A Fool’s Errand: Defining the Black Agenda Over Time
∗
Matthew B. Platt†
February 23, 2014
Abstract
In this paper, I introduce a new data set on how Congress recognizes black issues from 1947
to 2002. The exploration of this data emphasizes the importance of both continuity and change
in narratives of black politics. Over the last fifty years of the twentieth century Congress has
allocated a greater share of its agenda to black issues and those issues cover a broader range of
policy areas. Black Americans have progressed from a state of impoverished political exclusion
to middle-class political incorporation, and the black agenda reflects that change accordingly.
However, this story of change exists with a backdrop of the persistent failure of black Americans’
struggles to achieve full economic and social equality.
∗
I would like to thank Fredrick Harris, Richard Niemi, Lawrence Rothenberg, Valeria Sinclair-Chapman, Daniel
Gillion, Jeffrey Elliot, and Stephen Voss for comments on previous versions of this paper.
†
Department of Government, Harvard University [email protected]
In 1957 Martin Luther King had a singular black policy agenda – voting rights. The vote would
be enough to end white mob violence and segregation (King 1957). By 1968 King espoused a far
more radical and ambitious policy agenda: ending the war in Vietnam; offering full employment
and/or a guaranteed income; reconstructing urban transit systems to meet the needs of the poor;
greater community control over the administration of federal poverty programs; fair provision of
affordable housing; and greater police accountability (King 1967, 1968). By 1968 black American
voting rights had been protected; segregation in public accommodations had ended; President
Johnson had declared war on poverty; the undeclared war in Vietnam was escalating; the major
riots in Watts, Newark, and Detroit had eroded the political will of white liberals; and the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference had unsuccessfully tried to export the civil rights movement to the
north. King’s transformation suggests that black agenda setting is a story about change – changes
in strategies, changes in government responsiveness, and changes in the very issues themselves. Yet,
the expansion from civil rights to economic freedom and opportunity is not unique to King. Indeed,
a strong case can be made that issues of economic inequality have always been at the core of black
freedom struggles (Smith 1996; Hamilton and Hamilton 1997). In that sense, black agenda setting
is a story of stasis – America’s continued failure to live up to its promise. This paper examines
the continuity and change in black agenda setting by asking how should a black issue agenda be
defined and what issues comprise that agenda from 1947 to 2002.
Black agenda setting has tended towards characterizations of continuity rather than change.
Conventional wisdom is that the major policy demands that would comprise a post-civil rights
agenda have not changed a great deal because those demands have gone unmet. Core issues of
full employment, a guaranteed income, national health insurance, federal funding of education, and
affirmative action for individuals and businesses have not been resolved (Hamilton and Hamilton
1997; Walton and Smith 2003). The underlying conditions that create these policy demands have
not miraculously abated in the absence of policy, so it makes sense to think of the black agenda as
more constant than variable. Studies of black agenda setting over some long span of time established
broader themes about the continuous institutionalization of white privilege (Williams 2003); the
cycles of progress and retrenchment that characterize America’s search for racial equality (Klinkner
1
and Smith 1999; King and Smith 2005); and the lack of efficacious black political leadership (Smith
1996). The literature focuses on the persistence of problems, the persistence of policy prescriptions,
and the persistence of failure.
The literature’s emphasis on continuity is compounded by two significant data problems. First,
there is no clearly articulated method for determining what constitutes a black issue or a black
agenda. Second, even if there was some consensus definition of black issues, we do not have data
that compiles a comprehensive list of policy demands by black political entrepreneurs over an
expansive period of time. This paper addresses both of those data problems. I offer a general
definition and set of guiding principles for determining whether any policy proposal is part of the
black agenda. The definition is sufficiently general to accommodate changes in political, social, and
economic contexts, but it also contains a rigid, fundamental idea that makes comparisons across
time meaningful. For the second data problem, I shift the emphasis to the black issues that receive
some recognition from Congress. Admittedly, congressional recognition of black issues is a step
removed from the entrepreneurial work of black advocacy organizations and activists. However,
the central question for black agenda setting is not how policy proposals originate but how those
proposals receive governmental attention. Using data from the Congressional Bills Project, I use the
definition of black issues to code every bill introduced in Congress from 1947 to 2002 as addressing
black issues or not. This provides insight into how Congress allocates recognition of the black
agenda as a whole and how it prioritizes issues within that agenda. The story that emerges from
this black agenda encompasses both continuity and change. Jobs are the consistent core of the
black issue agenda, but the number and types of black issues that Congress recognizes has grown
over time. Most importantly, the transformation in how Congress prioritizes black issues follows the
progression that black Americans have made from impoverished, nominal citizens to a politically
incorporated middle-class minority group.
The paper proceeds in four sections. Section 1 crafts a definition of black issues. Section 2
details how the bill introductions were coded in accordance with that definition. Section 3 uses the
data to explore fifty-six years of congressional recognition of black issues. Section 4 concludes by
discussing how this data can be used in future projects and returns to these concepts of continuity
2
and change in black agenda setting. A full understanding of black agenda setting requires both
concepts. The continuity speaks to some of the inherent problems in black agenda setting and
representation. The change reveals some of the possibilities of minority incorporation and the
tradeoffs between individual rights and collective policy aims.
