I think that passage says a lot about black people's relationship to conservatism. I'd be out of my area, but I'd guess that if we looked at other arenas, where activists attempted to open up the Constitution--suffrage for instance--I wouldn't be shocked to see conservatism lagging there too. This is history, of course, and a record on suffrage doesn't constitute a record on all things. But it explains a lot about the chasm. If you come up paying the price for going slow, you tend to be sensitive to others having to go through the same.But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.
Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.
You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.
I want to be clear about something: I'm not raising this to score points or beat up on conservatives. When I wrote, yesterday, that we should not dismiss the cautions of conservatism, I wasn't being polite. I believe it. I think it was Connecticut that, instead of emancipating all its slaves, simply said everyone born after a certain date was free. Was that a smarter approach? Would a steadier, gradualist approach to Reconstruction made Redemption untenable? Would a more gradualist approach to Civil Rights ultimately left us somewhere better, today? I don't think so. But I don't dismiss it out of hand. Lincoln's conservative hand ultimately served him well, no?
Maybe I'm going here because some of this is ultimately in me. I find Pat Buchanan's bluster to be disgusting--but not because I'm undisturbed by the Ricci Case. This, for instance, I basically agree with:
My worry about identity politics is that we should indeed take into account our different experiences, but we should always also try to transcend them. Wallowing in them seems less of an overcoming than an undergoing. It's why I'm leery of hate crime laws and affirmative action, and all legal structures that put us all into separate ethnic or emotional or racial camps for ever. The argument that this comes too easily for a white guy like me is certainly valid. But I refuse to see the rule of law and judicial modesty as somehow white or male. The principles of classical liberalism have no color and gender, and are, to my mind, indispensable to getting past both.Our points of emphasis may be different, but this comes perilously close to my own world-view.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Would you say then that this is less a question of the actions of "a conservative" vs. let's say "a progressive," and more a question of when is it appropriate to act conservatively? Because, what I keep reading from your repeated focus on the various moments in the history of civil rights is that you're conflating "conservative actions" with "the actions of conservatives," and I'm not sure that's altogether appropriate.
An excellent distinction. Obama himself is a case in point. A progressive, who acts conservatively. This is a person with a vision for the future that is significantly different (and, for them, better) than the present, who understands that change that is too abrupt can be counter-productive, but that is a pragmatic caution, not a Burkean conservative worldview. There is a difference between what I think of as the conservative philosophy of, "if it ain't broke badly enough to set society on fire, don't hurry to fix it," and a progressive pragmatists philosophy of, "we know we can do better, the question is: how to pursue a better world most effectively."
These are very different camps, in my view. They don't have to be hostily different, because on many issues, problems are so apparent that true Burkeans can be allies, but the difference is difinitive nonetheless.
I think it was Connecticut that, instead of emancipating all its slaves, simply said everyone born after a certain date was free.
A lot of Northern States passed similar laws (which led to curiosities like the fact that there will still slaves in New Jersey in 1861, since they had been born before the proclaimed date). However, the usual way they worked is that they declared all slaves born after a certain date would become free on their 18th birthday. As a result, the slaveowners would simply sell the slaves when they reached 17 to buyers further south. In other words, the Northern anti-slavery laws didn't actually free more than a handful of slaves. They did, however, contribute to the concentration of slavery in the south (remember that according to the Constitution, the slave trade was prohibited after 1808. Northern slaves, therefore, were a highly desirable commodity). This completely changed the pattern of slavery in the U.S. Most people don't know that in 1800 New York had the most slaves of any state. By 1840 slave-owning patterns had changed completely. Even in the 1850s and 1860s, you find a trend where the northern slave states (Delaware, Maryland, parts of Virginia) began to lose slaves as they were sold even further south to work on the more lucrative cotton plantations of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. Slave ownership in Maryland and Delaware plummeted between 1850 and 1860. At the same time, you find emancipation movements gaining strength, although ingrained racism meant that nothing was ever done. Delaware voted on emancipation in 1859 I believe, but the decision failed by one vote, even though slaves were only a few percent of the population. In Maryland, after contentious debate, it was agreed to 'encourage' free blacks to emigrate to Liberia (few took the offer), but a move to appropriate funds to purchase slaves for forced transportation went nowhere.
There is a fine book on this called DISOWNING SLAVERY: Gradual Emancipation and "Race," 1780-1860 by Joanne Pope Melish and it details Northern gradualist emancipation plans. Also, just to be a bit more accurate, Northern emancipation laws free more than "handful of slaves," even with "handful" in its most general form.
Scott de B.,
You're wrong: New York did not have more slaves than any state in 1800. There were about 20,000 slaves in New York in 1800, a year after the state passed its gradual abolition law. Virginia, by contrast, had nearly 350,000 slaves. Caroline County, Va., alone, had over 10,000 slaves. Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee all had more slaves than New York state at this point.
The reason why slavery spread throughout the South was because cotton was such a promising way to accumulate wealth--not because northern states introduced gradual abolition laws.
Part of the problem with this discussion is that there is conservative/liberal the political camps and only sort-of-relatedly conservative/liberal the personal temperaments.
Someone with a more liberal temperament is drawn to change and is probably bored with things staying the same. They are willing to take large risks for great things. And that can be really good. But they often break a lot of good things on the way. Which isn't so great. People with a conservative temperament like to cherish the good things as they are. They aren't thrilled about changing them. This can lead to keeping a lot of good things, but if they are in bad situations it can lead to them putting up with things longer than they need to.
