History
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PowerPoint_SFF_Chapter20.pptxChapter Twenty
The Search for New Directions During A Conservative Era, 1979-1991
Finding a Place in the Political System.
Michele Wallace sympathized with the civil rights movement and admired Black Power advocates. But in the late 1960s she was transformed by the emerging women’s movement. In Black Macho (1979) she challenged the black militancy that equated black liberation with a violent assentation of black manhood, exposing tensions between black men and women and other conflicts among African Americans in an conservative era.
After Andrew Young, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, met informally with a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization, objections by Jewish-American leaders forced his resignation. The episode bred distrust of the Democratic Party, as President Carter seemed willing to forego black support for Jewish support. Black leaders had more to fear though, from incoming president Ronald Reagan, a conservative who exploited anti-tax sentiment and white resentment of black “welfare mothers.”
A Black Alternatives Conference in 1980 revealed disillusionment with governmental programs like affirmative action, and heralded a new black conservatism. Some black conservatives advocated self-help in the tradition of Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey. Others, like libertarian economist Thomas Sowell, claimed that government action to combat discrimination was counterproductive, producing a debilitating “culture of poverty.”
This “culture of poverty” passed down through generations, and created what sociologist William Julius Wilson called an “underclass,” falling behind the rest of society. Though Wilson argued that the black middle class benefited from civil rights reforms and affirmative action, Sowell’s influence marked the beginning of a broad shift away from the liberal assumptions underlying the social policies of Roosevelt and Johnson.
Reagan, elected with little black support, indicated that his administration would be les responsive than Carter’s to civil rights concerns. He reduced funding for welfare and other programs that supported the poor, with the result that black unemployment and the number of African American families below the poverty line grew. After he appointed Clarence Thomas, a critic of busing and affirmative action, as head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency’s budget and staff declined. In Reagan's second term, Martin Luther King’s birthday was made a national holiday.
Jesse Jackson’s 1984 Presidential Campaign
Jesse Jackson's forceful criticisms of Reagan contributed to his emergence as the nation’s most influential black political figure. Building on the anger over Young’s forced resignation, Jackson traveled to the Middle East, meeting with PLO leader Arafat, thus further offending Jewish leaders. He returned to support Harold Washington’s successful campaign for mayor of Chicago by emphasizing voter registration.
In 1984, he decided to run for president, figuring that if African Americans could gain the balance of power in the Democratic Party they could force it to support progressive politics. Jackson expressed strong support for civil rights, labor unions, women’s rights, and environmental causes. His campaign received a boost when his negotiations secured the return of a black Navy pilot shot down over Syria following the failure of the State Department to do so.
But his earlier successes collapsed following an anti-Semitic remark magnified in comments by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Though Walter Mondale got the party nomination and Reagan won the lection, Jackson with his “rainbow coalition” appeal, demonstrated that a black candidate could draw white support.
In Washington, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Mary Frances Berry, and Walter Fauntroy founded the Free South Africa Movement, and repeated protests at the embassy strengthened the campaign to force South Africa to end apartheid. Campus activists compelled universities such as Stanford and Columbia to divest endowment funds from companies that did business in South Africa.
The Popularization of Black Feminism
Ultimately, Congress overrode Reagan’s veto to institute economic sanctions against South Africa, the first time since the 1960s that African Americans had spearheaded a national campaign of nonviolent direct action.
Alice Walker, a participant in the Free South Africa movement and a qualified defender of Black Macho, attracted a controversy with her best-selling novel The Color Purple.
Like Zora Neale Hurston, Walker focused on relationships within black families rather than on external black-white relations, revealing the brutality of gender oppression and the indomitable spirit of a woman who endures and ultimately prevails. The book’s film version made stars of Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, and Danny Glover, but director Steven Spielberg was criticized for turning male characters into caricatures.
Walker’s success built on a foundation established by earlier black women writers, including Hurston. Maya Angelou’s autobiographical I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings was widely studied as a metaphor for women’s oppression. The fiction of Toni Morrison and Gloria Naylor, together with the works of influential black women poets, blended militant feminist advocacy and intimate revelation of black women’s perspectives on male-female relations.
Their criticisms of black males made them vulnerable to charges of racial disloyalty, and all faced a dilemma as they sought to depict African American life accurately but also positively.
TV dramas featuring black families were primarily sit-coms, and Hollywood produced formulaic black characters who ties to realistic black communities.
Following The Color Purple, black actors increasingly moved into primary or co-starring roles. Although hit movies of the 1980s, such as Trading Places, used predictable racial culture clash themes, a few films, such as A Soldier’s Story and Glory, made serious attempts to illuminate African American life and history. Director Spike Lee demonstrated the possibilities for significant African American films outside the studio system.
August Wilson’s plays were praised for their sensitive portrayal of African American family relationships. Meanwhile, the popularity of hip hop and gangsta rap indicated a competing black cultural trend with lyrics that sometimes degraded women and celebrated an outlaw lifestyle of sex, drugs, and violence. But rap was also controversial, and a large segment became highly politicized, the most overt social agenda music since the urban folk movement of the 1960s.
Racial Progress and Internal Tensions
Jesse Jackson's second presidential campaign, in 1988, garnered greater support than his first, but it also exposed growing divisions among African Americans. Many Democratic leaders saw him as a liability, believing the party needed to distance itself from the causes he championed. Republican George Bush won the election, in part by inciting racial prejudice in TV attack ads.
The Democrats’ defeat reinforced the party’s tendency to veer away from its tradition of civil rights reform.
Despite black conservatives arguments that affirmative action and other racial preference programs were no longer necessary, the nation continued to be beset by racial problems-all unaddressed by the Reagan and Bush administations.
Colin Powell’s appointment as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff indicated that individual African Americans could excel, but when Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to replace Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court, a new controversy erupted. Already opposed by civil rights and feminists groups, Thomas was accused by Anita Hill, an EEOC lawyer when he headed the agency, of sexual harassment.
Her testimony set off a contentious national debate on issues of class, gender, race, and an ideology that marked the convergence of the past decade’s cultural and political trends. By a slim margin, Thomas’ nomination was confirmed, but Norton credited Hill for the upsurge in political activity among women that helped make 1992 “The Year of the Woman,” in which a record number of women were elected to national office.
