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Wrong for All the Right Reasons: How White Liberals Have Been Undone by Race

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Give contentious state Sen. Gordon MacInnes credit for tackling the country's most vexing issue head-on. But not too much credit. While his diagnosis of how race drove Democrats' fall from mid-'60s power seems basically on-target - if overly harsh toward activists and thinkers whose ideas and proposals were compromised by changing attitudes and social conditions - his prescription becomes less and less convincing as it goes on. The conclusion reveals the book to be useful primarily as an example of how even very bright people become muddled when considering the subject of race.

The first part of "Wrong" is valuable: MacInnes details every misguided move made by post-JFK liberal intellectuals and politicians: ignoring the 1965 Moynihan report, which singled out black illegitimacy as a cause of future urban unrest; accepting the McGovern handout of "specially tailored rights" for virtually everyone; moving from "clearly opposing crime and civil disorder" to " excusing black crime and rioting as an understandable reaction to a history of oppression and discrimination." But his focus is on perception, not reality, and his goal for the Democratic Party appears not so much to solve America's race problems as to convince white swing voters that Democrats care about them - not blacks. Rather than changing people's minds - in this case the admittedly narrow, even racist, views of white swing voters - he advocates sanding down the party's stances to suit those prejudices. MacInnes - from Morris County, N.J., "one of the most Republican places on earth" - is tired of minority-party status, and he's more than willing to trade longstanding Democratic ideals for the votes of resentful whites. Rather than try to convince the "radical middle" why their true home is the Democratic Party, he'd prefer to abandon its traditional electoral base and go for the swing vote.

He'd rather switch than fight.

Dubbing the word *liberal* "a political pejorative," MacInnes goes so far as to name the Democrats' race-based fol! lies "the Liberal Misadventure." The villains of his story are not African-Americans but "the liberals who obligingly shut up about ghetto problems, who patronized the ideas of vocal blacks solely because of their color." After the 1964 presidential election, in which all but a handful of African-Americans deserted the GOP, liberals began focusing on the interests of its least empowered; it became "the party of the poor, the dispossessed, the homeless, the disabled." Therefore, since 1964, the Democratic Party has steadily lost "the votes of white suburbanites." And, MacInnes says, it can't have both. "If . . . progressives emphasize bailing out society's most troubled members," he writes, "they squander the chance to incorporate increasingly anxious working- and middle-class white Americans into the coalition."

Here he moves toward - but never reaches - the Democrats' real coalition-building problem: Since segregationist Dixiecrats left the party after 1964, Democrats have never effectively made the case that the interests of black ghetto-dwellers and the white middle class have much in common, while Republicans have done all they can to drive a wedge between the two. "Before they can rebuild a political majority, progressives must both shore up their coalition and come up with an answer to restoring the American dream," MacInnes writes. But he proposes abandoning, not "shoring up," the Democrats' most reliable voters.

Throughout "Wrong for All the Right Reasons," MacInnes doesn't seem to sense the disconnect between his beliefs and his realpolitik political instincts. "No matter what terms are used, politically it makes sense to emphasize equal opportunity and integration," he writes. He understands full well, though, that this rhetoric is to be meant only theoretically: "Make no mistake: as soon as someone proposes specific ways and means for the ideals of equal opportunity and integration to come alive for black Americans, white American enthusiasm flags, quickly and precipitously." So here's what ! MacInnes appears to be recommending: As Republicans have always done, make appropriate "equal opportunity" noises but don't actually *do* anything about it, lest white Americans run screaming.

And yet, for a moderate Democrat in an anti-affirmative-action era, MacInnes is surprisingly wishy-washy on the topic, trying to have it both ways. He insists that remedial programs should be organized around "misfortune, disadvantage, and poverty . . . not race or ethnicity." "Progressives," he writes, "must be clear about the implications of race preferences: they so strongly counter the fundamental beliefs of American society that they should be opposed" - but here's the catch - "except in cases of persistent discrimination where temporary preferences are the only solution."

In the end, MacInnes actually advocates government involvement in private business. "Employers should be required to demonstrate that they had included women and minority candidates in their search, and that there are acceptable explanations for disproportionately low representation." This, Senator, is called affirmative action. And for employers who fall short? "Court-administered quota plans appear to be the only remedy," writes MacInnes, who angrily rejects the term "liberal" but apparently has no problem with "quotas."

What lessons should the Left take from "Wrong"? For the benefit of white Americans, speak to blacks in harsh tones, criticize them, make it clear that Democrats don't need them. But continue everything pretty much as before. Actually, it's unclear whether MacInnes is advocating the misleading of white Americans as to the Democratic Party's beliefs - which ill serves the cause of open debate - or advocating the jettisoning of its least empowered voters. Maybe both. Either way, his naked pandering for the votes of Perotistas doesn't speak well for the cause of sticking by one's beliefs. And remarks like "Democrats do not need to prove again that they care about poor people" bespeak a callousness that is antithetical to t! he only major political party that does in fact care about poor people (if only erratically).

MacInnes recognizes that the GOP, the "party of Lincoln," has been on the wrong side of the race issue since, well, Lincoln. So it's up to Democrats to make a principled stand and balance justice and realistic expectations. This book, though discussion-provoking, is not a great place to begin.