1
An Unanswerable Question: What is a Black Issue?
Changes in the issue content of the black agenda cannot be understood without a coherent definition
of black issues. Unfortunately, that definition has been elusive.Walton and Smith (2003) characterize the general approach to this problem with their distinction between rights- and material-based
issues. Rights-based issues “seek to achieve fundamental universal freedom in terms of basic human,
constitutional, and legal rights,” and material-based issues “seek access to economic benefits such
as land, education, employment, and social security,” (Walton and Smith 2003, 84). Rights-based
issues are straightforward and evince little controversy. Material-based policies require a further
distinction between generic liberal policies and those that would have particular significance for
black Americans.
Previous research on the substantive representation of black Americans traces an outline of
consensus on making the distinction between black interests and generic liberalism. A wave of
research on representation and redistricting in the 1990s took one of two flawed approaches to the
problem of defining black issues: the definition was outsourced to racial advocacy groups like the
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) or the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP); or black issues were conflated with liberal voting records (Bullock 1981;
Cameron, Epstein and O’Halloran 1996; Lublin 1997; Whitby 1997; Grose 2005; Baker and Cook
2005). Hamilton and Hamilton (1997) offer an in depth case study rather than roll call analysis
of other studies; however, they adopt the same approach of defining material-based black issues as
those that were espoused by the NAACP and Urban League. Examining black interests in terms
of liberal voting records does nothing to distinguish between generic liberal concerns and black
issues. Using the issue positions of black advocacy organizations has the methodological appeal of
removing the researchers’ own biases, but those biases are just replaced by the elite perspectives
3
of those advocacy groups. As Strolovitch (2006) demonstrates, black interest groups – such as the
LCCR, NAACP, and Urban League – adopt agendas that only address the concerns of a specific,
relatively advantaged segment of black Americans. Ideally, a definition of black issues would be
inclusive enough to transcend boundaries of class and ideology.
Consensus around black issue definitions emerged as a reaction to and rejection of the early
reliance upon vote scores. This second wave of race and representation research shifted the focus to
non-voting forms of legislative behavior such as participation in hearings, bill sponsorship, and floor
speeches. All of this research follows the Walton and Smith (2003) distinction between rights-based
and material-based policies. Gamble’s work on black representation in committee deliberations
defines black issues as those that deal explicitly with race and those that disproportionately impact
black people – education, poverty, housing, welfare, unemployment, and criminal justice (?Gamble
2011). Minta also examines committee hearings and divides the analysis in terms of explicitly racial
and/or civil rights hearings and those that address social welfare concerns (?Minta and SinclairChapman 2013). Owens (2005) defines black issue areas as welfare, education, and healthcare.
The general consensus of these studies is to define rights-based policies as those that explicitly
address race and/or racial discrimination, and material-based policies are defined as improving the
socioeconomic conditions of black people (Bratton and Haynie 1999; Canon 1999; Whitby 2002;
Baker and Cook 2005; Winburn and Sullivan 2011).
This approach to defining black issues is a major improvement, but it still has two important
drawbacks. First, the inclusion of all issues that explicitly address race assumes that any policy
that addresses some subset of black people should be important for all black people. For example,
it is not obvious why providing additional research funding for black people with sickle cell anemia
should be an important policy concern for healthy black people who do not have any family history
of that disease. This assumed prioritization embedded in the “explicitly racial” category gets
close to a kind of essentialism that makes political theorists wary. Second, the standards of either
improving the socioeconomic status or disproportionate impact for selecting material-based policies
is not sufficiently precise. The existence of varied disparities in educational achievement does not
necessarily mean that all education policies should be included as black issues. At the core of
4
both of these problems with the current approach to black issue definition is the lack of a strong
theoretical framework. In order to establish specific criteria for defining a black issue agenda across
time periods, we must have a concept of universal black interests.
Theorists of black politics have been skeptical that such a conception can exist. Proponents of
intersectionality criticize broad categorizations, such as race and gender, for ignoring the diversity
that exists within these groups (Weldon 2006; Hancock 2007). Cohen (1999) is more pointed in her
criticism, characterizing black Americans as existing within a state of advanced marginalization.
That is, the relatively more advantaged segment of the black population now marginalizes the
least advantaged black people, specifically those who do not conform to standards of “appropriate”
behavior. Similarly, Reed (2000) describes black identity politics as pushing the narrow interests
of an elite who justify their advocacy as representing some homogenous community sentiment.
Black Americans have progressed sufficiently in the post-war era to create real economic and social
divisions among themselves. Although these divisions have not manifested in divergent political
attitudes (Dawson 1994; Tate 1994), they are substantial enough to render claims of universal black
interests as suspect.
Shelby (2005) develops a pragmatic black solidarity to answer these critics. Despite the socially
constructed nature of racial identity (Appiah 2005; Weldon 2006; Hancock 2007) and the class
divisions among black Americans (Cohen 1999; Reed 2000; Strolovitch 2006), black people are
united by a shared vulnerability to racism. As such, black politics should limit itself to issues of
racial justice:
. . . I would urge that we define black politics not only in terms of (1) the common racial
identity of the agents who engage in it, but also, and more importantly, in terms of
(2) the political interests those agents share because of the unfair social consequences
that this ascriptive racial identity typically entails and engenders and (3) the mutual
recognition of the need to work collectively to advance these shared interests in racial
justice. (Shelby 2005, 154)
In practical terms, that means a black agenda should contain policies that offer legal protections
against racism, remedies for the effects of racism, commemorations to undermine the negative
5
stereotypes which reinforce racism, and elimination of stigmatizing social and economic disparities
that justify (and are justified by) racism (Shelby 2005, 153-160).
