By: Sheryll D. Cashin
Collectively our nation now venerates our most
progressive, socially transforming legal edicts, even as we accept,
or ignore, persistent racial inequality. Much has been
written about the limits and modern meaning of Brown.
Elsewhere I have argued that we have failed to live up to the
integrationist vision that animated Brown and the civil
rights movement, primarily because our neighborhoods remain largely
segregated by race and class. In this Article, I celebrate
the coalition politics that made the civil rights revolution
possible with a view toward understanding how and why coalition
politics of the progressive kind seem to be stymied today. I
argue that the thesis of interest convergence advanced by Professor
Derrick Bell, while pessimistic in its outlook, offers a key
insight into human nature and American race relations that can and
should be harnessed in order to build the sustainable multiracial
coalitions that will be necessary if we are to close existing gaps
of racial inequality. The civil rights movement ultimately
succeeded not only because it had moral force, but also because a
powerful, well-organized grassroots effort altered the
understanding of a voting majority in Congress as to what was in
their enlightened self-interest and in the interest of the
nation. I explore below the possibilities for progressives to
recapture majoritarian politics based upon a convergence of
interests among communities of color, working class, and
progressive whites. A key challenge, as Bell and others
suggest, is whether racial ideology often, but not exclusively,
harbored by whites can be transcended by engaging seemingly
disparate groups in the language of self-interest.
In Part I of this Article, I explore the coalition politics that
made it possible to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the
coalition theory that animated this movement. I then discuss
Bell’s interest-convergence thesis and related arguments offered by
other scholars and social advocates who are skeptical about the
possibilities for mutual cooperation between blacks and other
groups, particularly whites. I argue that it is unsurprising
that any social group in power would oppose policies that they
perceive to be contrary to their self-interest, even in the face of
moral counterweights. Acknowledging this dark aspect of human
nature, I nevertheless conclude that broad coalitions for
progressive change are theoretically possible when common
interests, or a convergence of perceived self-interest, can be
established.
In Part II, I test this premise in the modern context, examining
the challenges to progressive coalition building presented by our
nation’s new and increasing racial complexity. I canvass
recent political science literature regarding the theory and
practice of multiracial coalition building, exploring how
inter-group relational dynamics have changed since the civil rights
movement. I see both promise and peril in demographic
trends. With rising diversity, it is increasingly unlikely
that a single racial group can succeed independently in pursuing a
progressive policy agenda. In racially diverse contexts,
coalition building is the only route to meaningful political
power. Diversity, then, can be a source of power if properly
harnessed. The risk with ever-complex diversity, however, is
that the transaction costs of inter-group negotiations and the
possibility for conflict rise with each new group or interest that
must be incorporated. There is an especially heightened risk
that racial and ethnic minorities will perceive their relative
interests in zero-sum terms. More importantly, the chief
obstacle to multiracial coalition building appears to be the
persistence of negative racial stereotypes, especially those held
about African Americans. I offer hopeful examples of
successful multiracial coalitions that have transcended potential
race and class conflicts and, therefore, altered the status quo in
a policymaking context. Building off these examples, I argue
that the best route to creating a more enlightened understanding of
how the interests of seemingly strange bedfellows do converge is
through leadership and grassroots organization fueled by the artful
dissemination of empirical data. This is labor-intensive and
challenging, but necessary, work. While the path of least
resistance is to work solely within single issue or single identity
constituencies, progressives will be increasingly disempowered
without alliances and relationships across boundaries of race and
class.