Black Political Mobilization Research Articles

White Violence, Black Victims: The Impact of Political and Economic Competition on Interracial Killings in 21st Century America

Do political and economic rivalries promote interracial killings in 21st-century America? This article examines the determinants of disaggregated interracial killings in 1,381 U.S. counties by testing conflict-based accounts in an era of economic recession and unprecedented Black political mobilization. Results show that one dimension of racial conflict—political competition—is linked to interracial killings. Counties with mounting interracial rivalry in the political domain are significantly more likely to experience White perpetrated killings of Black residents and less likely to experience Black-on-White homicide offending. These results suggest that contests for political influence lead to greater interracial violence involving White perpetrators and Black victims.

Editor’s Overview

Editor’s Overview Jim Downs, Editor Volume 68, no. 3 continues with the journal’s commitment to study the Civil War from an interdisciplinary perspective. Among the many outcomes of the Civil War are various narratives that have come to define it. At times, these narratives have taken the shape of explosive debates from the 1990s polemic of “Who Freed the Slaves” to more current debates on the geography of the Civil War—how much did the West matter? There have also been more subtle narrative shifts that have defined the field without announcing their entrance; these narratives no longer appear as ideas in need of interpretation but rather as uncontested facts or uncontrivable frameworks. This issue aims to expose the interpretative ruts that have fostered these narratives. In his deeply insightful essay, “Prisoners with Undaunted Patriotism: Incarcerated Black Soldiers and Battles of Citizenship in Military Prisons during the Civil War,” Jonathan Lande explores the taboo history of incarcerated Black Union soldiers. While the history of Black soldiers’ heroic contributions to the Union’s war effort has been widely documented, Lande turns attention to the Black soldiers who deserted the Union army and were then incarcerated. Refusing to portray these men as cowards, Lande examines their political activism within prisons, adding a new dimension to not only the history of Black soldiers in the military but also the larger narrative of Black political mobilization during the Civil War. Turning attention to Southern regiments, Josh Waddell interrogates the religious narratives that have defined the Civil War era. Waddell expertly uncovers the “spiritual warfare” that was fought “in the hearts and minds of Southern troops.” By excavating many tracts, delivered to Southern regiments, Waddell reveals how Southern ministers argued that “God controlled events on the battlefield.” Since the rise of social history in the middle of the twentieth century—when historians moved away from just studying the “great men” of the past and turned to the lives of ordinary people—the subject of why soldiers enlisted and how they understood the war has been a subject of fascination among generations of scholars. Josh Wad-dell implores us to reckon with how religion played a fundamental, critical role in how so many Southern men understood the war and its discontents. While the aforementioned articles address narratives that are seemingly familiar to Civil War readers, Andrew Donnelly powerfully breaks new ground by exploring the often-neglected history of same-sex sexuality during the Civil War. He shows how “postbellum novelists, sexual scientists, and Civil War historians made meaning of the war by reference to homosexuality and made meaning of [End Page 227] the evolution of homosexuality by reference to the war.” Drawing on a range of sources, Donnelly identifies how narratives of same-sex intimacy and identity unfolded. “Two versions of homosexuality operated together to make meaning of Civil War history,” Donnelly explains: “old, innocent, sentimentalized male– male intimacy and the modern problem of deviant sexuality.” This article is a mind-blowing analysis of how people from the past used sexuality to create narratives about the Civil War. Similar to our previous issues, this one includes an excellent book review section. Khal Schneider reviews Megan Kate Nelson’s Three-Cornered War: The Union, The Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and pushes the study of the Civil War to the West. Christopher Hager reviews Deborah Willis’s deeply evocative book, The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship, which will actually be the focus of a roundtable discussion to be published in the next issue. The reviews also include many other notable books that enrich our understanding of the Civil War era. [End Page 228] Jim Downs, Editor Gilder Lehrman-National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of Civil War Studies and History Gettysburg College Copyright © 2022 The Kent State University Press

The Empowering Effects of Racial Messaging: The Link between Racial Outreach, Descriptive Representation and Black Political Mobilization

ABSTRACT This paper assesses the influence of racial outreach on Black political participation in the context of United States electoral politics. We argue that racial appeals should inspire higher levels of Black voter enthusiasm because they, in part, improve perceptions of empathy from politicians. However, we expect that racial outreach will matter more when it comes from non-descriptive representatives because Black representatives are perceived as empathetic regardless of their actions. We test these hypotheses using two separate experiments. We find that Black Americans are more politically active when non-Black politicians discuss their intentions to advance Black political interest. We also find that racial appeals provided by descriptive representatives is not a significant predictor of Black voter turnout. Our analysis demonstrates that under certain conditions racial outreach plays an important role in mobilizing underrepresented groups.