Shelby’s discussion of universal black interests provides the refinement we need to precisely
operationalize black issues. If every individual black person does not (normatively) have an interest
in contributing to the enactment of a given policy idea, then it does not belong on the black
agenda. Under this definition disproportionate impact and racial disparities are not enough. The
disparity has to be tied to a racialized stigma and stereotype that affects black people who are
not themselves part of the disparately impacted group. Criminal justice provides the clearest case.
Racial disparities in the rates of arrest, prosecution, and incarceration for various crimes reinforce
racial stereotypes of black criminality. The pervasiveness of the stereotype is such that all black
people are treated as dangerous criminals regardless of their own behavior. Thus, all black people
have a vested interest in eliminating the racial disparities around criminal justice. Conversely, it
is not clear that the large racial disparity in obesity rates impacts how non-obese black people
interact with the world. Thus, all black people may not have a vested interest in policies that
reduce obesity rates.
Emerging from this discussion, there are three general criteria for identifying black issues:
1. Anti-Racist: Any policy that actively fights against racial discrimination – at home or
abroad – is included on the black agenda. Explicit racial set-asides, funding, affirmative
action, etc. are included because they share the premise that black people experience a
variety of disadvantages that are the result of current or past racial discrimination, so the
government should play some role in eliminating these racial inequalities.
2. Cultural: Commemorations are included because they emphasize the positive contributions
of black Americans to the nation’s development and they counter racist ideals of black inferiority.
3. Social Welfare: Racial disparities that are caused by structural inequality/institional racism
and/or perpetuate the stereotypes that reinforce racial inequality would be considered part
of the black agenda.
There is a great deal of room for interpretation within these three criteria for black issues. The
aim is not to construct a definitive black agenda that is universally accepted. Instead, the hope is
that these criteria can serve to provide a common terrain for debate. Then the disagreements can be
6
with regard to specific interpretations rather than the fundamental theoretical underpinning. The
remainder of the paper I apply these criteria to the U.S. Congress to demonstrate how changes in a
black issue agenda reveals the tension between securing individual rights collective material-based
policy aims.
2
Measuring Congressional Recognition
Typically, scholars of agenda setting measure congressional attention in terms of hearings (Jones
and Baumgartner 2005). Given that the vast majority of bills introduced in Congress never receive
any further consideration, bill introduction does not meet the “serious consideration” hurdle that
defines the formal agenda (Cobb, Ross and Ross 1976; Krutz 2005). Nonetheless, bill introductions
do provide meaningful information about the issues that members of Congress (MCs hereafter)
believe that their constituents and the public at large prioritize (Sulkin 2005). I conceive of bill
introduction as congressional recognition, rather than attention. When a bill is introduced Congress
is recognizing that issue as a problem of interest to some constituency, but further action may or may
not occur at that time. The Congressional Bills Project (Adler and Wilkerson 2007) has compiled
every bill introduced from 1947-2002. These are the raw data for the measures of recognition. Bills
have been coded as fitting within nineteen subject categories: macroeconomics; civil rights; health;
agriculture; labor, employment, and immigration; education; environment; energy; transportation;
law, crime, and family; social welfare; community development and housing; banking, finance,
and commerce; defense; space, science, and communication; foreign trade; international affairs;
government operations; and public lands and water management.1 Allocations of recognition are
the distribution of bills across these nineteen topics.
All of the bills were coded based on their title when possible. If a bill’s title was not sufficiently
descriptive then either the bill’s summary2 or the full text of the legislation were consulted. A
detailed description of more specific coding guidelines could not fit within this space. I have
included a condensed list of some of the major guidelines in the appendix. Some of the most
1
Greater detail on how this coding was done can be founds on the public website for the database:
www.congressionalbills.org.
2
Summaries are available on thomas.loc.gov only for bills introduced after 1973.
7
important coding rules are presented below:
• Unemployment: Jobs programs that are either targeted towards the poor and/or minorities; jobs programs that are not targeted to some specific non-poor, non-black group (eg.
displaced homemakers or veterans); and policies that are geared explicitly to solving problems of unemployment are included under the social welfare criterion. These policies have the
potential to disproportionately benefit black Americans who suffer from higher rates of unemployment. Most importantly, black poverty and unemployment serve to stigmatize black
people, so all black Americans have an interest in supporting policies that work to curb
poverty and increase employment.
• Health: In general, efforts to curb health disparities are only included if these disparities
are linked to unequal/discriminatory treatment. Although a variety of health outcomes are
the result of issues that would be included under the criteria, most health disparities are not
stigmatizing in and of themselves. As such, medicaid, universal health care, etc. are not
included as black issues.
