Rogers Smith on the Campbell Conversations

Campbell Conversations

Rogers Smith

Program transcript:

Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. Issues of race are once again front and center in this November's presidential election. My guest today on the Campbell Conversations has coauthored a new book arguing that the lines of division on this topic have been changing in important ways. Rogers Smith is a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania. And the title of his book, written with Desmond King at Oxford University is, "America's New Racial Battle Lines: Protect versus Repair". Rogers, welcome back to the program, it’s good to see you.

Rogers Smith: Great to be here, Grant.

GR: Well, thanks for making the time. And let me just start with a very basic question about the book. You know, to me, the racial battle lines feel pretty familiar in a lot of ways. So explain how they have changed, do you think.

RS: It's important to understand that throughout American history, there have always been dominant racial issues that have defined different eras. Slavery versus anti-slavery, pro-Jim Crow segregation versus anti-segregation. But those divisions were resolved, at least as a matter of law, in the 1960’s with the civil rights laws that ushered us into a new era of racial politics in which conservatives no longer championed racial segregation. But they did insist that we should embrace colorblind public policies, some out of a sincere conviction that this is what our principles should be, others because they recognize that colorblind policies were a barrier to something conservatives had always feared. Just because whites had committed injustices against blacks and other people of color throughout US history, conservatives feared that there would be a push to privileged people of color over whites, and so they urged colorblind public policies to prevent that. Now, many liberals felt that we needed race conscious policies to integrate all of America's institutions. And the battle between conservative, colorblind positions and liberal positions championing race conscious measures like affirmative action and majority minority representative districts, that went on through the late 20th century and into the early 21st century. Now something has changed. Our argument is that conservatives over the last couple of decades, especially perceive the left as more militant, seeking not just integration of American institutions, but more radical transformations. And so they don't talk about colorblindness very much. They talk about the they do sometimes in litigation, but their political discourse is about the need to protect more traditionalist, conservative Americans, especially white Christian Americans, against what they see as a radical left. And on the left, it is true that many civil rights champions came to feel that integration into existing American institutions wasn't enough. There was too much systemic racism in American institutions, and they needed more dramatic repair to achieve racial equity in one way or another. And so, instead of colorblind versus race conscious measures, we see the modern debates as a battle between those who want to protect traditionalist Americans against those who want to repair the systemic racism they see in American institutions. And that's a much more polarized clash.

GR: Right. Yeah, no, it does sound that way. So when you say repair, I immediately think of reparations. And that's something that you talk about. And obviously reparations have become a pretty loaded term. You just say there's very polarized debate over this. When we talk about reparations, what exactly are we talking about?

RS: Well, one of the findings of the book is that we're talking about something different than we did historically. I should note that in polls, most Americans oppose reparations. And that's why many champions of racial reform trying to undo systemic racism, talk about racial equity initiatives are not reparations. But the shift in meaning of reparations is that, whereas at one time it signaled plans to provide one-time cash payments to people to make up for damages, harms they had suffered like a tort remedy in law. That's not what the people championing reparations now mostly mean. What they mean instead is that we should have a set of initiatives to transform many of our economic, educational, political, cultural and social institutions so that they provide more extensive opportunities for a wider range of Americans. And that means that, like the racial equity people, the people who talk about reparations now are often talking about combating systemic racism as they see it and not on one time cash payments.

GR: So I want to just ask you this question flat out, and I know it's more complicated than this, but the way you were describing the protect side earlier, is the protect side racist?

RS: Frankly, some on the protect side are racist, just as there has been racism in America throughout our history. And it is also true that there are those on the protect side who, while having no animosity or prejudice against people of color per se, nonetheless feel that proposals from the left will be damaging for the country and will also disrupt many traditional systems, institutional practices, ways of life from which white people disproportionately benefit. And so you can say that, you can debate whether that's racism or not. It is my belief that it's legitimate to preserve many of the aspects of American life that have privileged and continue to privilege white people. I should note also that on the protect side, there are many who see traditionalist Christianity as under attack. And these are overwhelmingly white traditionalist Christians and many of them interpret attacks, or criticisms of whites as also criticisms of Christianity. There is a resurgent movement to recognize that this is a white Christian nation. Marjorie Taylor Greene hands out bumper stickers saying she's a proud Christian nationalist. And the Protect Alliance has blended in many ways the concerns to protect traditionalist whites with concerns to protect traditionalist Christians. The latter position, of course, has broader public respectability and appeal. But again, even those in the Protect Alliance will present the two things as closely linked.

GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm speaking with University of Pennsylvania political scientist Rogers Smith. With his coauthor, Desmond King, he's recently published, "America's New Racial Battle Lines: Protect versus Repair". So you have an appendix where you list the different organizations of different types. You break out different types that the two of you think are in these two categories. And in the protect organizations, you've got conservative organizations that a lot of people would recognize like Federalist Society, Freedom Caucus in Congress, the American Enterprise Institute, a high profile think tank. But then you've also got the Ku Klux Klan and the Proud Boys. So, I don't know what that question is I want to ask here, I guess I’m trying to figure out, like, were you trying to be provocative with that? Because you know people are going to be looking at that and seeing the parallel that you're drawing and get pretty upset.

RS: We're not trying to be provocative we're trying to be empirically accurate. These are members of a coalition, and every coalition has diversity within its ranks. Its members don't agree with each other on every position, but they do agree on the overarching goal of the coalition and all those groups you mentioned do see a liberal or progressive or left movement in America that they regard as radical and dangerous and as something that they must defeat. And they do work together to a certain extent. The Ku Klux Klan did champion Donald Trump's candidacy in 2016. While he disappointed them to a very little degree, they're still on his side. And Donald Trump is the champion of the Protect Conservative Alliance now, as his speeches and his policies have made abundantly clear. Donald Trump did invite to Mar-a-lago Nicholas Fuentes, who heads the America First Foundation and who has said that the nation must not lose its white demographic core. So, now that's a position that many in the American Enterprise Institute, for example, would repudiate. But nonetheless, if you ask them, are you going to be on the side of the Protect positions more generally against the calls for systemic transformations of American institutions that the Repair Alliance wants, they're firmly on the Protect side.

GR: So, something that has concerned me and that I've thought a lot about and I wanted to get your reaction to it, given of all the information that you provide in the book and the research that you've done. But some of my students, echoing what they've heard, I think, from some political leaders and activists on the repair side, claim to me that we are in the midst of a backsliding that is going to return us, is in the process of returning us to the 1950’s or the 1960’s when it comes to this issue. And yet, at the same time we have a black woman who's in a dead heat race for president right now against the gentleman that you were just invoking. So I have to say, you know, I grew up in Virginia in the 60’s. I don't have any sense that this is where we are at present or are heading to. I mean, it's a frustrating conversation for me to have and I wanted to get your take on that. Is there a hyperbole there that maybe isn't helping and is causing some of the reaction or am I missing something important? Help me sort through this.

RS: I would say that there are certainly people in the modern conservative movement, in the Protect Alliance on racial policy issues that we talk about who do want to return us to the America of the mid-20th century. And for them, that's what the slogan, “Make America Great Again” means. I don't think that's likely to happen, it's not feasible in the 21st century to go back to the mid-20th century. And while there are some in the Protect Alliance and its right wing fringe that are openly white supremacists, that is not, in our view, the center position of the Protect Alliance. And it's not the most likely program or outcome. What is more likely, we indicate at the end of the book, is a scenario in which if conservatives regain the kind of national power that they had after the 2016 election, they might push more in the direction of what they and we call multicultural conservatism. It is a set of policies in which whites are not actively privileged, although many institutions that have long advantaged whites stay in place and people of all ethnic, racial and religious backgrounds are welcomed into the American political community, so long as they support conservative economic and social policies. So you can have conservative South-Asian leaders, as we did, competing briefly in the presidential campaign this time. You can have conservative black leaders, as we did like Tim Scott of South Carolina as we had competing. It is not the racial conservatism that precedes the civil rights era. You're right, there were transformations in the 1960’s. But it is also not a program that is designed to undo what people on the left see as the pervasive systemic racism of American institutions.

GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Rogers Smith, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. He’s recently coauthored a book with Desmond King titled, "America's New Racial Battle Lines: Protect versus Repair". And we've been discussing his book, so many people who are sympathetic to some of the things that you're writing about argue that if the focus was on economic class rather than race, you'd do probably 90% of the repair work racially that you're trying to do, but you wouldn't generate nearly the same level of political backlash and resistance. And at the same time, you might also be able to appeal to White working and middle class families who are, first of all, really struggling and second of all, feel left out of the government's attention. They're part of that Trump coalition, or some of them are. So you could substantially repair without threatening the Protect in that in a rhetorical way, I guess. Why isn't the class based approach the smarter and better way to talk about this?

