity in a way that does not alienate white stakeholders. The Republican Party is no exception, and, in fact, it has long struggled to project an openness to diversity. But presenting a diverse coalition of support has particular resonance in the wake of the Trump administration.

The public representation of Black Republicans has certainly shifted under Mr. Trump's leadership of the party. The social media personalities Diamond and Silk replaced Mi chael Steele, the Catholic former chair of the Republican National Committee. Former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke was more relevant than General Colin Powell. Candace Owens supplanted Condoleezza Rice. Internet celebrities have taken the place of the legislators, military leaders and judges who used to stand as the "face" of Black Republicans.

Internet celebrities have taken the place of the legislators, military leaders and judges who used to stand as the "face" of Black Republicans.

This shift reflects many of the themes I found in my research for a book about the experience of being Black in the Republican Party. Through interviews with Black Republican activists, it became clear to me that most people understand these activists based on their relationships to other Black people. Those sympathetic to Black Republicans like how they reject the "group think" or "identity politics" that motivate other Black voters. But detractors call Black Republicans "sellouts" who have abandoned any commitment to other Blacks.

Neither proposition accurately captures Black Republicans' relationship to blackness. More important, this framework distracts from the way that relations with white Republicans fundamentally shape the political experience of Black Republicans. As we think about how organizations are incorporating diverse populations, the experience of Black Republicans can be instructive.

The Black Republicans in my study often complained that concerns about their racial identity resulted in a skeptical embrace from their white Republican counterparts. They reported that white Republicans were eager to have Black representation in the G.O.P., but this eagerness came with a concern that Black racial identity would take precedence over partisanship. As a consequence, they felt they had to constantly prove their conservative bona fides, especially with respect to policies perceived as especially benefiting Black people.

Invoking racism or discrimination as an explanation for racial inequality, Black Republicans told me, was verboten because that was inconsistent with party rhetoric.

Accordingly, the way that Black Republicans talked about race was critical in establishing their legitimacy with other Republicans. Invoking racism or discrimination as an explanation for racial inequality, they told me, was verboten because that was inconsistent with party rhetoric. Across the nation, I heard that white skepticism within the G.O.P. not only shaped how Black Republicans got to talk about their own racial identity but also structured how they framed conservative policies in relation to Black people.

That is, framing conservative policy as good because it benefited Black people was likely to alienate party leaders who disdained "identity politics." For example, a race-blind framing of conservative tax policy would argue that lower taxes are good because they stimulate the economy or because the government has no right to take citizens' money. In contrast, a race-conscious framing would argue that low taxes fuel the revitalization of Black businesses and neighborhoods. Among the Black Republicans who spoke with me, those who invoked the race-blind approach reported finding greater acceptance within the Republican Party.

Black Republicans also told me that their opportunities for advancement in the G.O.P. depended on sticking to the party's dominant rhetoric on race. When the Republican Party embraces white grievance, articulates anti-Black policies and raises anti-Black voices, Black Republicans are less able to talk about Republican policies in ways that will uplift Black people. The Black Republicans who articulate ideas consistent with white grievance, or who work to undermine claims of racism, are given broad platforms within the party, even when those ideas are not particularly resonant with Black audiences. This race-blind messaging is not necessarily representative of what all Black Republicans think, but it is what the primarily white leadership of Republican organizations wants to hear.

Black Republicans who invoke a "Black power through conservative principles" approach or acknowledge the impact of racial discrimination are marginalized.

My research made me realize that the G.O.P. gets the diversity it deserves. When there is a shared understanding of how race should be folded into the political discourse and framing of Republican policy, Black Republicans and their white counterparts enjoy a mutually beneficial relationship. The Republican Party gains a descriptive diversity that has Black faces delivering the party's message. Black Republicans and their organizations find themselves with access to resources-material and symbolic-that white Republicans are eager to make available.

But when Black Republicans endorse an explicitly "pro-Black" version of Republicanism, relations with white Republicans can be contentious and adversarial. Black Republicans who articulate a "race doesn't matter" brand of conservatism are given a platform and a national audience, and Black Republicans who invoke a "Black power through conservative principles" approach or acknowledge the impact of racial discrimination are marginalized.

With this in mind, the shift in the "face" of Black Republicans under Mr. Trump should not necessarily be understood as a shift in what Black Republicans care about. Instead, the G.O.P.'s organizational priorities and preferences, driven by white leadership within the party, set the standards for what is acceptable for Black Republicans to say. Accordingly, the current crop of high-profile Black Republicans reflects the priorities and preferences of current leadership in the party.

One way to think about Black Republicans is that they represent the challenges of being Black in white spaces. Their experiences stand out in the context of politics, but they are not unique. Indeed, the experiences of Black Republicans parallel stories of well-known Black people who have risen through predominantly white organizations. I have also heard from friends and family members who are embedded in organizations and institutions with primarily white leadership. Similar to the experience of Black Republicans I studied, they tell stories about engaging with organizations that proclaim to embrace diversity and inclusion but only want "diverse" voices that toe the party line.

As institutions respond to calls for racial equality, it is critical that we consider the organizations that Black people will be integrating into. The Republican Party provides an interesting case study of how the attitudes and preferences of organizational leaders shape the experience that these newly incorporated folks will have. In practice, the incorporation of "diverse" people into an organization is fragile and heavily conditioned on those people sharing the same orientation to thinking and talking about race and racism.
More from America:

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The G.O.P. prizes Black Republicans - as long as they don't alienate white members

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As the entire nation grapples with issues relating to race and racial inequality, all kinds of organizations-from churches to businesses to neighborhood associations-are trying to demonstrate their commitment to racial diversity in a way that does not alienate white stakeholders. The Republican Party is no exception, and, in fact, it has long struggled to project an openness to diversity.

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Barack H. Obama as President of the United States was a significant event in the social and political history of the United States. His election as the first non-white male President has been seen as a sign of the changing racial attitudes of white Americans. Nonetheless, the specter of race and racism haunts his presidency. As the first African American president, he has to show the black community that he has their social, political, and economic interests on his public policy agenda. On the other hand, he cannot appear to be to overtly pro-black without bruising white racial sensibilities. In order to walk this fine line, President Obama has taken a colorblind approach to public policies. He claims that his color-blind public policies will help to uplift all citizens regardless of race, creed, or national origin.

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1 W. E. B. Dubois, "The Souls of Black Folk," University of Virginia Library, "Of Mr. Booker T. Washi (...)

1In 1903, W. E. B. Dubois published his seminal work, The Souls of Black Folk, which contained his scathing critique of Booker T. Washington entitled "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others." 1 In this critique, Dubois took issue with what he took to be the program of racial reconciliation that Washington proposed. Dubois claimed that Washington's program for the betterment of race relations in the United States was having a detrimental effect on the educational progress and social standing of black people. He claimed that the effects of Washington's program had negative consequences, in that it asked that black people give up, at least for the present, three things:

2First, political power, Second, insistence on civil rights, Third, higher education of Negro youth, - and concentrate all their energies on industrial education, the accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South. This policy has been courageously and insistently advocated for over fifteen years, and has been triumphant for perhaps ten years. As a result of this tender of the palm-branch, what has been the return? In these years there have occurred:
- The disfranchisement of the Negro.
- The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro.
- The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the Negro. 2

4In the one hundred and twenty-five years between the publishing of Souls and the election of President Obama, there have been many changes in the manner in which race and racism impact on the lives of African Americans, so much so that there are persons who now claim that the United States is in a "post-racial" state. The claim is that race and racism are no longer significant factors in the success of any person who wants to succeed. The claim is not that there is no longer individual acts of racism, but that societal racism has diminished to the point where race no longer matters. In the United States, at least, character has finally overcome color. 5 The election of a non-white male as President of the United States attests to this important social fact. It is thought by some that the election of Obama shows how far the country has come in thinking about race relations. However, all of the economic indicators show that African Americans are still doing much worse, educationally, financially, and in terms of life expectancy, than whites, despite their extensive sojourn in the United States. President Obama realizes this important fact about black life in America. He has consistently proclaimed that his public policies will help the economic and social standing of blacks. Will his public policies really be effective in advancing the economic and social standing of black Americans?

