INTRODUCTION
The two books that have occasioned this symposium represent efforts to research thoroughly, think rigorously, and argue honestly about complex and significant issues of race and ethnicity in America. There is much to be learned from them on many topics. I read them chiefly for insights about whether and how a defensibly democratic politics of egalitarian change can be achieved by, for, and with racial minorities in a country whose majorities, like most majorities, have long been reluctant to pursue policies that did not predominantly benefit themselves. I raise some challenges to the perspectives offered in these books, but only as an effort, kindred in aim if not achievement, to carry forward the work they have thus far so nobly advanced.
IN THE SHADOW OF DU BOIS
Robert Gooding-Williams characterizes Du Bois's ([Reference Du Bois, Blight and Gooding-Williams1903] 1997) The Souls of Black Folk as supporting a Black politics that involves first, rule or governance of Black communities by their “talented tenth”; second, political “expressivism” that manifests the collective spiritual identity of Black folk; and third, struggles against social exclusion that aim at assimilationist forms of social integration (Gooding-Williams Reference Gooding-Williams2009, pp. 4–6, 31–32, 50–63). I agree with these depictions and most of Gooding-Williams' criticisms of those positions, but I have reservations about his arguments on each point.
The first and most fundamental reservation concerns his contrast of politics-as-rule, inevitably by elites, with a democratic politics of action-in-concert that he identifies with Frederick Douglass but also with Hannah Arendt and Sheldon Wolin. Gooding-Williams hopes to see this politics instantiated in the institutions of a subaltern, Black counterpublic engaged in democratic criticism and opinion formation that can check, even if it does not eliminate, politics-as-rule. Though I endorse the value of such a politics, I have a more Gramscian or even Machiavellian view of how politics must operate most of the time. I accept that, as Gramsci (Reference Gramsci1971) wrote, “there really do exist rulers and ruled, leaders and led” who play unequal roles in shaping political outcomes (p. 144; Smith Reference Smith2003, pp. 38–42). With the more benign readings of Machiavelli, like that elaborated in John McCormick's (Reference McCormick2011) Machiavellian Democracy, I believe it is indeed vital to have followers who are politically engaged enough to criticize and occasionally replace their leaders—but it is unrealistic to believe that politics, much less governance, can be routinely conducted via fully egalitarian, democratic collective action. The role of a counterpublic's “action-in-concert,” albeit essential, must remain limited.
Gooding-Williams' sources show this. Wolin (Reference Wolin and Benhabib1996) portrays democratic instances of the “political,” the occasions when the people act in concert to govern themselves, as rare and “fugitive” moments that inevitably give way to predominantly elite ruling in the course of everyday life. Gooding-Williams himself portrays his desired Black “counterpublic” as having institutions providing for debate and, at best, collective opinion-formation, but he says little about institutions that might actually govern. He contends that Frederick Douglass invoked such an “action-in-concert” politics by echoing Shakespeare's character Henry V (Gooding-Williams Reference Gooding-Williams2009, p. 187). But many interpret Shakespeare's Henry as the Machiavellian ruler par excellence: he lacks valid title to the throne, he seeks to win popular support for a dubious war, and he does so by fostering a new sense of English nationalism—“we band of brothers”—which buttresses rather than replaces his rule (Roe Reference Roe2004, pp. 63–93; Sullivan Reference Sullivan, Alulis and Sullivan1996). I similarly doubt that Douglass ran his newspaper as a fully egalitarian collective enterprise; I think he was in charge (McFeely Reference McFeely1995). The significance of this objection is not that we should applaud elite-dominated politics. It is rather that we need to think about how to check and channel leaders routinely so that they act more constructively and responsively, although I think that is also Gooding-Williams' goal, his emphasis on politics as “action-in-concert” risks focusing us on only one dimension of that task.
My second criticism concerns Gooding-Williams' extension of his critique of Black expressivism, with which I concur, to a critique of efforts to achieve Black solidarity more generally. Though I am also mostly in agreement with the anti-foundationalist, pragmatic politics he identifies with Eddie Glaude, I do not see its implications quite as Gooding-Williams does on pages 240–242. Pragmatic politics should be seen in part as descriptive of the reality of how Black politics, and politics in general, must be conducted. People can aspire to require democratic participants to “precommit” to various principles, but no one can make them do so sincerely. Politics inevitably involves conversation and contestation among people with different and evolving senses of their identities, experiences, and foundational commitments.
