Michael Mitchell - Charting the Range of Black Politics

National Political Science Review, Volume 14

David Covin, editors

A Publication af the National Conference af Black Political Scientists

First published 2012 by Transaction Publishers

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Barack Obamas election to the presidency has prompted rethinking in the way that scholars have customarily mapped out the terrain of Black politics. President Obama has brought onto the national stage the complexities confronting the member of a minority group assuming power over national political institutions and the limits placed on that power by virtue of the double accountability such a figure faces, both from his own minority community as well as from the larger majority population. The question, therefore, arises: might the ascendancy of President Obama lead to a deracialization of American politics, or even its opposite? Either course remains open and continues to be the subject of serious discussion.

The contents in the current volume of the National Political Science Review in one way or another speak to this question. The Articles section draws on work presented at the 2011 meeting of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. Among these works, the editors solicited contributions from David Wilson and Khalilah Brown-Dean of the University of Delaware and Yale University, respectively, who analyze Black attitudes toward the candidates for the Democratic Party nomination in the presidential race of 2008. Wilson and Brown-Dean found that a candidates strategy of deemphasizing his racial identity and the salience of racial issues, in an effort to appeal to White voters, has the opposite and potentially negative effect on Black voters. Wilsons and Brown-Deans work was the winner of the Best Paper Prize at the 2011 National Conference of Black Political Scientists meeting.

Michael Clemons assesses the impact of the racial factor in shaping public support for President Obamas foreign policy. Clemons observes that while there existed clear and long-standing differences between Blacks and Whites regarding foreign policy, Blacks appear to have become more favorably inclined to the Obama administrations foreign policy initiatives. Clemons attributes this shift to the generally favorable attitudes that Blacks show for Obama himself. Lorenzo Morris of Howard University continues this discussion of race and foreign policy. Morris asks how perceptions of race have defined the expectations held of the African American ambassadors to the United Nations. Morris has found that since the earliest of these ambassadors, starting with Ralph Bunch, race had played a significant part in perceptions of the kinds of policy emphasis Black ambassadors would place on their missions. Susan Rice, however, although she shares similar characteristics with President Obama, has become, arguably, the prototype of the invisible diplomat.

The concerns of Black political scientists, as these articles illustrate, stretch beyond areas confined to domestic policy. One topic where an intersection of concerns occurs is the subject of the analysis by Horace Bartilow of the University of Kentucky and Kihong Eom of Kyungpook University. Using a game theortic approach, Bartilow and Eom examine U.S. drug interdiction strategies in the Caribbean Basin. They bring a methodological freshness to a topic that cuts across both domestic and international concerns as well as one that draws a discussion of this sort closer to the diasporan links with the Caribbean region.

Two essays comprise the Works in Progress section. Two senior scholars, Michael C. Dawson of the University of Chicago and Andra Gillespe of Emory University, offer personal reflections on their work and the manner in which they assemble it. They follow in the tradition of C. Wright Mills in writing about intellectual craftsmanship, that is, of how their own personal concerns and curiosities guide the building of their research.

A Book Review section follows with an introduction by Tiffany Willoughby-Herard. These reviews provide an extended discussion from scholars and activists about the works of interest to the community of scholars committed to a dialogue on themes pertinent to the study of Black politics.