• Crime: In general, “tough on crime” policies are not included as black issues. Even though
such policies can often improve the quality of life for poor inner city residents, they also
contribute to high rates of black incarceration. The quality of life issue does not necessarily
add to negative racial stigmas; however, black incarceration furthers the stigma of black
criminality. As a result, I lean towards preventing the larger stigma by excluding these
anti-crime policies.
• Welfare: In general, cash and “in-kind” transfers from the government to poor people are
included as black issues. The basic idea is that such policies contribute to poverty alleviation,
and the disproportionate number of black people in poverty is a major contributor to negative
racial stereotypes about intelligence, work ethic, morality, and general worth. In practice this
means that all sorts of welfare programs ranging from earned-income tax credits to food
stamps to energy vouchers are included as black issues.
• Foreign Policy: Foreign policy is only included on the black agenda if it fits within the
anti-racist criterion. That means that punitive policies against apartheid would be included
as black issues, but increasing foreign aid to fight HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan African would
not be included. The idea is that racial injustice abroad that is either implicitly or explicitly
supported by the United States government is a tacit acceptance of racial injustice at home.
Thus, all black people have an obligation to fight against it. Conversely, foreign aid that
serves a sort of social welfare goal is not included because global racial disparities do not
contribute to domestic stigmatization in the same way. As a corollary, immigration policy is
only included if it is geared toward fighting racial discrimination.
It is important to note that the exclusion of any policy from this definition of a black agenda does
not mean that some subset of black people should not or do not support these policies. Nor should
8
the inclusion of policies on the black agenda indicate that non-black people do not or should not
support such policies.
These abstract ideas become more concrete when we examine some examples of what the black
agenda entails. Table 1 shows that the more straightforward elements of the definition of black
issues – anti-racist and cultural criteria – combine to account for only twenty-five percent of the
black agenda over time. The Congressional Bills Project have already coded each bill as falling
Table 1: The social welfare criterion characterizes most of the black agenda: This table shows the
number of black issues that fell within each of the three criteria.
Bills
Anti-Racist
2347
(22%)
Cultural
369
(3%)
Social Welfare
7988
(75%)
Total
10704
(100%)
within one of nineteen policy topics. Table 2 illustrates the types of black issues that fall into each
topic category. These three criteria for black issues place bills into a variety of different categories.
Judging from both of the above tables, the Social Welfare criterion includes the widest range of
issues; it spans health, labor, community development, foreign trade, agriculture, and macroeconomics. However, the Anti-racist criterion is broader than simply civil rights. The banking,
communication, defense, international affairs, and environment categories all address issues of past
or present racial discrimination. Finally, government operations and public lands are the primary
homes for cultural legislation. Examples like this can only provide an unrepresentative snapshot of
the issue content of the black agenda. The point was simply to provide more understanding of the
data and how bills were coded. Armed with that understanding, we can examine the congressional
recognition of black issues over time.
3
Results
Congress does not devote much of its agenda to the recognition of black issues. Figure 1 shows
black issue bills as a proportion of all bills that were introduced in Congress for each year. Congress
9
Table 2: Examples of Black Bills by Topic
Topic
Macroeconomics
Civil Rights
Health
Agriculture
Labor/Employment/Immigration
Education
Environment
Energy
Transportation
Law/Crime/Family
Social Welfare
Community Development/Housing
Banking/Finance/Commerce
Defense
Space/Science/Communication
Foreign Trade
International Affairs
Government Operations
Public Lands
Example
incentives for manufacturing in high unemployment areas
extension of the Commission on Civil Rights
“Intravenous Substance Abuse and AIDS Prevention Act of 1989”
domestic food programs for the needy
earned income tax credit
expand Title III programs under Higher Education Act
collecting demographic data for waste treatment sites
low-income home energy assistance
public works employment for long-term unemployed
racially discriminatory use of the death penalty
establish national minimum for AFDC benefits
revitalization and construction of public housing
non-discrimination in insurance
pensions for soldiers in the Brownsville Massacre of 1906
diverse ownership of local broadcasting
none
sanctions against apartheid
King holiday and its commission
national African-American history museum
10
Figure 1: Black Issues Comprise a Small Proportion of Congressional Bill Sponsorship: This plot
0.04
0.03
0.02
0.01
Proportion of All Bills Introduced
0.05
0.06
shows black bills introduced as a proportion of all bills introduced. Since 1955 black issues have been a relatively
stable and small component of congressional recognition.
1950
1960
1970
1980
Year
11
1990
2000
recognizes a relatively tiny amount of black issues until the beginning of the modern civil rights
movement in 1955. However, even at the peak of the movement in 1963 and 1968 black issues
only account for six percent of all the issues that Congress recognized in those years. Figure
1 nicely captures how black agenda setting is about both continuity and change. Black issues
are continuously a minor aspect of the Congressional agenda, but understanding the year-to-year
changes in that small amount of attention could be instructive.
Table 3: The black agenda allocates recognition differently than the congressional agenda: Cell
entries are the proportions of issues that fit within a given topic for all bills and black bills.