There is, therefore, no way—and no reason—to rule out of those conversations and contestations people who argue in “foundationalist” fashion that a shared history of oppression partly constitutes Black identities and gives most if not all Blacks interests in common. It is nonetheless true that an effective antiracist politics in America must involve cross-racial coalition building: both the nation's demographics and its distribution of resources mean that no other option is credible. Indeed, Gooding-Williams might have done more to call attention to that fact and to reflect on the politics it might entail, rather than simply stressing development of a Black counterpublic as he did.
Even so, there are good political reasons for American Blacks to think that they must play a leading role in defining their own interests and goals. History shows it is too risky to permit Whites to decide for Blacks, and that Blacks are likely to act more effectively in many important political struggles, though not all, if they can act with a high degree of intraracial solidarity. I welcome foundationalist arguments in quest of solidarity, so long as they are open to and subjected to contestation. The feasible and desirable outcome of such contestation might be one in which African Americans achieve great solidarity on some issues, while embracing different identities and obligations on others, as Cristina Beltrán (Reference Beltrán2010) has suggested in regard to Latinos/Latinas.
My third concern about Gooding-Williams' arguments is his contention that African Americans must resist social integration when this means embracing White middle-class norms that derogate many African Americans as well as others, on grounds of their sexual orientation, family structures, and more. The dangers that concern him are real: in recent work, Desmond King and I argue that the modern conservative coalition has been built and sustained partly through discourses of “good character” that allowed economic, religious, military, and sexually traditionalist conservatives to see themselves, despite their real differences, as all on the same side (King and Smith, Reference King and Smith2011). These notions of “good character” often demonize many good people. Yet the appeal of supporting “good character” is too strong and too justifiable for all such arguments to be debunked and dismissed. Instead, arguments for the value, the good character, of a wider range of persons must be made, and policies and institutions supporting those values and fostering such character have to be defined and defended. Examples might include defenses of responsible single-parenting and same-sex marriage, even drug decriminalization. Gooding-Williams is not very concrete about spelling out such desirable alternatives to White middle-class morality and policies—understandably, given the primary tasks of his book—but his persuasive position on this issue implies that more needs to be done.
DEMOCRACY'S RECONSTRUCTION
In many respects that need for more is also my main concern about Lawrie Balfour's (Reference Balfour2011) Democracy's Reconstruction. I applaud her aim to “treat race and racial injustice as fundamental to the study of modern democratic life” (Balfour Reference Balfour2011, p. 5). I admire how she does so, first by highlighting the critical perspectives on the past and present that are generated by attention to racial injustices, second by using exemplary Black experiences to show neglected possibilities as well as problems of democracy, and third by recognizing issues of both race and democracy as transnational and international. I have only one substantial criticism of her book, but it is fundamental. I doubt the kind of productively critical view of America's history and present that she rightly wants to promote can be achieved by using the language of “reparations,” however broadly defined.
Most White Americans, especially, perceive talk of “reparations” as implying their personal responsibility for specific racial harms past and present. Those perceptions generate a flood of predictable objections, which must be responded to over and over and over. The result is that, even when the responses are strong as Balfour's are, discussion never gets to the issues of what we should do now, the issues that Balfour wants to motivate us to examine. Her concerns can be better advanced by beginning not with slavery but with current racial inequalities and injustices, and then focusing on the benefits to all members of American society, and the world more generally, if these inequalities could be eased and the injustices curbed. In considering what policies might best achieve those ends, critical discussions of the past must come into play, because many will respond with “blaming the victim” explanations and policy proposals. It will be necessary to show why those aren't right and won't work, because inequalities have different sources. The historical lessons of Du Bois's ([Reference Du Bois1935] 1992) monumental Black Reconstruction in America and works like Ira Katznelson's (Reference Katznelson2005) When Affirmative Action Was White may then prove useful in clarifying the political sources of deeply entrenched racial inequalities. But it is best not to lead with distant history. It is better to invoke it once people are motivated to turn to history by their senses of current problems and the choices among possible remedies. Talk of “reparations” begins with the past and points continuously backward, in ways that are unlikely to engage political attention, must less inspire political change. Again, this is not to say that we should not present race and racial injustice as fundamental to America's past and present. This is an argument about how to do that.
