Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T16:25:33.320Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

NEW ORLEANS IS NOT THE EXCEPTION: Re-politicizing the Study of Racial Inequality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2006

Paul Frymer ,
Dara Z. Strolovitch  and
Dorian T. Warren
Paul Frymer
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, University of Santa Cruz
Dara Z. Strolovitch
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota
Dorian T. Warren
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science and School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Although political science provides many useful tools for analyzing the effects of natural and social catastrophes such as Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, the scenes of devastation and inequality in New Orleans suggest an urgent need to adjust our lenses and reorient our research in ways that will help us to uncover and unpack the roots of this national travesty. Treated merely as exceptions to the “normal” functioning of society, dramatic events such as Katrina ought instead to serve as crucial reminders to scholars and the public that the quest for racial equality is only a work in progress. New Orleans, we argue, was not exceptional; it was the product of broader and very typical elements of American democracy—its ideology, attitudes, and institutions. At the dawn of the century after “the century of the color-line,” the hurricane and its aftermath highlight salient features of inequality in the United States that demand broader inquiry and that should be incorporated into the analytic frameworks through which American politics is commonly studied and understood. To this end, we suggest several ways in which the study of racial and other forms of inequality might inform the study of U.S. politics writ large, as well as offer a few ideas about ways in which the study of race might be re-politicized. To bring race back into the study of politics, we argue for greater attention to the ways that race intersects with other forms of inequality, greater attention to political institutions as they embody and reproduce these inequalities, and a return to the study of power, particularly its role in the maintenance of ascriptive hierarchies.

Keywords

Hurricane KatrinaNew OrleansRaceGunnar MyrdalAlexis de TocquevilleIntersectionalityFederalismPolitical ScienceInequalitiesAmerican Exceptionalism
Type
STATE OF THE DISCIPLINE
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , March 2006 , pp. 37 - 57
Copyright
© 2006 W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Thanks go to Regina Kunzel and Sarah Walker.

