The 1970s to 1990s era has witnessed a new archaeology of the African American intelligentsia. This has involved a steady growth of conservatism among black intellectuals and, more recently, some ideological differentiation within conservative ranks. The early set of conservative …
I was preparing to drive from Cambridge, Massachusetts to my alma mater, Lincoln University, near Oxford, Pennsylvania, the day last fall that General Colin Powell announced his exit from what was a kind of presidential campaign. His decision not to …
Let me say straight off that I do not think the Sean Wilentz article “Race, Celebrity, and the Intellectuals” (Summer 1995) warranted publication in Dissent. Why? Because of protocol. As a long-time reader of Dissent from its start-up days under …
Contrary to what many conservatives assert, preferential treatment is not something new to our patterns of public policy. Moreover, it has an ethical basis in what might be called a “higher public purpose”—that of undoing and compensating for a long …
I begin with a straightforward proposition that there have been three types of black political leadership in twentieth century America: (1) pragmatic activist, (2) systemic-radical, and (3) ethno-radical. The first of these refers to what we commonly think of as …
I write these thoughts on Dissent’s future with a copy of the Spring 1956 issue lying next to my typewriter—part of a fairly complete collection that I cherish immensely. The Spring 1956 issue contains articles that cut across the gamut …
Clinton’s strategists—both white and black— were well aware of the need for any successful Democratic presidential candidate to win back a significant number of “Reagan Democrats” (upper working-class and new middle-class white ethnics). Helping Clinton to place the Reagan Democrats …
All American ethnic groups—Irish, Jews, Italians, Poles, blacks, and so on—have struggled in a rather schizophrenic way with their self-image or identity. Any group’s ethnic identity within American society is carved out of a delicate, tension-laced mixture of its origin …
Shelby Steele’s argument (“The Memory of Enemies,” Dissent, Summer 1990) has two intertwined parts. First, he asserts that since the early 1970s the opportunity-structure in American society offers more space for social mobility and achievement than black Americans have effectively …
The conclusions of the Kerner Commission Report on the urban riots during the late 1960s have been widely accepted; namely that this angry black urban upheaval was driven by a gnawing alienation and despair among mainly working-class and poor Afro-Americans. …
A complex class context underlies the changes in black American politics of the last twenty years. Today’s black stratification comprises sharply different classes—a coping stratum made up of blue- and white-collar workers, professionals and managers, business people and wealthy entertainers, …
The conclusions of the Kerner Commission Report on the urban riots during the late 1960s have been widely accepted; namely that this angry black urban upheaval was driven by a gnawing alienation and despair among mainly working-class and poor Afro-Americans. …
The most important impact of Jesse Jackson’s campaign has been his ability to fashion for black Americans a parity-status within the Democratic party. A parity-status with regard to a political party is the opposite of a client-status. It entails the …
Since the 1950s the politics of New York blacks has been characterized by weakness and factional division. Compared with the political gains of blacks in cities like Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Detroit, black politics in New York is marked …
Jesse Jackson as a leading left-of-center political force is again receiving a lot of attention. There are numerous concerns about Jackson: Does he have a legitimate function in black American politics? A legitimate function in American politics? Given his deployment …
