NYPost | Since the 1960s, black leaders have placed a heavy emphasis on
gaining political power, and Barack Obama’s presidency represented the
apex of those efforts. The assumption — rarely challenged — is that
black political clout must come before black social and economic
advancement. But as JASON L. RILEY argues in this excerpt from his new
book, “False Black Power”
(Templeton Press), political success has not been a major factor in the
rise of racial and ethnic groups from poverty to prosperity.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was followed by large increases in
black elected officials. In the Deep South, black officeholders grew
from 100 in 1964 to 4,300 in 1978. By the early 1980s, major US cities
with large black populations, such as Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago,
Washington and Philadelphia, had elected black mayors. Between 1970 and
2010, the number of black elected officials nationwide increased from
fewer than 1,500 to more than 10,000.
Yet the socioeconomic progress that was supposed to follow in the
wake of these political gains never materialized. During an era of
growing black political influence, blacks as a group progressed at a
slower rate than whites, and the black poor actually lost ground.
In a 1991 book, social scientist Gary Orfield and his co-author,
journalist Carole Ashkinaze, assessed the progress of blacks in the
1970s and ’80s following the sharp increase in black officeholders. The
thinking, then and now, was that the problems of the cities “were
basically the result of the racism of white officials and that many
could be solved by black mayors, school superintendents, policemen and
teachers who were displacing white ones.” The expectation, they added,
“was that black political and education leaders would be able to make
large moves toward racial equity simply by devising policies and
practices reflecting their understanding of the background and needs of
black people.”
But the integration of these institutions proved to be insufficient.
“Many blacks have reached positions of local power, such as mayor,
county commission chairman or superintendent of schools, positions
undreamed of 30 years ago,” they wrote. Their findings, however, showed
that “these achievements do not necessarily produce success for blacks
as a whole.” The empirical evidence, they said, “indicates that there
may be little relationship between the success of local black leaders
and the opportunities of typical black families.” Fist tap Big Don.
