Buckley on Racism and the American Dream

For this final day of Black History Month 2012, I’ll post links to some YouTube videos that I was watching a couple of days ago.  Essentially, they’re William F. Buckley, Jr.’s contribution to his 1965 debate with James Baldwin about racism and the American dream.  See here and here for the videos.  If you’d like to listen to Baldwin and the other contributors to the debate, they’re also on YouTube.

Buckley is not exactly easy for me to follow, due to his intellectual verbiage, but what I got out of his presentation was the following four points:

1.  Buckley argues that African-Americans are holding themselves back.  He appeals to a scholar who argues that African-Americans have displayed less motivation than other minority groups to become doctors, even though there are schools that are non-discriminatory and offer scholarships.  Buckley also refers to the increase in out-of-wedlock births among African-Americans.  Buckley states that America is a mobile society, and that the solution should be to provide opportunities, not to resort to the iconoclasm against America that Baldwin practices.

2.  Buckley states that the plight of African-Americans should be addressed with concern, and that it has been in America.  James Baldwin, after all, is a well-received author, and the issue of the plight of African-Americans is prominent in the United States.

3.  Buckley fears radical “solutions” to a complex problem.

4.  On the issue of African-American suffrage, Buckley glibly remarks that the problem is that too many white people are voting!  Buckley also echoes Booker T. Washington’s sentiment that African-Americans should be educated to become informed voters.

Buckley was roundly applauded at this debate, but his position was ultimately out-voted.  The proposition was that “The American dream is at the expense of the Negro”, and Baldwin was arguing in favor of this, whereas Buckley and another speaker were arguing the opposite.

My greatest problem with Buckley’s argument was that he under-estimated the reality of racial discrimination. Regarding Buckley’s comments on suffrage, I think that any adult should be able to vote.  But what if the person is not educated and does not know what’s best for society (which is not to say that Buckley had a high opinion of the Ivy League, notwithstanding his Yale credentials)?  First of all, I think that people with or without education (formal or informal) can, on the basis of their experiences, form a legitimate opinion about what policies help them or hurt them.  Second, we usually vote for people who are educated, anyway.  I think that we can listen to all sorts of policies developed by educated people and make a fairly informed decision about which we like and dislike.

Reflections on Projects for Black History Month

For the last two days of Black History Month, I was planning to blog about the chapter on civil rights in Joan Hoff’s Nixon Reconsidered.  But I changed my mind on that, for a variety of reasons.  For one, the chapter discusses African-American civil rights and also feminism, and I didn’t want to go off course more than I already have (since my blogging through Dean Kotlowski’s Nixon’s Civil Rights ended up discussing Native American and feminist issues, which are not exactly relevant to Black History Month).  Second, Hoff discusses African-American issues outside of her chapter on civil rights.  There is a solid chance that I will one day read Hoff’s entire book and blog through it, but I won’t be reading and blogging about any of it for the last two days of Black History Month.

Overall, I’m glad that I read and blogged through Kotlowski’s Nixon’s Civil Rights this month.  I first saw the book at a public library a few years ago, but I did not have the time to read it then, since I was trying to concentrate on preparing for my comprehensive exams, and I already had enough books on my plate.  I was contemplating the possibility of reading and blogging about it during February, 2011, but I decided instead to read and blog about W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington.  During earlier Black History Months, I was curious about the disagreement between those two African-American leaders, especially because it was often discussed in Roots: The Next Generation, which I watched for several Black History Months.  I also noticed that many African-American conservatives gravitated towards Booker T. Washington, whereas some African-American liberals preferred Du Bois (and this characterization is far from absolute).  I figured that I should read what these figures themselves had to say, before I read about Richard Nixon’s civil rights policies.

How did Kotlowski’s book compare with my expectations?  When I first saw the book in the library, I did not know if it would be enthralling or dry.  It turned out to be both.  I think that the book was enthralling when it discussed the complexity of Nixon—-how his rhetoric and personal attitudes were regressive and conservative, and yet many of his policies were progressive.  It was also enthralling when it discussed the personal reasons that Nixon had for opposing racism, as well as how Nixon boldly stood up to Southern states.  But, ironically, the book was also dry because of Nixon’s complexity, for it was hard to admire fully a President who waffled all over the place before he could arrive at a position, plus some of the discussion of policy was dry.  But the dryness is a huge part of why the book is a valuable resource, for a mark of solid research is that it acknowledges complexity and gets into detail, while meticulously documenting the details.  It’s good when a piece of non-fiction can have enthralling novelistic elements, and Kotlowski’s book did, to a certain extent.  But, in other areas, it did not because it’s ultimately not a novel, but a work of research.