It isn't that people with conservative temperament don't ever change, they just need to be much more uncomfortable with the present situation before they are willing to change and they are more cautious about breaking other things along the way.
My take on this as it plays out in black history in the US is that in many areas, the lives of black people have been such that even many of the temperamentally conservative people have been forced to embrace/push for change. So black people's relationship to conservatism (the temperament) is that many of them would love to rest in a fairly good status quo, but they can't, so they don't.
The plays out in interesting ways when some of them "make it". If they are conservative by nature, they will now play defense because they made it to a comfortable enough place that their natural temperament can kick in. It isn't limited to that of course. I'm sure you know the mother or grandmother who makes a little zone of normalcy and then fights like hell to keep it in place. That is conservative temperament in action.
(I'm not defending the liberal temperament here because I think most people respect it already. The innovator, the trailblazer, the inspired harbinger for change are all deeply entrenched in our national psyche and don't need much defense)
Essentially I don't think there are more or fewer black people with a conservative temperament than is found in the general population. It is just that more of them find themselves in bad enough situations that the conservatives among them still want change.
“Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I can move the earth.”
On so many issues, this quote always cuts to the heart of things for me. Which is to say that mostly everybody reacts in the same way to different stimula. People are naturally predisposed to adapt to their own circumstances and resist change. But their relative level of resistance is dependent upon their circumstance and how well they've adapted to it. But everybody can be moved. Inevitably most people will be moved. It simply takes a rod of sufficient length wielded by a person who understands the most basic principles of physics.
The principles of classical liberalism have no color and gender
Um, no, since those principles were framed within white-dominated, patriarchal societies.
"All men are created equal" is almost such an obvious example that it qualifies as low-hanging fruit: it must certainly count as a "principle of classical liberalism," but the word "men" explicitly leaves out women, and de facto left out men who weren't white property owners. (I'm not even getting into the implications of "created.") That old, restrictive meaning of the term would still be operative if not for the energetic political work over the last two centuries of millions of people with non-male and non-white life experiences. As Frederick Douglass wrote, "Power concedes nothing without a demand."
The rule of law and judicial modesty must reflect gender and color when the laws and judicial decisions in question were framed by a racist and sexist society, and when the majority of the people writing and interpreting those laws continue to do so from a perspective shaped predominantly by the dominant-class experiences of whiteness and maleness. That's what "ideology" means.
Isn't this a little simplistic? The principle that "all people are created equal" is not invalidated because the people who originally came up with the principle did not see women or non-whites as "people". The principle of equal political respect for humans was exactly the basis for the "energetic political work" that lead to "men" being replaced in interpretation by "people".
With respect to "The rule of law", obviously if the laws in place are unfair, the rule of law leads to unfair results. And thus the substantive laws should be changed (perhaps by reference to the principle all people re created equal). However, apart from the substantive laws themselves, the principle that there should be rule of law is valuable in itself. Without it, we get arbitrary government where those in power for whatever reason think of new ways of exercising their power, unconstrained by the need to be consistent with pre established rules for behavior. It's one of the reasons why the Bush Administration's desire to act as it wished with regard to detainees, mostly unconstrained by the rule of law was so appalling. At the same time, though, they felt the need to pretend to adhere to legal rules, leading to the contortions of the torture memos. Bad as the situation was, it was still an improvement over a government that did not even feel the need to justify its actions on the basis of principle.
Well, now, there is a case to be made that the *principles* of liberalism are race and gender blind, but it is not very clear cut since the *reality* of liberalism is that it is not, and never has been, race and gender blind. I've always found this argument a serious cop out. This lack of race/gender/even class blindness is not only or even primarily because of the nepharious machinations of nasty individuals, but more often because the common understanding of the phrase "all men are created equal" is absolutely different depending on the place and time in history.
The Sextual Contract by Carol Pateman and The Racial Contract by Charles Mills are required reading on this front.
The problem with the "liberalism is perfect, it's our application that's been flawed" argument is that the onus of chopping up society is always put on people who have been defined out of the category of the pretend universal. And it is also often accompanied by the "don't be too radical, wait your turn" rhetoric which King is reacting to in the speech TNC quotes. It is almost always accompanied by the questions Why are you women, you minorities, you gays so obsessed with your difference?
This is, on it's face, absurd, and a re-inscription of what has been wrong with the implimentation of liberalism for it's whole gloriously mixed history. The fact is that these groups are aware of their "difference" at all is because the unmarked, universal group(s) (which are inevitably actually particulars -- white, male, straight, middle class) have made it very clear in attitude, word, deed, and law that the "differences" of people not in that "universal" category are quite a big deal.
It always cracks me up, in a 'the world is sick and sad' way, when I hear folks who are born into the unmarked categories scold those of us marked by difference that we're obsessed with our identities. It's like punching someone in the face and then being shocked - shocked! - that they complain of the pain. That punch is in the past afterall. And besides, it's not at all in line with the golden rule. The punch was a mistake. We've all moved on (haven't we?!) Why not man up (irony intended) and learn to go with the flow?
It's is an argument that in some, is sincerely intended, but it refuses to grapple with the fact that liberalism's principles have not been operative in the world in any kind of pure fashion and that does effect what liberalism actualy is and means. In it's actual manifestations, liberalism has, in fact, allowed some seriously illiberal doosies to thrive under its watch (like, for instance, chattle slavery, or you know, spousal rape and murder) and even though we can retrospectively define those things out of liberalism by saying "they were never really apart of it, anyway" that approach lacks respect for reality and the courage that it takes to improve the world based on lessons we have truly learned.
