Black Political Incorporation under Neoliberalism: The Routinization of Interracial Urban Regimes

[mastermind]

https://nonsite.org/black-political-incorporation-under-neoliberalism-the-routinization-of-interracial-urban-regimes/

After more than fifty years of black urban governance, black politicians and managers have successfully navigated a contradictory terrain to maintain power and accrue benefits for themselves and their class. Of course, their own personal and political success has nothing to do with how well they have served their constituents. Otherwise working-class residents would have a chance at gaining quality public schools, affordable housing, living wage jobs, adequate health care, beautiful parks, and reliable public transportation systems. Success has everything to do with the staying power of African American professionals and managers in the positions of mayor, city councilors, housing authority directors, budget and planning directors, and school superintendents. Their longevity speaks to the postwar expansion and continuity of the black professional and managerial class delivering a seemingly unending supply of pedigreed candidates for municipal office.1 More than any other reason, their sustained run is a testament to the role this class continues to play in urban governance. They have continued to promote a developmental agenda for downtown expansion and investment, diverting public capital away from addressing deteriorating housing and infrastructure, dwindling job prospects, chronically under-resource public schools, and the violent character of making ends meet in the informal economy. This central dynamic was first identified by political scientist Adolph Reed, Jr. in his seminal essay, “The Black Urban Regimes: Structural Origins and Constraints.”2 If anything, the fiscal, demographic, and ideological constraints identified by Reed have gotten worse with the advent of privatization, draining municipal budgets and fueling a dramatic expansion of the nonprofit organizations. The nonprofit sector became a fertile source of black candidates for public office, seasoned by corporate foundations, civic planning associations, and community development corporations, auditioning for roles in public-private partnerships that dominate urban politics.

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Philadelphia is a good example of early black incorporation into a liberal reform coalition. The reform coalition implemented civil service requirements for municipal employment, which substantially increased African Americans’ share. Under the Joseph Clark and Richardson Dilworth administrations, blacks saw their gains in the municipal workforce as secretaries, staff inspectors, police supervisors, and lawyers increase dramatically by the early 1960s (RRR 55–58).39 Under these liberal administrations, middle-class blacks translated their income from new public employment into buying homes within the city. In Philadelphia, black homeowners represented 44 percent of all black households in 1966 after constituting 29 percent ten years earlier, the largest increase in the nation (RWT 354).40 However, not everyone benefited from early racial inclusion. As early as 1967 some observers noticed that there was a growing “gap” between a small segment of upwardly mobile blacks and “the much larger bottom sector who seemed doomed to life in the ‘deferred clearance’ areas of the inner city, the old and new ‘Jungles’ of Philadelphia” (RWT 358).

Philadelphia’s reform coalition, including political entrepreneurs, civic housing and planning agencies, and downtown business interests organized by the Greater Philadelphia Movement (GPM), had a distinct approach to solving the problems of decline and inadequate housing (BNT 174–75). They rejected wholesale demolition, opting for more rehabilitation of substandard housing stock after an initial foray into slum clearance.41 The planners also favored rehabilitating inner-city homes for low-income citizens, rather than building high-rise public housing projects (RWT 358–59).42 Due to the “predominantly residential” requirement in the 1949 act, many cities sought to build housing for middle-income families (RRR 110). Liberal reform coalitions took advantage of urban renewal funding and rules to produce modest rental housing for their black middle-class constituents who previously had few options for finding adequate and affordable housing in the city.43 For instance, a racially integrated 88 unit private project, financed by Quakers and subsidized by Title I urban renewal funds, was built in Philadelphia, with the above-noted agenda in mind. However, this project, along with Penn Towne, “a privately managed, garden housing complex for middle-income housing project” in East Poplar, had a hard time attracting moderate-income black families since the development was near slums (PHRR 110).44 The building of middle-class projects occurred at the same time new housing opportunities opened up on the periphery of the ghetto in neighborhoods experiencing racial transition in the 1950s and 60s (PHRR 151). In addition, government-subsidized private housing for black middle class citizens faced financing problems. Even with federal subsidies it was difficult keeping the rents affordable for middle-income families. Philadelphia’s Redevelopment Authority also helped to finance low-cost housing in order to maintain low densities and not be forced to build high-rise projects in order to save costs with a larger scale. Nonetheless, rents were still out of reach for “the original slum tenants.” City officials abandoned plans for future interracial private projects when the results did not warrant continued public expenditure (RWT 334–35; PHRR 110–11).45