I’m not sure what I’ll blog about tomorrow, the last day of Black History Month (since February 2012 has 29 days).  We’ll see, though.  Stay tuned!

Nixon’s Civil Rights 27

I finished Dean Kotlowski’s Nixon’s Civil Rights.  In his epilogue, Kotlowski offers his assessment of President Richard Nixon’s civil rights policies.  In some areas, Nixon followed others, either activist federal courts or the Democratic-controlled Congress.  This was evident on such issues as school desegregation in the South, voting rights, lowering the voting age to eighteen, Title IX, and the Equal Rights Amendment.  On other issues, such as tribal self-determination and assistance to African-American colleges and minority-owned businesses, Nixon was more of a leader.

In terms of the effects of Nixon’s policies, Kotlowski sees positives and negatives.  Affirmative action opened the door for minorities to get professional or managerial positions, and that allowed U.S. firms to gain “a cultural advantage over European and Japanese competitors in the race for global alliances and international business deals” (page 262).  But affirmative action “did not touch all blacks and still left them overrepresented in low-wage, unskilled jobs” (page 261).  As African-American historian John Hope Franklin argued, the African-American middle class was increasing, but so was the African-American underclass.  President Nixon’s lack of emphasis on integration had negative results, according to Kotlowski, for it left blacks and whites separate and unequal, and the later location of service- and information-based industries in the suburbs “added new layers onto the walls of segregation” (page 262).  A positive element of Nixon’s policies, according to Kotlowski, was that they acknowledged that civil rights applied to a variety of people, and Kotlowski in this epilogue discusses Nixon’s revolutionary policies for the elderly.

Kotlowski argues that Nixon’s civil rights policies were significant because they occurred in an important time in history and set the stage for how subsequent Presidents handled civil rights issues.  But there came a point when later Presidents retreated somewhat from Nixon’s policies.  Kotlowski notes that Nixon’s detractor, Roy Wilkins, thought that Nixon’s civil rights policies looked good when compared to those of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush!  Republicans in the 1990′s criticized affirmative-action and supported making English the official language, whereas Nixon was more supportive of bilingualism.  Bill Clinton embraced the Eisenhower Republican ideal of using government to give people a hand-up as opposed to hand-outs, but, while Nixon mostly emphasized action over talk in the area of civil rights (and often talked in a manner that appeased Southern conservatives), Clinton was the opposite, focusing on talk rather than action.

In certain respects, this book was difficult to read because reality is complex, and thus it’s difficult to place it into a neat narrative.  There were times when Nixon was bold—-dramatically bolder than his predecessors—-but then Nixon would retreat somewhat, or he would pursue a middle ground.  It was hard to make firm, definitive statements on Nixon’s civil rights policies because there were paradoxes and contradictions, but Kotlowski did rather well in his attempt.  While I applaud Kotlowski’s attention to detail and nuance throughout this book, there were a couple of times when I wished he provided more detail.  For example, what were the long-term effects of Nixon’s policies to help minority-owned businesses and colleges?  Did they make a significant impact, and, if so, why is there still a lot of poverty among African-Americans?  Was it due to any deficiency in Nixon’s programs?

This is a good book to read.  There was plenty of material in it that my blog posts did not cover!  There are two more days of Black History Month for this year, and we’ll see what I blog about.  Stay tuned!

Nixon’s Civil Rights 26

My reading of Dean Kotlowski’s Nixon’s Civil Rights covered a variety of women’s issues, and President Richard Nixon’s stances on them.

There was federal support for child care facilities.  As I talked about yesterday, Nixon was for it, before he was against it.  In the end, Nixon arrived at a middle ground, for he signed a bill that gave tax deductions for child care expenses, and his Health, Education, and Welfare Secretary, Casper Weinberger, “issued day care rules with a sliding fee for low- and medium-income families” (page 250).

