Race and Politics

Jeremy Cooper
Senior Seminar

Race and Politics, Revisited
By ANDREW ROSENTHAL (Blog)
A post in my blog on Tuesday, about the undertone of racism in American politics, drew a great deal of angry e-mail and critical commentary, most recently from the Bill O’Reilly program on Fox News. I thought the subject was worth another visit.
Some people who have reacted to the post have sincerely taken issue with my opinions, which is one of the reasons we publish opinions – to generate debate.
Other responses – comments on the blog that we did not post, through e-mail, on Twitter and from other sources – have been more unpleasant. Some have been overtly racist themselves, including bigoted references to my last name. Some have attacked me for saying that anyone who criticizes President Obama is a racist. That would be a ridiculous claim, had I actually made it, which I did not.
And others have made the argument that I should have accounted for anti-white racism, which some readers say is a real problem in this country. There are members of minority groups who make racist comments, but if there is some evidence that white Americans, especially white men, suffer from racial discrimination, I’d love to see it.
One thing I could have made clearer in my blog post is that racially tinged and outright racist attacks did not begin with the election of Mr. Obama. They have been going on for a long time, and yes, particularly from Republicans. This bitter strain was evident in my first assignment for The Times in the 1988 general election, when the infamous “Willie Horton ad” was used against Gov. Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts, the Democratic nominee. Mr. Dukakis was also the target of xenophobic attacks based on his Greek heritage. The debate over immigration reform has had a river of racism running through it.
The racial theme continues in the 2012 presidential campaign. One day after coming in fourth in the Iowa caucuses, Newt Gingrich appeared at a town hall in Plymouth, N.H., where he offered to attend the NAACP convention and explain “why the African-American community should demand paychecks instead of food stamps.”
The idea that black Americans don’t want paychecks is condescending and outrageous.
(Mr. Gingrich, who calls Mr. Obama the “food stamp president,” also has been advocating employing children from housing projects to clean toilets in public schools so they can learn there are alternative careers to pimping and drug dealing.)
The NAACP did not comment on Mr. Gingrich’s offer to speak, but the organization attacked Rick Santorum for a remark he made at a voter forum in Iowa. “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money,” Mr. Santorum said. “I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money and provide for themselves and their families.”
(Mr. Santorum later said that he’d been misunderstood, that he was stumbling over his words and it just sounded like he said “black.”)
In a statement on Wednesday, the NAACP President, Benjamin Todd Jealous, said: “Senator Santorum’s targeting of African Americans is inaccurate and outrageous, and lifts up old race-based stereotypes about public assistance. He conflates welfare recipients with African Americans, though federal benefits are in fact determined by income level.”
That’s very well put.
Introduction:
In Urban Studies two schools of academic thought answer the “urban question”: the ecological and urban political economy schools. Because the “urban question” allows us to ask how we can address and understand urban inequalities in American cities, I will argue that to fully grasp the “urban question” one should take a perspective that composition of society and space as mutual. First, I will develop a working definition of “the urban question”. Second, I will write on the ecological school’s view of the “urban” question and how their vista explains but inadequately addresses urban inequalities. Third, I will review the political economy (social-spatial dialect) landscape of the “urban question” and how their panorama explains and gives better analyses of urban inequality.
Definition: The Urban Question
Again, this section will give a working definition of the “urban question’. To fully compare the political economy and ecological perspectives a working definition allows for the reader to better understand the “urban question”. For Social Science scholars from a variety of disciplines the “urban question” asks the question of what makes a space urban or city (The City Reader, 2009). The perspective on the homogeneity of society and space results in the “urban question” presenting in distinct separate ways from both the ecological and the social spatial-dialect schools of thought. Authors that wrote in The City Reader (2009), like Burgess, Wirth and others view society and space from the rational that geographical scope determines society. The “urban question” that results from the ecological paradigm asks how the city (space) produces certain behaviors of society. The second analyses views the relationship between society and space as one where wider processes (society) influence our geographical surroundings (space) which in turn impacts upon space (geographical surroundings) and wider processes (society). The second view defines the “urban question” in two parts, the first questions asks how do wider social processes affect urban societies and their relationship to geographical space? The second question asks: how do wider social processes affect spaces which impacts upon wider social processes like urban inequality? Understanding the two academic rationales, I will, in the next two sections, further argue that the interrelationship of society and space allows the question of how we can address and understand urban inequalities.
Society and Space: Ecological thought
The ecological school fails to address the modern social trend of urban inequality. The ecological perception sees urban social and economic unevenness as stratification. Stratification results from the urban geography or space. Again, the underlying premise that geographical landscape (space) influences social grouping and behavior (society) becomes central to the “urban question”. The ecological notion leaves out any beliefs to wider social, political and economic processes that address geographic location impinging upon the social concept of urban inequality (Burgess, 1925). The ecological school views urban racial or ethnic, and economic disparities from the standpoint that geographical factors such as population size, diverse and compact urban landscapes produce situations where stratification exist, but not necessarily inequality from a social justice standpoint (Burgess, 1925). Wirth (1938) implicitly acknowledges that the social and economic stratum of society implicates upon individuals that seek out other like individuals who share similar biological, personality or social traits of race, ethnicity, economic social status etc., because cities (space) consists of dense and heterogeneous geographical space.
The assumption that space impresses upon society leads to research that focuses upon a micro-analysis of that space to explain unequal stratification. Again, the research ecologist conduct lacks any questioning of wider social, political or economic processes and focuses only on location analysis. Authors such as Wilson (1996) implies that the types of research questions ecologist ask assume that geography affects society. Wilson (1996) uses a positivist empirical framework to study black communities of Chicago. The question Wilson (1996) asks show that economic exclusion of black neighborhoods in Chicago results in from a lack of role models and social control in the black locale. The location analyses of specific urban areas in Chicago (Wilson, 1996) by ecologist ask questions and explain social economic strata through a lens that the urban geographies lack of role models and social control affects the behaviors of individuals who live in a particular space. Wilson (1996) makes no mention of wider social processes as the reason black communities in Chicago suffer. Wilson’s (1996) argues that factors like the wider social issue of racism plays no part in his analysis of the neighborhoods that he studies.
Additional confirmation exists where ecological research questions built upon premises that do not address any wider socially exclusive processes like urban inequality. For example, Burgess (1925) asks questions he bases on an ecological supposition that do not address wider social, political and economic processes. Burgess (1925) asks the question, “How far is the growth of the city, in its physical and technical aspects, matched by a natural but adequate readjustment in the social organization? What, for a city is a normal rate of expansion”? These questions have their bases in the ecological dialect that rapid growth, dense geographies, high populations and heterogeneous urban places results in different levels of social and economic strats.
That the ecological school fails to approach urban inequality in the type of research question the school asks has further proof through Gottdiener (1988) who lists question that address the study of the city from an ecological perspective. Again these questions have form that has a basis upon the premise where space forms society. Deconstructing the questions reveals no wider social dynamics that might explain the difference in social and economic strata. The questions include:
1. What are the relative or respective weights of ecological factors in urban development?
2. What helps organizations develop to help members adapt to their environment?
3. What are the effects of new technology and mobilization on the socio-functional organization?

