THE END OF RACE AS WE KNO\V IT: SLAVERY, SEGREGATION, AND THE AFRICAN AMERICAN QUEST FOR REDRESS By Paul Anthony Dottin A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida December 2002 Copyright by Paul Anthony Dottin 2002 11 Tiffi END OF RACE AS WE KNOW IT: SLAVERY, SEGREGATION, AND THE AFRICAN AMERICAN QUEST FOR REDRESS by Paul Anthony Dottin This dissertation was p1epared under the direction ofthe candidate's dissertation advisor, Dr. Stanford M. Lyman, Robert J. Morrow Eminent Scholar and Professor of Social Science, and has been approved by the members of his supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ,,,,~,....... Date lll ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank Dr. Stanford M. Lyman, chair of my doctoral committee, for his inspired stewardship of this study. His exceptional erudition, intellectual openness, exemplary mentorship, and enthusiastic :friendship helped tum my dream into a dissertation. I thank fellow doctoral committee members Dr. Nannetta Durnell-Uwechuwe and Dr. Stephen D. Engle for their respective expertise in the areas of communications and history. Their emphasis on both disciplinary rigor and interdisciplinary innovation helped forge the unique insights of this dissertation. I thank the Florida Atlantic University Foundation for their generous research assistantship. This funding enabled me to concentrate fully on my research. I thank Dawn M. Smith, Associate Librarian and Head of Reference and Government Documents, and Steven C. Matthew, Audio-Visual Specialist and Head of the Media Center at Florida Atlantic University for the professional dedication and unending patience they gave me in support of my undergraduate teaching and doctoral research. I also wish to thank Phyllis Bischof, Librarian of African and African American Collections at U. C. Berkeley for providing my initial grasp of the field of comparative slavery. I thank my late grandfather, Mitchell Livingstone Thorpe, for his moral rectitude and emphasis on excellence. He taught me the power of a principled mind. IV I thank my mother, Maurelle Dottin, for her compassion and emphasis of education. She taught me the value of knowledge and showed me how to share it. I thank her for teaching me how to read before entering school and beginning my life­ long love affair with learning with a set of encyclopedia I thank my father, Claude Dottin, for his charisma. He showed me the power of passion and taught me to express my opinions powerfully and persuasively. I thank my wife, Cardum Stacey Dottin, for her endless endurance. She taught me that capacity equals commitment every long day I labored on this study. Truly she is the most spiritually enlightened and enabling person I know. I thank my brother, Charles Dottin, for his entrepreneurial spirit. He taught me that initiative achieves the incredible. I thank my brother, Michael Dottin, for his mass media insights and advice. He taught me grace under the glare of studio lights. I thank my uncle, Dr. Trevor Anthony Thorpe, for his intellectual example. He is the earliest embodiment of science I knew. I thank my brother-in-law, Ya-Sin Norrise, for always lending me logistical support when I was so far away from home. I thank Ms. Stefanie Gapinski, Coordinator of Public Functions of the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters at Florida Atlantic University, for her warm-hearted friendship. Her philanthropic work and selfless support of the students of the Public Intellectuals Program is limitless and legendary. I am a better person having witnessed and benefited from her quiet quest to make the world a better place to live. v I thank Mrs. Shelley Anisman, Executive Secretary of the Dean's Office, for being a quintessential lady. Her voice was the first great impression I had of Florida Atlantic University. I thank Paul Mocombe, a brilliant doctoral student in the Public Intellectuals Program, and for his steadfast fellowship and brotherhood. I like to thank fellow graduate students Holly Larson, Natalia Giannini, Caren Neile and Lynn Bentley-Kemp for every kindness they showed me. They are the huge humble hearts of the Program. Finally, I thank Tracy Hayes, Kurt Carrington, Eric Escobar, Julio Cavero and Ronald Antonin for being such good friends to their most preoccupied buddy. I promise to be a better one in the future. VI ABSTRACT Author: Paul Anthony Dottin Title: The End of Race As We Know It: Slavery, Segregation, and The African American Quest For Redress Institution: Florida Atlantic University Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Stanford M. Lyman Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Year: 2002 This is a study of one of