There was abortion, which many feminists believed provided women with a sense of self-determination.  Nixon opposed abortion, but he refused to challenge Roe vs. Wade, and in 1990 he criticized the Republican Party for what he considered to be its obsession with the abortion issue.

There was Title IX.  According to Kotlowski, liberal feminists wanted colleges to fund male and female sports teams equally, and to make certain teams integrated by sex.  The NCAA did not approve of this, one reason being that it would reduce dramatically athletic scholarships for males.  Nixon, a sports fan, ardently supported the NCAA in this.  But Nixon’s Administration arrived at a middle ground, which “did not mandate equality of expenditures on collegiate athletics”, but rather “permitted single-sex teams so long as schools funded separate sports teams for men and women” (page 253).  That resolution did not satisfy a lot of people, but Title IX under Nixon did open up sports to women, and columnist E.J. Dionne states that this encouraged “less teenage pregnancy, higher high school graduation rates, the avoidance of abusive relationships, and success in later life” (page 254, Dionne’s words).

On some issues, Nixon came out rather strong, as when he supported legislation that “promoted equal access to credit, regardless of gender or marital status” (page 255).

For Kotlowski, there was a downside to Nixon’s murky approach to women’s rights.  Kotlowski states on page 256: “The Nixon administration’s skittish response to the women’s movement is mirrored in the ambiguous status of American women today.  Females enjoy greater opportunities in the workplace, but continue to face constraints both at the office and at home.  Federal policy recognizes women as breadwinners, but it does not provide them the means to advance as quickly or as far as men.”

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I have two items for my write-up today on Dean Kotlowski’s Nixon’s Civil Rights:

1.  On page 246, we read: “During 1971 and 1972, the number of women in supergrade posts tripled, from 36 to 105.  Nixon named the first six women to the rank of general in the armed forces, the first female rear admiral, and the first female air force general.  Women became sky marshals, air traffic controllers, and narcotics agents, and in 1973, for the first time, three females chaired executive branch agencies.”

These were some of President Richard Nixon’s accomplishments in the area of women’s advancement.  But Nixon still had his Democratic critics, such as Senators Birch Bayh and George McGovern.  Bayh thought that Nixon wasn’t working fast enough, and McGovern pointed out that the percentage of women holding policy-making jobs was still abysmally small under Nixon.  But Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods, remarked that it didn’t matter whether or not women had high positions, as long as people listened to their opinions and suggestions.

2.  Kotlowski narrates how Nixon moved to the right on the issue of child care centers.  At first, Nixon believed that federal support for child care centers was an essential part of welfare reform, since mothers needed for someone to care for their children while they were working or pursuing job training.  Consequently, that was a part of his Family Assistance Plan (FAP) to elevate poor families (along with a guaranteed minimum income).  But Nixon came to the point where he thought that child care centers were too costly, and he believed that women should raise their kids at home and that child care centers undermined the family unit.  For such reasons, he decided that, under FAP, job training should be optional for moms who had kids under six years old.

I can see positives and negatives to both sides of this issue.  On the one hand, I can sympathize with the right because federal funding for child care centers could become an entitlement that costs lots of money.  On the other hand, while it may be ideal for a parent to stay home and raise the kids (and I’m not speaking in absolutes here, because in some cases a child care center might be a more secure place for a child to be), that’s not feasible for everybody, such as the working poor.  Right-wingers have argued that working mothers can find a friend or relative to take care of their kids while they’re working.  That may be true, in a number of cases, but not everybody lives near relatives who can help out.

Nixon’s Civil Rights 24

In my reading of Nixon’s Civil Rights, Dean Kotlowski talks about Richard Nixon’s stance on the Equal Rights Amendment.  Phyllis Schlafly’s concern about the amendment was that it would remove gender distinctions from the law and thus invalidate legal protections that women enjoyed—-in the workplace, in alimony, etc.  I have read some feminists assert that Schlafly was merely attacking straw-people, but the information that Kotlowski presents demonstrates that the sort of concern that Schlafly had was shared by others, as far back as the 1950′s, when an amendment was added to the ERA to safeguard the protections that women enjoyed.  The concern was also shared by William Renqhuist, some liberals, some conservatives, and even Richard Nixon, a lawyer, who had a record of tepid support for the ERA.  But Nixon decided to support the ERA more firmly after his daughter and his wife persuaded him to do so.  My impression from Kotlowski’s narrative, however, is that Nixon didn’t follow through on this, and that was a contributing factor behind the Amendment’s defeat.