All this to say, until we grapple with the effects of liberalism's false starts, we're going to have a hard time journeying on into it's potentially bright future.
I do not defend liberalism as such because I believe it is inseparable from capitalism, from the disassociation of economics from society and culture. But I can sympathize with a defense of liberalism: until its appearance in the European enlightenment, the very critiques we are making of it would be impossible.
Liberalism is a secularization of what had previously been an impulse only in universalizing religions such as Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism: the idea that humanity itself constituted the most most important category, that the most important rights and responsibilities adhered to the category of the human as human. One might see European liberalism as specifically a secularization of Christianity and Christian universalism in particular, a secularization which adds religion itself to the list of things which do not explode the category of the human.
That liberalism was contradictory in its exercise is no indictment: "hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virture." That we critique it by its own standards, standards that we have internalized deeply, attests to its own triumph as an ideology.
But a conservative will fairly respond to a critique of liberalism by noting that only liberalism could make that critique possible; additionally, in the absence of liberalism (and, specifically, the liberal state) life becomes all the more "nasty, brutish, and short." Chauvinistic violence has been the norm in human history, as has the domination of women and, at least since the hunter-gatherers, the stratification of society. The historical conditions by which it became possible to undo these facts of the human condition are, according to a conservative view, fragile and complex, and indebted to the very specific cultural circumstances - the period of European domination of the world, the ascendancy of the bourgeois, the European enlightenment tradition, scientific progress - which are also the objects of its own criticism.
This is exactly what I thought when I read this at Andrew's this morning. He is being extremely disingenuous about his statements on Sotomayor and Latino identity. I am very disappointed in Andrew this week-- he needs a serious bout of self-reflection.
Agreed.
Disingenuous, perhaps. Unforgivably tunnel-visioned, absolutely.
Oh and part of me wonders if Obama acts from a conservative temperament or at least a large dose of respect to it. He seems to say: look things need changing, but lets really look at it and make it work without wrecking everything else.
TNC:
MAN YOU OWE ME A BEER OR SOMETHING. That quote at the end of the post! You mentioned Buchanan and then led into the quote and I thought PATTY PATTY PAT PAT (as the SNL McLaughlin skit used to call him) had written it. I thought that that thoughtful, reflexive, and honest post was from a column of Buchanan. Then, as my head was spinning and I started to growing a third arm, I clicked on the link and saw it was Sullivan. Ok, all is right with the world again, everything is back to normal: The earth is still spinning on its axis, gravity still exists, and Nas' ILLMATIC is still the greatest rap album of all-time. Everything is back to normal, indeed.
Hah! No, I quoted Andrew because that's where the debate started.
Sebastian H,
I absolutely agree with this. I think the catagorization of Obama as the leftiest left winger to ever be President is a Republican reaction to his name and skin color.
I don't doubt that policies like DADT will be repealed under an Obama presidency. I also don't doubt that he is going to be slow and cautious about getting there.
"I think the catagorization of Obama as the leftiest left winger to ever be President is a Republican reaction to his name and skin color."
I think it has more to do with him being a Democrat and popular. And president.
I don't.
You don't believe people would be calling any Democratic president as popular and as persuasive as Obama the most liberal president of all time? It's old school nonsense that's been used against white Democratic presidents or presidential candidates for decades. It's disingenuous, but it's not racially motivated.
I'm sorta with BreakerBaker on this one. The perception always is that Kennedy was very liberal; he wasn't. Johnson was much more liberal, although the Vietnam War and his being from Texas sorta mitigated the image of his actual behavior.
The reaction of calling Obama a lefty left winger has more to do with how conservative our nation has become since Reagan. The folks leading the Republican party today would have been considered knee-jerk reactionaries in the 60s, and even Clinton, who was hardly a liberal President, was framed as such by Republicana. Think if it were Thurgood Marshall, rather than Sonia Sotomayor being nominated to the bench. It's been long enough since a truly liberal justice was nominated that most people who contribute to the threads here were not alive when it occurred.
Principles, which are human constructions, always arise from experience. They are not dropped from on high. The problem is that principles are not always ascribed accurately to their origins. When doing research on the origin of guitars for example, I found musicologists mostly ascribed Greece as the point of origin, although fewer traced the antecedent to India. There was a tablet in Babylon that revealed such an instrument. After researching dozens and dozens of musicologists testimony, I found one which pointed to a guitar like instrument from West Africa.
This idea of transcendence, a very American idea--so American, one of our foremost historic intellectual movements (influenced by an American version of Hinduism) is named after it. But rather than transcend, it strikes me it would be better to rightly apply in time; to be of one's time in history. As a 21st century Jewish American, both the Magna Carta and soul music that has its origins in Puerto Rico via Cuba via Africa are part of my heritage, just as the Passover shout "this year we are slaves, next year we shall be free people," is part of the heritage of others. The issue is not to transcend identity, but contribute and acknowledge the contribution of others: to acknowledge conflict and cooperation; oppression and loss, promotion and gain; to rather than begrudge the pride of accomplishment and wisdom of others in their hard earned experience, learn from it and grow.
There is no ideal universal, except in the accumulation of particulars: Andrew Sullivan's Catholicism, which, for example, can't help but form his view of abortion--centuries an agency for the oppression of the people and culture Jesus was born from--is enriched and tempered by Buddhist practice that wandered from India through Tibet, China, and Japan--history--to get here.
