Fraters Libertas

How Academics Explain Ideological Inequity

Recently I was reviewing back issues of Public Opinion Quarterly, looking for some information regarding polling results during the run up to the 2000 presidential election, and I ran across an unrelated article that had this little show stopper of a sentence:

“That conservatives tend to focus more on individual rather than structural impediments to success is not surprising. Also, their focus on blacks may be linked to the explicitly antiblack sentiment that some have argued is basic to the “neoconservative” political movement (Omi and Winant 1994).”

Thanks for adding those qualifiers to your clinical mudslinging pal. His theoretical premise “may” be linked to what “some” have argued is the inherent antiblack sentiment of the neoconservative movement?

I guess this cement-footed tap dance prevents a class action lawsuit from unfairly maligned right wingers everywhere. This article was published way back in Winter of 2001 and I’m not sure which of the ever changing definitions of 'neocon' best served as the liberal bogey man back then. But if Bill Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz would like to contact me regarding a potential defamation case, you know where to find me (amid the dank stacks of Public Opinion Quarterly in my company’s library).

The whole debate on whether or not the culture of the academy is politically one sided is an amusing one. The recent Berkeley study on the dark psychological foundations of conservatism is yet another example of the end product consistently created from the system of higher education in the social sciences. Recently, the SCSU Scholars have also been involved in tracking developments on this debate.

For me all the evidence I need is first hand. I’m not going to elaborate on the details of my personal experience at the U of MN. But one of the quintessential moments of the ordeal was the day after the 1990 election of Paul Wellstone to the US Senate. The professor bounded in before a room of about 50 political science undergrads, took the stage, beamed broadly and exclaimed “whadd’ya know - we won!”

About half of the class responded with cheers and excited chatter. I surmise the other half didn’t know how to respond (as a flying body block to the professor’s sternum was a clear violation of the student conduct code). Ultimately I responded with a withering look that said in no uncertain terms - “what do you mean by ‘we’ kimosabe?”

A little background on the source of the offending quote above. It was from a study called How Whites Explain Black and Hispanic Inequality by Steven J. McDonald, which is full of wonderfully specious conclusions about the racial attitudes of conservatives. Unfortunately it’s not accessible online without a POQ subscription (so you're going to have to take my word for it).

The study cited by McDonald as the source of the argument that the neoconservative movement is explicitly antiblack is based on the racial theories of Michael Omi and Howard Winant. I can’t find the exact article cited (from 1994), but I suspect it has something to do with their 1989 book “Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s. If you’d like to read more about it, here’s a link to a summary. But for those who dare, be warned, you’re about to be confronted with sentences like this:

Once we understand that race overflows the boundaries of skin color, superexploitation, social stratification, discrimination and prejudice, cultural domination and cultural resistance, state policy (or of any other particular social relationship we list), once we recognize the racial dimension present to some degree in every identity, institution and social practice in the United States -- once we have done this, it becomes possible to speak of racial formation.

The effort must be made to understand race as an unstable and "decentered" complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle.

Yes, that sounds about right.

I’m quite sure it is an effort to come to this understanding. In fact, I’m sure it’s an effort to just get through the entirety of their manifesto without losing consciousness, as I’m sure the poor students of these professors can attest. But, for the connoisseurs of postmodern academic tongue twisters (and I know you’re out there Brad Jones), have at it.

For those of us who prefer to read less tortuous sentence-smithing, I refer you to Professor Howard Winant’s more personal reporting. His observations from the 2001 Durban Conference on Racism:

The UN World Conference Against Racism was a very American event. About 40% of the delegates accredited to the NGO forum were North American; at Durban, one had the constant experience of running into old movement comrades and friends, as well as seeing a new and younger generation of US activists coming together.

The WCAR was American in another way, too: It was anti-American. Just as the first two WCARs (1978 and 1983) were focused on anathematizing and ending the South African apartheid regime, the 2001 Durban conference sought to challenge the US empire, the hegemonic position the US occupies in a post-colonial, post-Cold War, post-apartheid, and post-civil rights world.

....Bush was a creature of the Republican right, a Southern president (in the US sense of the word), a usurper who owed his office in large part to anti-black voting rights fraud. He sought by attacking the conference to shore up his key lower-strata "socially conservative" constituencies; he had already assured the loyalty of the corporate fat cats by enacting massive regressive income and wealth redistribution.

...we confront a very disturbing political situation: the near-paralysis of opposition politics. The movements that seemed renascent before 9/11 -- notably the anti-globalization, anti-WTO movement and the resurgent anti-racist movement represented by Durban, by reparations initiatives, by resistance to racial profiling, and by critiques of the prison-industrial complex -- have now been put on hold. Though not completely stymied, they have been set back considerably. Denying this is whistling in the dark.

Not a very cheery picture. Not for the Professor and his dreams of an effective world-wide anti-American movement. Or for the parents paying thousands in tuition for the opportunity to have their kids radicalized under his guidance at UC-Santa Barbara.

But on the bright side, barring a Howard Dean victory in 2004, I don’t expect Professor Winant to be exclaiming “we won” any time soon.