ABSTRACT
African Americans have always perceived their interests as closely identified with policies that call for enlightened socioeconomic and civil rights initiatives coming from an activist national government. Such policies—and the social policy and civil rights agendas they spawned—have clashed at times. Indeed, the Republicans have little to gain from a Social Policy Agenda of deracialized politics, or from a Civil Rights Agenda of legitimate confrontation of racial discrimination. Although blacks have always advocated liberal, left-of-center socioeconomic policies, there have been “political realities” to contend with. In the 1990s, American politics should be far more honest than it has been about the issues. African Americans have always understood the dangers of raising the race flag in American politics. And an unapologetic liberal-progressive Democratic party ought to be the vehicle for that mission. If the Democrats leave the issue in the broad realm of “fairness,” subject to the negative, zero-sum connotations attached to quotas, then the Republicans will outdo them every time.
