“Movement” is probably too grandiose a word to describe the ranks of those critics of the civil-rights paradigm who are labeled, with varying degrees of accuracy, “black conservatives.” The vast majority of black American voters remain liberal Democrats. But Thomas’s nomination has propelled a once dismissed brand of African-American political thought to new national prominence. “No longer will one group take for granted the entire black community,” says Claudia Butts, deputy director of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s New Majority Project, the think tank’s minority outreach program.
Conservative notions of self-help trace their origins all the way back to Booker T. Washington. In some ways, they even converge with the separatist doctrines of left-wing figures such as Malcolm X, whom Thomas admired as a college student. Says Atlanta attorney Larry Thompson: “I think the core of [Thomas’s] beliefs is we can’t simply preach on and on that all we have to do is get more assistance from the government. It may be a nationalistic argument more than anything else.” Economists Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams and Robert Woodson of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise have long argued for policies such as workfare and tenant ownership of public-housing projects (box) that are designed to end the dependency of the black poor on government. In his provocative book, “The Content of Our Character,” Shelby Steele argued blacks must shed their “victim focused” identity-and that racial preferences in hiring and admissions can undermine black self-confidence.
The increasing visibility of black critics of the liberal agenda is largely due to the growth of the black middle class (itself partly a consequence of affirmative action), which has given significant numbers of blacks a stake in free enterprise. At the same time, the plight of black inner-city dwellers has worsened, creating a sense that government programs haven’t helped the poorest blacks. The Democrats’ failure to win the White House has led some blacks to question the benefits of loyalty to one party. Says Republican J. C. Watts Jr., 33, Oklahoma Corporation commissioner and the first African-American ever elected to statewide office in Oklahoma: “One of the reasons I’m not a Democrat is that [people] feel I have to be a Democrat because I’m black.” Reagan conservatives, especially the late Republican national chairman Lee Atwater, sought to capitalize on such trends by fostering the careers of young black officials such as Thomas, Connecticut Rep. Gary Franks and former State Department official Alan Keyes.
The list of blacks who have distanced themselves from conventional liberalism is by no means exclusively Republican. Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder, the nation’s first elected black governor, supports the civil-rights bill, but has joined the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, slashed his state’s budget and called for abstinence as a solution to drug abuse and teen pregnancy in the ghetto. Wayne Bryant, Democratic majority leader of the New Jersey Legislature, has proposed a bill that would require welfare applicants to finish school or complete job training-or risk a cut in benefits. Says Bryant: “The Democrats have got to be able to cut out something old that’s failed.”
Bryant and Wilder chafe at the label conservative." So do Steele and intellectuals like Glenn Loury of Harvard and Stephen Carter of Yale Law School, all of whom have published eloquent, highly personal essays on the hidden costs of racial preferences in hiring and promotion. While not against affirmative-action programs that equalize the opportunities of blacks and whites, they argue that preferential treatment to achieve “equality of result” is counterproductive-in part because the benefits go mostly to middle-class blacks, not poor blacks who need governmental attention the most. Carter, whose book “Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby” will be published this fall, argues that granting positions to blacks in the name of diversity may actually force them to represent a single black perspective that doesn’t necessarily exist. “There is no one way to be black,” he says.
To their harshest black critics, Republicans and scholars like Steele, Loury and Carter are “Uncle Toms.” NAACP president Benjamin Hooks once called Loury “treasonous.” In an interview with Playboy, film director Spike Lee said that Michael Williams, the Bush administration official who triggered controversy by announcing that minority-only scholarships at colleges receiving federal aid were illegal (the ruling was later watered down), “should be beat with a Louisville Slugger in an alley.” Such rhetoric, black conservatives say, silences African-Americans who might otherwise agree with them.
Yet civil-rights leaders say they aren’t as rigidly opposed to self-help as their conservative critics have alleged-sometimes in rhetoric no less provocative than the left’s. In recent years, black leaders such as Hooks and John Jacob of the Urban League have sounded the self-help theme, which has also been a staple of Jesse Jackson’s message. And the prominence of African-American conservatives often owes more to the patronage of like-minded whites than it does to grass-roots support from blacks. Many, such as Thomas, were not elected, but are political appointees. Of 436 black state legislators in the country, only three are Republican. All too often, white conservatives have been perfectly happy to put forth black critics of affirmative action, while aiming racially charged appeals at white voters. No one has condemned this more eloquently than Clarence Thomas himself. In a 1987 lecture at the Heritage Foundation, he chided Reagan conservatives for supporting tax credits for segregated Bob Jones University: “Often it seemed that to be accepted within the conservative ranks and to be treated with some degree of acceptance, a black was required to become a caricature of sorts, providing sideshows of antiblack quips and attacks.”
Black conservatives, noting that African-American views on social issues such as school prayer and abortion are often conservative, insist their philosophy is more in tune with traditional black values than liberalism is. They say skepticism toward big government is the logical heritage of African-Americans. “If our forebears could achieve in hostile climates, amid lynchings and an oppressive government, then surely we don’t need government,” says Woodson. “It’s like the victim waiting for the mugger to come back and pick him up.” David Bositis, senior research associate at the predominantly black Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, counters that on issues African-Americans rate as most important-affirmative action and government-supported health care-they favor government action.
In fact, both traditions are deeply rooted: American history is full of examples-slavery and Jim Crow, to name just two-in which government has been used as an instrument of oppression of blacks. But from the Reconstruction-era Freedmen’s Bureau to the War on Poverty it has also been used as an instrument of their advancement. In that sense, the debate among blacks over the proper degree of government intervention extends a similar debate that America as a whole has been waging since independence. Despite the efforts of some blacks to condemn conservatives-and despite the media’s failure to portray the full range of black opinion-political ferment is the historical norm among African-Americans. In a political climate increasingly hostile to their traditional agenda, civil-rights leaders may soon find themselves drawn deeper into dialogue with the critics in their midst.
Most black conservatives share a common set of beliefs centered on the notion of black self-help. Challenging the traditional liberal model of government-based solutions to racial and economic problems, their basic agenda calls for:
Black conservatives argue that affirmative action cheapens blacks’ true accomplishments and fosters resentment among whites. Some argue that affirmative-action or set-aside programs shouldn’t be abolished altogether, but should be based on class– not race.
Big-ticket social programs stifle free enterprise in minority communities, conservative black economists contend. They prefer tax breaks for minority-owned small businesses and for corporations that invest in inner cities. Welfare, black conservatives say, should be a benefit linked to jobs or training programs, the so-called workfare approach, and not regarded as an entitlement.
Conservative blacks support programs that turn over government duties to private hands. Two favorite schemes: HUD Secretary Jack Kemp’s program for tenant ownership of public housing and vouchers for private-school education.
Alan Keyes, director of Citizens Against Government Waste, says conservatives want to foster “traditionally black values: family, self-reliance, self-restraint” to end social ills like drug use, teen pregnancy and fatherless households. Others note that many blacks share a concern for customarily rightwing issues, such as school prayer and crime control.
