Elections matter. This is perhaps especially true in times of deepening inequality and cultural polarization. Commentators on both sides of the political aisle were in unison on two points: the 2004 presidential election was the most important such contest in a century, and the U.S. electorate has never seemed so sharply divided. The intensity of feeling around the Bush-Kerry contest has solidified in the national consciousness a well understood distinction between “blue states” and “red states.” It has also resulted in the most complete consolidation of conservative Republican control of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government in history.

Affirmative Discrimination: Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy (1975) criticized government policies requiring goals and timetables from federal contractors in order to implement affirmative action, arguing that this opposed the clear language of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 aiming at a color-blind society, was unnecessary, and threatened a full-scale Balkanization in employment procedures. It also criticized school busing and nascent programs to require publicly supported housing to reach some statistical goal in proportions of Black and White. In time, the author changed his position, as indicated in the introduction to the 1987 edition of Affirmative Discrimination. In particular, he saw the virtue and necessity of race preference in admission to institutions of higher education, recognizing the degree to which slavery and discrimination had placed blacks in a unique position of disadvantage, and the imperative for a democratic society to incorporate in its leading institutions all major elements of the population.

Walter White, the blond, blue-eyed Atlantan, was a voluntary Negro, that is, an African American who appears to be White but chooses to live in the Black world and identify with its experiences. He joined the NAACP national leadership in 1918 as assistant secretary and became secretary in 1931, serving at this post until his death in 1955. His tenure was marked by an effective public antilynching campaign and organizational stability and growth during the Depression years and by controversy over his leadership style. For him, posing as a Caucasian—and then telling all who would listen about his escapades—had three interrelated purposes. First, he developed inside information about mob psychology and mob violence, publicity of which was critical to the NAACP's campaign against lynching. Second, White hoped to show Whites in particular the fallacy of racial stereotyping and racial categorization. Third, by emphasizing the dangers he courted—and even embellishing on them—he enhanced his racial bona fides at key times when his Black critics called into question his leadership.

This exploratory study makes a contribution to the literature on antiracism by unpacking the cultural categories through which everyday antiracism is experienced and practiced by extraordinarily successful African Americans. Using a phenomenological approach, we focus on processes of classification to analyze the criteria that members of the African American elite mobilize to compare racial groups and establish their equality. We first summarize results from earlier work on the antiracist strategies of White and African American workers. Second, drawing upon in-depth interviews with members of the Black elite, we show that demonstrating intelligence and competence, and gaining knowledge, are particularly valued strategies of equalization, while religion has a subordinate role within their antiracist repertoire. Thus, gaining cultural membership is often equated with educational and occupational attainment. Antiracist strategies that value college education and achievement by the standards of American individualism may exclude many poor and working-class African Americans from cultural membership. In this way, strategies of equalization based on educational and professional competence may prove dysfunctional for racial solidarity.

The theory of stereotype threat was developed to account for persistent minority underachievement in American colleges and universities. It hypothesizes that members of minority groups underperform academically because of unconscious fears of living up to negative group stereotypes. While evidence pertaining to stereotype threat has been positive, it mostly comes from small experimental studies of selected undergraduate subjects at a few universities. In this paper we test the theory of stereotype threat on a large, representative population of college and university students. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen, which surveyed nearly 4,000 students at twenty-eight academic institutions, we construct scales to measure stereotype threat and use them to predict grades. We uncover a clear process of disidentification in response to minority stereotyping and show how it, along with other theoretically specified mechanisms, undermines the grade performance of minorities.

This study examines how dimensions of family structure, specifically marriage and parenthood, influence authority attainment among men and women of different racial and ethnic identities. Using survey data from the Multi-City Survey of Urban Inequality, we reach several empirical conclusions. First, the link between family structure and authority attainment is much stronger for women than men, and it revolves more strongly around marriage than parenthood. Second, while marriage decreases White women's odds of holding positions of higher authority, it increases these odds for Black women and Latinas. Third, this “marital bonus” for Black women is most pronounced in predominantly White work settings, allowing them to “play against” stereotypes of group members as single mothers. Fourth, and by contrast, the “marital bonus” for Latinas is strongest in predominantly Latina workplaces, suggesting that Latinas must conform to strong cultural expectations for marriage if they are to gain authority in ingroup work settings. These findings help to illuminate how race, ethnicity, and gender intersect to produce unique linkages between family structure and individual opportunities for organizational power.

There have been several recent attempts to operationalize and measure empirically attitudinal support for Black nationalism. However, scholars have not yet reached a consensus as to what precisely constitutes Black nationalism and its manifestations. Our work addresses three critical questions. First, is Black nationalism a uni-dimensional or a multi-dimensional construct? Second, is Black nationalism another form of xenophobia? Third, is support for Black nationalism a function of time? Some scholars note that Black nationalism takes on the character of its material context and that it cannot be easily subsumed into a trans-historical ideology (Reed 2002; Robinson 2001). We indirectly test these hypotheses by examining the relationship between two components of Black nationalism—Black separatism and Pan-Africanism. To test these hypotheses, we analyze data from the 1979–1980 National Survey of Black Americans (NSBA). Overall, we establish the determinants of support for Black separatism and Pan-Africanism while distinguishing these ideologies' similarities and differences.

Commentary on the Following Publications

McWhorter, John H.,Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America. New York: Free Press, 2000, 285 pages, ISBN 0 684 83669 6, $24.00.

McWhorter, John H.,Authentically Black: Essays for the Black Silent Majority. New York: Gotham Books, 2003, 264 pages, ISBN 1 59240 001 9, $25.00.

Pedro A. Noguera,City Schools and the American Dream: Reclaiming the Promise of Public Education. New York: Teachers College Press, 2003, 187 pages, ISBN: 0-8077-4382-8, Cloth, $50.00, and 0-8077-4381-X, Paper, $19.95.

Jennifer Hochschild and Nathan Scoveronick.The American Dream and the Public Schools. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003, 301 pages, ISBN: 0-19-515278-6, Cloth, $35.00.

David Tyack,Seeking Common Ground: Public Schools in a Diverse Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003, 237 pages, ISBN: 0-674-01198-8, Cloth, $22.95.

Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thernstrom,No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003, 334 pages, ISBN: 0-7432-0446-8, Cloth, $26.00, and 0-7432-6522-X, Paper, $15.00.

Manning Marable, The Great Wells of Democracy: The Meaning of Race in American Life. New York: Basic Books, 2002, 304 pages, ISBN: 0-456-04393-3, $27.50.

Robin D. G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2002, 248 pages, ISBN: 0-8070-0976-8, $24.00.

Katherine Tate, Black Faces in the Mirror: African Americans and Their Representatives in Congress. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003, 224 pages, ISBN: 0-691-09155-2, Cloth, $18.95; ISBN: 0-691-11786-1, Paper, $18.95.

Karen M. Kaufmann, The Urban Voter: Group Conflict and Mayoral Voting Behavior in American Cities. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2004, 248 pages, ISBN: 0-472-09857-8, Cloth, $60.00; ISBN: 0-472-06857-1, Paper, $24.95.

Vincent L. Hutchings, Public Opinion and Democratic Accountability: How Citizens Learn about Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003, 192 pages, ISBN: 0-691-11416-1, Cloth, $35.00.

Du Bois Review contributors.