‘Hidden Side Of Black Thought’ Emerges

From the moment that President Clinton announced his race initiative program, Newt Gingrich and other Republicans pounded him to include black conservatives in the debate. Clinton finally got the message. Before his Akron Town Hall meeting, he said he would listen to what conservatives like Ward Connerly had to say.

Clinton is wise to do this. Even though I am at polar opposites from Connerly on issues such as affirmative action, welfare reform and education, it’s a mistake to ridicule or dismiss black conservatives as sideshow exhibits or dangerous political fifth columnists.

Many liberals, mainstream black leaders and politicians hate to admit it but there has always been a hidden side of black thought that is less radical and more conservative than it appears at first glance.

Six years after the shrill attacks on Clarence Thomas during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings, black opinion has steadily showed a rightward trend on some social issues. In opinion surveys in the Christian Science Monitor and U.S. News & World Report, 30 percent of blacks called themselves conservatives; 48 percent of blacks blamed themselves, not racism, for not taking full advantage of opportunities; 50 percent favored ending welfare; and a whopping 75 percent backed a constitutional amendment permitting school prayer.

The Congressional Black Caucus, which has been virtually the last group standing for liberalism in American politics in the 1990s, seemed to have huge second thoughts about not only where much of America is politically but where many blacks are, too. In 1997, it shifted its agenda and publicly announced that it would strike hard on crime and drugs, and it was going to work more closely with Republicans.

Anyone who has paid any attention to what many blacks say and do should not be shocked by any of this. The truth is that conservative values and goals have been soundly enshrined in African American life for generations. The problem is that most white Americans never recognized this and many blacks denied it. They created a self-made myth of black liberalism. This was apparent in California in the frenzy over Proposition 209. Almost unnoticed in the ballyhoo over the anti-affirmative action initiative’s passage was the fact that slightly more than one out of four blacks voted for it.

Many tried to justify this, saying that the blacks who supported the initiative were confused by its deceptive language or misled by Republican trickery. This was wishful thinking. The plain truth is that many blacks voted for it because they supported it. They were convinced that they had achieved their own success in business and the professions through hard work, education and ability. They agreed with many whites and other nonblacks that affirmative action, like welfare, discourages incentive and unfairly stigmatizes blacks as social and moral paupers eternally seeking government handouts. They felt insulted that many whites believed that they only got ahead because of their color and not their competence.

Many younger blacks never experienced Jim Crow laws and have almost no knowledge of the civil rights battles of the 1960s it took to end them. They have only the fuzziest idea of how affirmative action benefits them. This deepens their feeling that affirmative action laws have little relevance to them, or aids and abets white females, Latinos and Asians more than blacks.

The call by many blacks for moral crusades against violence, more personal and family responsibility, more gang sweeps, more drug arrests and evictions of lawbreakers from public housing reflects not only their fear of crime but their sense that they, too, have a big stake in protecting their lives, property and hard-earned valuables from criminals, including black criminals. This is ignored by many blacks and whites who perpetuate the myth that blacks are by nature more liberal or even radical than whites on all social issues.

Whether one likes the views of black conservatives, they form a deeply rooted part of the black experience. It took political pressure for Clinton to let them have their say. If he hadn’t, the Akron Town Hall meeting and future race dialogue meetings would be nothing but an empty exercise in preaching to the choir.

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