While working on this book I remembered a conversation I had with a white female friend of mine, who identifies as conservative in her political and social beliefs. My friend expressed befuddlement on why there was not more excitement from African Americans toward retired neurosurgeon Benjamin Carsonâs attempt to capture the Republican nomination. Carson after all represented everything that African Americans hold dear: he held a strong belief in God and family, recognized and promoted the importance in education, and rising up from very humble beginnings and overcoming such constraints like poverty and racism to become the pre-eminent neurosurgeon in the world. Plus, according to my friend, white conservatives like her found his life story inspiring and admirable because Carsonâs life narrative was one that Americans of all colors could look up to. As my friend pointed out, the interest and popularity Carson had with white conservatives like her not only illustrated their ability to embrace people of color but also show that one can be color blind. âWhen I listen to Dr. Carson speak I donât see race or that heâs a black man, I see an American who exemplifies what America is all about.â What my friend did not understand was while African Americans have looked up to Carson for the way he has lived his life and being the best in a field African Americans are not normally associated with, thus helping to dispel the pernicious stereotypes about the alleged intellectual and cultural inferiority of blacks, the various positions Carson has taken on issues, particularly those pertaining to race, often makes some African Americans feel that Carson does not speak to, or acknowledge, the realities they have faced. Carsonâs biting criticism of President Obama, the racial protests on Americaâs college campuses, or the Black Lives Matter movement gives the impression to some African Americans that he is really speaking to white conservatives who find him appealing. Because of this the times Carson has taken his conservative peers to task for not addressing the issue of racism does not register as strongly with African Americans as it could or should (Chattanoga 2015). This is illustrative of the challenge African American conservatives face in attempting to make headway and cultivate significant support among their black peers. Because the positions and opinions African American conservatives hold puts them in line with a movement that is looked at by many African Americans with suspicion, a number of African Americans are leery about African American conservativesâ claim they speak in the best interests of their community. On the other hand African American conservatives have to be mindful of not being positioned as the âtokenâ conservative of color, by their white peers, who functions as a shield against criticisms from the left of racism, or as a âracial mascotâ as argued by legal scholar Sumo Cho (1998) thus falling prey to the accusations by some African Americans of âuncle Tomming for the white man.â
Racism has always been a thorn in the side of American conservatism, much of it due to the various oppositional stances that conservatives have historically taken on such issues as abolishing slavery, school and societal racial integration, and the Civil Rights movement. As conservative journalist Matt Lewis states, âI think itâs fair to say that we on the center-right have been defending ourselves and our movement against charges of racism for so long that weâve forgotten that, well, our side has some racistsâ (Lewis 2015).
The conflict among conservatives over the popularity of Donald Trumpâs nativism, the open support Trump received from white supremacists, and the debate among conservatives around issues like the legitimacy of the confederate flag and race and police brutality, are all instances of what I term âthe inescapability of race.â By this I refer to the continuing presence, power, and influence of race in highly racialized societies like the United States. Because race thoroughly permeates every social, political, and economic aspect of American life, ideologies such as color blindness cannot adequately address the realities of race. In fact, color blindness obfuscates the various ways in which race operates to create inequalities and an unjust social hierarchy. The main argument of this book is, while the presence of conservatives of color (such as African American) within the conservative movement highlights the increasing acceptance of diversity by conservatives, various conflicts between African American conservatives and their white counterparts also illustrates the tenuousness of this diversity, and the ways that conservatives are prone to the inescapability of race.
African Americans in Conservative Movements sociological concern is not simply African American conservatives themselves; its greater focus is on their relationships to African Americans and conservatives writ large. A half-century ago, an African American would have been shunned and condemned by a significant fraction of the conservative movementâjust as gay and lesbian conservatives are disparaged in many circles today. Today, the conservative movement actively seeks out African Americans and works to give them visibility, a practice culminating in 2009 with the election of the first African American, Michael Steele, to head the Republican Party.
The shift in conservatism that made possible, and perhaps necessary, the rise to prominence of African Americans, was the result of a concerted campaign and ideological process that continues to naturalize and cloak the constructed nature of their inclusion. An intentionality and purposefulness shapes the ways in which African American conservatism has been made to appear as a natural phenomenon, both to white conservatives and to black Americans as a whole. From World War II to the end of the 1960s, most conservatives openly allied with segregationists. The diversification of the Right both signals the political mainstreaming of American conservatism and illustrates the fluidity of conservatism as a movement and ideology. 1
Chapter 2 charts the transformative process by which American conservatism, in the mid-twentieth century, shed its overtly racialist skin to create a conservatism that would be more palatable for mainstream political consumption and help facilitate the diversification of the movement. This new conservatism, in a sharp break with the past, both embraced the notion of color blindness and used it in a racially coded discourse, or âdog whistleâ political discourse, a term coined by legal scholar Ian Haney Lopez (2014), 2 to frame a new more populist, movement.
