Although this essay appears very close to the most consequential presidential election since 1980, it was written months before during the week that former President Ronald Reagan died. The great majority of the U.S. media praised Reagan without any critical reflection—calling him the greatest president of the twentieth century, the man who brought hope and optimism back to America, the president who united the people. As one commentator mentioned, it was as if the nation itself had a case of collective Alzheimer's. Reagan deeply divided the nation and particularly on matters of race this division is very much still with us.

Despite the rhetoric of American equality, the school experiences of African American and other “minority” students in the United States continue to be substantially separate and unequal. Dramatically different learning opportunities—especially disparities in access to well-qualified teachers, high quality curriculum, and small schools and classes—are strongly related to differences in student achievement. Standards-based reforms have been launched throughout the United States with promises of greater equity, but, while students are held to common standards—and increasingly experience serious sanctions if they fail to achieve them—few states have equalized funding and access to the key educational resources needed for learning. The result of this collision of new standards with old inequities is less access to education for many students of color, rather than more. This article outlines current disparities in educational access, illustrates the relationships among race, educational resources, and student achievement, and proposes reforms needed to equalize opportunities to learn.

In this article we seek to show that prevailing ideological viewpoints on Black health misinterpret Black behavior, and that dominant racial ideologies themselves have negative health effects on African American communities. Second, we show that public policies and practices reflecting prevailing ideological viewpoints harm African American communities. Together, these ideologies and policies undermine Black health by adversely impacting the immune, metabolic, and cardiovascular systems, fueling the development or progression of infectious and chronic disease. Third, we argue that health reform pursued within the same prevailing ideological viewpoints that misinterpret Black health problems have limited effectiveness. We argue for culturally appropriate public policies that value African American social perspectives and coping mechanisms. We suggest that substantive health reform is best pursued through a democratic movement that challenges dominant ideological commitments.

This essay explores the historical genealogy of Internal Colonialism as an American theory of race from approximately 1950 to the early 1990s. Internal Colonialism as an idea originated in Latin America as part of a larger Marxist critique of development ideologies and was specifically elaborated by dependency theorists to explain the racial effects of poverty and isolation on indigenous communities. Black and Chicano radicals fascinated by the Cuban Revolution learned about the theory by reading Ernesto “Che” Guevara, by participating in the Venceremos Brigades harvesting Cuban sugar cane, and by the larger diffusion of Latin American dependency theory in the United States. Black nationalists and Chicano radicals embraced, transformed, and further elaborated on the idea of Internal Colonialism to explain their own subordinate status in the United States, which was the product of forced enslavement and military occupation. As a colonized population in the United States, Blacks and Chicanos suffered the effects of racism, were dominated by outsiders, much as colonial subjects in the Third World, and had seen their indigenous values and ways of life destroyed. As a theory that explained the effects of racism, it had its greatest popularity during the radicalization of the Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s when nationalism and separatist ideas were in vogue. By the 1980s the theory had been abandoned in favor of more accommodationist politics and ideas.

The Democratic and Republican parties both pursue a Downsian median voter strategy that has direct implications for the role of African Americans and Latinos in national politics. The driving force in much national politics is still the politically polarizing Black-White divide in the South, which provides the necessary foundation for a nationally competitive Republican Party. This Black-White racial divide also pushes the Democratic Party to deracialize its campaigns as guided by the strategy of the Democratic Leadership Council. Counterintuitively, however, the more recent strategy of the Republican Party also contains symbolic appeals to racial inclusion with a specific focus on Latinos and a consistent marginalization of African Americans. These are efforts to soften their social conservatism to appeal to moderate “swing” White voters. We conclude that the current politics of race and ethnicity in national party politics, by Republicans and Democrats, can serve to marginalize the interests of both African Americans and Latinos in substantive policymaking.