While Kotlowski confirms that others held the sorts of concerns that Schlafly had, he also states that some of the arguments of ERA opponents were “moot” (page 236).  Nixon was making the army all-volunteer, which meant that the fear that women would be drafted was unfounded.  Kotlowski also states that “the Supreme Court could leave political issues such as the draft or alimony to Congress”.  Schlafly would probably argue, however, that, if the ERA were enacted, it would take precedence over anything that Congress would decide, and thus alimony laws favoring women would be invalidated.

On the issue of protections for women, I was surprised and not surprised by what many of them were.  On page 229, Kotlowski states: “Some state laws prohibited female employment in places ranging from mines to shoeshine parlors to poolrooms, while others forbade women workers from cleaning moving machinery, serving alcohol, or lifting heavy objects.”  I can understand the law about lifting heavy objects.  But the one against women serving alcohol?  Or working in shoeshine parlors?

Nixon’s Civil Rights 23

The topic of my reading of Dean Kotlowski’s Nixon’s Civil Rights has now turned to women’s rights.  Essentially, at least so far, Kotlowski argues that President Richard Nixon and many of the male members of his staff were sexist, and Nixon had to be prodded by Republican women to do something for women’s rights.  But Kotlowski states on page 223 that Nixon “supplanted vigorous support of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) with specific programs to help females attain professional careers.”  Nixon also admired certain women politicians, such as Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, and he told a group of Girls’ Nation delegates that perhaps one of them will become President some day.

On page 223, Kotlowski states that Nixon opposed abortion.  This stood out to me because I was wondering when exactly being pro-life on the abortion issue became a Republican cause.  According to Lou Cannon’s Governor Reagan, when Ronald Reagan was Governor of California, prominent conservative Republicans were largely pro-choice, whereas Catholic Democrats were pro-life.  Wikipedia’s article on the Human Life Amendment, however, documents that Republican politicians were proposing to overturn Roe vs. Wade since 1973, the year of the decision.  And Frank Schaeffer has stated that C. Everett Koop’s work with Francis Schaeffer on the 1979 piece, Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, brought a number of evangelicals to the pro-life cause.

Why did Nixon oppose abortion?  The New York Times stated regarding Nixon’s comments on abortion on a tape:

“Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster ‘permissiveness,’ and said that ‘it breaks the family.’ But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases — like interracial pregnancies, he said.  ‘There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,’ he told an aide, before adding, ‘Or a rape.’”

Shocking, to say the least.  But, as readers of Kotlowski know, Nixon had some bigoted ideas.  But he still acted to advance the cause of minorities.

Nixon’s Civil Rights 22

For my write-up today on Dean Kotlowski’s Nixon’s Civil Rights, I’ll start with something that Kotlowski states on page 213, and the context is when Native American militants took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in Washington, D.C.:

“Officials at the White House and interior sketched out three aims: (1) ‘get best press possible’; (2) ‘Look strong.  [Will] not tolerate illegality any longer’; (3) ‘Defer violence until Wed. A.M.,” the day after the presidential election.  On the evening of the occupation, Ehrlichman sounded impatient: ‘We better get those people out of there.’  But after Nixon indicated that he did not want bloodshed to mar his reelection, Justice Department officials sought a court injunction to evict the trespassers.  Garment and Frank C. Carlucci, deputy director of OMB, then opened talks to entice them to leave.”

That sounds rather crass on the part of Richard Nixon: don’t use violence against the protesters, because that might mar my re-election!  But Kotlowski is honest about the crass aspects of Tricky Dick!  For example, on page 39, Kotlowski talks about how Nixon sought to hurt George Wallace’s Presidential prospects, by contributing money to Wallace’s opponent in the primary for Governor, and by probing “charges of graft in Alabama.”

Although Nixon may look like a crass political player who was out only for himself, however, he did manage to do the right thing a number of times.  For example, after the militant occupation of the BIA, Nixon was outraged at what he considered to be Native American ingratitude for his responsiveness to Native American concerns.  He said that he was through with helping Native Americans, and he attempted to discourage Vice-President Spiro Agnew’s interest in Native American matters, calling the issue a “loser”.  And yet, Kotlowski states on page 214: “Such outbursts, so typical of this quick-tempered president, cannot be taken too literally.  Nixon did not reverse his Indian policy.”