5One hundred and twenty-five years after the publication of Souls, I want to use a similar Duboisian critique of President Obama's programs of social and economic progress that, by his account, are meant to advance the social and political position of all Americans. The claim here is that his universalist approach to policy-making and implementation will have a detrimental impact on the social and economic standing of African Americans. It is his use of color-blindness as a guiding principle to direct public policies that is called into question. Will this approach address the social ills that have continually plagued the African American community? I think not. I also think that a pragmatic understanding of race-talk can help us understand why colorblind policies will not work to address the social and economic problems facing the black community. It is argued, herein, that color or race conscious policies are needed to address the social and economic problems that besiege the black community. This article will utilize a pragmatic account of race to illustrate why colorblindness in public policies takes an ahistorical and decontextualized view of race and in the long term will hurt the social and economic standing of African Americans, indeed all Americans.

6 "Speech Before the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition by Booker T. Washington," Tea (...)

7 "Barack Obama Speech at DNC" - Barack Obama Speech at 2004 Democratic National Convention, Welcome (...)

8 [bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm], see for black unemployment rate, October 2011.

9 Newman, Trodd, Lawson & Sweeney 2011.

10 This raises some interesting questions about the concept of progress and race relations in the Unit (...)

6In a manner similar to that of Dubois, I want to examine the logic of President Obama's position on colorblindness in public policies for the advancement of African Americans. At the outset, I want to claim that there are some interesting similarities between the lives of Obama and Washington. Obama came to the attention of the nation in the same manner as Washington: Washington's fame and prominence came after his 1895 Atlanta Exposition Address, 6 and Obama's national fame came after his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. 7 These speeches thrust both men into the public limelight and within a few years Washington was seen as the leader of black America and Obama was President of the United States. Let me be clear here, I am not equating any of Obama's political positions with those of Washington. These men come onto the political scene at radically different political moments in the history of the United States. Nonetheless the economic, social, and political plight of many African Americans remains just as dire now as it was then. 8 Washington and Obama both had to deal with issues of the problematic condition of black Americans. Obama notes correctly that the economic situation in the United States has been bad for all Americans. While it is true that Americans across the racial divide have been hit hard by the economic turndown, the African-American Community has been one of the hardest hit. The problems facing the African-American community have their roots in the racist history of the United States, and in the recurrent failure of the United States to address these problems connected with this history. Indeed this may be the most important difference between Obama and Washington. Washington understood the failure of the United States to fully incorporate African Americans into the social, economic, and political life of the country. 9 Obama seems to think that the country has or is moving much closer too making the full inclusion of African Americans a social reality. This is the point at issue. While no one would claim that there has been no progress, there are questions as to whether the progress is only symbolic. 10

7While there was much excitement generated by his campaign, there is a suspicion that his policy-making after his election marks a setback for the full inclusion of African Americans into the social fabric of the United States. Obama, during his campaign and after, has consistently adhered to the view that making the lives of all Americans better will solve many of the problems of black Americans. For this reason, public policies should be colorblind. There is some truth to the claim that if all Americans do well, so will African Americans. But it seems also true that many of the problems-social, economic, and political - require "race conscious" policies. These are policies that are directed to the problems that plague the African-American community given the racist history and current instances of racism in the United States. I will cite some particular problems later in the paper.

8In the United States, racism has impacted on the manner in which social goods have been distributed. For decades there were race conscious policies that favored whites over blacks. For years, persons of color were the victims of unjust social goods distribution policies. Policies such as Affirmative Action and "busing" were meant to address the maldistribution of social goods in the economic and educational spheres of life and the ways in which these inequities affected the lives of many African Americans. A race or at least a color conscious policy was needed to ensure that blacks were not again victimized by the maldistribution of social goods. In this regard, race becomes a factor in our understanding of the (re) distribution of social goods to correct for past injustices. These are called race or color conscious principles. These color and/or race conscious policies came under and still are attacked for being unfair and unjust. It was claimed that social justice required principles that were color-blind, that is, it was and remains wrong to use race or color as a principle for the distribution of social goods. Social justice requires race neutral policies for the distribution of social goods.

10There is of course the strong version of color-blindness which entails that in our lives there should be no mentioning or consideration of race at all. Color-blindness in the context of this paper does not mean that we try to ignore race altogether. You can be proud of your race, claim your racial identity, you just cannot use race for public policy decisions. Color-blindness then becomes coupled with the distribution principle that goods be distributed according to merit. If the merit principle is applicable at this moment in American history, accordingly, we should embrace color-blind liberalism.

11The move to what can be called "color-blind liberalism" should not be surprising to any one with knowledge of the social and political history of the United States. Given the history of racism it is not surprising that persons of all racial stripes would welcome colorblind principles. Indeed it has been the appeal of color-blindness that has prompted the enacting of laws to overturn many of the de jure segregation laws that were a part of this country's racist history.

12That President Obama would draw on the color-blind paradigm also should not be surprising either. He is, as he often states, the president of America, not black America. Let us put away for the moment the cynicism that we might hold that for him to win the Presidency, he had to take a color-blind position. Rev. Wright reminded us that in the end Obama is a politician. 12 Let us suppose for the sake of argument that Obama is deeply committed to a strong form of color-blind liberalism. That is, he thinks that at this moment in United States history we do not need to focus on race as a basis for public policy nor whom we elect for President. We need to and can look beyond race. We must be color-blind for the Country to move forward, together.

13My aim in this paper will not be to discern what his stance on color-blindness is, but to show the importance of his stance as the focal point of current and future public policy. I will not herein be concerned with the division between the political right and left over what it means for a society to be color-blind, but will focus on Obama's projection of "color-blindness" as the way to shape race relations and public policy. I contend that totally color-blind public policies are the wrong approach to solving the problem of inclusion of black Americans into the social and political fabric of the United States.

14Obama's campaign and election rhetoric have consistently drawn on the color-blind principle. He gives no overt arguments against color-conscious policies; however, he just acts as if it is an obvious conclusion that public policy in the United States should be color-blind. In order to appreciate Obama's position on colorblindness we must put his position in both a historical and sociological context. Here, I want to draw on his speech of March 18th, 2008. This speech was given to distance himself from his former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright and to set the racial/race agenda for his campaign and policy considerations as President. What is at issue here is Obama's appeal to color-blindness as a focal point for his election. In this speech, among other things, Obama wants to express how the country has moved beyond race in very significant and important ways. While admitting that the country had a bad start regarding racial justice, the impetus for social justice was always present in the country's moral space.

16At this point, Obama begins some not so subtle shifts in his focus on what race means in the United States. The first move is from the African American experience in the United States to the emigrant experience. The story he tells of his mother's family is rooted in the emigrant story. Obama's life story is a story framed within the legacy of the emigrant story. Obama tells his now well-known life story, which I will not repeat. Obama notes, "It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out of many, we are truly one."

17It is the story of the United States as the land of opportunity and the freedoms that it affords to all and our understanding of these values that unite Americans regardless of race, color, or creed. It is Obama's contention that it is these values that make us one great country. Still he understands that some people want to divide the country at a time people are looking for unity.

18It was clear that people were willing and could see beyond race. While some people were willing to be color-blind, others were not. The ugly specter of race began to intrude on his campaign. His own racial identity became a problem.

19Still many people in the United States were able to see beyond race until his former pastor interjected race in a nasty way into the campaign. Wright called into question America's commitment to social justice for African Americans. Obama thinks that Wright took the discussion of race in a particularly divisive turn. Obama uses this moment to discuss the manner in which race and race conscious policies have impacted on both blacks and whites at opposite ends of the racial spectrum.