Macroeconomics
Civil Rights
Health
Agriculture
Labor/Employment
Education
Environment
Energy
Transportation
Law/Crime/Family
Social Welfare
Housing/Development
Banking/Commerce
Defense
Science/Communication
Foreign Trade
International Affairs
Government Operations
Public Lands
All Bills
0.052
0.025
0.070
0.048
0.068
0.044
0.045
0.034
0.067
0.063
0.058
0.027
0.066
0.066
0.008
0.019
0.010
0.160
0.070
Black Bills
0.034
0.170
0.013
0.003
0.277
0.137
0.000
0.000
0.024
0.040
0.144
0.093
0.005
0.001
0.000
0.000
0.002
0.051
0.004
N
278750
10794
Before addressing how the allocation of recognition shifts over time, it is necessary to establish
that the allocations for black issues differ from the allocations for recognition more generally.
Table 3 presents how bills are distributed across the nineteen policy topics. There are a number
of important points to take away from this table. First, looking at the columns for black bills,
12
we see that issues of civil rights, labor/employment, social welfare, and education are Congress’s
top priorities in dealing with black issues. Jobs are particularly important for the black agenda,
accounting for more than a quarter of all black issue bills. Interestingly, Walton and Smith (2003)
discuss all of these four topics as elements of the post-civil rights black agenda.
Second, the allocations for recognition are substantially different for black issues compared to
all issues. The overall congressional agenda is far more diverse than its black issue agenda. Civil
rights, labor/employment, social welfare, and education are 72.8% of recognized black issues but
only 19.5% of all the issues Congress recognizes. These stark differences in the prioritization of
black issues compared to all issues suggests that changes over time in congressional recognition to
black issues may not necessarily mirror larger trends in congressional behavior. Combined with
Figure 1, Table 3 raises questions about the responsiveness of Congress to black issue concerns.
The most important topics for black issues receive relatively little attention from Congress overall,
and black issues as a whole never rise above 6% of all congressional bill sponsorship. Future studies
will address how black Americans attain congressional recognition for their issues. Part of that
story will be told through the exploration of how recognition has changed in the post-war era.
Matching the distinction between rights- and material-based issues, Table 3 shows that civil
rights and labor/employment are the two largest policy areas on the black agenda. Following
on the insights of Hamilton and Hamilton (1997), the proportion of the agenda that these two
areas accounts for represent that black liberation struggles have always been about social/political
equality on one hand and economic equality on the other hand. While Hamilton and Hamilton
(1997) stress how jobs and freedom are coexistent concerns, I am interested in the potential tension
between them. Figure 2 illustrates some of that tension by showing how bills that fit the anti-racist
and social welfare criteria are prioritized over time. The first thing to notice in this figure is that
bills classified under the social welfare criterion have always been the dominant component of the
black agenda. From 1947 to 1964 there was relative parity between these criteria, but after 1965
there is a sharp and permanent divergence: black issues are mostly defined according to the social
welfare criterion. Figure 2 makes the point that, in terms of the prioritization of issues on the black
agenda, the pursuit of social/political equality has given way to the fight for economic equality.
13
Figure 2: Anti-racist Issues Fade from the Agenda after the Civil Rights Movement: This plot shows
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
Proportion of Black Issue Bills
1.0
the proportion of black issues that fit within the anti-racist and social welfare categories. The solid red lines show the
social welfare bills and the dotted blue line shows the anti-racist bills. Social welfare issues are always the dominant
component of the black agenda, and anti-racist bills never comprise more than 30% of black issues after 1966.
1950
1960
1970
Year
14
1980
1990
2000
This idea becomes more apparent when we restrict our attention to the Congress’s top black
issue priority for each year. Table 4 presents the policy area with highest proportion of black
Table 4: The Dual Agenda of Jobs and Freedom: The table shows the topic that accounted for the highest
proportion of black issue bills in each year.
Year
Most Recognized Black Issue
Year
Most Recognized Black Issue
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
Civil Rights
Employment
Civil Rights
Employment
Civil Rights
Employment
Civil Rights
Employment
Employment
Civil Rights
Civil Rights
Employment
Employment
Civil Rights
Employment
Civil Rights
Civil Rights
Welfare
Civil Rights
Welfare
Employment
Welfare
Welfare
Education
Employment
Employment
Employment
Employment
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
Employment
Employment
Employment
Employment
Welfare
Employment
Employment
Employment
Employment
Education
Employment
Employment
Employment
Employment
Employment
Education
Education
Employment
Employment
Housing
Employment
Employment
Education
Education
Education
Education
Education
Welfare
issue bills for each year in our time period. Civil rights and employment policies alternate for the
top spot from 1947 to 1965, confirming the patterns for anti-racist and social welfare bills from
Figure 2. After 1965, civil rights issues never again rise to the top black issue priority. Conversely,
employment issues continue to dominate black issue recognition in Congress until 1997, when they
15
are supplanted by education policy. Lyndon Johnson’s “war on poverty” briefly interrupts the focus
on employment issues from 1964 to 1969. During those five years welfare issues become prominent
on the black agenda. In the twenty-six year period from 1970 to 1996 employment policy is the
top issue priority for all but six of those years. Finally, education begins to compete with jobs as
an issue priority in 1990 until it becomes the focus of black agenda setting from 1997 to 2001.