Again, urban ecologists ask how the relationship between space and society frame and impact upon each other. Due to the underlying premise that space impacts upon society, the question excludes any referral to wider social processes to explain urban inequality. Because the research questions have a basis upon the above assumption, they exclude out any regard for urban inequality. In the next section I will discuss how asking the urban question from a political economic standpoint better confronts urban inequality.
Society and Space: Urban Political economy
Urban political economy allows for a better understanding of urban inequality via the dialectical view of the city from macro-process. Urban political economic concepts better frames “urban question” than ecological thinking due to political economies dialect which includes an analysis of the relationship between space and society built on the premise that the relationships society and space are mutual. As a result, the political economist ask the “urban question of how wider social, political and economic processes impress upon cities and how city space in turn impacts upon the wider social, political or economic processes? In David Harvey’s “Contested Cities: Social Process and Spatial Form” (1997) he gives an example of how wider processes shape space and in turn these shaped spaces affect other space and social formations. For example, China (space) and the Proletarian revolution (wider social process) and how the revolution impacts upon modern spaces (Chinese cities) and wider social process (Chinese politics after the revolution) (Harvey, 1997).
Unlike, the ecological dialect of economic stratification as the results of social selection and competition in the work place, processes like education, globalization and technology can affect the city’s economic conditions which in turn can affect urban inequality. (Gottdeiner, 1988). Saskia Sassen (1998) writes about how technology and globalization define the urban question. Sassen (1998) ask the question of how the relationship between space and society is mutually comprised. For instance, Sassen (1998) writes on how New York City (space) and other global cities still have regional business districts (space) that technology (wider process) improves. The districts allow for globalization (impact of technology on wider processes) that in turn impact upon the city (space). Furthermore, Sassen (1998) believes that economic inequalities result from globalization which results in a devalorization of economically disadvantage actors who consists of women, minorities and immigrants. Essentially, globalization and global cities requires space that meets the needs of people who work in global industries. The CBD or nodes that hold value devalorize certain people who hold no social economic value (Sassen, 1998) and as a result other areas of the city (space) contain people with no economical advantage or the poor. Once again, societies’ political and economic processes impacts upon space which in turn has an effect on social inequality (social process) and offer an explanation on why inequalities occur.
Unlike the ecological perspective the political economic research questions better address urban economic inequalities due to the premise that society and space mutually comprise each other. The ecological perspective offers a deeper understanding on the factors at work in the relationship between space and society. Gottdienr (1988) gives further proof of these questions:
1. What is the character of power and inequality? How do they relate to ecological patterns?
2. How do production and reproduction processes of capital accumulation manifest themselves in socio-spatial (the city) organization?
3. Historically, what are the advantages between capital and labor?
These questions concern themselves with inequality, capital and the historical aspects of cities. These kind of questions not only analyze location factors that impact upon society but they bring into the analysis wider social, political and economic processes that impact upon space and how the space in turn impacts upon the wider situational processes. The result of ecological theories and methods for analyzing urban inequality includes a deeper analysis of the urban landscape and the variety of factors that impact upon that space and social conditions like urban inequality.
Conclusion:
The political economic perspective offers a better analysis of urban inequality. I believe that the ecological thinking fails to address urban inequality. I argue the ecological school considers the

Relationship between society and space as a one way relationship. The ecological school views space as impacting upon society. Their view results in the “urban question” of how does the geographical landscape impact upon cities? Additionally, the ecological perspective of the “urban question” leads to research that result in a location analysis of communities, but does not take into account any wider social, economic and political processes impacting upon space that in turn impacts upon a social condition of urban inequality.
On the other hand, the political economic perspective offers an analytical view where wider social process impact upon the urban panorama which in turn impacts upon wider social processes and conditions like urban inequality. Again, urban political economist asks how do wider social processes impact upon the city and how does that city in turn impact upon wider social processes? The research questions urban ecologist asks result in higher level analyses because they relate those wider processes, like technology and globalization, impact upon urban geographies of cities. The political economists in turn show how space impacts upon social process and situations like inequality. In the end, the two schools offer divergent conceptions of the urban question and result in contrastive research questions. As a result, the political economy perspective offers a more analytical understanding of urban inequality and the geographies and processes involved in that inequality.