"But I refuse to see the rule of law and judicial modesty as somehow white or male."
The thing is, when what works politically is overdetermined by white males, the rule of law and judicial modesty is for all practical purposes white and male. The GI Bill was affirmative action for white families. Manifest destiny was all about the government encouraging mostly white families to settle the west. But no no, let's not talk about any policy that seeks to rectify disenfranchisement of minorities and women...that, by the by, was sanctioned.
It amuses me to no end to hear white folks talk about how we need fair laws that treat everyone equally. We are just supposed to trust that in the absence of laws that give us a way to redress wrongs, white folks will just do better and not discriminate.
The crux of Sullivan's argument is faulty because it rests on white folks' critical misunderstanding of how their whiteness functions as everything and yet nothing. Meaning that this appeal to "no categories" is really about "no non-white categories."
In his defense, I think this is a difference between principal and application--at least as I read it. One might agree in principal to much of the GI Bill, and still concede that in practice, it was--as you said--"affirmative action for whites." But I'd argue that the problem lies in the practitioners, not in the policy itself.
Martin Luther King was appealing to the same principles (Bible, Decl. of Independence, Const.) as many of his adversaries. But he called for them to be practiced in a truer sense.
And in that sense, T-NC, just as with President Obama, Dr. King could be labeled conservative. As he was, by some, late in his career. There is the same reverence for foundation principles in our constitutional lawyer president.
This is true. There are limits to this whole exercise. But the conservatism of the day had no use for him. The conservatism of this day seems to have only limited use for him.
One interesting point on this is that many of the "conservatives" of the Confederacy explicitly rejected the whole "All men are created equal" notion as radical and violation of basic, natural law. I thought about that because "All men are created equal" is, in the context of the 18th and 19th century, a radical notion. Just like "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" seems radical.
My head is spinning.
Good conservative principles are wasted by American Conservatives.
But of course that's really beside the point. Because Black citizens don't live in Andrew's mind. They have to react to / be impacted by the actual positions that are taken by Conservatives.
But then the question becomes, why agree with the principal behind a GI Bill and not with the principal behind affirmative action. That disconnect is purely racial.
On this King thread. King, by the time of his assasination, was more or less a democratic socialist, which I guess makes him a lefty (but all this ideological mess is irritating to me mostly because i think liberal and conservative when colored black are fundamentally different). And he argued for something much much stronger than affirmative action in Why We Can't Wait in 1964 before he even radicalized.
He may have appealed to principles, but King was practical enough to know there needed to be laws and policies in place that make those principles, those documents, real for black folks. He was deeply suspicious of white people's "good intention."
Invoking King this way is not really correct, or rather, incomplete.
Yeah, I think we (as a country) definitely made King into something he wasn't for the sake of country. I'm not doubting he's a great man at all, but I just think that the country decided we needed a hero for everyone, not just Democrats or liberals.
My examples of this are a bit anecdotal, so forgive me. I didn't know about King's opposition to the Vietnam War until I got to college, and I had some very good history teachers. The other example I have is actually Malcolm X. Malcolm wasn't in my history curriculum until 11th grade. Even then, I remember mostly glossing over his radicalism, and focusing on the trip to Mecca and his subsequent support for integration up until his assassination.
To me, this is problematic; well a dilemma, really. I understand the need for national heroes, especially concerning Civil Rights. So the photoshopped historical image of the two leaders really does serve that purpose, and I do think it's valuable. However, making these men (especially King) into bi-partisan, universal heroes also allows false assumptions to be made about the country the way it is now. Andrew Sullivan, in particular, as an immigrant who apparently isn't interested in the history of civil rights for blacks (I say that because I've never seen him post about it, so correct me if I'm wrong), is particularly guilty of this tabula rasa style of thinking. It deals far too much in ideals and not enough with reality. It's good to have ideas, but the refusal to accept reality can have horrible consequences--most recently, the rise of Neo-conservatism
I would not label Dr. King a conservative. Some did. Each generation, every person, has the chance to interpret his words. Everything gets filtered. My view involves student memories my mentor shared of discussing philosophy with him late at night, that I imagine Boston University 1954, that I interpret my mentor's words, that I understand my own pride about these and other equally tenuous connections. Those are inconsequential things. But they illuminate a greatness I see. It is not wrong to call the man a great preacher. But many tend to forget or not be told -- and there is racism here -- that Dr. King was a philosopher, a PhD. Like Thoreau and Gandhi who influenced him, he put philosophy into action. As you say, his views changed as he thought about strategies and confronted different problems. That's what a brilliant thinker does.
I can't agree with this formulation either. The rule of law itself, *as a concept*, is not white or male. The rule of law, when applied to an existing set of laws formed in a particular culture, will inevitably favor the existing power structures within that culture. Using respect for the rule of law to justify ignorance of social injustice is a rhetorical fail, but that's not what Sullivan is talking about in the quote.
I agree that's not what he's talking about. But I guess the point I'm talking about is this appeal to "pure" anything, be it principles, rule of law, history, etc...is, intended or not, an appeal to a time when white ruled. Or more specifically, white landowning men ruled. Conservative principles may be the same at the core no matter who practices them, but a black conservative is different than a white conservative and a black liberal is different than a white liberal, because experience affects how you apply the principale (more or less).