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My reading of Dean Kotlowski’s Nixon’s Civil Rights highlighted some of the negative aspects of President Richard Nixon’s policy towards Native Americans.  According to Kotlowski, Nixon dramatically increased funding for Native American concerns, but he did not spend a whole lot on urban Native Americans, focusing instead on those in rural areas.  There were also times that Nixon did not show leadership and will, or follow through on his commitment to legislation.

My reading also discussed what may (in my opinion) have been conservative justifications for Nixon’s progressive policy towards Native Americans.  (Kotlowski did not say this explicitly in my latest reading, but I’m deducing this from facts that he presents.)  Conservatives tended to oppose the interests of Native Americans, for they wanted to protect the grazing rights of ranchers and thus did not like Native Americans asking for land in their claims against the government.  At times, Nixon’s solution was to give the Native Americans cash, or at least to propose that such be done.  But there were times when Nixon supported Native American rights, perhaps for conservative reasons (or so it seems to me).  For example, President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 made Native American territory in New Mexico into a national forest, and many saw that as egregious federal imperialism.  Many were concerned about this issue, and Nixon tried to seize it.

Opposition to the federal government infringing on people’s rights is a conservative trademark, at least when it comes to property rights, and that may have been a basis for Nixon’s championing of Native American rights, even when other conservatives did not do so.  We saw something similar when Ronald Reagan was Governor of California: Reagan opposed a federally-supported dam that would have destroyed Native American land, averring, “We’ve broken too many damn treaties” (see here).  As I’ve said before, it’s refreshing when conservatism can be used to advance progressive causes.  I should note, though, that, according to Kotlowski, Reagan as President was not as sympathetic to Native American concerns, for he sought to limit their land claims as well as cut funding for Native American health care and education.

Nixon’s Civil Rights 20

My reading of Dean Kotlowski’s Nixon’s Civil Rights has turned to the topic of President Richard Nixon’s stance towards Native Americans.  On page 193, Kotlowski states:

“Skeptical of integration between blacks and whites, the president saw no point in extending such a policy to Native Americans.  He also equated the government’s treatment of Indians with the liberals’ tendency to use federal power at the expense of local or private initiative.  Nixon called Native American policy ‘a bitter example of what’s wrong with the bankrupt, old approach to the problem of minorities.  They have been treated as a colony within a nation—-to be taken care of.’  Fond memories of his Whittier College football coach, Wallace Newman, a Cherokee, reinforced the president’s view.  Newman, he told aides, had blamed the government for turning ‘a once proud people’ into ‘wards.’  Nixon did not romanticize traditional Native American lifestyles, which he deemed ‘dirty, filthy, horrible.’  Still, he believed that Native Americans deserved the opportunity to make their own choices and ‘should no longer be treated like a colony within a nation.’”

Kotlowski talks in the above passage about Nixon’s personal and ideological reasons for supporting Native Americans (and, as with African-Americans, his support was mixed with a degree of prejudice against them).  On page 197, Kotlowski discusses the personal and ideological reasons that Vice-President Spiro Agnew was sympathetic towards Native American concerns: that he was “the self-made son of Greek immigrants”, and thus sympathized with minorities struggling to advance.  Agnew as Governor of Maryland had an impressive civil rights record, for he “named African-Americans to state offices, approved a fair employment code for the executive branch, and won passage of a mild open housing law to prohibit bias in the sale of new homes.”

But there were also political and practical reasons for Nixon’s concern for Native Americans.  As with African-Americans, Nixon did not expect to receive a lot of Native American votes, but he did desire the ability to refute charges by liberals that he lacked compassion for minorities.  Moreover, the Nixon years were a time when people became concerned about Native American issues.  In 1972, Marlon Brando refused to accept an Academy Award for the Godfather because of the negative ways Native Americans were depicted in films and television (see Sasheen Littlefeather’s remarks here).  And a group of Native Americans briefly took control of Alcatraz, “claiming it for all tribes ‘by right of discovery’” (page 198).