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Black Conservative Intellectuals in Modern America Michael L. Ondaatje

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Black Conservative Intellectuals in Modern America Michael L. Ondaatje NEITHER COUNTERFEIT HEROES NOR COLOUR-BLIND VISIONARIES: BLACK CONSERVATIVE INTELLECTUALS IN MODERN AMERICA MICHAEL L. ONDAATJE This thesis is presented for a doctorate of philosophy in the discipline of History, School of Humanities, University of Western Australia. 2007 CONTENTS Abstract...............................................................................................................................i Acknowledgements............................................................................................................ii Introduction........................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Historiography of Contemporary Black Conservatism............................10 Chapter 2: Contemporary Black Conservative Profiles..............................................38 Chapter 3: Black Conservatives and Affirmative Action.............................................83 Chapter 4: Black Conservatives and Black Poverty...................................................138 Chapter 5: Black Conservatives and Education ........................................................184 Conclusion......................................................................................................................225 Bibliography...................................................................................................................228 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS No person is an island. Our debts to others stretch far back into the mists of time. And so it is not surprising that I have accumulated numerous debts at the University of Western Australia, where I have been a student for the past 11 years. In the History Discipline Group, I would like to thank Ernie Jones, Philippa Maddern, Sarah Brown and, especially Richard Bosworth and Rob Stuart, for their support and friendship over the years. In writing a thesis, one inevitably confronts personal ‘crises’ and seeks the counsel of friends. I would like to acknowledge my very best friends – Jeremy Martens, Simon Thackrah and Dave Edelman – for the interest they showed in my research from the beginning and for the encouragement they gave me (as I sometimes struggled) along the way. No three people better know the extent of these struggles and no three people have offered me greater encouragement than my mum, Vicki Vanden Driesen; my stepdad Jan Vanden Driesen; and my girlfriend Shannon Thompson. No words can adequately convey how important their love and support was to the eventual completion of this thesis. I am a lucky boy indeed to have such fine people in my corner and in my life. This acknowledgments page would be glaringly incomplete, however, without recognition of Tony Barker. For over ten years now, Tony has been a teacher and mentor to me. He has taught and thought in ways that I aspire to match and from which I have tried to learn. He has given me generosity, both intellectual and emotional. He, more than anyone else, has made my university experience a source of great joy and pleasure. Always encouraging, supportive and available for discussion, Tony’s supervision of this project was absolutely outstanding. He read the thesis numerous times (including a final proof-reading), offering helpful ideas and suggestions. All mistakes are, nonetheless, my own. Finally, I would like to dedicate this thesis to three towering figures in my life, all of whom passed away, unexpectedly and tragically, in the final 18 months of writing. To ‘Aunty’ (Nerissa de Niese), ‘Pa’ (Vivian Blazé) and especially ‘Nanna’ (Charmaine ii Blazé): ‘I got there.’ Your contributions to the subtlety, range and happiness of my life are infinite. iii ABSTRACT This thesis focuses on the rise to prominence, during the 1980s and 1990s, of a coterie of African American intellectuals associated with the powerful networks and institutions of the New Right. It situates the relatively marginalised phenomenon of contemporary black conservatism within its historical context; explores the nature and significance of the racial discourse it has generated; and probes the intellectual character of the individuals whose contributions to this strand of black thought have stood out over the past three decades. Engaging the writings of the major black conservative figures and the literature of their supporters and critics, I then evaluate their ideas in relation to the key debates concerning race and class in American life – debates that have centred, for the most part, on the vexed issues of affirmative action, poverty and public education. In illuminating this complex, still largely misunderstood phenomenon, this thesis reveals the black conservatives as more than a group but as individuals with their own distinctive arguments. INTRODUCTION Being a black conservative is perhaps not considered as bizarre as being a transvestite, but it is certainly considered more strange than being a vegetarian or a bird watcher.1 So, in 1980, wrote Thomas Sowell, free-market economist and unofficial godfather of the ‘black right,’ delivering a stinging rebuke to the liberal critics of modern black conservatism. Although amusing, Sowell’s penchant for sarcasm in this instance masks an interesting point. When one considers the extent to which American conservatism has historically been conditioned by racist notions of black inferiority, the existence of powerful conservative black spokespeople is indeed quite astonishing. Putting to one side Sowell’s playful allusions to transvestites, vegetarians and bird watchers, the obvious question becomes: ‘what does it mean to be both ‘black’ and ‘conservative’ in America?’ The inevitable corollary to that question is another – ‘what do black conservatives actually want to conserve?’ These questions were most famously posed by the Russian anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin on his visit to the United States nearly a century ago.2 While Kropotkin accepted that there was such a thing as an American black conservative – Booker Taliaferro Washington was widely acknowledged as the pre-eminent black leader of the day – he mocked the idea that their commitment to conservatism could in any way be genuine. A conservative, Kropotkin explained at the time, is someone who is satisfied with existing conditions and advocates their continuance. In the early 20th century, no ‘thoughtful’ African American could be satisfied with segregation and no ‘thoughtful’ African American would advocate the continuation of second-class citizenship and the social, economic and cultural humiliation that invariably accompanied it.3 By Kropotkin’s definition, then, a ‘black conservative’ was a contradiction in terms, a freak of nature; those who claimed the mantra for themselves were opportunists, and complicit in the oppression of their own people. 1 T. Sowell, quoted in H. Allen, ‘Hot Disputes and Cool Sowell’, Washington Post, 1 October 1981, p. C1. 2 K. Miller, Radicals and Conservatives and Other Essays on the Negro in America, New York, 1968, p. 25. 3 Ibid., p. 25. 1 Fast forward one hundred years and the question of whether it is possible for American blacks to be genuinely conservative seems ‘old hat,’ even irrelevant. Black conservatism is now firmly planted on the nation’s cultural landscape. Most interpreters of the African American experience acknowledge it as a ‘phenomenon’ or ‘movement’ of some strength, even as their judgements about its deeper significance continue to vary. Put simply, observers no longer have the luxury of pondering whether or not black conservatives should exist. The reality is that they do. Who, then, are these black conservatives? What do they stand for? And when and why did they emerge? Today’s black conservatives are ideologically at home on the right wing of the Republican Party, offering radically different assessments of American institutions and race relations to those of modern civil rights leaders. Although Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is at present arguably the best known ‘black conservative’ in the United States, the black conservative phenomenon has typically been associated with a cluster of ‘intellectuals’ who, beginning in the early 1980s, carved out its ideological parameters and established its political trajectory. Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institution and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas may have been the most prominent of these intellectuals during the past quarter century. But significant contributions to racial discourse were also made in this time by economists Walter Williams and Glenn Loury; cultural theorists Shelby Steele, Anne Wortham and John McWhorter; and social activists Robert Woodson and Jay Parker. While these black conservatives’ ‘existence’ has continued to stir emotions and provoke polemical debate, serious scholarly studies of their social and political thought remain elusive. By focusing on these intellectuals’ ideas and assessing them alongside mainstream scholarship, this thesis seeks to fill an important void in the literature on a most intriguing impulse within the contemporary American political culture. Nobody can possibly dispute the fact that the black conservatives have had a significant impact on this ‘culture.’ Indeed, for much of the 1980s and 1990s, these intellectuals were ensconced at the heart of the national dialogue on ‘race’, tapping into the enduring American philosophies of individualism and free enterprise, seeking to overturn the corrective political initiatives secured by the great civil rights movement. Insisting that their differences were not
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