It's this notion that by talking about race or gender or class we are somehow tainting the purity of ideas. There's an implicit equation in discussions that operate within this frame that "pure" is "white" because what we are trying to keep out is black, and latino, and (often) female. Again, it may not be intended, but this is how whiteness functions to maintain its hegemony. The only way to stop that from happening is to stop that. A lot of laws were written when the only people that mattered politically were white men. That means something, whether we want it to or not. This false notion that there is a "pure" rule of law, or principle or idea or ideal is wrong-headed.
Apologies for all the grammatical errors above.
Well, yes and no. Unfortunately, we do not have two separate words for "rule of law as it could be implemented in a society that has somehow overcome these issues" and "rule of law as a guiding ideal for the society that exists." The former is a "pure" concept, and has real value as such... but here I agree with you, the latter is what we are usually talking about, and thus the promotion of the former gets undermined by the path-dependent realities of the latter.
Thus, in argumentation, we get a problem: it is not true that all assertions of the value of the rule of law are, in fact, even an unintentional appeal to the time when white ruled. But we have no way, upon listening to the argument, to discern that; and the vast majority of such appeals are completely unaware of this distinction and thus perpetuate the real-world imbalances.
And so we reach another consequence: in reading your responses above, I have to parse the difference between A) rejection of classical liberal principles as potential solutions to these problems and B) rejection of vague appeals to the rule of law as a mechanism for sweeping things under the rug. You pretty clearly mean B, but rhetorically that can resemble A. This is how people get to talking past each other. (Not that you and I appear to be doing so. :)
You could also say that the GI Bill was affirmative action for straight men, since gays were not allowed in the military (no DADT back then).
The crux of your argument, Tigger, is faulty because it rests on straight folks' critical misunderstanding of how their heterosexuality functions as everything and yet nothing. Meaning that this appeal to "no categories" is really about "no non-straight categories."
That's absolutely correct.
As the Oakeshottian in Andrew understands, conservative principles can be preservative while also being restorative and constructive. American conservatism -- and this is one thing I think Andrew is trying to achieve -- has no important record of men who emulate Oakeshott, a man who could be described in the same sentence as one of the most influential conservative intellectuals of the 20th century and as a liberal. The European line of thought, liberal conservatism, has had no grasp on American politics.
American conservatism has historically been populated by people who called themselves Know Nothings, defeated Reconstruction, supported the trusts and the monopolies, imposed immigration quotas, were against desegregation in the Armed Forces, ran the Dixiecrat party, tried to filibuster Civil Rights Bills, opposed affirmative action and school desegregation, and voted for George Wallace (who after being shot might have been an American liberal conservative, maybe not). This is a history that correctly defines the Black relationship to America conservatism. Andrew wishes it were not so, struggles mightily and often well to make it not so. But Green's Law still applies. They are who we thought they were.
It's always somewhat misleading when you try to apply today's political labels to the past. One of the things US history texts tend to ignore is the deep connection and overlap between the Know Nothing party and the anti-slavery movement. Those who opposed the trusts and monopolies were more often than not the same ones who defeated Reconstruction. And the Dixiecrats were, of course, huge supporters of FDR and the New Deal.
I don't think you can easily point to the above examples and apply simple labels of liberal vs. conservative in the modern sense. And it's simply a fact that historically in the US the "progressive" or "liberal" party has also been the most backwards in terms of racial justice.
It's difficult to separate out conservatism as a political philosophy (in theory, very supportive of civil rights), conservatism as a governing policy (essentially gradualism and the focus of the post, I think), and the modern conservative movement (for whom opposition to black civil rights was a founding principle). But they are three different things, and only the last lines up well with a specific group or political party.
I agree with much of what you say. My examples were essentially parenthetical and I won't quibble. (Much. Exception = the Dixiecrats were solid for FDR but abandoned his successor in large part because of Truman's desegregation policy. As the Dixiecrat movement morphed into the solid South of the 60s and 70s, whether these folks were liberal or conservative depends on your POV and your place in time. If I were black in the 60s, I know I'd not call them liberal. But that, of course, is in keeping with what you are saying.)
Better to completely agree with your final paragraph. I do. And I point out, circling back to T-NC's original point, that it is the loud voices of the the modern conservative movement that have impact on recent American policy in ways the gentlemanly whispers of Sullivan's conservativism as a political philosophy and conservatism as a political philosophy have not. I appreciate the effort of people like Sullivan and others to move us toward the latter. But thus far those efforts have been quixotic.
That second one there should have been governing philosophy.
This discussion explains my problem with conservatism. I'm skeptical of gradualist approaches to social problems, because in the particular case of desegregation, gradualist arguments were used as a cover to do nothing but preserve white privilege. For a century after the Civil War, southern states claimed they weren't ready to integrate and needed more time. They resisted and dug in their heels. So when was the right time for change? 100 more years? That history and Dr. King's writings taught me not to trust entirely those who take a "go-slow" approach to injustice.
TNC, why is it when a White American gets into a bind around his comments that play him as some sort of “racist” they run for the “Rules of Law” as Andrew did? He just twisted the words around “But I refuse to see the rule of law and judicial modesty as somehow white or male.” The law in America is White and the majority who wrote the rules is Male. So Ergo………… “To be a true conservative is to be more disturbed by victimology, than actual victimizing.”
Are you suggesting that the Laws for Whites and Blacks are different? How so? Please, be forthright and say what you feel.
Ta Nehisi - the very fact that you are able to achieve this level of philosophical distance about affirmitive action and related issues, and give some credence to conservatism as being principled on these issues is because you're living in 2009 and not 1959. Just saying...
BAM! Thank you for pointing out that Dr. King is winning, and will win.
Right. But that was the goal. So then, what? Should I not think about it? Should I not debate it? What would you ask?