Table 4 is a good illustration of the major points of this study. First, civil rights disappears
from the list of top priorities because the major policy aims are achieved by 1965. After passage
of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the struggle for legally mandated political and social equality is
a success. There is a need for vigilance to maintain and implement the civil rights victories, but
the need for new policy initiatives has dramatically lessened. This is a prime example of change in
black agenda setting. Second, employment policy persists as the top issue priority because its goals
have not been attained. In that sense, the dominance of “jobs” as a policy demand reinforces our
instinct to think about black agenda setting in terms of continuity – continuous disappointment in
this case – rather than change. Third, the contrast between civil rights and employment policies
raises questions about tradeoffs in black agenda setting. Political equality was supposed to be a
means to full equality rather than strictly an end in itself. The disappearance of civil rights and the
persistence of employment begs the question of how concessions to political equality relate to the
struggle for economic equality. Lastly, the progression from civil rights to welfare to education –
against the constant backdrop of employment concerns – tells us something about black Americans’
progress over this period.
Figure 3 provides a visualization for the broader story of black American progress that can be
gleaned from black agenda setting. The comparison for all three of these trends is the congressional
prioritization for black employment issues. At every point in black people’s struggle for equality
in the post-war United States there was a demand for jobs and wages that would allow black
people to become economically self-sufficient. That is the central insight in Hamilton and Hamilton
(1997) and it is completely supported by this data. The first part of black Americans’ progress
is moving from nominal to actual citizens. Figure 3(a) shows the shifts in congressional priorities
for extending full citizenship rights to black Americans. From 1947 to 1952, black civil rights
16
Figure 3: From Civil Rights to Welfare to Education: The plots show the proportion of black issue bills
that address civil rights (in red), welfare (in blue), and education (in green) compared to the proportion of black
issue bills that address employment/labor. Employment is the dominant black issue over this entire time period, but
it competes with a transition from civil rights until 1965, to welfare until 1980, and then education through the late
1990s.
(a) Civil Rights
(b) Welfare
0.4
0.3
0.0
0.1
0.2
Proportion of Black Issue Bills
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0.0
1970
1980
1990
2000
1950
1960
1970
Year
1980
Year
(c) Education
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
Employment
Education
Proportion of Black Issue Bills
1960
0.1
1950
0.0
Proportion of Black Issue Bills
0.5
Employment
Welfare
0.5
Employment
Civil Rights
1950
1960
1970
1980
Year
17
1990
2000
1990
2000
issues consisted of fighting employment discrimination through the creation of a permanent, strong
Federal Employment Practices Committee (FEPC); abolishing the poll tax as a requirement for
voting; and curbing mob violence through anti-lynching legislation. Beginning in 1953, Congress
begins to recognize black civil rights in a broader sense, with legislation calling for the end of
discrimination and segregation in housing, public accommodations, and education. By 1955 the
emphasis had largely shifted away from FEPC legislation toward establishing a commission on
civil rights and fighting segregation on interstate transportation. This shift towards focusing on
broad civil rights legislation remained until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and it was
supplemented throughout by efforts to enfranchise black Americans, which was finally accomplished
through the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
After black people had obtained the legal trappings of citizenship, the next step was to stop
the basic human suffering through the provision of welfare programs. Figure 3(b) suggests that
the prioritization of welfare policies could be tied to larger political forces. Certainly, the figure
and the underlying bills make it clear that the War on Poverty was the impetus for welfare’s surge
onto the black agenda. Up through the early 1970s, much of the black issue welfare bills were still
about either improving or maintaining these war on poverty programs. The second major trend
that emerged in black welfare issues was combating hunger and malnutrition. Bills that sought to
create or expand school lunch, special milk, and food stamp programs are driving black welfare
issues throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Additionally, these black issue bills are about nationalizing
requirements for Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), making AFDC more generous,
and plans for some sort of guaranteed income policy. There is a major decline in the prioritization
of black welfare issues in conjunction with the rise of Ronald Reagan in 1980.
The publication of “A Nation at Risk” in 1983 is responsible for the surge in education as the
top black issue priority in 1984 (see Figure 3(c)). In 1990 and 1991 the congressional black agenda
contains an assortment of education policies ranging from providing tax and loan incentives to
teachers who work in disadvantaged schools to expansions of Head Start. In the late 1990s the
policies take on a bit more of the priorities of the education reform movement – school choice, more
accountability, etc. However, education as a black issue priority can largely be classified just as the
18
federal government taking a broader role at all levels to help reduce disparities in funding, opportunities for post-secondary education, early child education, and academic achievement. Looking
at Figure 3 as a whole, we can see that shifts in congressional priorities for black issues has an
intuitive narrative of change: first, black people had to be acknowledged as full citizens; second,
a stronger social safety net was needed to help lift people out of poverty; third, the provision of
jobs at decent wages allowed black people to remain out of poverty; and to complete that slow
progression towards the middle-class, black Americans required greater federal intervention into
(particularly urban) problems of quality education.
4
Conclusion
As the title of this paper suggests, trying to construct a universal definition of black issues is a fool’s
errand. There will undoubtedly be disagreements over some of the individual coding decisions that
were made in constructing this new data set. Despite the futility of the endeavor, I have taken
on the role of the fool because the potential benefits of defining a black agenda over time can no
longer be ignored. This paper demonstrates some of those benefits. The largest benefit is that it is
now possible to provide a realistic portrait of black agenda setting that incorporates both change
and continuity.