Breaking the Chains, Forging the Nation: The Afro-Cuban Fight for Freedom and Equality, 1812–1912

Breaking the Chains, Forging the Nation: The Afro-Cuban Fight for Freedom and Equality, 1812–1912

The Revolution that Failed: Reconstruction in Natchitoches by Adam Fairclough

Reviewed by: The Revolution that Failed: Reconstruction in Natchitoches by Adam Fairclough Justin Behrend (bio) The Revolution that Failed: Reconstruction in Natchitoches. By Adam Fairclough. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2018. Pp. 400. Cloth, $29.95.) The Revolution that Failed offers a sweeping interpretation of the Reconstruction era that is at once conventional and not altogether convincing. The claim that Reconstruction failed dates back to the first scholarly interpretations produced by William A. Dunning and W. E. B. DuBois, who offered, of course, starkly different accounts. What makes Adam [End Page 138] Fairclough's argument different is that he attributes Reconstruction's failure to black suffrage, and he does so through a close analysis of politics in Natchitoches Parish, instead of an overall assessment of the era. In the first chapter, Fairclough argues that Reconstruction failed because congressional Republicans extended voting rights to black men. The entire Reconstruction project, by which he means African American citizenship and voting, "proved to be an error" because Republican idealism prevented them from recognizing that "most whites were violently hostile" (15). As a result, Fairclough asserts, black suffrage "prolonged the chaos of the postwar years" (20). There are a number of problems with this interpretation. The argument hinges on the intentions of Republican congressmen, yet Fairclough does not examine the debates, speeches, or correspondence of these leaders. Instead, he uses abstractions, such as "Congressional Reconstruction assumed" and "Congressional Republicans knew" to impute motivation and agreement to a group of politicians who were famously divided between radical and moderate factions (19). Additionally, he implies that white violence against black people followed black male enfranchisement, yet numerous studies have shown how violence increased dramatically before black male enfranchisement between 1865 and 1867. Moreover, while Fairclough castigates Republican leaders for not doing enough, he is often silent about southern whites' racist actions, assuming that they were predisposed to violence against black people. More troubling, his argument about Reconstruction's failure rests on the recklessness of white Republican congressmen, but he ignores the demands of ordinary freedpeople for the vote. If Republican leaders deserve blame for Reconstruction's failure because they implemented black suffrage, should not black people also share the blame? In the subsequent chapters, The Revolution that Failed shifts to a tighter focus on Natchitoches Parish. We learn much about the variations and nuances of this community as it adjusted to rapid and substantive change. Fairclough is at his best when he shows the interconnections between local issues and statewide politics, particularly in how patronage appointments and factionalism sowed seeds of mistrust and illegitimacy in communities, such as Natchitoches, where little corruption existed. But for all of the attention to local political leaders and the particularities of the Natchitoches story, Fairclough's history does not shed much light on the black majority, whose votes propelled Republicans into office in Louisiana. While we learn about notable black leaders, such as Alfred Raford Blunt and John Gideon Lewis, the aspirations and actions of ordinary freedpeople remain hidden. Black women are rarely referenced, and [End Page 139] black political mobilization is assumed rather than analyzed. Fairclough is more interested in white Republican leaders, devoting a whole chapter to this small group. He mentions the few but "silent Unionists" during the Civil War—a reference to a handful of white people—but this phrase ignores the fact that nearly every black person in the parish would fit this label (28). Natchitoches, Fairclough asserts, was an anomaly in the midst of the notoriously violent Red River valley, known for the Colfax and Coushatta massacres. The parish was a place of "relative tranquility" where planters were "less exploitative … less cruel, [and] less inclined to employ violence" (40, 45). This peace and orderliness is nearly always attributed to "the white elite," but curiously, black people's role in creating a more egalitarian culture is not considered (116). Fairclough also deemphasizes the role of U.S. troops in mitigating white violence and maintaining social stability. Over a thousand troops were stationed in the parish in the summer of 1865, followed by a company during the 1867 and 1868 election season as well as during the turbulent era from November 1874 to December 1876. Indeed...