20Obama tells a story of the history of racism in the United States. He notes that Blacks have been subject to all sorts of racist policies and restrictions. It is this history that drives Rev. Wright and many older black Americans. He then draws the following conclusion regarding Rev. Wright:

21In essence, persons like Rev. Wright are still locked in a vision of the United States that reflects a terrible history, but in fact it is history. Wright and like-minded blacks have not moved beyond their memories of a race conscious United States. They are out of touch with the current social reality of the United States regarding race. They have failed to embrace the truly color-blind nature of the United States at this moment in history. On the other end of the spectrum, we find whites that are resentful about what they perceive to be the loss of their economic and social standing because of race conscious policies that seem to favor blacks. Obama notes that we must also understand that there is white resentment.

22He continues:

"Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism" 21.

23It is the appeal to race that exacerbates these feelings of resentment. Accordingly, we must move beyond race. Holding on to bad memories and the media keeps the racial animosity potboiling. 22 Public Policies that seem to favor one race over the other are another part of the problem. Obama thinks that we must acknowledge that both blacks and whites have bad feelings regarding race-based policies in the United States. What should blacks do?

24Obama notes that Rev. Wright often preached what to many would seem like a conservative social position: "Ironically, this quintessentially American - and yes, conservative - notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change." Thus, it is not by means of race-based policies that the problems of blacks in America can be solved; policies must be color-blind coupled with individual responsibility. He then insists that blacks must believe that society has changed and can continue to change to improve the social and economic standing of blacks. In this regard, appeals to race-based public policies would be counter-productive. What must whites do?

25Whites must understand black resentment! Whites must understand that there has been a history of racism that has impacted negatively on the economic and social standing of blacks. Blacks must understand White resentment. But in the end we must look beyond race.

26According to Obama, we must move beyond race. To do less will make the possibility of social progress nearly impossible. We should remember the history, but also remember that it is history. It is not the America in which we now find ourselves. Race has played a divisive role in the relationships between all persons in the United States. However, we are now at a different point in American history, a moment when character matters more than race. Accordingly, we must remember this if we are to perfect this union.

28While, I must admit that these are noble goals and goals that we should work to achieve; we must admit that there is a big difference between citizens being color-blind in their choice of a presidential candidate and the president advocating color-blindness as the method of distribution of social goods. Race and racism still plays an important role in the lives of black Americans, indeed all Americans. We cannot and should not forget this important social fact.

29According to Obama, race is no longer the most important factor preventing a person from being successful in the United States. What matters most is hard work, personal responsibility, and a belief and hope in America's ability to provide the best possible life for all of its citizens, regardless of race, gender, or ethnic background. What impression does this way of viewing the current racial climate in the United States create about race relations in the United States and those programs that might be direct to the problems of African Americans? Obama makes the not-so-subtle shift from color-blindness in voting to color-blindness in public policy. In doing so, he in the past three years through his policies and statements has
(1) Given the false impression that societal racism has lessened to a much greater degree than it has.
(2) Made it more difficult to propose social programs that are color conscious.
(3) Given the impression that color-blindness is absolute for all public policy.
(4) Taken away race-talk as a factor in public policy.

30These claims, if true, will have serious implications for the future economic and social standing of African Americans. Obama seems to be asking Blacks to give up insistence on race based public policies and view their future economic and social progress on programs solely meant to benefit all Americans. What is being asserted is that while it may be true that race and racism played an important part in the history of race relations, race and race conscious policies cannot be used to correct for the current conditions in which blacks find themselves. Hard work and personal responsibility are more important now. It is character that counts more than race. The questions are: Have we reached a stage in American history where character and qualifications trump the color of one's skin? Has racism diminished enough to not require race-based public policies? Obama appears to think that both of these questions can be answered in the affirmative.

31Some will object and claim that Obama had to say and act like he does to get elected and reelected. In fact, Obama's plan is like William J. Wilson's hidden agenda in his book The Truly Disadvantaged. 27 Wilson argues that we must hide programs for Blacks in program policies that are class based. We know if we try to use race based programs whites will not support them. In support of Obama, some will claim that he is just being pragmatic in that he could acknowledge that race is a problem, but it is not the major problem that needs his concern at the present moment. He also understands that to bring a discussion of race into the political mix will bog the country down. Here is the intellectual rub: Obama calls for Blacks to believe in a positive future in the United States and not make appeals to race or color conscious public policies. He is asking African Americans to put their faith in future Presidents to have their (Blacks) best interests as an important part of their public policy agenda. Should black Americans take this bet? I think not!

32Obama understands the pressure coming from both blacks and whites regarding race and his presidency. Blacks want him to show that he understands the plight of blacks and will do something positive as President to address their concerns. He is, indeed, black. Whites, on the other hand, want him to show no favoritism towards blacks. He is, indeed, black. Obama therefore must walk the line between supporting black interest and not offending white racial sensitivities. This may be why he couches his public policies as benefitting all Americans regardless of race. Still he has to show blacks that his programs have a positive impact on the black community, while these programs are geared to the larger American community.

28 The President Discusses the Economic Crisis | Videos | BET, Celebrities, Music, News, Fashion, Ente (...)

29 Cobb 2010.

30 "The President's Agenda and the African American Community," Scribd, section goes here, accessed De (...)

33President Obama also understands that some of his critics have strongly suggested that he has forsaken the black community. To address these charges, he appeared on BET TV to address black America and explain why his programs and policies were the best for all Americans including the majority of black Americans. In this interview, the President was asked about targeting programs to and for the African-American community. The President said that targeting one specific group is "not how America works." He continues that his policies are meant to help all Americans who are suffering at this time. Admitting that blacks are being hurt disproportionately, he thinks the majority of African Americans will be helped with his policies: "What has always made this country great is the belief that everybody has got a chance." "Regardless of race, regardless of creed." 28 Public policies must be race and color-blind in order to help all Americans. In the end, Obama asks the African-American community to work hard, take responsibility for their lives and believe that all boats will rise with the improving economic tide. They must also believe that he is doing his part to make life better for all Americans. He is the President of all Americans; he is not just the president of black America. 29 A few weeks later, President Obama released a 44-pages report on the positive impact his policies were having on the black community. 30 There is some criticism that the report is very similar to the report on the poor given a few weeks earlier but this time with the emphasis on black Americans.

34Has racism diminished enough to not require any race-based policies? Obama's speeches and public pronouncements seem to adhere to the belief that it has. In the end we must ask: Does Obama's move to color-blindness help or hurt the future of race relations in the United States? This is where the intellectual rubber meets the road. As I noted Obama adeptly draws on the liberal conception of the individual as the locus of social respect. We must look to those attributes to which the individual is responsible for to assess his or her accomplishments. People must take responsibility for their condition. The government should be working to make the lives of all citizens better regardless of race. Public policies must be colorblind. By drawing on color-blindness Obama does two things: he affirms the individual responsibility tradition that many whites and most blacks feel and he distances himself from issues of social justice that arise out of the civil rights era. This is not to deny the significant changes in the United States regarding race, it is, nonetheless, still unclear how deep these changes are in the hearts and minds of many white United States citizens. (Remember Obama only ask whites to understand that some Blacks are still resentful because of the history of racism.) Even if there is a deep and profound change in the attitudes of whites toward blacks, race conscious policies are needed to address some/many of the social problems confronting black Americans. (Blacks are asked to have faith and believe that the country will take their problems seriously.) These problems were caused by the use of race conscious policies and race conscious policies are needed to address the problems. If this is true then race-talk has to be a part of the nation's public policy discussion and race-conscious policies are needed to correct for past and current social injustices.