A narrative of change emerged from this data that illustrates black Americans’ progression in the
twentieth century. First, black people needed to be accorded the fundamental rights of citizenship:
basic human dignity and a self-determined voice in the political process. Second, the social safety
net was strengthened to help meet basic material needs. Lastly, black Americans required quality
education to complete the transition from impoverished non-citizens to a politically incorporated
middle-class minority. The change narrative inherent in black agenda setting is reinforced by a
stark reminder of stasis. Throughout the progression from civil rights to welfare to education there
is a dual agenda prioritization for decent jobs and wages. This persistent policy demand illuminates
that economic inequality remains a reality, despite the genuine progress black people have made.
The second half of the twentieth century was marked by America’s struggle to accept its black
citizens on an equal basis, congressional recognition of black issues mirrors that effort.
19
By viewing the black agenda as consisting of elements of both change and continuity, this
descriptive data exploration also suggests a trade between individual rights and collective policy
aims. The depictions of how the black agenda changed over time all stress how the success of civil
rights demands gave way to the failure of the economic demands. Although this exploration of
data cannot provide support for strong claims, it does suggest an argument that is sympathetic
to Cohen’s theory of marginalization (Cohen 1999) or Guinier’s views on representation (Guinier
1994): black Americans bargained for legal citizenship rights at the expense of economic goals that
would help us collectively. Individual black people have the ability to reach great heights of wealth,
power, and status, but collectively black Americans have not made much headway in confronting
poverty or the myriad negative consequences that stem from it. In that sense, as black people we
have made the same mistake as Esau, forfeiting our economic birthright for a pottage of individual
rights. The great potential for this data set is that it can allow for more empirical analyses of this
idea. That is a goal well worth playing the fool.
Appendices
A
General Guidelines
• The underlying principle is to define what a black agenda would look like in the absence of
some corporate entity that can clearly speak for all black people or a consensus that emerges
out of some form of black unity. Given that premise, Shelby (2005, 151) argues, “Black politics
is instead about identifying, correcting, and ultimately eliminating race-based injustices.”
• In practice this means:
1. Obviously, any policy that actively fights against racial discrimination – at home or
abroad – is included on the black agenda.
2. Explicit racial set-asides, funding, affirmative action, etc. are included because they
share the premise that black people experience a variety of disadvantages that are not
entirely of their own making, so the government should play some role in eliminating
these racial inequalities.
3. Commemorations are included because they emphasize the positive contributions of
black Americans to the nation’s development and they counter racist ideals of black
inferiority.
20
4. Racial disparities that are caused by structural inequality/institional racism would be
considered part of the black agenda.
5. Racial disparities that perpetuate the stereotypes that reinforce racial inequality would
be considered part of the black agenda.
6. There must be strong arguments that conservative policies do not contribute to institutional racism in order for them to be included on the black agenda.
• In general, targeted jobs credits for hiring the “economically disadvantaged” are included under the social welfare criterion. These policies are aimed at increasing employment among the
poor. Although the programs are universal and not specific to black people; black American’s
disproportionate representation among the poor means that they could particularly benefit
from such programs. Given that black poverty and unemployment are important elements
of stigmas of black Americans as lazy and irresponsible, these targeted job credits meet the
standards for black issues.
• In general, enterprise zones are included under the social welfare criterion. The idea is that
these policies seek to provide economic development to distressed areas – in which black
people are disproportionately represented. Ghetto and rural black poverty stigmatize black
people as lawless, lazy, irresponsible, immoral, etc., so the alleviation of such conditions fits
within the definition of a black issue.
• In general, job training programs that are aimed at specific groups other than minorities or
the poor are not included as black issues. Given that there are already targets in mind for
these policies, it is hard to argue that black people as a whole have an interest in ensuring that
this particular subset of the black population receives benefits. By the same token, policies
targeted primarily to areas impacted by base closings or globalization are not included as
black issues.
• In general, creating specialized positions to handle “minority affairs” are included under the
anti-racist criterion. These posts are created to remedy past and/or prevent future instances
of racialized disparities in the provision of services/benefits. Basically, they are institutional
safeguards against racial injustice.
• In general, bills that oppose affirmative action and set aside programs are in direct conflict
with the anti-racist criterion. Admittedly, this is somewhat of an ideological judgement.
Conservatives argue that opposing affirmative action is in the interest of racial equality.
However, given the consistently high levels of support for affirmative action by black public
opinion, I side with the view that opposition to affirmative action should not be included as
a black issue.
• In general, punitive policies against the apartheid regime in South Africa are included under
the anti-racist criterion. These policies fall under the category of fighting against racial
injustice both at home and abroad.
• In general, jobs programs that are not targeted to a particular non-black group (ie. veterans,
homemakers, displaced factory workers) are included as black issues under the social welfare
criterion. These policies have the potential to disproportionately benefit black Americans who
21
suffer from higher rates of unemployment. Most importantly, black poverty and unemployment serve to stigmatize black people, so all black Americans have an interest in supporting
policies that work to curb poverty and increase employment.
