Customer Reviews

White Nationalism, Black Interests: Conservative Public Policy and the Black Community (African American Life Series)

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Ron Walters is a distinguished historian of race in America. In this book Walters presents an intelligible explanation for a phenomenon he chooses to call "White Nationalism." He refers mainly to the backlash against affirmative action and the ongoing attack on the 14th Amendment's application of equal protection and rights to historically discriminated groups. Walters manages to encompass "neoNazi crazies" and "Gingrichites"
within a single paradigm which denies the moral legitimacy of the claims of African-Americans for unfulfilled justice. Walters's paradigm is especially interesting when stretched to the post 9/11 new imperialism of America's special and exceptional mission to civilize the world. He sees this as a renewal of Kipling's call to Teddy Roosevelt to "take up the White Man's Burden" and extend our special virtues to the benighted of the Third World. The book is well document and by no means a simple screed or jeremiad from a liberal Democratic perspective.

My chief reason for writing something here is to counter the astonishingly misleading review that is described as "the most helpful critical review." Perhaps astonishing is too strong: if you review a book you have not read, your description will be predictably wide of the mark.

Professor Walters' book is one of the best accounts available of the policy continuities between the Reagan/Bush I/Gingrich years on the one hand and the Clinton administration on the other. This is to be expected from a political scientist and public intellectual who has produced the other major works and volume of widely cited commentary that Professor Ronald W. Walters has (not to be confused with the historian Ronald E. Walters).

The claim that this book "is oddly silent on... issues where the Democratic Party moved to the right, in an attempt to siphon off the 'Gingrich Revolution' of 1994" is breathtakingly false. This preposterous assertion exploits potential readers' unfamiliarity with the contents of the book. I suppose there is a weird kind of democracy in that, since the reviewer also is unfamiliar with the book, and in the real world people talk about books they pretend to have read all the time. But in a review written for potential readers it is close to malicious.

For those concerned about the supposed deficiencies mentioned, I suggest they begin with chapter 4, "New Democrat Politics and Policy Convergence," and then read the four chapters that follow, treating specific policy areas ("The Deregulation of Civil Rights," "The Attack on the Black Poor," "Criminalizing a Race," and "Attacking Black Access to Education"). The reader can then go back to the opening chapters, which provide conceptual clarifications regarding White Nationalism, the post 1970s dismantlement of the public sector and destruction of public goods, processes to which Walters attaches the important concept, "devolution."

However, if, like the negative reviewer, you want to stop the presses in order to share the late breaking news that "some individuals are both conservative AND black"; or if you fervently "wish there was information on the apparent paradox posed by Black conservatives" or think their existence somehow poses a "challenge to Walter's thesis," then I would suggest you read the chapter that follows chapter 8 -- the one entitled, "Black Conservatism: White Interests," and THEN go back to the three opening chapters.

The only conceivable explanation for the negative reviewer's absolute ignorance about Professor Walters' book is that in the bookstore or library she skimmed a page of the index (the index shows only a few pages referring to the Democratic Leadership Council, although two columns worth of material on Clinton, the former head of the DLC). She cannot have glanced at even the Table of Contents.

White Nationalism: Black Interests is one of the best accounts available of the upper class driven but race-wrapped reactionary offensive that gripped so much of the US in the last two decades of the 20th century. The book brings together a wealth of information to buttress its description of the Democratic Party's betrayal of formal commitments made in the 1960s and 1970s to democratizing U.S. society. Professor Walters' book does for major areas of civic public policy what Meeropol's Surrender does for economic policy during the same period and is stronger on the underlying causes for the success of the reactionary offensive than Meeropol's (which to be fair is designed with a narrower focus).

A review of a book which the reviewer has not read does a terrible disservice to the author and to potential interested readers. I would urge anyone concerned about the health of US democracy to buy or borrow this Ronald W. Walters' book and to read it carefully.

This is an extremely well written analysis of how American policy is designed to keep African Americans eternally at the bottom. Walters does a tremendous job of breaking down the Reagan years and connecting the dots to today. It's clear that the main thing keeping Blacks in a reactionary state is a lack of information. I wish that WBAI (The Global Black Experience show in particular) would contact Mr. Walters about possibly doing a weekly commentary. His insights are necessary to the survival of the least informed group in the country.

Walters undoubtedly identified some ongoing public policy problems in America, but he selectively ignores others. I am empathetic to most of his argument, but wonder why he had not devoted more time to critiquing the 'centrist' Democratic Leadership Council for also being conservative.

Blacks have become almost solidly Democratic voters since the 1960's, but constructive criticism of 'friends' is always important to effective policymaking. Bill Clinton's signature of 'welfare reform' and welfare's post-war blatant racial stereotyping as a haven for black 'baby machines' should have waranted more pointed critique from this very text.

It is oddly silent on this and other issues where the Democratic Party moved to the right, in an attempt to siphon off the 'Gingrich Revolution' of 1994.

His book also is problematic because he does not (as other scholars from Gloria Anzaldua to Dorothy Roberts have done) recognize that one's public policy experiences intersect with MULTIPLE idenities. A black low-income lesbian woman with disabilities has a much different social experience than a rich white heterosexual able-bodied man or even a black heterosexual man without disabilities. It it currently impossible to lump 'black people' and 'white people' together into one hedgemonic group as he apparently did throughout the book.

Because we live in an era of Alan Keyes and Condoleeza Rice, I also wish there was information on the apparent paradox posed by Black conservatives. I don't personally have to like their policies to recognize the challenge to Walter's thesis; some individuals are both conservative AND black. Hopefully future editions of this book will address that area's inherent sociopolitical complexity.

Good grief. So here we have it, once more it is the Bush administration's fault. All of us evil conservatives want to beat down people of color. Give me a break.
Don't bother with this one, it is just one more screed from the left that robs people of hope. This book is damaging to your soul. If you listen to it you will get exactly what it portends. Ignore it and believe in what is possible. This is America. Anyone can do anything they set their mind to. Read "No Excuses" by the Thernstroms instead.