References

REFERENCES

Aldrich, John H. (1995). Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Party Politics in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Alston, Lee J. and Joseph P. Ferrie (1999). Southern Paternalism and the American Welfare State. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Amenta, Edwin (1998). Bold Relief: Institutional Politics and the Origins of Modern American Social Policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
American Political Science Association (APSA) (2004). American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality. APSA Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy. Washington, DC. 〈http://www.apsanet.org/inequality/taskforcereport.pdf〉 (accessed February 1, 2006).
Appiah, K. Anthony (1996). Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections. In K. Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutmann (Eds.), Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race, pp. 30–106. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Bachrach, Peter and Morton Baratz (1962). Two Faces of Power. American Political Science Review, 56(3): 947–952.Google Scholar
Bell, Derrick (1992). Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism. New York: Basic Books.
Brandwein, Pamela (2000). Slavery as an Interpretive Issue in the Reconstruction Congresses. Law and Society Review, 30(2): 315–366.Google Scholar
Brown, Michael K. (1999). Race, Money, and the Welfare State. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954). 347 U.S. 483.
Bumiller, Elisabeth (2005). Storm and Crisis: News Analysis; Casualty of a Firestorm. New York Times. September 10, p. 11.
Bunche, Ralph J. (1936a). A World View of Race. Washington, DC: Associates in Negro Education.
Bunche, Ralph J. (1936b). A Critique of New Deal Social Planning As It Affects Negroes. Journal of Negro Education, 5(1): 59–65.Google Scholar
Bush v. Gore (2000). 531 U.S. 98.
Carmichael, Stokely and Charles V. Hamilton (1967). Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. New York: Random House.
Civil Rights Cases (1883). 109 U.S. 3.
Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams (1991). Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6): 1241–1299.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberlé, Neil Gotanda, Garry Peller, and Kendall Thomas (1995). Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement. New York: New Press.
Dahl, Robert A. (1961). Who Governs? Democracy and Power in An American City. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Davis, Mike (2004). Poor, Black, and Left Behind. Mother Jones, September 24. 〈http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2004/09/09_414.html〉 (accessed February 1, 2006).
Dawson, Michael C. (1994). Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African-American Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Dawson, Michael C. (2000). Slowly Coming to Grips with the Effects of the American Racial Order on American Policy Preferences. In David O. Sears, James Sidanius, and Lawrence Bobo (Eds.), Racialized Politics: The Debate about Racism in America, pp. 344–358. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Dawson, Michael C. (2001). Black Visions: The Roots of African-American Political Ideologies. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1903[2005]). The Souls of Black Folks. New York: Pocket Books.
Esping-Anderson, Gosta (1990). The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Fields, Barbara J. (1982). Ideology and Race in American History. In J. M. Kousser and J. M. McPherson (Eds.), Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward, pp. 143–177. New York: Oxford University Press.
Finkelman, Paul (1996). Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jackson. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
Foucault, Michel (2003). “ Society Must be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–1976. Trans. David Macey. New York: Picador.
Frymer, Paul (1999). Uneasy Alliances: Race and Party Competition in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Frymer, Paul (2004). Race, Labor, and the Twentieth-Century American State. Politics and Society, 32(4): 475–509.Google Scholar
Gaventa, John (1980). Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Community. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Gertner, Jon (2006). What Is A Living Wage? New York Times Magazine, January 15, pp. 38–45.
Gilens, Martin (1999). Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Gilroy, Paul (1987). “There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack”: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Glazer, Nathan and Daniel P. Moynihan (1965). Beyond the Melting Pot. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Harris, Cheryl I. (1993). Whiteness as Property. Harvard Law Review, 106: 1709–1791.Google Scholar
Harris, Cheryl I. (2005). In the Shadow of Plessy. University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, 7: 867–901.Google Scholar
Higgins, Michelle (2005). Taking Shelter from the Storms. New York Times, September 30, D5.
Hirsch, Arnold R. (1998). Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940–1960, 2ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Hochschild, Jennifer L. (1984). The New American Dilemma: Liberal Democracy and School Desegregation. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Holden, Matthew, Jr. (1973). The Politics of the Black “Nation”. New York: Chandler Publishing.
Holt, Thomas C. (2000). The Problem of Race in the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Huntington, Samuel P. (1981). American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Jackson, Jesse L., Jr. (2005). Jackson Reintroduces Eight Constitutional Amendments. 〈http://www.house.gov/apps/list/hearing/il02_jackson/050307EightAmends.html〉 (accessed February 1, 2006).
Katzenbach v. McClung (1964). 379 U.S. 294.
Katznelson, Ira (1976). Black Men, White Cities: Race, Politics, and Migration in the United States, 1900–30, and Britain 1948–68. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Katznelson, Ira (2005). When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold Story of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America. New York: W. W. Norton.
Katznelson, Ira, Kim Geiger, and Daniel Kryder (1993). Limiting Liberalism: The Southern Veto in Congress: 1933–50. Political Science Quarterly, 108: 283–306.Google Scholar
Kim, Claire Jean (2000a). Bitter Fruit: The Politics of Black-Korean Conflict in New York City. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Kim, Claire Jean (2000b). Clinton's Race Initiative: Recasting the American Dilemma. Polity, 33(2): 175–197.Google Scholar