32 See, for example, Dubois, Souls: "BETWEEN me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: (...)

36Taylor starts with the Deweyan insight that inquiry starts with a problem. The problem for the United States is how to complete the task of incorporating members of that population that have a history of chattel slavery into the full social and political fabric of the United States. This problem has historically been called the "Negro Problem." 32 The problem has been in the United States: "What to do with the Negro?" The "Negro" problem for many persons in the United States was resolved with the passage of the Civil Rights Acts. Any problems blacks encounter currently cannot be attributed to societal racism, but to their own personal failings. Again race-talk or color conscious policies are unneeded to resolve the problems of African Americans. Can Dewey help us here?

39The second familiar idea behind the narrow pragmatic thesis, call it contextualism, is that inquiry, or the pursuit of knowledge, is value-laden and situational. 35 According to Taylor, "Dewey had in mind the now common point that we come to any inquiry, experiment, or question with aims, interests, desires, presumptions, and habits, and that these have some bearing on the answer that we get from the world or from our interlocutor." 36 We must examine and understand who is asking the question and why: "Thinking, we are too accustomed to saying, is relative; knowledge is pursued and produced somewhere, some when, and by someone, and these variable factors are not inconsequential." 37 In this regard, who and why someone is asking the question is as important as the question. Persons of color in the United States who think that race and racism still impact on their lives are asking different questions about the use of race than the politician who is trying to present his or herself as a person of the people. Attending to the context of inquiry helps us decide which theoretical vocabulary is most appropriate to the situation, and to choose between theoretical vocabularies is also to choose between sets of entities and forces. 38 The question of what kinds of policies are needed to improve the lot of African Americans will have differing answers depending on who is asking. There is the belief that there is some "real" perspective from which to answer the question. Dewey resisted this reductionist impulse. He insisted that there are different levels, different reals, valid for different purposes, and he made this contextualist pluralism an integral part of his pragmatism. 39 It is often the case that there are certain ideological assumptions lurking beneath the epistemological surface of the answers proposed:

As individuals, we are more or less likely to see certain things in certain ways, sometimes because of the habits of cognition and perception into which we've been socialized, sometimes because of our deep and abiding interest in things being a certain way-a way, as it might be, that preserves our place in a power structure, or that undermines someone else's. Knowing this, we may wish to find some way of supplementing individual contributions to the process of inquiry, or of bringing individual interests and commitments to light (especially if, as it might be, these interests are opaque even to the agent in question). 40

42Put another way, a way that highlights the methodological aspect of the view, the Deweyan naturalist holds that nothing is in principle inexplicable or inaccessible to the methods of science, even if, as it might be, we lack the cognitive or perceptual endowment that's necessary for finding the right explanations. For this Deweyan methodological naturalist, the basic pattern of explanation and inquiry used for science can usefully be generalized to other realms of human activity, including, as Dewey put it, the "social and humane subjects."

44Science and reason can help us address the problems facing humans. This leads to the second element of Taylor's broad notion of pragmatism, experimentalism. He uses this label to indicate the view that, under the irremediable conditions of human finitude, all we can do is act, though more or less intelligently, and take our chances with the outcomes. Conduct is always dogged by the possibility of error, and though we try to minimize this possibility through the applications of intelligence, we can never shake it. That's what it is to be human. 47 We must be willing to experiment with plans and policies. Dewey often criticized the philosophic fascination with necessity and certainty, with transcultural and suprahistorical standards, a fascination that he traced to the desire for metaphysical guarantees (which he in turn traced to antiquated notions of knowledge and experience and to something akin to existential dread). 48 We must act boldly without a safety net. Pragmatic experimentalism rejects this quest for certainty and accepts instead the irreducible possibility of error, the radical contingency of things, and the need to act, to hypothesize and experiment, even in the absence of guarantees. 49

48At this point Taylor thinks that he can give what would count as a pragmatic account of race. First, as a species of practicalism it would approach race theory as a practical endeavor, as an undertaking that helps us deal with, to paraphrase Dewey, the problems of people. 54 This means taking a hard look at the social realities facing people. The theories and devices that are needed to navigate one's life must take into account this reality. Taylor correctly notes: "Telling me that there are no races, even while populations mostly coterminous with the ones we used to think of as races can still be systematically distinguished by appeal to all sorts of social measures, is probably not an approach that helps me get around in a world shaped by white supremacy." 55 His second point draws on the application of contextualism: pragmatic racialism would approach race-thinking, and accounts of race-thinking, as in conversation with their places and times, as the product of interaction among humans and between humans and their environments, and as situation-specific stories about social life. It would, in other words, concede that the concept of race depends on a particular cultural history for its very existence, and that specific applications or developments of the concept depend on particular local histories and conditions. 56

53I might decide that I don't want to be black, but, to use Dubois's famous "test" from Dusk of Dawn, if I am on a train in the state of Georgia in 1940, looking the way I do, I'd have to ride in the Jim Crow car, with all the black people. I'm not in a good position to interact with the world, to resist it even, unless I recognize what's likely to happen to me; and racial categories are an efficient and effective way of summing up my prospects under the conditions of white supremacy-as well as a point of entry into existing lines of antiracist organizing. So my pragmatism encourages me to add that I'd have to ride Jim Crow with all the other black people-not because we give racism the last word about who we are, but because effectively responding to racism requires realistically assessing how things are, and because centuries of antiracist work have made racial categories available as resources for mobilizing against racist assaults. 63

54I want to draw from Taylor the following: The social condition in which black Americans find themselves is a real condition of their experience of racism in the United States. Race has played and plays an important role in the living of their lives. They cannot live their lives as if race does not impact on the quality of their existence as citizens in the United States. If the leaders of the country are sincere about improving their status they must seriously take into account the manner in which race impacts on the economic and social existence of African Americans. A commitment to colorblindness in a society that is not colorblind seems to make little sense. If race still plays an important role in a group's social condition, race-talk must be a part of the conversation about public policy in the United States. Given the history and current status of racism, to do less would be to impede the future progress of African Americans and indeed all American citizens.

55It may be objected that I still have not shown that we need color-conscious policies, particularly race based policies. While I believe that color-conscious policies are both needed and permissible, my aim in this paper is much more modest. I only wanted to raise what I see as a problem with President Obama's seemingly unabashed support for color-blindness and not talking about race and racism as serious social problems in the distribution of social goods. As Taylor notes:

The vocabulary of race is a useful way of keeping track of a number of features of our conjoint social lives all at once-specifically, the features involved in the histories of systematically inequitable distributions, and in the continued patterning of social experiences and opportunity structures. It is a useful device because the concept has over the years come to connote registers of human experience-bodies, bloodlines, sex, and individual embedment-that might otherwise get obscured in social analyses, and because it can be used to abstract away from dimensions of experience-ethnicity, culture, and national origin-that receive adequate explanation in accounts that nevertheless fail to shed much light on specifically racial phenomena (involving the connections between bodies, bloodlines, and social location). 64

56If it is the case that African Americans are still denied housing, jobs, and other opportunities because of race, we do not live in a colorblind or post-racial America. This means, currently, race talk, race thinking, and race or color conscious public policies have work to do. It is clear that race and race consciousness still impacts on the lives of all Americans. The concern this raises for those of us who are concerned with issues of social justice is that President Obama, by claiming that his race neutral public policies will resolve the problems of the historic unjust race based distribution of social goods, takes race talk off the social agenda. By his actions and words, he is expressing the view that race-talk is unnecessary for social progress. This leads to the conclusion that whites will not support nor endorse race-based public policies that are meant to correct or ameliorate the social conditions of black folks. They (Whites) can rightly claim that the black President did not think the country needed race-based public policies.

57However, if race-conscious policies are needed to address some of the problems that face the black community, President Obama should forthrightly say that this is the case. He can/will do this only if he takes the problem of racism in the United States seriously. President Obama knows that some of the problems that black Americans face are the result of current racist practices. He is also correct that these issues can or should be addressed by more strident equal enforcement of laws and programs that support the betterment of all Americans. There are, however, some problems that will require race-conscious policies. If it is the goal of the government to ensure that blacks get these social goods, race conscious policies will be needed.