RS: Well, we do note at the end of the book that an approach that foregrounds class concerns along with racial concerns is probably the most promising path forward for liberals and folks further to the left. But it is one that those Americans have had a hard, who see themselves in back in those camps. They've had a hard time coalescing around those kinds of positions. And there are several reasons for that. One is that class appeals themselves are very controversial. We often say that a movement that emphasizes it's going to address the economic concerns of all Americans will have broader appeal, including to the white working class. And that's an argument that has some power, but it is also true that strongly class oriented movements in American history have met with fierce opposition and repression so it's not such an obvious winner. The second thing is, that you said it might do 90% of what the repair side wants, that's much debated. Many think that because economic initiatives which claim to be universal never really are, that they, in fact, might only perpetuate the levels of racial inequality in material terms that we continue to experience in this country. And so they doubt that it will actually work to deal with the most serious problems in most disadvantaged portions of communities of color in this country. The third thing is that the many Americans that have been discriminated against want that experience to be recognized and acknowledged. And what the class approach doesn't provide is the recognition that they have been unjustly treated, that their contributions have been undervalued and obscured and they want that recognition and respect. And that's why the most promising path forward for liberals and those on the left is probably to combine programs that do address the economic needs of all Americans, including white workers who have been hurt by neoliberal policies, both parties in the 20th century, but also include some programs that are designed to respond to the distinctive needs of African-Americans and other minorities in the country.

GR: So I appreciate the way that you answered that at a sort of a systemic and policy level. And you can dismiss this question if you think it's not fair, but I just continue to try to wrap my mind around this. Can you give me an example of a type of person of color who would suffer from a genuinely class based approach? I mean, I'm trying to conjure up in my mind sort of a group of people that get left out and I have a hard time doing it.

RS: Well, for example, one form of reparations that's actually underway in America today addresses housing. And some 20 cities in the country now have reparations missions. And rather than, again, just giving out single checks, they are concerned to try to address specific kinds of institutionalized problems in their communities. Evanston, Illinois, the first of these reparations commissions has begun distributing checks, but only for housing and provide other kinds of housing assistance to black residents in Evanston because it has a history of discrimination in real estate practices and in mortgage provision for black residents in Evanston. Now, housing is a huge problem throughout the country right now. And you can say we could have a big initiative for affordable housing, but it probably wouldn't be massive enough to address everyone in need. You can say that we're going to conduct it on a nondiscriminatory basis, but it might still leave a lot of black families who have not acquired homes, not acquired the wealth, the equity of home ownership because of practices of discrimination in the past and present, they might not get included in those housing programs unless there's a conscious effort to make sure they're included. That's the argument, anyway.

GR: Now I have to have a shout out to the Maxwell School there. Steven Hagerty was the mayor of Evanston when that was being put forward and passed. If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media and my guest is University of Pennsylvania professor Rogers Smith. The conversation that you and I are having is happening in the context of a presidential race in which I think racial themes are pretty obvious and prominent, even though the candidates may not be emphasizing them overtly. And I'm just wondering how you see it fitting in to the presidential race here in 2024 and how the outcome could affect the things that you're concerned about in this book?

RS: Well, in some ways it's ironic that the candidacy of Kamala Harris has moved racial policy issues out of the center of what the candidates are talking about. Donald Trump has to be very careful about how he talks about racial issues if he's not going to appear to be firing up racist opposition to Harris. He's already stumbled into that and done badly with his interview with the black journalist’s organization where he questioned Harris's blackness. That clearly didn't play well with really any constituency. Harris has made the deliberate choice not to feature her racial or gender identities. She waved away the question in the recent CNN interview. She is emphasizing economic programs more than anything else. But at the same time, everyone knows that she is a racial progressive. And if you look at the platforms for the two parties in 2024, the Republican platform emphasizes that they're going to ban teaching critical race theory and they're going to fight efforts to teach about race or to transform public monuments having to do with our racial history in ways that they think amount to indoctrination of woke ideologies. And on the Democratic side, they say that the nation has never fulfilled its promises. They support the creation of a federal commission to study reparations. Both parties are still adopting these clashing policy positions and whoever wins will have an effect on which program gets carried forward in the future.

GR: We've got about a minute left, I’ve got one last question for you. It's a little bit different than all the others, more personal, if I could. But you, like me, are an old white guy.

RS: Getting older!

GR: (laughter) You've got a Harvard Ph.D., you've had tenured faculty appointments at two Ivy League schools and with a name like Rogers Smith, it seems like you could have just stepped off the Mayflower. So, why have you devoted such a large portion of your life to this topic?

RS: I was born in Spartanburg, South Carolina, not far from the birthplace of John C. Calhoun, the leading champion of slavery in the antebellum era. And my family then moved to Springfield, Illinois, the hometown of Abraham Lincoln. We visited South Carolina often during my youth, which was in the midst of the civil rights era. And it became clear to me that the clash over racial justice was a central part of the American experience. It was a central part of my family's experience and so it's been central to the work I've done for most of my career.

GR: All right. We'll have to leave it there. That was Rogers Smith. And again, his new book is titled, "America's New Racial Battle Lines: Protect versus Repair". It's a good and provocative read. You can agree with it, disagree with it, but I think you'll find it engaging. Rogers, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me, I really appreciate it.

RS: Thank you, Grant. I've enjoyed it.

GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.