“Black Oppressed People All over the World Are One”: The British Black Panthers’ Grassroots Internationalism, 1969–73

Abstract This article examines the grassroots Black internationalist organizing of the British Black Panther Movement (BBPM). The BBPM, which was inspired, although not founded, by the U.S. Black Panthers, was a London-based antiracist movement composed mainly of Afro-Caribbean and South Asian immigrants to the United Kingdom. The British Panthers led hundreds of campaigns for housing, education, health, legal aid, employment and against police brutality from 1969 to 1973. These pages reconstruct the day-to-day organizing efforts of the BBPM, revealing a highly active movement that focused on bridging local people’s experiences of racism with the movement’s membership in diasporic networks. Analysis of oral histories and forty-four issues of movement newspapers collated from across six archives demonstrates that the BBPM also raised awareness of British institutional racism and police brutality in the absence of public recognition of these issues. In so doing, this article introduces significant new evidence about the nature and extent of anti-Black racist violence in Britain in the late 1960s and early 1970s and opens up novel perspectives on the forms of Black political mobilization in Britain. Among the UK’s Black Power organizations, the BBPM was the most militant and secretive. Members rigorously studied Black history and literature and labor movement history inside communal spaces that the movement occupied in London. The BBPM also acted as an umbrella organization, facilitating a network of Black Power movements across the United Kingdom. While increasingly internationalist in its outlook, the movement splintered over time, with former members founding Black organizations dedicated to working-class people’s concerns, intellectual life, and women’s issues.

The Political Context of the Percent Black-Neighborhood Violence Link: A Multilevel Analysis

A century of urban research has established that percentage black associates positively with violence at the neighborhood level. We extend traditional structural explanations for this association by drawing attention to the political contexts of cities that may influence the race-violence link. Drawing on insights from social movement and racial politics literatures, we contend that the relationship between percentage black and neighborhood violence will be attenuated in cities with greater black political opportunities and black mobilization. We examine this thesis using multilevel data from the National Neighborhood Crime Study that provide sociodemographic and violence data for census tracts nested within 87 large cities. We pair these data with city-level measures of black political opportunities and mobilization. Multilevel analyses reveal that the relationship between percentage black and violence varies substantially across cities, and that the average positive relationship often is attenuated, and reduced to statistical insignificance, in cities with favorable political contexts. We propose that the substantive and symbolic benefits set in motion by favorable political contexts lay the foundation for neighborhood organization against violence.

