POLISCI 307 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: White Supremacy, Black Nationalism, Executive Order 9981
26 Dec 2019
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Readings to Know
● Smith, Rogers and Philip Klinkner 1999. The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of
Racial Equality in America. Chapters 1 and 8
○ Discussion Questions from slides → ANSWER THEM TO STUDY
■ What, if any, are the problems with K and S argument?
■ In order to achieve true racial equality, is there a need for a foreign
enemy?
■ If K and S are correct, what are the prospects for similar
situation/mobilization today?
■ Is white supremacy the norm in American politics as K and S suggest?
■ In order to achieve true racial equality, is there always a need for a foreign
ideological enemy? a war? a movement?
■ If K and S are correct, what are the prospects for furthering the political
rights of African Americans today?
■ Is BLM akin to CRM in the 1960s?
■ Is War on Terror akin to Korean/Vietnam Wars?
■ Russia? China? As Ideological Enemies?
○ Unsteady March Hypothesis
■ Must recognize that further progress towards a just and harmonious
(society?) overcoming of racial divisions and inequalities might not occur
in our time unless we as a people make an effort of a sort we have never
undertaken before except under the most extreme duress
■ Progress towards greater but never full racial equality has come only when
three factors have occured
● 1) large scale war that required extensive economic and military
mobilization of African Americans for success
○ Why war? Because its normative
■ Elities find it difficult to ask blacks to serve but then
treat them as 2nd class citizens on return
○ Why war? Because there is a position of strength
■ Provides black leaders with political ammunition to
force concessions
● examples = korean war
● 2) Ideological Justification
○ Argument
■ American portrays enemies as antithesis of
american values beliefs and practices
■ Elicit support for American position from other
nation states
■ USSR- morally and politically deficient to US
■ No democracy liberty equality or individualism
○ Why? Ideological justification
■ Cold war and international perceptions
● Cold war - ideological war over appropriate
way of life (communism/socialism v.
capitalism/democracy)
● Hearts and minds of unaligned nation states
● USSR used Jim Crow as evidence that US
“does not practice what it preaches”
● Elites oppose discrimination for geopolitical
reasons
● 3) Civil Rights Movement
○ Actions, Rhetoric, Pressure
■ Non violent protest rhetoric connecting with CRM
and APC and Southern reaction
● Connect with criticism of USSR
● Connect with geopolitical concerns of US
● Embarrass Fed Govt to Action
● True Target- entities not white citizens
● Example MLK
○ Elicit fear
■ Fire next time
■ No movement on political equality
■ Potential use of violence
■ “Ballot or the Bullet”
■ There have only been three necessities to bring about significant progress
towards greater racial equality in US history all three of which the 3
factors mentioned above were at work
■ Initial reform era was the first emancipation following the revolutionary
war when slavery was put on the path of extinction it was won with key
contributions from american blacks and it was accompanied by white and
black religious movements espcially that highlighted the contradictions
between the declaration of independence and the continuation of black
slavery
■ Second reform era was reconstruction period after civil war, which
probably couldnt have been won without black soldiers it led to postwar
amendments that ended slavery and established formally equal black
citizenship in accordance with the demands of black and white
abolotionists
■ Third reform era is the modern civil rights era occuring in the wake of
WW2 and during the cold war including its hot korean and vietnamese
phases
■ 1941-1968 was a period in which all three of the factors we stress
remained present, throughout these years the US mobilized huge numbers
of black soldiers for combat against nazis and communists, american
leaders stressed democratic ideals and a broad array of civil rights
protestors pushed to make ideals a reality
■ Whether the nation will continue to progress in a racially egalitarian
direction is we think the most important question facing the US
■ Normal experience of a black person in the US has lived in a time of
stagnation and decline in progress toward racial equality this helps explain
the deep pessimism about race
○ Steady March Hypothesis (conventional wisdom)
■ Assumes there will be steady progress towards racial equality
● Inevitability of racial equality
■ Problems
● Racial equality is NOT inevitable/not always steady progress
because prevalence of white supremacy
● Whites as targets
○ Civil rights movement failed to change the white opinion
○ Assumes they are unaware of jim crow/violated values
● Zaller, John 1994 The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion pgs 9-13
○ Discussion Questions from Slides
■ What is an attitude/racial attitude?
■ How and why did whites’ racial attitudes change? Changed from white
supremacy to racial equality because the white elites changed their beliefs
■ What are African American attitudes toward race and how can we best
explain them?
○ Elite Discourse and Racial Attitudes
■ Racist ideas about blacks and most non anglo saxon groups had the
support of biological and psychological science of that period therefore
racist ideas were not confined to an extremist of backwater fringe they
were as common among the nations white intellectual leaders as among
other types of whites given this pattern of elite attitudes any attempts to
mobilize white support for black equality whether by blacks themselves or
sympathetic whites were bound to fail
■ By 1930 attitudes of political elites seemed to be changing this was
apparent when John Parker was nominated to the Supreme Court but the
senate rejected him because of a racist speech he delivered 10 years prior