58Consider that at the present time we need black doctors to serve the larger black community, which is underserved. While programs like the National Health Service Corps attempts to get doctors to underserved areas, it has not provided enough physicians for these areas. Another problem with the NHS program is the lack of long-term commitment to these areas by the practicing physicians. In the case of underserved urban areas, doctors with a commitment to serve that population are needed. At this moment in our country's history, this means doctors with roots in those communities and who are committed to working with that population are needed and must be recruited. One way, perhaps, not the only way is to recruit persons from these areas to medical school. But such a policy would be race conscious. It may be possible that given time, enough black doctors would graduate from medical school to meet the need, or the government would make reimbursements sufficiently high enough to entice white doctors to work in these areas, or medical schools will train doctors with the necessary cultural sensitivity to want to work in those areas. There is also one more possibility: that the level of income will rise such that there are no longer any such communities. All of these are clearly long-term approaches. What should we do in the short-term?

60If I am right here, then there are a number of social goods that can only be distributed at this time to the black community using race conscious policies. Legal, educational, and health concerns are among the pressing social needs of the black community. Let me state that I realize that African Americans are not the only group with such pressing problems, nor am I picking on President Obama because he is black; I think the same issues face any President black or white.

61Let me conclude by noting that I think that the election of a non-white male as President of the United States is significant and historic in nature. However, we must constantly be diligent in assessing President Obama's symbolic behavior regarding color-blindness and public policy. His seeming reliance on color-blindness is problematic for the advancement of racial and social justice for African Americans and the country as a whole. Listening to the political pundits talk about the importance of the Obama campaign and election made me realize the urgency of keeping his policy considerations under constant scrutiny. People have been too quick to move to a post-racial mode when it is not justified. Truly, we are not at that space or place in United States history where race no longer matters.

62In this regard, we need to keep assessing Obama's public policies and, in particular, his guiding principles regarding the use of race. We need to do this because it forces us to constantly re-think the social and political status of those persons who have been consistently overlooked in the move to a more perfect union. There may come a time when colorblindness is the call of the hour, but we are not at that place or space now. To this end, a pragmatic understanding of race helps us to see why we still need both race-talk and race conscious policies. While the current economic downturn cannot be solely blamed on Obama, how the country deals with the issue of race and racism when the economy bounces back is to some degree in his control. We need to keep race-talk on the public policy agenda.

64As for our thinking about President Obama and colorblindness, it is important to note that his behavior regarding issues of race will set the tone for how many Americans understand the use of race in public policy, now and for years to come. Given his behavior and rhetoric over the past three years, race talk and color conscious policies will be forever off the political agenda. We must remember that the President's behavior is very symbolic. People are very symbol minded so we have to pay attention to symbols. Regardless of how significant President Obama's election was/is, we must call into question those behaviors that we think will do more harm than good. As Dubois said at the end of chapter 3 of Souls: "We have no right to sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest of disaster to our children, black and white." 68

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The election of Barack H. Obama as President of the United States was a significant event in the social and political history of the United States. His election as the first non-white male President has been seen as a sign of the changing racial attitudes of white Americans.

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Americans don't want to imagine that our racist history is actually an ongoing, racist reality. We like to look at racism as a thing that has gotten better (if not gone away completely) and that the way black Americans are treated in society is actually colorblind. So, if forced to pick between the idea that our country's structures and systems are biased toward white people or the idea that black communities are flawed, many pick the latter. Some doing so, of course, because they're racist.

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This article is from the archive of our partner .

Americans don't want to imagine that our racist history is actually an ongoing, racist reality. We like to look at racism as a thing that has gotten better (if not gone away completely) and that the way black Americans are treated in society is actually colorblind. So, if forced to pick between the idea that our country's structures and systems are biased toward white people or the idea that black communities are flawed, many pick the latter. Some doing so, of course, because they're racist.

The "culture of poverty" debate, in brief

1. Rep. Paul Ryan's remarks on inner city poverty

2. Ta-Nehisi Coates compares them to Obama's remarks

3. Jonathan Chait responds

4. Coates argues that Chait is misunderstanding history

5. Chait says that Coates appears to have changed his mind on the issue

6. Coates extends his argument

The past week has seen an extended and thoughtful debate between New York's Jonathan Chait and The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates over whether cultural forces within the black community are to blame for its enduring poverty. (Links to the various points of the debate are at right.) It began after Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan referred to a culture in the inner city where "generations of men" are "not even thinking about working" - remarks broadly seen as racially controversial. Coates' first post largely took aim at President Obama's similar remarks putting blame for poverty on black culture. Chait, responding, indicated that many other Democrats agreed with Obama's position (as distinct from Ryan's). Over three more posts, the argument grew more refined, as I'll outline.

Here is what is beyond dispute: In 2012, 35 percent of blacks lived in poverty, compared to 13 percent of whites. In 1970, those rates were 33.6 percent and 10 percent, respectively. Poverty in the black community is higher, and has been consistently.

There exist three options for that persistence, if we assume that culture might play a role.

1. There is something about black culture that prevents black Americans from escaping poverty. We'll call this the black culture option.

2. There is something about the culture of being poor that prevents the poor, regardless of race, from escaping poverty. We'll call this the culture-of-poverty option.

3. There are no internal cultural forces at play. We'll call this, partly for the sake of stirring the pot, the racism exists option.

This distinction isn't simply rhetorical. If there are cultural forces at play, one of those three things must be true. What's more, the political implications of each are different. If the black culture explanation is correct, it suggests that admonishments against the behavior of black Americans - the sort of thing that Coates has consistently objected to - are a proper response to entrenched poverty. If there's a culture of poverty, there needs to be a broader cultural realignment among all poor people, one that's not limited to the black community. If there are no internal cultural forces at play, then the "racism exists" explanation becomes more significant.

Put more simply, there are three options for why black people continue to experience higher levels of poverty: it's in part black people's fault, it's in part poor people's fault, and it's society's fault. The best answer, without question, is the latter.

The culture-of-poverty option

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the problem lies with the second option, that there is something about being poor that results in future generations being poor.

If this culture exists, what are its components? Ryan's remarks offer one view: it involves "men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with." Or, put more crassly, parents who have been out of work take refuge in the welfare state, living on food stamps and government services, and their children learn that this is a viable means of survival.

Last November, the National Bureau of Economic Research published a study suggesting that the children of people who receive government benefits are more likely themselves to receive such benefits. "[W]hen a parent is allowed [benefits], their adult child's participation over the next five years increases by 6 percentage points," its summary reads. "This effect grows over time, rising to 12 percentage points after ten years." (The conservative National Review embraced the argument, unsurprisingly.)

The study - conducted by looking at Norwegian, not American, benefits usage - found a relationship. But the noticeable uptick in the likelihood of children signing up for benefits programs was to the effect of being 1-in-16 or 1-in-8 more likely to do so. That's hardly a suggestion there is necessarily or even probably a transfer of the inclination to avoid work over generations.

There simply isn't a strong argument to be made that identifies attributes of enduring poverty from attributes common to the black community. Chait never presents one clearly.

In fact, in his most recent response to Chait, Coates argues that his opponent confuses the first and second options, conflating black culture with the culture of poverty. Here is what Chait wrote, in the closest approximation of a definition of that culture, and citing a paper linked in this essay by Jamelle Bouie.

[The paper] surveys some of the best research evidence of the detrimental cultural outgrowths of concentrated urban poverty on parental expectations, sexual behavior, the willingness of students to engage in beneficial activities, and other things. Culture is hard, though not impossible, to quantify, which does not mean it doesn't exist.

Coates' point, in part, is that Chait is pointing to things that are primarily specific to communities of color as being representative of the culture of poverty at large. But, further, that blurring that line tends to happen more when the "roots of poverty" being identified are more rampant in the black community.

