 
Rogers M. Smith
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As racial violence escalated across the nation, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. told his followers that he longed for a day when "justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream."
But like other civil rights activists both before him and since, King saw strides toward racial equality come only in irregular spurts, with progress often followed by long periods of drought, says Rogers M. Smith, the Alfred Cowles Professor of Government, who spoke with the Yale Bulletin & Calendar recently about a newly published book he coauthored with Philip A. Klinkner, an associate professor of government at Hamilton College.
In "The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America," Smith and Klinkner offer a sweeping historical survey of U.S. race relations and civil rights reform -- from the American revolution through current government initiatives -- to demonstrate how the advance toward racial equality has occurred only during brief periods, and always under duress.
Furthermore, periods of significant strides have been followed by times of frustration for American blacks, argue the authors. "Some historians of civil rights have made the claim that once we make progress we have tended to keep it," says Smith. "But our analysis has shown that after periods of reform, there have not only been periods of stagnation but real retrenchment -- when whites have again built up some of the racial hierarchies that had earlier been dismantled."
Civil rights leaders have long used the adage "Two steps forward, one step back" to characterize this pattern, Smith and Klinkner note. Yet, many people in this country still believe that the "march" toward racial equality has been a gradual but steady progression toward a justice to which most Americans aspire, they say.
"[The] complacent conventional wisdom ... that the nation's movement toward greater racial equality was somehow preordained by the characteristics and the principles of the American founding, the American national soul, or the broader tides of world history ... looks increasingly dubious today," write Smith and Klinkner in "The Unsteady March."
Thus, the authors note, "the normal experience of the typical black person in U.S. history has been to live in a time of stagnation and decline in progress toward racial equality."
In their analysis of race relations over the past 200 years, Smith and Klinkner found that substantial progress toward eliminating racial divisions in the United States has come when three circumstances have converged -- a large-scale war that requires black manpower, economically and militarily, to ensure success; foreign enemies of a character that prompts U.S. leaders to stress the nation's more inclusive, democratic traditions; and domestic political protests that aggressively pressure national leaders to institute reforms.
The three periods of greatest civil rights reform, Smith notes, were during and immediately following the Revolutionary War, when northern states abolished slavery and restrictions on free (non-slave) blacks were loosened; during the Reconstruction period following the Civil War, which ended the institution of slavery throughout the nation and formally established black citizenship; and during the wake of World War II and during the Cold War, when the modern civil rights movement was born.
Yet, much of the progress obtained in these eras was short-lived, Smith says. For example, the lessening of restrictions on blacks during and after the Revolutionary War because they fought with whites for the common cause of independence gave way soon after the war to an increasing denigration of blacks as various states eliminated black suffrage rights, imposed restrictions on the immigration of African Americans and instituted strict "black codes," Smith and Klinkner say. In spite of America's stated belief that "all men are created equal," in the early 1800s mounting numbers of American citizens subscribed to scientific theories and religious beliefs claiming white superiority, note the authors.
Similarly, in the late 19th century, the push toward greater racial equality in the Reconstruction period was followed by the passage of a variety of laws aimed at disenfranchising blacks, Smith and Klinkner say. This period also saw the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and of evolutionary theories about the intellectual and social inferiority of blacks. (Charles Darwin's "The Descent of Man," for example, supported arguments about differences in the intellectual and emotional capabilities of African Americans and whites.) During this period, the number of lynchings of black citizens rose, as did racial violence in America's increasingly segregated cities, note the authors.
Civil rights reforms were again on the American agenda after World War II as white Americans -- appalled at the horrors of the Holocaust -- became more sensitive to the issue of racism, Smith and Klinkner contend. Black citizens were again mobilized to fight in that war, as well as in the Korean and Vietnam wars, and civil rights leaders became especially vocal in their demand for equality. In addition, government leaders and the nation's presidents had a heightened awareness that progress toward racial equality was a foreign policy imperative if the United States was to be taken seriously as a global leader of democracy, the authors say.
This latter era saw the introduction of legislative reforms -- such as the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act and the Supreme Court's "Brown v. Board of Education" ruling ordering school desegregation -- that gave black Americans protections against discrimination in many areas of life, says Smith. But already, some of the advances made in eliminating racial barriers are being pared away, he contends.
