Stephen Steinberg - Counterrevolution: The Crusade to Roll Back the Gains of the Civil Rights Movement

COUNTERREVOLUTION

The Crusade to Roll Back the Gains of the Civil Rights Movement

STEPHEN STEINBERG

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Stanford, California

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Stanford, California

2022 by Stephen Steinberg. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021947843

ISBN: 9-781-5036-3002-4 (cloth)

ISBN: 9-781-5036-3003-1 (paper)

ISBN: 9-781-5036-3004-8 (ebook)

Cataloging in Publication Data available from the Library of Congress.

Cover design: David Drummond

Text design: Newgen North America

Typeset by Newgen North America in 10/15 Sabon LT

This book is dedicated to Derrick Bell who neither surrendered to false optimism nor allowed pessimism to diminish his struggle against white supremacy.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing a book may not take a village, but it does rely on friends, colleagues, and comrades who provide knowledge and indispensable feedback and criticism. It is also an occasion for remembering. Let me begin by paying homage to three professors who changed my life trajectory.

As a freshman at Brown University in 1958, I enrolled in an innovative course called The Identification and Criticism of Ideas, taught by Dennis Wrong. It was basically a great books seminar and we read Durkheim, Veblen, Freud, Fromm, Riesman, and other luminaries. In retrospect, Marx and Du Bois were absent from Denniss pantheon, but then again, this was the regressive 1950s. Denniss voice would resonate whenever ideas clashed around the table. This was my baptism in the contentious but liberating academic world.

In 1963 I came to know Bob Blauner, who was a new hire in the Sociology Department at UC, Berkeley. I attended his first class on racism, along with Gary Marx, an activist in CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), and David Wellman, a red-diaper baby from Detroit. The three of us absorbed Bobs penchant for challenging prevailing orthodoxies, and we witnessed the evolution of his tour de force, Racial Oppression in America.

As a graduate assistant at the Survey Research Center, I was delegated to work with Gertrude Jaeger Selznick on a national survey of anti-Semitism, sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League. Gertrude was trained in the philosophy of science and the logic of inquiry, which she applied to survey research. She was an intellectual to the core and was indefatigable when it came to unmasking obfuscation.

In 1971 I tore myself away from the seductions of California and morphed into a New Yorker, with the great opportunity of teaching at the City University of New York. I am indebted to Ben Ringer and Rolf Meyersohn for taking me under their wing and to Joe Bensman for his theoretical acumen and passion for talking sociology. In 1978 I joined the Urban Studies Department at Queens College, a rare hub of interdisciplinarity. I am particularly indebted to two colleagues, both anthropologists: Jeff Maskovsky expanded my horizon with his mastery of poverty, grassroots activism, and political economy. Melissa Checker did the same with her critique of environmental gentrification and its consequences for racial and economic injustice. I could always rely on them for a dose of iconoclasm.

Much appreciation as well for Alyson Coles friendship and intellectual scope and originality. Other colleagues in the Urban Studies Department shared decades of camaraderie: Sherry Baron, Dana-Ain Davis, Martin Eisenberg, Martin Hanlon, Tarry Hum, Madhulika Khandelwal, Len Rodberg, Alice Sardell, John Seley, and Alan Takeall.

In 1987 I was introduced to New Politics, a socialist journal founded and co-edited by Julius Jacobson and Phyllis Jacobson, two progeny of the nearly extinct Jewish blue-collar working class. Phyllis and Julie were fierce Trotskyists who rejected Stalins authoritarianism and championed socialism from below. For me personally, New Politics was a godsendit bridged academic and political discourses and for over thirty years provided a venue for my research and writing. Julie and Phyllis were sources of inspiration and friendship, along with Herbert Hill who was the labor director of the NAACP and a frequent contributor to New Politics. Kudos as well to Barry Finger and Sam Farber for so many penetrating articles.

I met Derrick Bell at the Race Matters Conference at Princeton University in 1997. Derrick was teaching at NYU Law School. We frequently met for lunch, and conversation often drifted to the maddening contradictions of race in America. It is my honor to dedicate this book to his memory.

I came to know Charles W. Mills after reading The Racial Contract. I was bowled over by his ingenious concept of an epistemology of ignorance. In my naivete, I was constantly puzzled that in matters of race, sociologists never got it quite right. Charles provided me with an epiphanic moment: that we are not supposed to get it right! How else can we explain sociologys proclivity for victim-blaming discourses?

Over the years I had extended dialogues with Adolph Reed, and though we sometimes sparred, I treasured his political acumen and trenchant prose.

It was my good fortune to meet Micaela di Leonardo, whose groundbreaking scholarship and vibrant prose merge into an eloquent amalgam. I cherish our long friendship.

For decades, Frances Fox Piven and I were colleagues at the CUNY Graduate Center. Knowing her has been an inspiration, and I have been shaped by her deep and indefatigable advance of progressive ideas and politics.

The academic enterprise is often solipsistic. However, students bring their diverse life experiences into our classes and in doing so inform or challenge our assumptions and point of view. I relish the memory of cohorts of students from the City College of New York, Queens College, and the CUNY Graduate Center. It is also a pleasure to acknowledge several graduate students who remain friends: Neil McLaughlin, Bruce Haines, Donal Malone, and Cody Melcher.

Two people generously read and commented on chapters of this book. Peter Taubman, a colleague and friend from Brooklyn College, provided thoughtful and candid criticism, in sharp detail and nuance. Heartfelt appreciation to Sharon Friedman, my partner in life, for her inimitable insight, close reading, and scrupulous editing. Perhaps a book takes a village after all, speaking of which, our children, Danny and Joanna, provided their ageing parents with perspective on the culture and politics of Generation Y. They shaped our values and sensibilities as much as the other way around.

Profound thanks to Kate Wahl, editor-in-chief of Stanford University Press, for her editorial wisdom, and Marcela Cristina Maxfield and Sunna Juhn for their indispensable support and keen judgment. Finally, words cannot convey my appreciation to Barbara Armentrout for her fastidious copyediting of the manuscript.

INTRODUCTION

RACE RELATIONS

An Obfuscation

It was a stroke of genius really for white Americans to give Negro Americans the name of their problem, thereby focusing attention on symptoms (the Negro and the Negro community) instead of causes (the white man and the white community).