Comparative perspectives on Afro-Latin America

A review of Comparative Perspectives on Afro-Latin America by Kwame Dixon and John Burdick (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012. 382 pp., ISBN 978-0-8130-3756-1) reviewed by Eric R. Jackson (Book Review Editor, Journal of Pan African Studies; jacksoner@nku.edu) Associate Professor, Department of History and Geography; Director--Black Studies Program; Northern Kentucky University. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] United States immigration system is outdated and in many ways almost completely broken. Thousands of employers have manipulated the system to hire thousands of undocumented workers from Latin America, particularly those of African descent. It is estimated that about eleven million illegal immigrants now call the United States their home. Also important to this situation is the various voices that emerged during and soon after the 2001 World Conference Against Racism that was held in Durban, South Africa that referenced the immigration problem of the United States. Thus, the one million dollar question is what can be done to resolve this dilemma in a fair and comprehensive fashion? One way to tactical this problem is to examine and understand the cultural heritage and countless histories of some of the major groups of Latin American migrants who seek employment and a better life in the United States. editors of this volume, Kwame Dixon and John Burdick, members of the African American Studies and Anthropology Departments at Syracuse University respectively, seek to perform this task in the book under review here. In Comparative Perspectives of Afro-Latin America Dixon and Burdick offers a powerful and original collection of fifteen essays by various prominent scholars who explore the topics of and cultural differences, Black political mobilization, and various Latin American countries' responses to Afro-Latin activism throughout Latin America. More importantly, however, the overall goal of the editors was to create a volume that will provide a range of disciplinary perspectives, in-depth regional coverage, and cutting-edge analysis of Afro-descendant peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean (1). Also important was the editors' quest to investigate how the region's Afro-descendants are reconfiguring notions of citizenship, territory, race, gender, belonging, and nation (1). volume is divided into three thematic sections titled Blackness and Cultural Differences, Afro Social Movements and Mobilization, and State Responses respectively. Each section discusses some aspect of either the cultural heritage or the potent contemporary realities of the numerous Afro-Latin American socio-economic, political, societal, and ethnic challenges and complexities of this region of the Western Hemisphere that has received little attention from most scholars, political leaders, and community activists. Also included in this volume is a masterful balance of gender-focused essays that broadens the book far beyond any of its competitors. Finally, this book contains several essays that examine a wide-ranging of geographical locations and Afro-Latin American experiences from at least nine different countries. Comparative Perspectives of Afro-Latin America, in general, contains numerous profound and powerful essays that rest on the use of an abundance of personal interviews from members of a variety of Afro-Latin American communities that rarely have had a voice outside of their specific location. use of this type of research methodology greatly enhances the creditability and authenticity of each essay. Also crucial is that the use of this methodology helps the authors greatly analyze the subjects of race, gender, ethnicity, political activism, and geographical location with great ease. For instance, in the essay titled The Black Movement's Foot Soldiers: Black Women and Neighborhood Struggles for Land Rights in Brazil, author Keisha-Klan Y. …

Toward Understanding the Changing Politics of U.S. Cities: A Political Development Approach

This paper addresses the question of where we are politically in a trajectory that begins in the mature industrial city and brings us today well into a post-industrial age. It uses a political development approach to compare the political order of present-day cities with the earlier order that gave priority to redevelopment as a centerpiece in transitioning to post-industrialism. In line with a political development emphasis on political discord, the paper also shows how black political mobilization intersected the redevelopment regime and challenged the “good government” idea of color-free expertise. The post-industrial urban order is characterized by a less active role for corporate business, a greater role for philanthropic foundations, a prominent place for the “ed & med” sector, and a continuing struggle over lay-professional relationships and claims of expertise.

‘They must be discontented’: racial threat, black mobilization and the passage of school closing policies

Existing research demonstrates that black population size in a given area correlates with the passage of racially restrictive policies in that area. This paper examines the mechanisms through which minority population size translates into exclusionary policies. It does so by examining a little-known but critical aspect of US civil rights history: the development of policies which allowed white communities to close their public schools entirely rather than desegregate. Using comparative-historical methods to build on existing quantitative studies, this analysis demonstrates that, while black population size does correlate with the passage of restrictive policies, the adoption of school closing policies was primarily a political strategy used to counter rising black political mobilization. That is, whites were not responding to a demographic threat per se or to increasing contact with blacks, as extant work might suggest. Rather, restrictive policies were a response to increasing political activity and mobilization within black communities.

Labor Militancy and Black Grassroots Political Mobilization in the Louisiana Sugar Region, 1865-1868