This elision is not particular to Chait. In the 1960s, when 20 percent of black children were found to be born out of wedlock, progressives went to war over the "tangle of pathologies" choking black America. Today, 30 percent of white children are being born out of wedlock. The reaction to this shift has been considerably more muted. This makes sense if you believe that pathology is something reserved for black people.

The black culture option

Perhaps another assumption is in order. Let's assume instead that the black culture option is the correct explanation. That pathology actually is something reserved for black people.

But again: What are the components of that culture? Paul Ryan got in trouble because he implied that the problem was, in short, laziness. Coates frames it loosely in similar terms - "black people are less responsible, less moral, or less upstanding" - which Chait quickly steps away from, preferring the gauzy expression "cultural norms that inhibited economic success." The paper cited by Chait indicates a number of very specific behaviorisms and attitudes, some of which he notes, but it also downplays the idea of "culture" as an organizing force.

The clean overlap with longstanding anti-black stereotypes embodied in the Ryan argument and in Coates' formulation is the problem. It's what got Ryan in trouble. And it's why, from the outset, the black culture formulation should be considered suspect.

In his most recent post, Coates makes an exhaustive argument demonstrating the lengthy history of racist policies and programs that existed to help white Americans at the expense of black Americans. Chait presents the evolutionary repeal of programs explicitly targeting blacks as progress - the end of slavery, the end of Jim Crow. Coates presents it as refinement, as a softening and blurring of the approach society takes toward putting the interest of whites over blacks. It's the Lee Atwater-ization of institutional racism, manifested on the front page of The New York Times - on the same day that Coates published that essay - in the form of expanded voting restrictions that would keep more black (Democratic) voters from getting to the polls.

The racism exists option

Believing that black culture is primarily at fault means believing that black cultural attitudes are why the black unemployment rate has always been at least 50 percent higher than white unemployment. It likely means assuming that vague, hard-to-identify and complex cultural attitudes are responsible for most of the things on this bulleted list: flat wages, higher rates of arrest for possession of marijuana, higher rates of incarceration, a greater likelihood of being arrested at school, a lower likelihood of being accepted to top-tier colleges. When The Wire noted that black preschoolers are more likely to be expelled from their preschool programs, multiple people wrote in to blame the black culture of single parenthood. It was blamed on black culture.

Is black culture why this 2003 study found that job applicants "with white-sounding names are 50 percent more likely to get called for an initial interview than applicants with African-American-sounding names"? American history demonstrates countless examples of racist obstruction of black economic success. Ongoing examples show countless ways in which black Americans are still obstructed in the same way.

In his essay, linked to by Chait, Jamelle Bouie makes the point that certain aspects of behavior might influence certain aspects of the fight against poverty. But he then makes a critical ancillary point: that the addressing the systemic problems that obviously block black success - like the intentional neglect of poor urban communities - should happen regardless. "'Culture' might explain the reluctance of individual households and families to leave" those communities, he writes, "but it's of limited utility when it comes to the broad phenomenon. In that case, the starting point should be the fact that African Americans deal with a unique set of durable circumstances that have festered and worsened over the last forty years." The dominant white culture articulated by Coates and that neglected those communities is the more obvious problem.

Is this so impossible to imagine? America was born with sin and keeps sinning. No matter how fervent your belief in the perfection of the American ideal, you've certainly met enough Americans to know that the ideal may not always be met. Racism is the simplest answer and racism, of all theories, is the one with a robust evidentiary trail.

Finally, consider this: The poverty level in the Hispanic community was 33 percent in 2012. In 1970, the figure was 24.3 percent. Poverty is entrenched in the Hispanic community. Do we blame black culture? Latino culture? Maybe we should consider that Coates is right, and admit that America needs to fix itself before it starts trying to fix the cultures it has spent a long time breaking.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

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The Source of Black Poverty Isn't Black Culture, It's American Culture

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This article is from the archive of our partner . Americans don't want to imagine that our racist history is actually an ongoing, racist reality. We like to look at racism as a thing that has gotten better (if not gone away completely) and that the way black Americans are treated in society is actually colorblind.

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Many black migrants also came to the territory as hired laborers, while some traveled as escaped slaves through the Underground Railroad. In the 1860s, others joined the Union Army, and some moved from the South in large groups during the Kansas Exodus, a mass migration of freed-people during the 1870s and 1880s. As a territory that had a long and violent history of pre-Civil War contests over slavery, Kansas emerged as the “quintessential free state” and seemed like a promised land for African Americans who searched for what they called a “New Canaan.”

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With the promise of freedom and new economic and educational opportunities, Kansas attracted many African Americans in its territorial days, through statehood, and into the 20th century. Slavery existed in the Kansas Territory, but slave holdings were small compared to the South. Many black migrants also came to the territory as hired laborers, while some traveled as escaped slaves through the Underground Railroad. In the 1860s, others joined the Union Army, and some moved from the South in large groups during the Kansas Exodus, a mass migration of freedpeople during the 1870s and 1880s. As a territory that had a long and violent history of pre-Civil War contests over slavery, Kansas emerged as the "quintessential free state" and seemed like a promised land for African Americans who searched for what they called a "New Canaan."

Slavery in Antebellum Kansas and the Underground Railroad

Although there were relatively few slaves in territorial Kansas, enslaved men and women provided important labor along the Missouri-Kansas border. Unlike large plantations in the South, slavery in the border region existed in small holdings, permitted closer contact between slaves and slaveholders, and allowed slaves to hire themselves out with the permission of owners.

The issue of slavery's expansion into the West turned Kansas into a battleground as it prepared to enter the Union. A bill passed in 1860 would abolish slavery in Kansas, but before then, antislavery settlers campaigned against proslavery factions. Abolitionists raised money for fugitives through aid societies and publicly argued against slavery on lecture circuits. Daniel Anthony, the brother of woman suffragist Susan B. Anthony, moved to Kansas in 1854 with the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society for the express purpose of fighting against the extension of slavery into the territory. Antislavery activities could be as violent and sporadic as John Brown's vigilante raids on proslavery neighbors, or they could be more cautious and systematic, as were the secret Underground Railroad "stations" meant to shuttle escaped slaves to freedom.

The Underground Railroad was not actually a train, but rather a large, national network intended to help fugitives escape from slavery into northern states and Canada. White and African American abolitionists created a large but informal network of hiding places in farmhouses and in the woods throughout the South, so that conductors could help passengers travel from station to station under the cover of night. Fugitive slaves and those who aided them risked their own safety, especially after the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act required the return of runaway slaves to their owners even if they had made it into a free state or territory. A 19th century minister once claimed that the number of escaped slaves who passed through his town of Lawrence, Kansas, amounted to $100,000 worth of property during the territorial period. Depots in Kansas proved to be especially important to fugitive slaves from Missouri en route to Nebraska, Iowa, and even Canada.

Quindaro residents established several Underground Railroad stations, where many African American slaves sought refuge on their way to freedom.

In some cases, abolitionists established new towns near the Missouri-Kansas border to reinforce the "cause of liberty." An example of such a town is Quindaro, located in present-day Kansas City, Kansas. The name, Quindaro, was a Wyandotte word meaning "bundle of sticks," which evoked an ideal of strength in unity. The town, founded in 1856, quickly grew because of its port near the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers, as well as its subsequent establishment of surveyors, businesses, and stone and brick yards. The boom of Quindaro's first year did not sustain the community for long, though, and by 1862 the state legislature had taken measures that led to the voiding of the town's incorporation. However, during its existence, Quindaro residents established several Underground Railroad stations, where many African American slaves sought refuge on their way to freedom.

An example of a frequently used station was Quindaro's high school for African Americans, established by a white minister, Eben Blatchley, in 1857. In 1865, Blatchley named the school Freedmen's University, and in 1881 it was finally renamed Western University, with the sponsorship of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The school lasted much longer than the town, gaining support from local communities and the state legislature and earning a reputation as a school where African American students could excel academically until its closure in 1943.