Klinenberg, Eric (2002). Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Klinkner, Philip A. and Rogers M. Smith (1999). The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Inequality in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Krugman, Paul (2002). For Richer. New York Times Magazine, October 20, pp. 62–67.
Lieberman, Robert C. (1998). Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Lipsitz, George (1998). The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Marx, Anthony W. (1998). Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of South Africa, the United States, and Brazil. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy A. Denton (1993). American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
McCall, Leslie (2001). Complex Inequality: Gender, Race and Class in the New Economy. New York: Routledge.
McCall, Leslie (2005). The Complexity of Intersectionality. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 30(3): 1771–1800.Google Scholar
McCleskey v. Kemp (1987). 481 U.S. 279.
McConnell, Grant (1966). Private Power and American Democracy. New York: Vintage.
Mendelberg, Tali (2001). The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Mettler, Suzanne (1998). Dividing Citizens: Gender and Federalism in New Deal Public Policy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Mink, Gwendolyn (1990). The Lady and the Tramp. In Linda Gordon (Ed.), Women, the State, and Welfare, pp. 92–122. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin.
Mink, Gwendolyn (1998). Welfare's End. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Myrdal, Gunnar (1944). An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. New York: Harper & Bros.
National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968). Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, Volume 1.
Nobles, Melissa (2000). Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
Omi, Michael and Howard Winant (1994). Racial Formation in the United States: from the 1960s to the 1980s. New York: Routledge.
Quadagno, Jill (1994). The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty. New York: Oxford University Press.
Palmer v. Thompson (1971). 481 U.S. 279.
Pinderhughes, Dianne (1987). Race and Ethnicity in Chicago Politics. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Piven, Frances Fox (2006). Response to “American Democracy in an Age of Inequality”. Political Science and Politics, 39(1): 43–46.Google Scholar
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). 163 U.S. 537.
Preston, Michael B., Lenneal J. Henderson, and Paul L. Puryear (1982). The New Black Politics: the Search for Political Power. White Plains, NY: Longman.
Rakove, Jack N. (1996). Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Reed, Adolph L., Jr. (1997). W. E. B. Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line. New York: Oxford University Press.
Reed, Adolph, Jr. (1999). Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Reed, Adolph L., Jr. (2005). The Real Divide. The Progressive. November, pp. 27–32.
Reskin, Barbara F. (2003). Including Mechanisms in Our Models of Ascriptive Inequality. American Sociological Review, 68(1): 1–21.Google Scholar
Riker, William H. (1964). Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance. Boston, MA: Little & Brown.
San Antonio School District v. Rodriguez (1974). 418 U.S. 717.
Sawyer, Mark Q. (2006). Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Sears, David O., James Sidanius, and Lawrence Bobo (2000). Racialized Politics: The Debate about Racism in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Skrentny, John D. (2002). The Minority Rights Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Slaughterhouse Cases (1873). 83 U.S. 36.
Smith, Rogers M. (1993). Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal, and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America. American Political Science Review, 87(3): 549–566.Google Scholar
Sniderman, Paul M. and Thomas Piazza (1993). The Scar of Race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Strolovitch, Dara Z. (2004). Poverty in Politics and Policy. In Gwendolyn Mink and Alice O'Connor (Eds.), Poverty in the United States: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics, and Policy, pp. 548–552. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio Publishers.
Strolovitch, Dara Z. (2007). Affirmative Advocacy: Marginalization, Representation, and Interest Group Politics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press (forthcoming).
Sugrue, Thomas J. (1996). The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Thompson, J. Phillip (2005). Double Trouble: Black Mayors, Black Communities, and the Call for Deep Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press.
Tillery, Alvin B. Jr. (2006). Tocqueville as Critical Race Theorist: The Perverse Effects of Whiteness as Property in Jacksonian America. Unpublished manuscript.
Tocqueville, Alexis de (1832 [2001]). Democracy in America. Edited by Richard C. Heffner. New York: Signet Press.
United States Kerner Commission (1968). Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. New York: Bantam Books.
Venkatesh, Sudhir Alladi (2000). American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wacquant, Loic (2001). Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh. Punishment and Society, 3: 95–134.Google Scholar
Walton, Hanes, Jr. (1972). Black Politics: A Theoretical and Structural Analysis. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott.
Walton, Hanes, Jr. (1973). The Study and Analysis of Black Politics. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press.
Walton, Hanes Jr. and Robert Smith (2000). American Politics and the African American Quest for Universal Freedom. New York: Longman.
Walzer, Michael (1992). What it Means to be an American. New York: Marsilio.
Weir, Margaret (1988). The Federal Government and Unemployment: The Frustration of Policy Innovation from the New Deal to the Great Society. In Margaret Weir, Ann Shola Orloff, and Theda Skocpol (Eds.), The Politics of Social Policy in the United States, pp. 149–190. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Williams, Linda Faye (2003). The Constraint of Race: Legacies of White Skin Privilege. University Park, PA: Penn State Press.
Wilson, William Julius (1978). The Declining Significance of Race. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Wilson, William Julius (1996). When Work Disappears: The New World of the Urban Poor. New York: Vintage.