IN EARLY AUGUST 1868 THE FREEDMEN'S BUREAU AGENT FOR IBERVILLE Parish, Louisiana, Charles E. Merrill, was called upon mediate one of countless labor disputes that occupied much of his and other bureau agents' time. In this instance, Merrill investigated complaint of John Williams, a freedman and head laborer Belle Grove plantation, who claimed that his employer, Henry Ware, had dismissed him on account of his political opinion. Merrill ultimately concluded that Williams's dismissal did not involve his political views. Nonetheless, because political and labor conflicts had become inseparable in highly charged atmosphere surrounding 1868 presidential campaign, Merrill found it necessary remind local justice of peace, James C. Adamson (whom Williams had at first evidently petitioned success), that planters must not be allowed use their authority as employers interfere with their workers' political rights. Ware has no right discharge any of his laborers account of their political opinion, Merrill lectured Adamson, adding that [i]f planters carry politics into fields they will find it bad business. Planters who could not convince freedmen to join their party by fair and honorable means were leave them alone. If Mr. Ware does not want republican laborers his plantation, let him pay them in full for time contracted for, and they will leave his plantation at once, Merrill insisted. If he wants their labor, let them go work, regard politics.(1) Merrill's sentiments notwithstanding, planters in Louisiana sugar region and throughout South would have found it impossible--even had they been so inclined--to let freedmen go work without regard politics.(2) As Eric Foner, Michael W. Fitzgerald, and Julie Saville have convincingly shown, black grassroots political mobilization profoundly shaped labor arrangements southern plantations in years after emancipation.(3) Instances of black political mobilization in South had appeared before war's end but tended be dominated at first by antebellum free black elite and confined largely urban areas. With onset of Radical Reconstruction in 1867, by contrast, this mobilization expanded include mass of former plantation slaves, who formed political organizations, held rallies and engaged in debate, registered and voted en masse, and banded together for self-defense and preserve internal unity. These activities injected politics into questions concerning freedmen's working lives, as conflict over seemingly mundane aspects of plantation routine underscored larger contest over decision-making authority between former slaveholders and freedmen. Black politics transformed social landscape by shifting balance of power plantations. In fluid labor markets of early Reconstruction, it even tilted that balance--albeit briefly--in freedmen's favor. While it is true that black grassroots political mobilization altered southern labor arrangements, most scholarly attention has focused how this development unfolded in cotton South, where freedmen's success in rejecting gang labor and in gaining access land had unintended consequences. The various forms of sharecropping and tenancy that came dominate in cotton production, whatever their much-debated origins, eventually undermined very solidarity that had strengthened former slaves' bargaining position in first place. As individual black families or households spread out over cotton plantations, it became increasingly difficult for them mobilize for self-defense or act collectively in other ways. Ironically, Michael W. Fitzgerald observed in his study of black political mobilization and emergence of sharecropping, the freedmen's success in renting land dispersed them widely throughout countryside, making them more vulnerable attack. …

Black and Female Municipal Employment: A Substantive Benefit of Minority Political Incorporation?

Research has advanced the expectation that black political mobilization will result not only in gains in black descriptive representation but also change in public policy. Under the premise that city employment is a substantive benefit, this article documents the relationships between mayoral leadership, minority descriptive representation on the city council, and trends in black and female municipal employment across eight job categories in New Orleans, Louisiana rom 1978 through 1997. It is hypothesized that with growing minority political incorporation there will occur a distinct and identifiable temporal sequence in minority city employment gains across several job categories dependent upon the relative desirability of those jobs. Over the period studied the following is found: (1) patterns of racial job stratification based on job desirability, (2) distinct trends in black male and black female employment, (3) male-female differences in traditional gender-specific occupations, and (4) bifurcation of black female and non-black female employment trends in gender-specific occupations. Although black political incorporation was in its ascendancy through the 1980s and public policy has been substantially controlled by the black leadership for more than a decade, the realization of substantive benefits in the form of municipal jobs has been much slower than previously theorized.

"A Warlike Demonstration": Legalism, Armed Resistance, and Black Political Mobilization in Decatur, Illinois, 1894-1898

