BEHIND THE MULE
BEHIND THE MULE
RACE AND CLASS IN
AFRICAN-AMERICAN POLITICS
Michael C. Dawson
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
Copyright 1994 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Chichester, West Sussex
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dawson, Michael C, 1951-
Behind the mule: race and class in African-American politics /
Michael C. Dawson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-691-08770-9 ISBN 0-691-02543-6 (pbk.)
eISBN 978-0-691-21298-2
1. Afro-AmericansPolitics and government. I. Title.
E185.615.D39 1994
323.1196073dc20 93-44088
R0
Figures
Tables
Acknowledgments
THIS WORK is the result of a collective effort of family, colleagues, and friends. I have been fortunate in that there is a very large overlap between the three groups. The University of Michigan has proved an ideal place to engage in serious work on black politics. In particular, the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, the Race and Politics Program of the Center for Political Studies, and the Program for Research on Black America (the latter two both part of the Institute for Social Research) have all provided material support and wonderful colleagues as well as a real home for my work. The Rockefeller Foundation, through the Program for Research and Training on Poverty and the Underclass, provided a needed postdoctoral fellowship that supported this work during the most critical stage. Many colleagues have read and critiqued parts of this book. I am grateful to the many colleagues at UM who discussed these issues with me, including Christopher Achen, Walter Allen, Robert A. Brown III, Nancy Burns, Cathy Cohen, Doug Dion, Pat Gurin, JoAnn Hall, Kim James, Todd Shaw, Lynn Sanders, Jocelyn Sargent, Ernest Wilson III, and Rafia Zafar for sharing their wisdom with me. A number of colleagues provided the exceptional aid of reading through the entire work. My sympathy and great thanks go out to Don Herzog, Jennifer Hochschild, James S. Jackson, John Jackson, Robin Kelley, Donald Kinder, Earl Lewis, and Steven Rosenstone. Many of the battles we waged not only made the work better, but have profoundly influenced how I approach scholarship. Dianne Pinderhughes and Hanes Walton, Jr., not only incisively critiqued the work, but also helped to introduce me to the complexities and importance of work in the field of black politics. Conversations with them and with many other colleagues in the National Conference of Black Political Scientists will continue to shape the direction of my work and keep me grounded in my roots. I have been extraordinarily fortunate in working with a group of graduate students unmatched in the country. They have been real friends, and will help shape the field of political science in the future. After I moved to the University of Chicago I received critical aid in the final manuscript preparation from two exceptional studentsPamela Cook and Taeku Lee. Ronald Brown shared the pain, frustration, and joy of scholarship and family life with me during the entire period of this works creation. Without him, this book would not have existed. My family provided the anchor and love needed to sustain me over the past several years. I am constantly made proud of and annoyed by the fact that our children are easily my severest critics. But the most supportive and incisive critic I have is my partner in life, Aiko Furumoto. Her work in epidemiology and the example of her life are a constant reminder that our work must at least attempt to change the world. I will attempt to aid her on her first book as she has aided me on mine. Finally, this book is dedicated to three African-American elders who each taught me important life lessons: Crosby and Mary Ramey, my grandparents, who taught me the dignity of honest labor and the importance of ideas, and St. Clair Drake, my first mentor, who lived the life of scholar and activist without compromise.
Part One
BEHIND THE MULE: THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF
AFRICAN-AMERICAN GROUP INTERESTS
Whatever else the blues was it was a language; a rich, vital expressive language that stripped away the misconception that the black society in the United States was simply a poor, discouraged version of the white. It was impossible not to hear the differences. No one could listen to the blues without realizing that there are two Americas.
(Samuel Charters, quoted in Houston A. Baker, Jr., Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory)
You want to know where did the blues come from. The blues come from behind the mule. Well now, you can have the blues sitting at the table eating. But the foundation of the blues is walking behind the mule way back in slavery time.
(Bluesman Booker White, quoted in Houston A. Baker, Jr., Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory)
The Changing Class Structure of Black America and the Political Behavior of African Americans
Most people are totally unaware of the darkness of the cave in which the Negro is forced to live. A few individuals can break out, but the vast majority remain its prisoners. Our cities have constructed elaborate expressways and elevated skyways, and white Americans speed from suburb to inner city through vast pockets of black deprivation without ever getting a glimpse of the suffering and misery in their midst. But while so many white Americans are unaware of the conditions inside the ghetto, there are very few ghetto dwellers who are unaware of the life outside.... Then they begin to think of their own conditions. They know that they are always given the hardest, ugliest, most menial work to do.... They realize that it is hard, raw discrimination that shuts them out. It is not only poverty that torments the Negro; it is the fact of poverty amid plenty. It is a misery generated by the gulf between the affluence he sees in the mass media and the deprivation he experiences in his everyday life.
(Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?)
Introduction: Images of Unity and Conflict
During the 1988 presidential primary season, African Americans marched to the polls in support of Jesse Jackson. Northern and Southern, urban and rural, rich and poor, large numbers of African Americans supported Jacksons quest for the Democratic partys nomination for president of the United States. Five years earlier, Harold Washington had been elected the first black mayor of Chicago when the citys black community, often divided by political bickering, came together with an unprecedented degree of political unity. And in 1990, when Jesse Helms of North Carolina conducted a racist campaign to retain his seat in the U.S. Senate, the black turnout rate for Helmss opponent, black Democrat Harvey Gantt, was 95 percent. These instances of electoral solidarity typify the political unity of African Americans in what many have come to call the New Black Politics (Preston 1987b). This New Black Politics is characterized by the transformation of protest politics into electoral politics with high levels of black political unity. This is the first image given by the evolution of African-American society and politicsan image of a profound political unity that transcends class.