The Underground Railroad activities at Blatchley's school maintained secrecy during the antebellum period, but in 1911, the school and the Quindaro community created a public reminder of its anti-slavery stance by installing a life-size statue of John Brown. For his leadership in a failed insurrection of slaves, Brown had been charged with treason and hanged for his attempt to start a slave insurrection at Harpers Ferry in 1859. The statue of the martyred hero stood in the front lawn of the school with a dedication: "Erected to the memory of John Brown by a grateful people."

War and Increased Demands for Education

As skirmishes increased in Kansas in the years before the Civil War, so did a military buildup that included both whites and African Americans. Black soldiers joined Union troops as early as 1862 in the First Kansas Colored Infantry in the town of Fort Scott. Earning the distinction as the first African Americans engaged in Civil War battles, their initial combat took place at the Battle of Island Mound in Bates County, Missouri, in October 1862, even though the troops were not officially recognized by the federal army until a few months later.

For some, joining the military also increased their chances with literacy in an era when it was otherwise illegal in many states to teach slaves how to read.

Both escaped slaves and freedmen joined the Union Army because it ensured a certain amount of freedom for African American soldiers. For some, joining the military also increased their chances with literacy in an era when it was otherwise illegal in many states to teach slaves how to read. While in camp, soldiers would share each other's letters and teach each other how to read the Bible. In 1865, when soldiers in the First Kansas Colored Infantry gathered their families to settle in Fort Scott, the Northwestern Freedmen's Aid Commission constructed a schoolhouse behind the officers' quarters of the military fort. At one point, the school served 160 children during the day and 75 adults in the evening.

Eventually the legislature would levy taxes on property owned by African Americans to be appropriated for such schools, but until then local communities and aid societies maintained black schools. Most schools for African Americans were separate from white schools, but since the territorial legislature had ordered that schools should be available without charge for all children between the ages of five and 21 years, a certain commitment to African American education remained. By the end of the 1880s, Fort Scott had opened an additional school for children of African American Union soldiers. By 1956, Fort Scott had opened a total of four schools for black students, including one that the inventor George Washington Carver briefly attended as a teenager.

As more African Americans migrated to Kansas after the Civil War, the demand for education also increased. Federal assistance, however, did not. The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, a branch of the War Department in the federal government, had opened in March 1865 with the purpose of supervising relief activities for refugees and freedpeople. The efforts of the Freedmen's Bureau included providing medicine, land, rations of clothing and food, and education, as well as providing overall support for African Americans' transition from slavery to freedom. The existence of the Freedmen's Bureau was threatened by President Andrew Johnson, whose second veto of its renewal and expansion in 1866 was overturned by Congress. Although the Freedmen's Bureau continued until 1872, its funding was significantly cut by 1869 and its operations were mostly suspended. Therefore, without much federal assistance, African Americans were left to depend on each other, on white reformers, and on small organizations to fund their schools. As African American populations increased in towns such as Lawrence, Topeka, Leavenworth, and Tonganoxie, Kansas-based charity organizations also demanded that public school districts assume more responsibility for African American schools.

In general, white Kansans supported state and municipal legislation to fund African American education, although they did not necessarily call for the integration of public schools. Black students would continue to attend separate (although undoubtedly unequal) schools as long as the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson United States Supreme Court decision upheld the legality of segregation. In Leavenworth, for example, African Americans had their own school, but some described it as a "hut" situated in a "low, dirty-looking hollow close to a stinking old muddy creek, with a railroad running almost directly over the building."

Despite such conditions and because of the voracious appetite for education among African Americans, civil rights organizations chipped away at Jim Crow laws that segregated white and black school children. Lawyers took 11 desegregation cases through courts of appeal up to the Kansas Supreme Court until Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas finally went to the United States Supreme Court in 1954. The Supreme Court unanimously decided against "separate but equal" policies of the past and called for the eventual integration of public spaces, including schools.

The Exodusters

After the Civil War and the Reconstruction era, the cattle industry grew, and so did the number of African American cowboys throughout the West, but the largest catalyst for population increase was a desire among African Americans to escape the South and migrate to a free state. In the 1870s and 1880s with the failure of the federal government to provide adequate amounts of land, jobs, education, and protection for the millions of newly freed African Americans, thousands left their Southern homes. In 1879, Benjamin "Pap" Singleton, a former slave from Tennessee, became known as the leader of the "Exoduster Movement." Kansas-based white reformers, such as Elizabeth Comstock, reported that African Americans suffered atrocities in Southern states: "Hanging, shooting, whipping, and mutilation have not ceased." Lynchings of African Americans actually increased nationwide between the 1880s and 1930s, totaling over 3,000 during the period.

Kansas was not immune from Jim Crow segregation, race riots, or violence. Newspapers recorded incidents of a lynching of an African American man in Fort Scott and white mobs attacking African Americans held in local jails in Leavenworth, Topeka, and Kansas City. Gordon Parks, author, photographer, and director, spent his early years in Fort Scott, which he fictionalized as Cherokee Flats in the 1963 novel, The Learning Tree. His memory of Kansas included tranquil hills and the smell of delicious barbecue, but he also detailed memories of segregated restaurants, schools, and graveyards in his writing. For example, Parks described the protagonist's hometown as especially complicated because of its position so close to the Missouri border, where the laws "stood for equal rights, but the law...never bothered to enforce such laws in such books."

The idea that Kansas had a particular claim to freedom still appealed to African Americans, who saw migrating to Kansas as a positive alternative to their current conditions. "Leave the south if you have to crawl, come where you can have some protection," the Afro-American Advocate claimed. Many African Americans thought of making new starts in the relatively young state of Kansas, where the possibility of "growing up with the country" reflected their optimism for more freedom. Some white politicians encouraged rhetoric that portrayed Kansas as especially welcoming to African Americans. For example, Jacob Winter, a state senator and civil right proponent, referenced Kansas as "this State that was born free; this State that stood in the front ranks in the great contest for freedom."

Pap Singleton's fliers urging African Americans to "Ho for Kansas!" ultimately prompted tens of thousands of individuals and families to leave the South. In an issue of the Wyandotte Gazette, the Freedmen's State Central Organization called on several counties to prepare for the influx of refugees from southern states because "the dictates of humanity, as well as the honor and good name of Kansas demand that the destitute of this class of people should not be neglected, nor permitted to suffer for the necessary wants of life."

Although Kansas had claimed to be the quintessential "free state," Exodusters did not necessarily find the absolute freedom and equality that they had hoped to discover there. New residents brought with them large hopes for land ownership, but could not always successfully negotiate the purchase of property from white landowners. Many had to rely on aid societies, such as the Kansas Freedmen's Relief Association, for food and supplies. Local aid societies also intervened with Exodusters to provide them support for acquiring housing, job training, and education.

African Americans often established "black towns" or neighborhood colonies as distinctly separate from white communities. Segregation in black towns often meant fewer prospects of buying land and increasing job opportunities, but segregation also meant that black communities could concentrate their efforts on social uplift in their own communities. For example, in 1877, when 300 migrants from Scott County, Kentucky settled Nicodemus in Graham County, Kansas, they established their own churches and a school. They also prohibited saloons or other "houses of ill-fame" within the colony's first five years. The trustees of Nicodemus recruited new residents by posting advertisements that referred to their establishment as a "beautiful Promised Land."

In another black town, Tennesseetown, founded in 1880 within the city limits of Topeka, residents developed neighborhood improvement clubs, created a community library, and sent their children to a school that claimed to be the first African American kindergarten west of the Mississippi River. Elisha Scott, an African American lawyer who attended the Tennesseetown Kindergarten as a child, went on to establish a career as a civil rights lawyer and helped to argue the Brown v. Board of Topeka case before the United States Supreme Court. The court case, initiated in Topeka, Kansas, would not bring a conclusion to the state's frequent contests over the meaning of freedom, but would stand as another important watershed moment in their long and ongoing struggle for civil rights that would continue for decades.