It is the thesis of this volume that subjection to violence in various forms has been a central ingredient of the Afro-American experience. Violence, the actuality or the threat of death or serious injury from assault, has constituted an ever-present reality in practically every black community and for practically every black person. Herbert Shapiro, White and Black Response, 1988 Lynching is crucial in the continuance of the racial system in the south. . . . It is the most powerful and convincing form of racial repression operating in the interest of the status quo. Lynchings serve the indispensable social function of providing the ruling class with means of periodically reaffirming its collective sentiment of white dominance. Oliver C. Cox, Caste, Class and Race, 1948 In a memorable quotation from the turbulent 1960s, black activist Jamal Al-Amin (a.k.a. H. Rap Brown) declared, Violence is as American as cherry pie. Amin's statement is a commentary on the nature of American society and an indictment of the system of racial oppression. The truth of Amin's simile reminds us that violence has been at the center of race relations in the United States. In the main, African-Americans have been the victims, rather than the perpetrators of racially motivated violence. Race riots and lynchings have been the dominant forms of collective violence used against African-Americans. Race riots have typified anti-black violence during the twentieth century, while lynchings symbolized racial repression during the 1890s.(1) For example, between 1890 and 1900, 121 African-Americans were lynched yearly. In more graphic terms this means that every three days a black man, woman, or child was murdered by a racist mob. Therefore, lynching, the most blatant form of racial violence, is crucial to understanding American race relations at this pivotal historical moment.(2) Though lynching has been a central chapter in the American narrative, it has received scant attention from historians. Social activists and sociologists have dominated scholarship on this gruesome phenomenon. Sociologists have articulated various explanations for lynching and have compared it to other mechanisms of social control. While their contributions have enriched our understanding of this form of collective violence, the impersonal nature of their mathematical models has served to eclipse the role of human agency. Further, their theoretical frameworks have generally been ahistorical. When historians have explored this terrain, they have tended to focus on the South, or they have chronicled campaigns for a federal anti-lynching law.(3) This southern emphasis is understandable; after all, lynching was a southern mania, but it was also a national tragedy. For instance, between 1891 and 1914 at least twenty-two lynchings occurred in the northern state of Illinois - including eight in central Illinois between 1893 and 1908. Further, the focus on national anti-lynching campaigns has predisposed lynching scholarship toward emphasizing legal action, thus obscuring more militant forms of local opposition and resistance.(4) During the last decade of the nineteenth century, racial violence erupted across the nation. Besides the institution of racial terror, this decade witnessed the disfranchisement of African-Americans and the consolidation of American apartheid. In response to the resurgence of racism, Rayford Logan, an African-American historian, termed the 1890s the nadir of the African-American experience. On June 3, 1893 this horror struck the black community of Decatur, Illinois, when Samuel J. Bush, an African-American day laborer accused of rape, was forcibly taken from the Macon County jail and lynched.(5) This essay examines the reaction of black leadership in Decatur, Illinois, to the Bush lynching and the attempt to incite the lynching of James Jackson a year later. Black leaders continued their protests of the Bush lynching into the 1898 Congressional and Macon County Sheriff races. …

Religious Sources of Politicization among Blacks in Washington, D.C.

Although there has been some controversy about the role of religion in the black community, this research found that religion was an important source of collective and political action among blacks in Washington, D.C. Those who frequently attended churches where pastors attempted to politicize their flock, and those who identified as pentecostals or who reported a pentecostal experience, were more supportive of collective action, reported higher rates of political participation, and showed more support for Jesse Jackson. These results suggest that the black church is a positive force in black political mobilization.

Black Political Mobilization: Leadership, Power and Mass Behavior.Minion K. C. Morrison

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsBlack Political Mobilization: Leadership, Power and Mass Behavior. Minion K. C. MorrisonAldon MorrisAldon Morris Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 94, Number 6May, 1989 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/229199 Views: 2Total views on this site Copyright 1989 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Black Political Mobilization: Leadership, Power, and Mass Behavior. By Minion K. C. Morrison. Albany: SUNY Press, 1987. 303p. $49.50 cloth, $19.95 paper. - Whose Votes Count? Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights. By Abigail M. Thernstrom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987. 316p. $25.00.

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Black Political Mobilization: Leadership, Power and Mass Behavior.Minion K. C. Morrison

<i>Black Political Mobilization: Leadership, Power and Mass Behavior.</i>Minion K. C. Morrison

Black Political Mobilization: Leadership Power, and Mass Behavior.

Black Political Mobilization: Leadership Power, and Mass Behavior.

Does Interest Group Litigation Matter? The Case of Black Political Mobilization in Mississippi

Litigation, like other interest-group tactics, is often assumed or asserted to have an impact. This research empirically examines this proposition by placing litigation in the context of the myriad of forces aimed at achieving black political mobilization in Mississippi. The results show different forces promoting different modes of black political mobilization, with litigation being effective in boosting black voter registration and black candidacies for public office.

Convergence and Divergence in Political Orientations between Blacks and Whites: 1960–1973

Trends in the political orientations of blacks and whites from 1960 to 1973 are examined to determine if racial positions have increasingly diverged as the Kerner Commission warned they might. The evidence suggests a mixed pattern. Continuing but not diverging large‐scale differences in political goals are found. Black political mobilization is seen to be increasing, as well as black/white differences in partisan and electorial behaviors. Widely different evaluations of black political movements are maintained. Political distrust is found to be both widespread and growing, especially among blacks.