Why? Do you really believe that our minds are so bound to time and place that our rational faculties are incapable of probing beyond our identities? Do you think that there were no black people with sufficient imagination to distance themselves philosophically from their immediate circumstances?
Also - check your history. There were black conservative civil rights activists in 1959 who would agree with Andrew in 2009. One of them was Bayard Rustin, who was also gay.
Superb reference, in this connection, to Bayard Rustin. Such an influential man. I have not read as much about him as I should but have often wondered whether the MSM, and even historical, neglect of his contribution was due to his sexuality or to his interest in staying out of the limelight (and of course the first may have been the reason for the second; wondered about that too).
Unimaginable that Bayard Rustin would not join Andrew in arguing against enhanced interrogation.
Yes - Rustin would have *definitely* been opposed to tort- I mean - "enhanced interrogation." He was first and foremost a peace activist who traveled the globe promoting non-violence. He later became a close confidant to Dr. King, but was relegated to the sidelines because he was gay. King was heartbroken to severe ties with him for political reasons related to Rustin's sexuality. I don't believe King was homophobic and his wife has explicitly stated this.
After the Civil Rights Act, Rustin's politics veered to the right of the burgeoning black power movement so he became unpopular. I believe he was opposed to affirmative action.
Acromonion - You obviously don't know the first thing about Bayard Rustin...do your homework before bloviating.
Incidentally, Rustin's critical stance toward "preferential hiring" was complicated by his financial dependence on and strategic analysis of the labor movement (led by George Meany at the time) and it's place in liberal coalition politics in the late '60s. Far from being a "conservative" - ever - he was always a socialist who unfortunately got ensnared in some arcane ideological disputes generated by splintering followers of the neo-Trotskyite Max Schactman. To call Bayard Rustin a "conservative" - especially in 1959 when he was still a left-wing socialist and a militant pacifist is utter nonsense.
If you're looking for some solace in a "black conservative" who in the 1950s was wildly out of step with the civil rights movement, check out "feminist icon" Zora Neal Hurston - who actually opposed the Brown decision.
And if you don't believe Rustin's refusal to support what was then called "preferential hiring" had nothing to do with his decision to hitch his star to George Meany and the AFL-CIO, circa the late '60s, check out the A. Phillip Randolph Insitute (Rustin's labor-funded perch at the time) today and their current support of affirmative action - which is obviously because the labor movement has evolved. If you think I'm assuming too much about why certain public positions were taken by Bayard at this point in his life, Rustin's lover, close "Schactmanite" political ally and Meany aide, Tom Kahn, once wrote a gay-baiting speech for Meany - because these guys were willing, frankly, to compromise drastically - if not humiliate themselves - in service to their "coalitionist" labor-oriented ideology.
I happen to know quite a bit about Rustin. I have read every single biography of him as well as everything written by him. Why? Because I wrote my senior capstone on him. You can read it if you really want to.
Rustin was much more conservative and integrationist than his contemporaries in the post-Civil Rights era. Don't want to write an essay about it if you read From Protest to Politics you will see what I mean.
But I'm really more interested in you answering the original question. Why do you think that TNC could only reflect philosophically on affirmative action and conservativism because he lives in a particular time and place? If Coates was alive in 1959, why wouldn't he be able to think about these things?
The reason why I am curious is because it is the same reason that people might think a "wise Latina" could come to a better conclusion than a white man. To me, a judicial decision should be based on sound logic, not your identity.
"There were black conservative civil rights activists in 1959 who would agree with Andrew in 2009. One of them was Bayard Rustin..."
Don't write such an incoherent, ill-informed characterization of Rustin and then explain how much you know about him. I was very, very familiar with Rustin and his comrades long BEFORE anyone was writing books about him...
"If Coates was alive in 1959, why wouldn't he be able to think about these things?"
He might in theory, but it's extremely unlikely that in 1959 anyone with Coates' background would have given a shit about parsing conservative principles. Rustin certainly didn't in '59. Very bad example. And Bayard's reasons for taking the positions he took later (and in 1965 when he wrote "Protest to Politics" - which I read probably the week it was published - neithe was it in any meaningful sense the "post-civil rights era" nor was Rustin's main concern anything other than keepiing together the mainstream "liberal coalition" to press his and Randolph's legislative agenda that was coming apart at the seams over the Vietnam war primarily, and to a lesser degree at that point over black militancy.)
Rustin was one of the most brilliant men ever in American politics and much of his criticism of the movement in '65 was incisive, but it was not his time. The sweep of events and the tragedy of the Johnson administration's committment to the Vietnam war destroyed his credibility. (And don't kid yourself that Vietnam wasn't crucial in legitimatizing the more militant elements of the black protest movement that Rustin was trying to rein in . Ironically, my first thoughts about Vietnam and the beginning of my opposition to the war at the time were inspired by a piece Rustin himself wrote - I think in early '63 - for the WRL. He saw the thing coming - but when he finally had to choose his fight, he stuck with the old Humphrey-Meany "liberal coalition" that undermined everything he was trying to do even as he defended it.) History quite often sucks...
Waiting for evolutionary change just prolongs situations that are, for some group of people, unbearable.
Yes, of course, real change happens when the majority of people converge around some shared belief. Legislation, by itself, does bring about that kind of change. However, just based on my life experience of growing up in the south during the civil rights era, I would argue forever that legislation gives real change a considerable shove in the right direction.
Legislating social justice serves a multitude of purposes and alleviating suffering in some sector of society is probably the most important.