In this context, color blindness refers to the philosophy, articulated by many conservatives, wherein the guiding principle of human relations is to evaluate a personâs merits based on their individual characteristics (kindness, morals, values, talents, etc.) and not on their space within a racial category. This approach is best captured by the conservative co-optation of Dr. Martin Luther Kingâs famous call that African Americans, ânot be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.â Embedded in the color-blind philosophy is the belief that the best approach to racial inequality is not to strive for equal outcomes; instead, it aims to make equal opportunities available to all. This approach confers the rights of equal treatment and fairness under the law to the individual, and disregards the notion of affording privileges based on racial categories. While the concept carries a veneer of noble intentions, it elides or overlooks the important role of social structures in maintaining and replicating racial inequality.
Chapter 3 continues the historical narrative started in Chapter 2. I provide a brief examination of the concept of color blindness, a concept whose origins go back to the founding of this nation. I pinpoint the seventies as the period that saw the creation of a conservative infrastructure or network of institutionsâin the popular media, the public sphere, think tanks, and the organization of intellectualsâthat brought together very different groups of New Right leaders, neoconservative intellectuals, and ministers of the religious right. This intellectual infrastructure helped to establish the contemporary discourse of color blindness within the right-wing community and, later, throughout the mainstream public. This new conservative movement seeded by the events of the 1950s and finding full bloom in 1980 with Ronald Reaganâs election to the White House, finds itself in crisis today. Chapter 3 concludes by discussing how the movement, both in spite of and because of its vehement opposition to affirmative action and other forms of racial liberalism, actively recruited African American intellectuals, politicians, and ministers in violation of its own color-blind principles. Some of these figures have had a troubled relationship with the movement, as conservatives continue to take positions, engage in actions, and treat individual African Americans in ways that pose challenges for African American conservatives. African American conservatives have also had strained relations with the rest of the African American community, and their relationship to grassroots social movements and black churches, frames much of the discourse of both the chapter and the book as a whole.
The structure of the book shifts, as the focus of the remaining five chapters is not a linear chronological examination of the various areas where black conservatism is articulated and acted upon. Where Chapters 2 and 3 serve to both contextualize and historize the transformation of the movementâs racial conservatism; Chapters 4â8 focuses on black conservatism as a multi-faceted and manifold social and political formation that manifests in various and differing realms, and frequently changes shape according to its context.
Chapter 4 begins with the groups that are most unlike those conservatives cultivated from the top-down by Republican and conservative white elites: Those that organize from the bottom-up in response to the issue of abortion. I argue that a different strand of black conservatism intersects with, and deviates from, the âtraditionalâ black conservatives who are recruited and organized by the broader white conservative movement. One of the significant deviations in the conservative black social movements, such as the black anti-abortion movement, is the abandonment of a color-blind philosophy. I argue in Chapter 4 that race, racism, victimization, and conspiracy are central components that frame the black anti-abortion activist movement. In Chapter 5, I continue my examination of black conservative social movements with an analysis of the anti-gay rights and school choice movements. Like their pro-life counterparts, African American conservative activists in the anti-gay rights and school voucher movements fully embrace the use of race within their discourses and are comfortable in pointing out the racism of their white conservative peers, as illustrated through a profile on Annette âPollyâ Williams, one of the influential founding members of the African American school voucher movement.
Chapter 6 describes the dilemma of black conservative politicians who find themselves positioned as a captured minority within the Republican Party. Their influence rests more in the ideological realm, as operatives who legitimize the notion of color blindness, than as representatives of a black constituency or deliverers of black votes. I detail the racial controversies and Republican Party pushback faced by Michael Steele and Herman Cain to explain the mazes that African American conservatives must navigate to hold their place at the GOP table. I also analyze the role of African Americans in the Tea Party, and explain how black Tea Party members solidify the Tea Party movement as, what scholar Lisa Disch calls, a âwhite citizenship movementâ while also reinforcing in their white counterparts the notion that scholar Laurie Balfour calls âracial innocence.â Chapter 7 explores the parallel struggle of black intellectuals and academics that are often identified as the go-to spokespeople for a broader set of black conservative values. I analyze and challenge the positions of two influential black intellectuals, John McWhorter, Shelby Steele, and an up-and-coming pundit named Kevin Williamson. I also examine the career of prominent former conservative intellectual Glenn Loury and Louryâs conflicts with his white counterparts.
Chapter 8 points to perhaps the most potentially effective form of black conservatism taking shape at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first: An increasingly well-funded black religious right. Under the auspices of such doctrines as the prosperity gospel, black conservative ministers are arguably doing more than any African American politician or movement to promote within the black American population a commonsense support for capitalism, through a discourse that leaves unchallenged and helps maintain ideologies of whiteness in American society. I conclude the book by providing an overview of where African American conservatism stands in the early part of the twenty-first century. This includes probing the strengths and weaknesses of African American conservatism, and its possible avenues for growth.
Because of the inescapability of race, African American conservatives will continually ...