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Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri-Kansas Conflict, 1854-1865

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With the promise of freedom and new economic and educational opportunities, Kansas attracted many African Americans in its territorial days, through statehood, and into the 20th century. Slavery existed in the Kansas Territory, but slave holdings were small compared to the South.

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Joe Biden’s congressional address, he stated that “America is not a racist country.” He admitted that he himself had experienced “the pain of discrimination,” and noted, “I know what it feels like to be pulled over for no reason, to be followed around a store while I’m shopping.”

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South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott shocked many people when, in response to President Joe Biden's congressional address, he stated that " America is not a racist country ." He admitted that he himself had experienced " the pain of discrimination, " and noted, " I know what it feels like to be pulled over for no reason, to be followed around a store while I'm shopping. " When asked o n ABC's Good Morning America the following day , Vice President Kamala Harris s eemed to agree with Scott when she s aid , "I don't think America is a racist country." Yet immediately following this sentence she quickly pointed out , "But we also do have to speak truth about the history of racism in our country and its existence today."

As Soledad O'Brien said, "It sounds like a racist country to me," in to Scott-but it seemingly applies to comments by Harris as well. President Biden, who seemed to not pull any punches during his speech, stated, "W e have a real chance to root out systemic racism that America ." However, Biden appeared to his remarks on The Today Show to align more with Harris and Scott (to a certain degree) by noting that slavery and Jim Crow laws had a cost.

It is almost as if simply saying America is not racist, but then turning the other cheek and saying it is racist in subtler terms and that racist things have been done to you makes it ok. It is confusing to Americans and the international community. To supporters, these comments are disappointing . To others, they were shocking. For me , the cognitive dissonance of some of our elected leaders is real and explainable . The re is an oversimplification of racism in America, because as sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva notes, there can be systemic racism without racists.

W hen a person critique s America for the racism that i s deeply embedded in our social institutions, some feel they are being personally attacked. This is because deep down they realize that they benefit from unearned assets associated with whiteness. Scott, Harris, and Biden recognize this and try to balance these varying perspectives as they worry about voters nationally and in a state like South Carolina.

Recently, a at a city council meeting had a meltdown when trying to explain why she does not want critical race theory taught in her children's school. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said that s ystemic racism as a concept is " a bunch of horse manure ." So, not only has Florida made it legal to harm people protesting, but he banned teaching critical race theory in schools. For a deeper dive on critical race theory , people should read the work of sociologists Victor and Ted , who lay out why DeSantis' perspective is problematic .

I conducted with Matt Hunt on what predicts who believes they are middle class. For education, income, and occupational prestige, Black people are less likely to identify as middle class compared to whites with comparable levels of these socioeconomic outcomes. Why? It is because social class is not just about what a person looks like on paper , but how people experience social class in everyday life and t he deference that one receives for their socioeconomic status. Black people are less likely to get that deference, while white people are often afforded more. It is so commonplace for white people that some cannot fathom living without it. This is because many white people, particularly white people with lower levels of education and income, realize that comes with a premium that extends beyond economics to include cultural and social capital. As Pr esident Lyndon Johnson said, " If you can the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and h e'll empty his pockets for you."

Harris and Scotts' comments are puzzling at a broader level as well considering how much of a collective memory their experiences with racism are- Harris reliving her systemic experiences with bussing and Scott recounting the nearly 20 times he has been pulled over by police, where being an elected official potentially made the interaction worse.

These stories acknowledge that life is different if you are Black, and unfortunately systemic racism seems to ripple through our social institutions and into our daily social interactions, whether in Congress or at a coffee shop down the street from the Capitol. These type s of experiences-racialized cuts and hurdles- have a cumulative effect on . Sociologist s Pam Jackson and Jason Cummings' research documents that middle-class Blacks have worse health profiles than working-class whites. They attribute this difference to the daily racialized trauma experienced in predominately white environments like work and neighborhood settings.

Systemically, we know that Black people compared to whites are more likely to attend schools with less funding per student, less likely to obtain a job because of our "Black-sounding" name or even when attending an Ivy League university , less likely to obtain a (even when having the same credit score ), have their homes appraised for equitable value, more likely to experience pregnancy complications and maternal mortality , and more likely to have contact with police and the criminal justice system .

Systemic racism inhibits (rather than prohibits like in the past) people's ability to actualize all aspects of the American Dream. This occurs  even for highly-educated Black people with high incomes and no criminal record. In fact, research documents that white people with a criminal record are more likely to get called back for a job than Black people without one.

Research documents that hard work (or lack thereof ), intellect, or criminality do not explain these outcomes. Instead, it is the embedded deeply within our social institutions' , rules, regulations, and laws that segment people's experiences along racial lines. It is the same for gender. Women can achieve but have a much harder time doing so. If not, America would have had a woman vice president and speaker of the House sitting behind the p resident long before 2021.

What people do not seem to realize is that being upwardly mobile does not negate encountering racist hurdles on the pathway to success. Our current system is set up for some people to have to jump over hurdles to succeed, while others get to simply run to the finish line without those sa me racial hurdles. Rather , it is about whether the pathways to success are equitable . This is what America says it is: an equitable democracy. People are pushing for America to reach its true ideal s and the only way this can properly occur is acknowledging the systemic barriers that prevent us from getting there. Moreover, it is not that racial progress has not been made. It is that the United States has yet to make enough progress. In this regard, comment s of our top elected officials are disappointing, yet predictable.

Black people who succeed often walk on pins and needles because they realize that their success, and more so maintaining it, is precarious.   As a result, some Black people aim to make white pe ople feel comfortable. Many of us are mostly socialized to do so. I t is often a survival strategy for our lives during police encounters or economic survival in boardrooms. Some of us who succeed may experience "survivor's remorse" because we are some of the few to "make it." We actually embody the American Dream and become the in-person example to people who do not want to admit that systemic racism exists. We may even convince ourselves that racism is more prominent on the individual level than the institutional level. We simultaneously represent racial progress but are also most likely to be subjugated to racial discrimination because of the predominately white spaces we are embedded within. We experience a chronic form of double-consciousness   and admitting as such can often lead us to being conscious of the slow death we often experience through the cumulative racist cuts and hurdles we encounter.   The American Dream being achievable for a few does not absolve the system and an imperfect union, even when some of those successful people try to rationalize systemic racism away.

In most instances: When Black parents worry about their straight-A student's traffic encounters with the police more than they do a potential accident, this is because of experiences with racism. When a Black couple is about to have a baby and has to think consciously about what hospital to deliver in so they can obtain equitable care, this is racism. When a Black parent worries about their child attending a prestigious university outside of an urban area, this is often because of the racism they worry about them encountering driving to the school and even once physically on the campus of the school. And even more urban universities are not absolved from .

Systemic racism is not simply a thing of the past. It is up close and personal in the present.

R acism may be no more transparent in an institution with the least representative racial progress like the Senate. There have only been 11 Black senators in roughly 232 years. Clearly, the Senate is the exact space we need people with the courage to say the blunt, honest truth about our nation's past and present. Only then can we actualize a future where systemic racism does not exist. It is imperative for a , reconciliation, and reparative process to commence. This starts with atoning for the enslavement of of Africans whose descendants contin uously fall systemically behind , whether they end up being the lone Black Republican senator or a Black police officer who might have the power to pull him over.   We must have the courage to speak truth to power and one of the places it starts is in Congress.   "If not now, then when?"

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South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott shocked many people when, in response to President Joe Biden's congressional address, he stated that " America is not a racist country ." He admitted that he himself had experienced " the pain of discrimination, " and noted, " I know what it feels like to be pulled over for no reason, to be followed around a store while I'm shopping.