The New Accommodationists

Abstract

The 1980s and early 1990s proved to be an era of great advancement for African American political and intellectual leadership. The number of Black elected officials across the country doubled. Major American cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Detroit, Baltimore, Seattle, and New Orleans were headed by Black mayors. As the decade of the 1980s closed, the nation's largest city, New York, elected its first African American mayor. An African American was chosen to chair one of the country's two major political parties. A Black man made two impressive runs for the presidency, and the nation had its first elected Black governor, remarkably in Virginia, the seat of the old Confederacy. Understandably, these successes were greeted with a great deal of self-congratulation on the part of both Black and White politicians, journalists, and political commentators, who pointed to these electoral triumphs as evidence of substantial racial progress in America. African Americans finally were entering the mainstream of American politics. This tone was also mirrored by a new cadre of Black intellectuals who had acquired positions in the major citadels of learning and with the major media outlets. They concurred that race was a moribund issue in American society and that the entrance of African Americans into the American political hegemony was evidence of this. Finally, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream of a color-blind American society was coming true. But is this in fact the case? Are these new Black political and intellectual leaders keepers of King's dream or are they its betrayers? Are they harbingers of a new age of racial harmony and justice