Is Anything Enough?

Extract

Is anything enough? The authors of this forum are in agreement that the political incorporation of blacks and Hispanics achieved thus far is not enough. Not only is protest not enough: they question whether any of the political arrangements by which members of these groups have been brought into city governments are sufficient to meet the goals of the civil rights movement—political equality and the alleviation of poverty. They have much to say about ways in which the incorporation of blacks and Hispanics falls short and about the conditions that block further strengthening of their position.

Is any theory enough—the theory of Protest Is Not Enough, in particular? The answer to the particular question is partly Yes, but the articles of this forum suggest qualifications and additions; we discuss these below. There are two answers to the general question, both of them No. No, because a theory of variations across cities does not fully meet the need for an understanding of possibilities or of leadership, agenda, and strategy over time in a particular city. And No, because the largest cities must be understood on their own terms, as we would seek to understand a nation or a war on its own terms.

Nevertheless, a theoretical structure of the sort in Protest is useful to practitioners and researchers because it focuses attention on a limited number of main factors and relationships, permits systematic and standardized comparisons between groups of cities, provides a way to summarize the main structure of causal factors and conditions in a given city, and allows us to estimate the levels of minority mobilization and incorporation and of governmental responsiveness that we should expect in a city on the basis of the experience in other cities.