Understanding racial dynamics and power relations in comparative, cross-spatial perspective is a topic which should have an extensive archive in the literature of comparative politics. Yet, the field of comparative racial politics remains at its infancy. While we have witnessed a resurgence in the study of race and ethnicity in the social sciences and humanities, much of the debate has been concerned with the meaning and relevance of the race concept, rather than its implementation. The authors believe comparative politics has a potentially distinctive and important contribution to make in the study of racial politics, as opposed to race relations, by foregrounding the role of politics in the social and political mobilization of various social groups premised upon the race concept, racial hierarchy, and distinction. This article provides a categorical review of the major trends and approaches to the comparative study of race in the social sciences, and provides an alternative conceptualization of racial politics.

The 2000 presidential election was unprecedented not only because of the lengthy dispute over the results, but also because both the Republican and Democratic Party presidential candidates directed their campaign appeals to minority voters. Because Black public opinion has moderated over time, Blacks are closer ideologically to the Democratic and Republican parties. Whereas in the 1970s and early 1980s Blacks believed the Democratic Party to be to the right of their position on issues such as government aid to Blacks and minority groups, today they see little difference, placing the Democratic Party slightly to the left of themselves on average. Black attitudes have moderated, I argue, because of the coercive dynamic of their incorporation into mainstream, electoral politics. And, indeed, the greatest force behind the newfound unity between Blacks and the Democratic Party is, ironically, the exogenous expansion of Black members' opportunities for political power and advancement in the United States House of Representatives. However, in contrast to other structural accounts, my analysis still leaves open the possibility that Black opinion could re-radicalize in the future.Note: Earlier versions of this paper were presented at a May 2003 conference on “New Perspectives on the Study of Race and Political Representation” at the University of Rochester organized by Fredrick C. Harris and Valeria Sinclair-Chapman, and at the 2002 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association meeting in Boston. The author thanks the participants at these events and Emory Denise Christian for their comments, and UCI's Center for the Study of Democracy for its financial support.

First of Two Commentaries on the Following Publications

Dinesh D'Souza. The End of Racism: Principles for a Multiracial Society. New York: Free Press, 1995, 724 pages, ISBN: 0-684-8524-4, $30.00.

Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom. America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997, 704 pages, ISBN 0-684-84497-4, $32.50.

Second of Two Commentaries on the Following Publications

Dinesh D'Souza. The End of Racism: Principles for a Multiracial Society. New York: Free Press, 1995, 724 pages, ISBN: 0-684-8524-4, $30.00.

Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom. America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997, 704 pages, ISBN 0-684-84497-4, $32.50.

Amanda E. Lewis, Race in the Schoolyard: Negotiating the Color Line in Classrooms and Communities. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2003, 243 pages, ISBN: 0-8135-3225-6, Cloth, $60.00, and Paper, $22.00.

John U. Ogbu, Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003, 320 pages, ISBN: 0-8058-4516-X, Cloth, $69.95, Paper, $32.50.

Douglas Massey, Camille Charles, Garvey Lundy, and Mary Fischer, The Source of the River: The Social Origins of Freshmen at America's Selective Colleges and Universities. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003, 283 pages, ISBN: 0-691-11326-2, Cloth, $29.95.

Sarah Susannah Willie, Acting Black: College, Identity, and the Performance of Race. New York: Routledge Press, 2003, 210 pages, ISBN: 0-415-94410-4, Paper, $22.95.

Richard Alba and Victor Nee, Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003, 359 pages, ISBN: 067401040X, $59.95.

Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002, 306 pages, ISBN: 0674007328, $42.00.

Tali Mendelberg, The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001, 307 pages, ISBN 0-691-07071-7, $62.50.

Taeku Lee, Mobilizing Public Opinion: Black Insurgency and Racial Attitudes in the Civil Rights Era. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002, 293 pages, ISBN 0-226-47024-5, $55.00.

John L. Jackson, Jr., Harlemworld: Doing Race and Class in Contemporary Black America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001, 285 pages, ISBN 0-226-38998-7, $30.00.

Omar M. McRoberts, Streets of Glory: Church and Community in a Black Neighborhood. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003, 178 pages, ISBN 0-226-56216-6, $25.00.

Katherine S. Newman, A Different Shade of Gray: Midlife and Beyond in the Inner City. New York: The New Press, 2003, 306 pages, ISBN 1-56584-615-X, $26.95.