Matthew Holden Jr. - The Changing Racial Regime

The following papers can be read each one standing alone, as they initially were written. Each serves its own intellectual purpose, according to the method and theory of the author in question. As presented here, however, they also lend themselves to a broader treatment of race and the political order. This form of presentation should be understood against the purpose of the National Political Science Review (NPSR). The NPSR is sponsored by an organizationthe National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOPBS)most of whose members share the social experience of being African American. It is almost inevitable that a scholarly publication so sponsored would be particularly oriented to information, insights, findings that deal with the ongoing problem of race and the political order. There is, of course, no intellectual uniformity among those political scientists who share the social history of being African American. Not all are committed to research on subjects related to race. Some find such a concentration on issues of race to be itself a form of intellectual and professional imprisonment that they would seek to escape or refuse in any way to countenance. But if African American political scientists, taken as a group, had no interest in such matters, they would deem themselves, and others would deem them, lacking in self-respect.

Suffice it to say, a social science interest arising from some experience or thought about moral problems is by no means unusual. While social science can arise from pure curiosity, and may often be generated by some existing theory, that is not the only way. Social science is oftenthough, one emphasizes, not alwaysa moral perception, a purpose, or a strategic objective armored with a methodology. The powerful influence of the cold war and the nuclear threat upon international relations is one example. The fear of chronic unemployment that dominated England from the 1920s onward, and that dominated the United States from the 1929 depression through World War II, is another. When the NPSR was initiated, Lucius Barker wrote of the ultimate hope that this venture will lead to new information, insights, and findings that add both to our basic knowledge as well as prove helpful in understanding and dealing with important ongoing problems in our politics and society (Barker, 1989: 3). The subordinate position of African Americansand, in varying degrees, of other ethnic groupsis what is here seen through moral perception. The trouble with moral perception is that one can become so committed to the problem, or to the answer, that one deceives oneself about data and consequences. Thus, writing can become little more than the grinding of self-confirming propaganda. If methodology is good enough, one will not deceive oneself. If intellectual integrity is present, one will deceive no one else.

Albert O. Hirschman once introduced a volume on Latin America by attempting to review the principal ideas on the character of Latin Americas development problems which have been put forward by Latin American writers and social scientists. The reason he thought it worthwhile was that

when we are called upon to advise a Latin American country on economic policy it is only natural that, hard pressed, we should first of all attempt to get the facts, a difficult enough undertaking. But frequently our advice will be futile unless we have gained an understanding of the understanding Latin Americans have of their own reality. (Hirschman, 1961: 3-4; emphasis mine)

The Editor is convinced the Hirschman dictum (this volume) is particularly relevant. It is likely that many, perhaps most, white scholars do not comprehend, or actively disagree with, what African American scholars intend to say on the subject of race. The converse may also be true. There is an intellectual central tendency among African American political scientists that is different from the intellectual central tendency of other political scientists when the subject matter is the ill-defined phenomenon called race.