Right now we are debating health care reform which is, at it's core, a social justice issue. In the absence of legislation, I question how many more millions of people would have to suffer, die, or go bankrupt before some natural evolutionary change process addressed their issues?
From the Food section of the Atlantic:
What the author does here is claim that "the only way to spread social progress is by spreading the joys of it". Noble cause. We do not have to burn us by touching the hot stove in order to learn how to avoid it. I would agree unless it were an absolute statement.
I am not going into his straw-man logic regarding the parents and the projection regarding the hypocrisy of the author. My analogy concerns the following: Rarely has social progress, also known as, finding ones true and not imagined identity and therefore being able to transcend it, happened without two forces at play?
welfare & abolition
civil rights & human rights
good & bad cop
King & Malcolm
new & old language
pacifist & militant
That there is also a "vs" component, e.g. civil rights vs human rights, only follows because of the "&". The heart and the brain compete evolutionary for genetic resources but one cannot exist without the other.
I will never forget that quote by Malcolm where he states that he genuinely believes that he is helping Dr King's cause. It is good that MLK has used new language which transcends color - it is good that Malcolm has used the same language that the oppressor uses. The language of already free man.
From the Food section of the Atlantic:
Basically the author claims that social progress can "only happen by promoting the joys of it". Noble cause. We could all learn not to touch hot things by observing those who do not touch hot things? (I am not going to go into some of the straw-man arguments of the article here).
Rarely has social progress, also known as, finding ones true and not imagined identity and therefore being able to transcend it, happened without two forces at play?
welfare & rights
civil rights & human rights
good & bad cop
King & Malcolm
new & old language
pacifist & militant
That there is also a "vs" component, e.g. civil welfare vs human rights, only follows because of the "&". The heart and the brain compete evolutionary for genetic resources but one cannot exist without the other.
I will never forget that quote by Malcolm where he states that he genuinely believes that he is helping Dr King's cause. I think he once said that without him nobody would listen to Dr King? It is good that MLK has used new language which transcends color - it is good that Malcolm has used the same language that the oppressor uses. The language of already free man.
Now - regarding conservative &/vs liberal... I actually don't know. But since both forces exist we have to work and live with them both.
Ups. Thought I had lost the comments to the ether and now there are two.. sorrrrrry. But at least I can add a PS:
Dr King knew how to write. Damn.
Both health care and affirmative action could be couched as conservative, the former as sound investment, the latter as enabling the most basic tenet of the Declaration of Independence--our founding document--to be practically put into play.
Conservatism as a historic practice in the United States (and elsewhere) hides behind its so called principles to continue to privilege an elite. As a force in history, it is less important as an ideology, which is largely so anachronistic as to be pitiful if it weren't so destructive, far more significant as the most virulent form of identity politics in our history, despite all the nay saying otherwise.
I'm not saying that Liberalism is free from such posturing, but nothing is more offensive than while Conservatism postulates that it conserves tradition, it in fact purports to be ahistorical.
Amen.
How is treating people unequally "enabling the most basic tenet of the Declaration of Independence"? And of course it is most definitely unequal treatment, because if I randomized the race of candidates for those eligible for some position, affirmative action as it is practiced today couldn't exist.
How is depriving people of some property and muting some of their liberty to supposedly enable the liberty of others' (noticed that this very same argument could be made in the torture debate) endorsed by the Declaration of Independence? Do the Founders really sound as if they had the affectations of the modern progressive to you?
Of course, I know it's nice to say those things, but that doesn't mean they are actually true.
Personally, I have thought for a long time that our liberties, our rights, and the basic dignity of all men and women to live in a free society where all are recognized according to their ability is a principle that needs to be fought for. Sure one can point to the Declaration of Independence and say that they were all white male property owners, but John Locke in his second treatise on Government argued that Native Americans had just as much right to the deer that he killed as a farmer who works the land. The basic point and the line that seperates in my mind a thinking person from an unthinking reactionary is that the one recognizes that traditions aren't static and the other seeks to maintain the status quo for the sake of the status quo. We have the capacity to read new values into old traditions when our traditions fail to express modern conceptions of justice. Sure at the time the Declaration of Independence was written it spoke for white male property owners, but today it speaks for men in the sense of all mankind without respect to race, gender, creed, and hopefully soon sexual orientation. I refuse to allow anyone who believes that some people are somehow less than others to monopolize a tradition that gives me hope and inspires me to be a better person. Since we're on this civil war kick (I've started reading along with the rest of y'all Allan Nevins books are on the way then it's off to capitol men and the rest.) Didn't Lincoln say in his second inagural "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in." The work in my opinion is building a better society, and the seperation between reactionaries and progressives is in the first line of the above quote. With malice towards none.
Not to draw too fine a point, but if one has to fight for something, the fight must be with someone else. Now, perhaps there can be a fight in which one is free from malice, but that is for the saint, the rare hero.
I think of myself as tolerant man, a peace loving man, a man who holds out the best of hopes for my fellow humanity, but when I think of my children and grandchildren, I cannot help but resent the upshot of those in high places who have labored so mightily to destroy the American promise for most to privilege the few.
I agree with you, and personally I like what Isaiah Berlin Said about this that
But I think we should draw a line between hating the actions of people and actively hating the person.
Wonderful post, but I'd like to question the idea that Lincoln's conservative hand served him well in the end. Assassination at the hands of a southerner and all...
