Volume 17.1 National Political Science Review
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THE NATIONAL POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW EDITORS Michael Mitchell Arizona State University David Covin California State University-Sacramento BOOK REVIEW EDITOR Tiffany Willoughby-Herard University of California, Irvine EDITORIAL BOARD Georgia Persons K.C. Morrison Todd Shaw Georgia Institute of Mississippi State University University of South Carolina Technology Robert Smith Melissa Nobles Duchess Harris San Francisco State University Massachusetts Institute Macalester University of Technology Cheryl M. Miller Lorenzo Morris University of Maryland- Lisa Aubrey Howard University Baltimore County Arizona State University Copyright © 2016 by Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, elec- tronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Transaction Publishers, 10 Corporate Place South, Suite 102, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854. www.transactionpub.com This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2015024652 ISBN: 978-1-4128-6240-0 eBook: 978-1-4128-6195-3 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Mitchell, Michael, 1944- | Covin, David, 1940- Title: Broadening the contours in the study of Black politics. Political development and Black women / Michael Mitchell and David Covin, editors. Other titles: Political development and Black women Description: New Brunswick, New Jersey : Transaction Publishers, 2015. | Volume 17:1 of National political science review. | Includes bibliographical references. Identifers: LCCN 2015024652 | ISBN 9781412862400 (acid-free paper) Subjects: LCSH: African American women--Political activity. | African American women politicians. | Women political scientists--United States. | Political development. | African American women--Social conditions. | United States--Race relations--Political aspects. | African Americans--Politics and government. | United States--Politics and government-- 1989- | Books--Reviews. Classifcation: LCC E185.86.B6958 2015 | DDC 305.48/896073--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015024652 Contents Editors’ Note vii Research Articles: Political Development 1 Innovation, Inevitability, and Credibility: Tracking the 3 Origins of Black Civil Rights Issues Matthew B. Platt Racialized Political Anger: Affective Reactions 17 to Barack Obama and Federal Government David C. Wilson Disasters, Public Policy, and Urban Black Communities: Urban 37 Planning and Recovery during Hurricanes Andrew and Katrina David McBride Symposium: Association for the Study of Black Women in Politics 57 Introduction: Nobody Can Tell It All: Symposium on 59 How Researching Black Women in Politics Changes Political Science: Methodologies, Epistemologies, and Publishing Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd and Tiffany Willoughby-Herard Radical Black Feminism and the Fight for Social and 63 Epistemic Justice Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd The Secret Eye: Black Women in Politics and Publishing 75 Tiffany Willoughby-Herard Yearning: Black Female Academics, Everyday Black 83 Women/Girls, and the Search for a Social Justice Praxis Brittany Lewis Black Feminist Prison Politics 89 Duchess Harris Praxis: Social Science Expert Testimony and the Voting Rights Act 95 Social Science Expert Witness Testimony in Voting Rights Cases 97 Richard L. Engstrom, Daniel McCool, Jorge Chapa, and Gerald R. Webster Book Reviews 121 Christina Heatherton, ed., Downtown Blues: A Skid Row Reader and 123 Christina Heatherton and Jordan Camp, eds., Freedom Now! Struggles for the Human Right to Housing in L.A. and Beyond, reviewed by Mark Schuller Nadia Brown, Sisters in the Statehouse: Black Women 126 and Legislative Decision Making, reviewed by Evelyn Simien Preston H. Smith II, Racial Democracy and the 129 Black Metropolis: Housing Policy in Postwar Chicago, reviewed by Teri Platt Vincent W. Lloyd, ed., Race and Political Theology, 131 reviewed by David E. Dixon Robert Holmes, Maynard Jackson: A Biography, 133 reviewed by Andra Gillespie Grace Kyungwon Hong and Roderick A. Ferguson, eds., 135 Strange Affnities: The Gender and Sexual Politics of Comparative Racialization and Ernesto Javier Martínez, On Making Sense: Queer Race Narratives of Intelligibility, reviewed by Yu-Fang Cho Editors’ Note The content of volume 17 of The National Political Science Review (NPSR) refects the sweep of research questions, themes, and patterns of power relations that underpin the study of Black politics. Contributions examine the legislative trajectory of anti-lynching proposals in the United States