A related point: Balfour's discussions could be even more valuable if she offered critical readings of America's past and present that highlighted features that might spur Americans to pursue paths of progress. For example, her discussion of Du Bois's ([Reference Du Bois and Roediger1909] 2001) book on John Brown shows well how Whites must pay major costs in order for all to share eventually in the heightened benefits of a more racially just society. But for many Whites, Brown is hardly an exemplary or inspiring figure. The sober message Balfour wishes to use Brown to convey, that ending slavery involved massive violence, succeeded by further violent struggles that could not be avoided if change were to continue, might be better reinforced by reflecting, as Drew Faust (Reference Faust2008) has recently done, on just how much bloodshed by Whites and Blacks was needed to win the Civil War, and by highlighting, as too few scholars do, how it was Lincoln's public endorsement of Black voting rights that drove John Wilkes Booth to kill him (Faust Reference Faust2008; McPherson Reference McPherson1988). People do not want to hear that risks and sacrifices are necessary for change, and so they seek to dismiss figures that have made them. Even if many White Americans can be brought to respect Brown more, it will be harder to get them to emulate him than figures like Lincoln and Grant.
Though I agree entirely that greater awareness of Black exemplars of egalitarian struggles can broaden and deepen our senses of what democratic politics can and should be, I demur when the suggested conclusion is that “emancipation was the product of African Americans working—by fleeing, fighting, and otherwise improvising—on their own behalf” (Balfour Reference Balfour2011, p. 110). Yes, it was that. But it was not and could not have been the product of those efforts alone. If we leave the lesson of past Black exemplars open to the interpretation that their oppressions were never so great that they needed allies, many Whites will conclude that this is all the more true today—so it is up to Blacks alone to close America's racial gaps.
Balfour does show how to build on Du Bois productively in ways many have missed. She calls attention to his insistence that, though we should recognize the value of nursing and housework, “we cannot imprison women again in a home or require them all on pain of death to be nurses and housekeepers” (Balfour Reference Balfour2011, p. 107). That is an example of using the history of Black women to highlight persisting problems and the need for more radical changes in American institutions and practices here and now. It spurs us to the task of deciding what those changes should be. It is the kind of forward-looking position to which Balfour's work might be structured to steer us more consistently.
Similarly, she skillfully uses Du Bois to show how America's early statesmen “bequeathed a political culture of evasion and deferral” on issues of race (Balfour Reference Balfour2011, p. 137). That insight might be elaborated through discussions of how such evasion and deferral persist, as in the perhaps necessary but nonetheless evasive casting of current defenses of efforts at curbing racial inequalities as aimed only at “diversity” in general, and the often covert evaluation by the right and left alike of putatively color-blind policies in terms of their racial consequences. For example, both conservatives and liberals recognize that the recently modified Texas plan to admit 10% of all high school seniors to state universities was an effort to retain racial and ethnic diversity without using explicit racial admissions criteria, while many advocates and critics of affordable housing programs have long judged them in part by their consequences for racial integration. Race-conscious assessments of formally race-neutral measures are pervasive in contemporary American governance (King and Smith, Reference King and Smith2011).
Such elaboration would also be valuable in regard to the last topic that Balfour raises: how the current structure of world power and resources reflects past and present transnational racial policies and preferences. Those realities should lead us to consider how American foreign policies and other international initiatives as well as international institutions could and should be refashioned to promote a more racially equitable world order. Here I do not think I disagree with Balfour. But I am encouraging her and all of us to structure the ways we bring racial injustice into our accounts of past and present democracy so that people are moved to think what can and should be done next, if we are to pursue, as Balfour rightly recommends, democracy's reconstruction, and if we are to do so, as Gooding-Williams rightly recommends, while moving past the antidemocratic elements in the shadow of Du Bois.