 

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Black Political Incorporation, Nonprofit Sector, and Interracial Urban Regimes

Black urban regimes were always based on biracial coalitions. Black mayors and majority black city councils depended on a unified black vote along with affluent white liberals to win elections. Whether they received business support while running for office or not, they, like their white counterparts, had to take into account that sector’s interests when governing their city. Despite the city’s structural dependence on their resources, business groups were not always able to act collectively or, if unified, proactively. Business groups fragmented along industry lines—e.g., manufacturing, retail, banking, and real estate—and their access and influence on city hall can be minimized. “Machine” governments, whose electoral sustainability rested on patronage and contracts, tried to cover budget deficits by raising taxes on the business sector. To the extent that machine regimes also relied on “white ethnic” voters, they excluded or discriminated against African Americans for municipal jobs and services and construction and service contracts. If they needed black votes, the allocation of jobs and benefits was not commensurate with the electoral support they received. Depending on the region, “clientelist” or segregationist regimes that funneled their resources mainly to their small business and middle-class supporters had little incentive to redirect those resources to renovating the downtown district. Moreover, since these regimes did not depend on corporate interests and did not want to disrupt traditional channels of patronage, they kept business groups at arm’s length or, if not, displayed outright antagonism. So, ambitious African Americans at the time sought more of a say in allocational decisions aligned with citywide business organizations to oust these types of regimes. The black political class received a larger share of municipal jobs, services, and later contracts, and business groups got access and influence over the developmental decision-making, leading to massive investment in the downtown. This is the material basis that cemented the biracial coalition that has become a durable interracial urban regime.

The mutual political-economic benefits that hold together biracial regimes gives sustenance to shared pro-growth ideology. Initially, 1970s black political aspirants, seeking to occupy city hall, campaigned on implementing redistributive policies that would bring relief and upward mobility to their working-class and middle-class constituencies. They were thwarted, however, by fiscal constraints and the ideological notion that economic growth, which was to bring jobs and revenue, necessitated taking their policy cues from the corporate, banking, and real estate sectors. For the moderate black professionals who positioned themselves to take advantage of political opportunities generated by demographic change and social disorder, racial redistribution was the only redistribution they conceived and pursued. Moreover, since oppositional black activists uncritically accepted the same racial group assumptions and did not have a clear program of building a popular majority, they were not in a position to compete with the black moderates for votes and political authority.48 In other words, black professionals based their electoral legitimacy on improved municipal services in select black neighborhoods; increased black municipal employment including policymaking positions and minority set-aside contracts, which improved some black livelihoods; but did not make a dent in high levels of black unemployment and poverty in their respective cities. Substituting racial redistribution for economic redistribution was facilitated by public administrations, media, academics, and nonprofit and community groups, which viewed racism as the main or sole reason for urban injustice, defined racial progress in group terms, and downplayed class conflict as a reason for black working class precarity.49

Business interests in urban governance gained immensely from the black professional and managerial class defining equality solely on racial terms and providing political cover for developmental decisions that produced unemployment and poverty by blaming such conditions on the cultural pathologies of the working class (BNOS 104).50 Clearly, the chief role for black politicians and bureaucrats was and is to manage urban inequality. After the threat of civil violence has waned, the black political class is still needed to legitimize a downtown-centered development agenda and contain the social fallout from that agenda through punitive welfare and criminal justice policies.51 In fulfilling this role, the black political class are not traitors to their race nor are they powerless to make other choices. More, they have a stake in a development agenda that brings political and material benefits, including business support for their elections and governance, prestige from civic institutions, and jobs and contracts to their professional and middle-class supporters.