Congress prior to the better-known civil rights legislative record of the 1960s and public opinion regarding President Barack Obama’s domestic policies, particularly with respect to the element of racial resentment in the adoption or rejection of Obama’s policies. Another contribution in the area of public opinion exam- ines the link between spirituality and inducement to political action. These contributions appear in our research articles section alongside close textual examinations of popular culture and theories of state and citizen. Volume 17 continues to build on the contributions carried in the previous NPSR special issue on Black women in politics. In its Symposium section, the current volume provides an exchange among leading Black feminist scholars, which focuses on the timely and vital question of the obstacles that Black women face in publishing work centered on the concept of intersectionality. This conversation mindfully takes note of the ways in which these obstacles can be overcome. A long tradition in political science involves the systematic accumulation and trans- mission of practical advice regarding the ways the state can achieve its ends. The study of Black politics is no less aware of efforts to offer genuine and timely recommendations and supporting evidence regarding the ways that political institutions and their leaders might accomplish particular goals. This volume provides a discussion of political praxis with an extended article on strategies which expert witnesses might employ in their tes- timony in favor of the implementation of the Voting Rights Act (even in its post-Shelby v. Holder reiteration). The broad sweep of the theoretical terrain covered in volume 17 also speaks to meth- odological pluralism that is a vital part of the study of Black politics. Research in this area is enriched by the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods, as well as methods specifc and appropriate methods for a selected focus of study. The volume includes a lively book review section. One of its features is a critical focus of the much-discussed work of Aenzele Isoke entitled Urban Black Women and the Politics of Resistance. The Book Review Forum in this issue, which carries an exchange on this work, lends credence to the supposition that young scholars can make deep and infuential impacts on a scholarly community. The Editors wish to extend special recognition to Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, the NPSR’s Book Review Editor. She has devoted an extraordinary amount of time and thoughtfulness to assembling the current volume. Our special thanks go out to her. vii Research Articles: Political Development Innovation, Inevitability, and Credibility: Tracking the Origins of Black Civil Rights Issues Matthew B. Platt* Morehouse College Black issues are often cast as the somewhat inevitable products of American political development (Klinkner and Smith 1999; King and Smith 2005). Such a conception of Black issues fails to consider the origins of Black policy ideas and ignores the purposive efforts of political entrepreneurs. In this article, I seek to pierce the aura of inevitabil- ity by asking: what accounts for shifts in the issue content of the congressional Black agenda? I answer the question by using Proquest’s Historical Black Newspaper database to place Black civil rights issues within their proper historical contexts. When informed by literatures on social movements and agenda setting, the contexts suggest that the credibility of problem defnitions and policy solutions—in terms of both policymakers’ and citizens’ perspectives—is essential to the introduction of policy innovations onto the agenda (Kingdon 1995; Mintrom 1997; King, Bentele and Soule 2007; Wood and Vedlitz 2007). The remainder of the article proceeds in fve sections: Section 1 provides a brief review of the relevant literature. Section 2 explains the basic data that are used to construct the narrative. Section 3 tells two distinct narratives about lynching and poll taxes. Section 4 synthesizes insights based on both cases. Finally, Section 5 concludes with a discussion of how the case of Black civil rights issues in Congress is helpful to a larger understanding about the role of credibility in policy innovation and policy changes over time. 1. The Argument The central concept of agenda setting is that items reach the agenda because political actors are able to defne problems such that they introduce new participants into the political fray, thus disrupting established gatekeepers’ control (Cobb and Elder 1972; Schattschneider 1975; Cobb, Ross, and Ross 1976; Baumgartner and Jones 1993; Kingdon 1995;