To the Editor:
Glenn C. Loury’s article on the “discovery” of self-help by some black elected officials and leaders of civil-rights organizations [“Who Speaks for American Blacks?,” January] presents a competent survey of vexations long suffered by those of us who have differed from the line laid down by the civil-rights establishment.
Mr. Loury accurately describes the deterioration of rhetoric from Martin Luther King’s earlier speeches to those of various activists today. Hence I find it curious that in recounting Dr. King’s early views of “the American dream,” Mr. Loury does not note that the American dream Dr. King was referring to was the Declaration of Independence. It is vitally important that, in this year when we are celebrating the bicentennial of the Constitution, all Americans reflect on the relationship of the Constitution and the Declaration to contemporary political issues, not least of all to civil rights.
It is easy to lose sight of this relationship, for the civil-rights establishment has encouraged black Americans to act and to be perceived as another interest group. When self-proclaimed black leaders reduce differences with their political, social, and economic agenda to an attack on fundamental rights they trivialize the very rights they claim to be defending. This irresponsible practice is dangerous, for it puts up for barter fundamental rights, rights that belong to all regardless of race.
To begin with a clean slate, and banish the dangerous consequences racial politics poses for all Americans, we need a sober reexamination of our fundamental documents. Having come so far in eliminating legal discrimination, we cannot fall into the trap of thinking that the equality of the Declaration of Independence, its “laws of nature and of nature’s God,” are mere sloganeering, a cloak for the crass self-interest of any race. A nation that is not based on race, that takes its bearings by standards that transcend race and apply to all humanity, is what our fundamental ideals demand.
Martin Luther King will always remain a controversial figure. But men and women of all parties should appreciate his great achievement of challenging Americans to live up to the higher law of America. In this year of the bicentennial it would be the greatest misfortune for the successors of the civil-rights movement not to draw on the strongest resource, the Constitution and the higher law inspiring it.
Clarence Thomas
Chairman
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Washington, D.C.
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To the Editor:
As a civil-rights lawyer for the American Jewish Committee who has filed many legal briefs in the past twenty years in support of the rights of black Americans, I have some mixed reactions to Glenn C. Loury’s article, “Who Speaks for American Blacks?” There is so much in the article that has the ring of truth, it is a pity that Mr. Loury leaves himself vulnerable to criticism in some of his other statements.
On the positive side, Mr. Loury is on solid ground when he urges that “young men who father children and then walk away from their responsibility to support them” and “those who carry on the drug trade in the ghettos, or who violently assault and brutalize their black neighbors” be viewed not as victims but rather as “the creators of victims.” In other words, he is saying, blacks (and whites, too) should stop excusing the malefactors and stop giving them permission, in effect, to continue to engage in atrocious behavior. Good.
Mr. Loury is also very much on target when he says that “some social tasks are better undertaken through the ‘mediating structures’ of private, voluntary associations” to “mobilize the coercive resources available within the black community itself to enforce behavioral norms” in dealing with crime, teen-age pregnancy, and staggering school-dropout rates. The TV show 60 Minutes recently did a segment on the board of directors of a black housing project in St. Louis which sends a clear message to all tenants: if you or a member of your family cause trouble for other tenants, you will be evicted. It seems to be working.
Police brutality, which blacks have experienced all too often, of course, is a terrible thing and must never be tolerated or excused. Some years ago, however, a leader of the Harlem branch of the NAACP remarked that the brutality that most black people in Harlem suffer so frequently is no longer that of the white racist cop (though it used to be), but rather that of the black criminal. The tragic reality is that the leading cause of death among young black men today is homicide, almost entirely at the hands of other young black men; only a tiny fraction of these deaths is in any way attributable to police brutality. In substance, this is what Mr. Loury is saying, and he is absolutely right about it.
But Mr. Loury also makes some other points which are, at best, problematical. He condemns “those who would ‘lead’ their people to permanent dependency on handouts from others.” Of course. But does that accurately reflect the agenda of most mainstream black leaders? Not in my experience. The National Urban League, for one example, traditionally has concentrated not on “handouts” but on the real needs of black people for job counseling, training, and placement. And Jesse Jackson, gravely flawed though he may be in other respects, to his credit for many years has been admonishing black youngsters to apply themselves to mastering their studies with the same diligence with which they apply themselves to mastering their skills at basketball. Jackson has said to them things like “the doors of opportunity are opening up, but what good is it if you are too drunk or too drugged to walk on through?”
Mr. Loury notes also, in connection with the observance of Martin Luther King Day, that President Reagan “had opposed civil-rights legislation in the early 1960’s.” He is referring, of course, to the fact that Reagan came out against enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, because he had serious doubts about their constitutionality. Moreover, Reagan had said at the time that he did not wish to “humiliate the South”—the white South, that is. Mr. Loury goes on to say that “Reagan cannot change the positions he took in 1964.” Obviously Reagan could not and cannot turn the clock back. But he certainly could have altered his stance in recent years, had he chosen to do so. What is so dismaying to many people is that, on the whole, he has not chosen to do so.