I've had a bit of a personal intellectual crisis with regards to the whole ESCR (Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) bandwagon that a lot of human rights groups are embracing. On Civil and Political Rights, I come close to absolutism. On ESCR, I start balking, badly. Mostly on the economic stuff. I'm not sure that I'll ever agree that people have a human right to housing, or many of the so-called "positive obligations," which governments are supposedly obligated to provide.
But I feel like this is my most deeply-ingrained personal and political biases coming into play. The stuff I'm almost incapable of analyzing clinically. 99% of radical ideas never become mainstream, and one of the stupidest things you always hear from radicals (and the Bush/Cheney posse) is the bullshit "history will show I'm a righteous martyr" nonsense. But the civil and political rights I preach were radical at one time, and I honestly wonder whether I'm the Reb in this case.
This particular sentence by Dr. King was striking to me. Mostly, because I've never found the ideal that it espouse to be true. To the loss of us all, I think.
I appreciate the Buchanan quote on both taking our differences into account and working to transcend them.
It sounded a bit like something else I read recently:
"I am reminded each day that I render decisions that affect people concretely and that I owe them constant and complete vigilance in checking my assumptions, presumptions and perspectives and ensuring that to the extent that my limited abilities and capabilities permit me, that I reevaluate them and change as circumstances and cases before me requires. I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate."
Yes, that's from Judge Sotomayor, and from the exact same speech as another line we've heard way too often.
As I am reading this again later in life it struck me just how intertwined Christianity was with the Civil Rights Movement. Everyone could count on being welcome at church on Sundays.
Do you think that's why so many blacks must think its a strange contradiction for gays to claim their civil rights whilst opposed to mainstream Christianity?
Just want to say that this was one of the greatest threads in I'net history. Made me tear up for real.
We need, all us posters here, to redouble our efforts to defeat the efforts of the Faux Conservatives to divide us and herd us into our own little racial/gendered/sexed defensive groups. And we need to bring Sully along.
Dr. King would smile and applaud.
Kathie - I refer you to the 12:12 A.M. comment above by Acromion about Bayard Rustin.
An ironic, sad, antithetical, contextually understandable expulsion from "All of God's children," a few decades ago. Rustin was apparently put to the side because of fears about how his sexuality would impact the public's support of the larger cause. We have come far enough (not completely there) to have mostly rid ourselves of that division. Speed up that day.
OK so you obviously had the benefit of knowing Rustin first hand. I will stand by my original argument, though, which is that his post-Civil rights politics was more conservative than his peers. By conservative I mean he advocated for a more gradual, integrationist approach, eschewed Black Power, and identity politics in general. He was a cosmopolitan man who delighted in other cultures. Pitting one against the other just seemed crude to him.
This has been an awesome discussion though. I think we are in agreement, for the most part. It is ironic how Rustin pretty much devoted his life to protesting war but did not make a stand on Vietnam. Haven't talked to many people that know much about Rustin. Just curious - how did you come to know him?
I agree that we are in agreement. He was clearly more conservative than his peers, as you say. I am wondering where I was misunderstood because I stand by your original argument too! My comment to Kathie was meant only as a suggestion that she read your post to learn more of the man. Didn't know him at all. Not of my generation. But was taught by a man who knew him and the sense I got from him is of a brilliant strategist who was essential early on and then was sort of discarded by some as proactive damage control and by others out of envy for his position of power. I can imagine (searching for how I confused the issue) that what I have been told is incorrect and that the gentleman that Rustin has been described to me just stepped away to do other things because of the "pitting one against the other" approach of some leaders of the 60s. Or that he chose to distance himself because of his more conservative approach. Or indeed perhaps because of his own concerns that others not be attacked for associating with him, there in the days of Hoover. What is the best book about him?
@RL,
My last comment was in response to someone else, but it got stuck here at the bottom for some reason.
Rustin is a fascinating person because he was so out of place in just about every important activist movement he was involved in. He was also quite the globe trotter. In this way, he is similar to peripatetic Obama, an outsider that soaked up the ideas of all the cultures he was a part of.
"Lost Prophet" by John D'Emilio is the most recent bio, and it is also the first to seriously consider Rustin's homosexuality. Earlier bios completely gloss over it, as if it was an embarrassing stain to his record.
It is really quite fascinating to see how so many liberals and civil rights agitators were completely disgusted by Rustin's homosexuality, but they *needed* him nonetheless.
To me, it says a lot about people's true intentions for social justice. Do you believe in Civil Rights only to the point where it involves YOU or are you generous enough to extend freedoms to others? Can you fight for a universal application of rights, or as soon as you "get yours" you push the new niggers to the back of the bus? Bayard got it. Other black leaders, sadly, did not.
Imagine me shaking my head in agreement over and over. I thought I remembered him as a traveler, influential beyond the US. Thank you for the book recommendation, I want the entire life, not just a gloss. On to Amazon, again (third time this week -- reading the free literature at T-NC gets expensive.)
Your last para. There is still a little of that; Andrew talks a lot about black views regarding gays. But from my blind perspective (not gay, not black) it feels better today, certainly than for Rustin. My advisor definitely thought the reason he was ostracized was homophobia, combined with some political envy. And I noticed a post on another thread where you took a somewhat gradualist position on gay rights. Do you think this is you, constitutionally, or perhaps some of Rustin's influence, or both?
@RL . . .
I will carry this convo over to the thread you are referring to. Unfortunately still at work so it will probably be tomorrow. I got some questions for you too.
BTW if anyone was offended by the use of the n word - I was paraphrasing Rustin