In fact, the abandonment of American commitment toward racial equality since the ending of the Cold War eerily parallels the country's neglect of black concerns in the late 19th-century, according to Smith and Klinkner.
"Again we are witnessing a rise in intellectual belief systems claiming white superiority," says Smith, citing the popularity of such books as Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's "The Bell Curve," which suggests that blacks are genetically inferior to whites in intellect. Likewise, he says, many white Americans have expressed a growing opposition to federal programs meant to assist blacks and other minority populations, including affirmative action, and many American citizens advocate strict policies to curb the number of minority immigrants. In the area of education, the U.S. courts have stepped back from enforcing school desegregation, while political leaders and American citizens focus discussion of school reform efforts on voucher systems, which "are more likely to carry de facto segregation even further," Smith and Klinkner write.
Other current trends that reflect the nation's abandonment of civil rights reform, they add, include a resurgence of Americans' belief in the "sanctity" of state and local governments as opposed to the kind of "expansive national governance" that has been necessary to initiate civil rights reform, as well as a belief that blacks and members of ethnic minority groups are inherently more prone to criminal behaviors, such as drug dealing and abuse.
Furthermore, the authors write, "ongoing white hostility toward blacks is also supported by an extensive body of experimental evidence showing actual racial discrimination in housing sales, rentals, bank loans, auto sales, hiring and other economic arenas. Such discrimination appears to contribute significantly to the creation of poverty-dominated black urban neighborhoods, and for every ethnic group, life in such neighborhoods has historically been associated with the patterns of out-of-wedlock births and high crime that cause so much concern today."
The future looks grim for harmonious race relations in the United States unless a major effort is made to change current conditions, Smith and Klinkner believe.
"To be sure, the United States is not headed back to formal Jim Crow law, much less slavery," they write in "The Unsteady March" (published by the University of Chicago Press). "But it is not so unlikely that Americans of different races, and especially blacks and whites, will live in different regions, attend different schools, concentrate in different occupations, and be governed by policies that reinforce these patterns, especially when they serve the interests and values of affluent whites and their closest allies."
To prevent this scenario, the authors propose a number of reforms in "The Unsteady March." Particularly important, they say, is to help black Americans achieve greater economic equality, and to reform the criminal justice system, which "disproportionately burdens blacks and other nonwhites," the authors say. Specifically, they propose:
* Increasing enforcement of civil rights laws and making violations of these laws a criminal offense.
* Continuing affirmative action until there is proof that "antiblack discrimination has ceased and median wealth for blacks has reached 50% of whites."
* Creating a "safety net" system akin to Social Security for all families with children under age 18 to reduce poverty and help working families (this universal program would also "help remove the racialized stigma currently attached to welfare systems," Smith and Klinkner say);
* Instituting criminal justice reforms that shift away from incarceration toward rehabilitation for certain crimes, such as "small-scale" drug crimes; abolish the death penalty (which also disproportionately affects blacks, the authors argue); restore voting rights to convicts who have completed their jail time or parole; and end peremptory challenges to jurors, "since they limit the likelihood of racially mixed parties," according to Smith and Klinkner.
* Reinstituting the draft for military service and creating a civil national service that could bring people of different races and ethnic backgrounds together for a common cause. History has shown military service to be a "powerful force for advancing the rights of African Americans," say Smith and Klinkner.
"Some may say these are crazy utopian ideas," says Smith. "But the fact is, we have seen that changes are not going to come on their own or over time simply because people's hearts and minds have changed. Talk and moral persuasion, though they can motivate people, have never worked alone to end racial inequalities. We need to have a program of public policies that push for constructive change. We need a concrete agenda for reform, and it requires, in most cases, 'pushing the envelope,' so to speak."
In spite of current trends, Smith and Klinkner are not without hope that achieving a more egalitarian society will again be an American priority.
"It is important to note that while we have seen periods of retrenchment, the total of the gains we have made is cumulative," says Smith. "We are a much less racist society now that we used to be, and I can't imagine that we would we ever turn back from some of the most significant steps we've taken. With a major national commitment and some hard public choices, we can do a lot more to make this country a better one for all of us."
-- By Susan Gonzalez
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