the most controversial public matters concerning race in America today: the African American reparations movement for slavery and segregation. This issue is hotly contested because racial identity and the relative status and well-being of ethnic groups in America, a configuration I refer to as "race as we know it," is inextricably linked to matters of prejudice, pride, property, and public policy both presently and historically. Any substantial shift in the relative position of blacks and whites, America's most iconically opposed groups, promises to alter fundamental dynamics between these two populations, effectively ending "race as we know it," if not racism and racial hierarchy per se. Randall Robinson, author of The Debt, the most important work advocating reparations for African Americans, sees reparations as the means by which to break the historical "habit" of American society of locking most blacks and whites into positions of inferiority and superiority respectively. David Horowitz, author of VII 'U_ncivil Wars, the most famous refutation of Robinson's argument, sees reparations as an all-out attack on America's "heritage" of racial progress because it threatens today's allegedly "color-blind consensus" with "reverse-racism." So put, these opposed positions express the fundamental fears of many whites and the highest hopes of many blacks. Hence, the conflict over reparations, a struggle over the economics and ethics of equality, is simultaneously and inseparably no less a struggle over the future of race in America. With the societal stake so high, the present study constitutes a much-needed critical scholarly attempt to "save" this public matter from the ideological excesses of these powerfully opposed manifestos. This study will analyze their respective arguments by using a multidisciplinary and comparative framework employing data, concepts, and theories from the disciplines of anthropology, economics, cultural studies, history, political science, and sociology. Its comparative orientation juxtaposes different forms of human bondage, class composition, racial identity and community formation, and political movements. A critical analysis of primary and secondary sources using qualitative and quantitative methods will also be employed. Vlll CONTENTS Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION.. 1 2. RACE AS WE KNOW IT IN BLACK AND WHITE . 7 The New Nadir The Limits and Limiting ofAffirmative Action The Institutional Incorporation ofBlack Politics Black Reparations as an Emergent Formation Early £mergences ofBlack Reparations .Modern £mergences ofBlack Reparations Randall Robinson and the Politics ofReparations 3. THE HYDRA OF HOROWITZI~""J HISTORY: THE MOBILIZATION OF SCHOLARSHIP AGAINST BLACK REPARATIONS........................................... 46 First Head: African Enslavement ofAfricans Second Head: Arab Enslavement ofBlack Africans Third Head: White Abolitionism Fourth Head: White Slavery Fifth Head: Non-Slave Owning Whites Sixth Head: Free Blacks Seventh Head: Black Slave Owners Eighth Head: Slavery's Class Legacy 4. RANDALL ROBINSON AND THE END OF RACE AS WE KNOW IT. 135 Social Movement Frame Analysis Micromobilization and The Debt 5. CONCLUSION . 148 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY................................ 150 lX To my wife, Cardurn, and my mother, Maurelle INTRODUCTION Now one of the chief errors of thought is to continue to think in one set of forms categories, ideas, etc., when the object, the content, has moved on, has created or laid premises for an extension, a development of thought. C. L. R. James, Notes on Dialectics This is a study of one of the most controversial public matters concerning race in America today: the African American reparations movement for slavery and segregation. This issue is hotly contested because racial identity and the relative status and well-being of ethno-racial groups in America, a configuration I refer to as "race as we know it," is inextricably linked to matters of prejudice, pride, property, and public policy both presently and historically. Any substantial shift in the relative group position of blacks and whites promises to alter the internal dynamics and external relations between these two populations, effectively ending "race as we know it," if not racism and racial hierarchy per se. In addition to the economic redress aspect of the movement, black reparationism is simultaneously what sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant would refer to as a racial reformation project that, if successful, could drastically, if not completely, change the historico-economic foundations of"race as we know it." Omi and Winant's theory