• In general, requiring that government agencies/boards be representative of the community,
particularly in terms of minorities and the poor, is included as a black issue under the antiracist criterion. These policies are aimed at allowing black people to have a greater say in the
programs that actually affect them within their own communities. As with “minority affairs”
positions, the aim is to remedy past and/or prevent future instances of racialized disparities
in the provision of services/benefits or the impact from decisions.
• In general, efforts to create higher benefit levels for state implementation of social welfare
policies that fit within black issues – unemployment compensation, AFDC payments, etc. –
are included under the social welfare criterion. Aside from the justification of the original
programs on grounds of fighting stigmatizing poverty, the federalization of policy implementation has deep roots in black freedom struggles going all the way back to anti-lynching as a
mechanism to counteract the racist/discriminatory practices of given states.
• In general, policies geared explicitly to solving problems of unemployment fit under the social welfare criterion. The same justification for jobs programs applies to programs that
extend/increase unemployment compensation programs/benefits.
• In general, universal cash transfers such as the earned income tax credit, guaranteed income,
and/or negative income tax are included as black issues under the social welfare criterion.
Such programs follow the same logic as full employment policies in that they alleviate poverty
without attaching a stigma of undeserving poor or otherwise reinforcing negative stereotypes
of black inferiority.
• In general, efforts to curb health disparities are only included if these disparities are linked to
unequal/discriminatory treatment. Although a variety of health outcomes are the result of
issues that would be included under the criteria, most health disparities are not stigmatizing
in and of themselves. As such, medicaid, universal health care, etc. are not included as black
issues.
• In general, immigration reforms are only included if they are linked to unequal/discriminatory
treatment against some black group – Africans, Haitians, etc. Otherwise, it is unclear that
black Americans should have any collective interest in the distribution of quotas for immigration policy. Unless there is an argument that such quotas are racially discriminatory, then
these reforms cannot be viewed as fighting racial injustice.
• In general, education policies that target the poor/disadvantaged and/or minorities are included under the social welfare criterion. These policies are included because they attempt
to address a variety of educational disparities that stigmatize black Americans as being intellectually inferior and/or academically lazy.
• In general, providing health care for poor people, such as through extensions of medicaid, are
not included as black issues unless such aid is explicitly targeted toward some stigmatizing
condition. Infant mortality is one example of such a condition. The basic justification is that
22
a lack of access to health care and/or health insurance is not clearly attached to any sort of
racial stereotypes.
• In general, lowering or seeking exemptions for the minimum wage are not included as black
issues. Given that living wage provisions are included under the social welfare criterion as
an important tool in eliminating ghetto poverty, it would be contradictory to also include
provisions that lower the minimum wage.
• In general, increasing the minimum wage and establishing a living wage are included under
the social welfare criterion under the same logic as a guaranteed income.
• In general, policies relating to organized labor, collective bargaining, etc. are not included as
black issues because organized labor has been far from an unambiguous supporter of black
people. More importantly, these labor issues do not produce any rationale that would justify
the participation of black people who are not interested in unions.
• In general, providing reduced/free child care to poor families is included as a black issue under
the social welfare criterion. Free/reduced child care allows families to seek more employment
opportunities, dealing with the negative stigmas associated with poverty and unemployment.
Additionally, the achievement gaps in education begin prior to kindergarten, so early child
development services would help to combat stigmas of black intellectual inferiority.
• In general, tuition assistance and/or scholarships targeted at low-income students are included
under the social welfare criterion because such programs can address both the stigmatizing
problems of educational achievement/attainment and the poverty associated with not having
a college education.
• In general, gun control policies are not included as black issues because stereotypes of black
criminality are not necessarily tied to guns per se. Indeed, stricter penalties for gun crimes
would seem to be counterproductive for the goal of finding ways to decrease levels of black
incarceration.
• In general, “tough on crime” policies are not included as black issues. Even though such
policies can often improve the quality of life for poor inner city residents, they also contribute
to high rates of black incarceration. The quality of life issue does not necessarily add to
negative racial stigmas; however, black incarceration furthers the stigma of black criminality.
As a result, I lean towards preventing the larger stigma by excluding these anti-crime policies.
• In general, omnibus crime bills are coded as black issues if they contain any of the acceptable
provisions listed under the “Law, Family, Crime” black issue section below.
• In general, fair housing bills are included under the anti-racist criterion because these are
efforts to combat racial discrimination.
• In general, cash and “in-kind” transfers from the government to poor people are included as
black issues. The basic idea is that such policies contribute to poverty alleviation, and the
disproportionate number of black people in poverty is a major contributor to negative racial
stereotypes about intelligence, work ethic, morality, and general worth. In practice this means
that all sorts of welfare programs ranging from earned-income tax credits to food stamps to
energy vouchers are included as black issues.
23
• In general, changes to welfare policy that create distinctions between deserving and undeserving poor – tying benefits to marriage, paternity, work requirements – are not included as
black issues because establishing such requirements automatically stigmatizes those who do
not qualify. In practice this means that the change from AFDC to TANF would not qualify
as a black issue.
• In general, improving nsocial services for poor mothers and poor children are included under the social welfare criterion. Given the concern with poverty in general and educational
achievement in particular, the well-being of children is critical to combating the negative
stigmas associated with the intersection of class, race, and education.
24
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