Under President Reagan, the Department of Justice, in case after case, has sought to limit the reach of the civil-rights laws, as well as of its own civil-rights enforcement authority. For a graphic illustration, in the case of Thornburg v. Gingles in 1985, which involved a challenge by blacks (under the amended Voting Rights Act) to an allegedly discriminatory legislative-redistricting plan in North Carolina, the Department of Justice backed the state’s narrow interpretation of the law. In a most extraordinary development, several key Republicans (including Senator Robert Dole) joined the Republican National Committee in actually filing a brief in the Supreme Court opposing the administration’s position in this case. The final ruling by the Supreme Court decisively rebuffed both the state and the Department of Justice.
As Mr. Loury must be aware, it is no mere accident of history that nearly nine out of ten blacks have voted against President Reagan, as well as against those candidates who supported him. In fact, in the midterm elections this past November, blacks were the “swing” vote in a number of close U.S. senatorial races where Democrats won, thereby gaining control of the Senate.
“Who speaks for American blacks?” They speak for themselves, loudly and clearly, every time they cast their ballots. Another question is: who has been listening?
Samuel Rabinove
Legal Director
American Jewish Committee
New York City
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To the Editor:
Glenn C. Loury writes that if William Lucas had been elected Governor of Michigan, “he would have been the first black governor since Reconstruction.” This is an error: no black has ever been governor of any state. As evidence, let me cite Carl N. Degler’s Out of Our Past: “Negroes, of course, did hold some offices under Reconstruction; in fact, outside of the position of governor, which no Negro held in any state, black men filled each executive office at one time or another.”
Sam Reyburn
Bronx, New York
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Glenn C. Loury writes:
Samuel Rabinove agrees with me that it is time to stop making excuses for things—that one can and should publicly distinguish between good and bad behavior on the part of people living in ghettos, commending the good and condemning the bad. He appreciates that the mediating structures of private, voluntary organizations are better suited than government to deal with severe behavioral problems. He also acknowledges that the quality of life of poor blacks is more threatened by the violent behavior of a few of their neighbors than by the “brutality” of law-enforcement personnel. Yet he finds “problematical” my assertion that politically liberal black leaders have led their people to depend on transfers from the larger society, and believes that the nine-to-one electoral rejection of Ronald Reagan by blacks in 1984 provides a sufficient expression of their political views.
In making this argument, Mr. Rabinove has missed the principal point of my article, which is that there are ideological implications, with political content, to the embrace of self-help strategies by blacks, content which many liberals would rather ignore even as they very belatedly take up some of the themes suggested by the personal-responsibility, self-help outlook. Advocating self-help means that one believes there is reasonably fair opportunity for achievement by members of all races in this society, that one thinks persons should be held accountable for their actions, especially those which are harmful to others, and that one regards the private voluntary sector as better suited than government to the doing of much which will have to be undertaken if stricken communities and devastated lives are to be reconstructed. These are not exactly the principles guiding political advocacy on behalf of blacks today.
I am an admirer of the leadership of John Jacob at the National Urban League. His organization, which has always been at the “conservative” end of the spectrum of civil-rights groups, is in the forefront of what I hope will become a vital movement among blacks. Yet I am also a close reader of the pronouncements and legislative proposals of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus. The League’s activities, while welcome, can hardly be taken as representative of the posture of today’s black leadership. And that posture, I continue to assert, places primary emphasis on the responsibility of “white America” to “do right” by its black folk. The notion of blacks as America’s preeminent victims, as persons presumptively damaged by a racist America and in need of the sympathetic attention of their fellow citizens, remains very much intact. Mr. Rabinove need only read some of the recent speeches by Benjamin Hooks of the NAACP, or note the activities of Hosea Williams in the wake of the Forsythe County affair, to see what I mean. I have also observed Jesse Jackson’s exhortations to youngsters to clean up their lives; I warmly applaud his undertakings in this direction. But I have noticed as well that he spends the other 99 percent of his time engaging in a rather different form of exhortation—one with an underlying ideological perspective far removed from that proffered in my article.
No, Ronald Reagan is not popular among blacks. Yet the black vote count for the President, or for other Republican candidates, hardly exhausts what is interesting and important about the political life of the group. And yes, there are many who believe that the civil-rights policies of this Justice Department have been injurious to black interests. One of the things which those who would “speak for blacks” must communicate is the concern of the group that civil-rights enforcement be vigorous and effective. Clarence Thomas, a black, appointed and reappointed by President Reagan as chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, surely shares this concern. Nevertheless, as his letter reveals, he has problems with the ideological posture of many in the civil-rights establishment. One finds him talking of the deep meaning of our republic’s fundamental documents, and of our common stake in preserving that meaning—an American interest which transcends the narrower “special interest” of any particular group. With this sentiment I heartily agree, as readers of my recent article, “Matters of Color—Blacks and the Constitutional Order” (Public Interest, Winter 1987), will discover.
For such a sentiment to become more commonplace in the public pronouncements of black leaders, there will have to be some overt political competition for group leadership. It was precisely such competition in which William Lucas was engaged in the gubernatorial campaign in Michigan last year. (Thanks, by the way, to Sam Reyburn for his historical correction.) I would like to think that this quietly competent black public administrator—formerly an FBI agent and sheriff of Wayne County—was one voice “speaking for blacks” when he sought the highest office in his state. As for those frightened black liberals who, when faced with his moderate challenge, accused him of abetting the “genocide” of his own people and called him an “Uncle Tom”—it seems clear that they were speaking for themselves.
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