October 30, 2006
Harold Ford, Jr., and the Future of Black Politics Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 11:45 AM EST A few days ago I wrote about Harold Ford, Jr., the Tennessee congressman who is currently locked in a tight race for the U.S. Senate. If Ford defeats his Republican opponent, Bob Corker, he will become the first African-American from a former Confederate state to serve in the Senate since Reconstruction.
I noted in my earlier post that Ford is a culturally conservative Democrat. He frequently touts his deep religious convictions, is a staunch opponent of gay marriage, and supports new limits on women’s access to abortion services. Whether he actually believes in these principles or has made the calculation (probably correct) that moving to the right is the only way to win a statewide race in Tennessee, Ford is something of an anomaly in the black congressional caucus, whose members tend, with some notable exceptions, to be culturally liberal.
The question I wish to pose is, who’s the anomaly, Ford or liberal black congressmen like Charles Rangel and John Conyers, who have long dominated the black caucus? A recent poll conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and American Life found that while 31 percent of Americans of all races believe that politicians mention their faith too infrequently, 43 percent of black respondents feel this way. While only 26 percent of black respondents in that same poll rated gay marriage as an important subject, other surveys have shown that African-Americans are more hostile to gay marriage than non-evangelical whites. A Zogby poll found that while white New Jerseyans support gay marriage by a margin of 54 percent to 41 percent, African-Americans oppose gay marriage 54 percent to 41 percent. Zogby’s New Jersey poll mirrors national surveys.
Finally, while a recent Pew Poll found that 71 percent of white mainline Protestants want abortion to remain either legal or legal with more restrictions, only 36 percent of black voters want abortion to remain legal or legal with some extra restrictions. The survey reported that 59 percent of black voters believe that abortion should be illegal or illegal in all but a few extreme circumstances, whereas only 25 percent of white mainline voters hold this position.
None of this should come as a terrific surprise. As countless historians and social scientists have noted, religion plays a central role in black communities. It’s the glue that held together the civil rights movement, and as David Chappell explained in his book A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow, the black Baptist church has traditionally been evangelical and neo-fundamentalist in its outlook. It parts ways with mainline churches in its assumptions about human nature and evil, and it shares with many white evangelical churches an emphasis on sin. This doesn’t mean that evangelical churches, white or black, are inherently anti-progressive. On many issues, particularly poverty, they are at the forefront of struggles for social justice. But on key cultural questions like gay rights and the separation between religion and state, they part ways with secular and religious liberals.
Black voters make up a significant portion of the Democrats’ electoral base, and on key cultural issues they part ways with liberal Democrats. (Importantly, black voters remain extremely skeptical of the Republican party’s commitment to pluralism and civil rights, and wary of the GOP’s economic agenda. So predictions of an electoral swing strike me as naive.) Viewed in this context, the cultural liberalism of leading black congressmen is a curious thing, and I wonder if Harold Ford, Jr., doesn’t represent the future of black politics.
|
