RACIAL AND ETHNIC

Development in Racial and Ethnic politics African - Americans

By Bruce Cain

wenty-five years ago, the focus of minority politics in America was almost exclusively on black-white relations. The central goal of the civil rights movement then was to end discrimination against African-Americans using a strategy that combined symbolic protest with litigation and political mobilization. Responding to the ferment of liberal activism and working with the bountiful resources of an expanding economy, Congress passed landmark legislation that aspired to eliminate inner-city poverty, ban institutional discrimination, and offer novel educational and commercial opportunities to African-Americans. African-Americans formed coalitions with liberal whites to elect black candidates to local, state, and national offices in areas where blacks had long been denied representation (Browning, Marshall, and Tabb, 1986; Sonenshein, 1990). On America’s college campuses, the civil rights ferment led to the creation of new black politics courses that introduced a generation of students to the thinking of African-American writers such as Eldridge Cleaver and Malcom X, and to the history and culture of the African-American community.

Contemporary American minority politics is in transition from this earlier, more simple era of biracialism to a new one of forms to a predominantly biracial pattern, black-white relations a growing number of urban areas elsewhere constitute only one piece of a complex multiracial and multiethnic mosaic. As it was in the 1960s, discrimination against blacks and other racial and ethnic minorities is still a key problem today, but contemporary minority politics now also include such issues as immigration reform, language rights, urban enterprise zones, and inter-ethnic tension. Multiracialism has also heightened group competition.

Government programs conceived in the earlier biracial era have been expanded to cover Latinos, Asians and nonracial groups such as women and the disabled. In some areas of the country, this has pitted the legitimate claims and interests of blacks against the equally legitimate claims of other groups at a time of declining economic resources and increasing public skepticism about the government’s role in solving problems of poverty, inequality, and justice.

he transition from black-white biracialism to contemporary multicultur-alism constitutes a new phase in the historical evolution of racial politics in America, an evolution that has always been shaped to a considerable degree by immigration policy and economic conditions. There have been two recurrent issues in the history of American minority politics: first, an assimilationist concern about absorbing large numbers of foreigners into the United States, and second, an egalitarian question about the relative conditions and opportunities for different racial and ethnic groups in the United States.

While in any period of America, history both themes have been manifest, over time, their relative salience has varied. Assimilationist concerns, quite naturally, have tended to be more visible in periods of high immigration. From 1840 to the Depression, there was significant European immigration in the east and Midwest especially, and significant Latino and Asian immigration in the west.

he dominant group in the American population at the time was white,Protestant, and English speaking. Certain elements of this population feared the impact of immigration upon American culture, as they knew it and labor competition and new immigrants took different forms in various parts of the country. In the Midwest, for instance, there were bitter conflicts over the creation of bilingual education for the German-speaking immigrants, and in many eastern states, inner-city Irish and Italian ethnic political machines fought for electoral control against suburban and rural native Protestant population (Erie, 1988). In the west and southwest, state legislatures passed a series of laws that restricted the economic and educational opportunities of their growing Latino and Asian populations (Acuna, 1981). By the outbreak of World War II, increasingly restrictive immigration laws and the Great Depression had brought mass immigration to a virtual halt. With the supply of new immigrants shut off, social mobility and intergenerational assimilation eroded the differences between second generation Irish, Italians, Jews, and the white Protestant majority, and gradually lessened the national salience of assimilationist concerns (Wolfinger, 1965; Parenti, 1967).

s compared to assimilationist issues, egalitarian conflict during the nineteenth century was more focused in the south than in the east, west, and southwest. Africans had been imported into the United States as slaves and relegated to a position of property. The civil War emancipated them from slavery, but with the end of Reconstruction, African-Americans found themselves in a position of severe inequality relative to the white population. Since the immigrants were predominantly white Europeans and mostly resided in areas outside the south, the immigrant assimilationist issue was both geographically and intellectually distinct from the African-American equality issue during this period of American history.

The interruption of mass immigration and the lessening of assimilationist conflicts shifted the focus of minority politics in the post World War II period in a biracial direction. The migration of African-Americans into urban areas of the nonsouth after the war broadened the egalitarian issues of black-white relations in at least two senses. Most obviously, it widened the conflict from a primarily regional (i.e. southern) to a national problem; it was no longer just a problem caused by southern prejudice and discrimination. As African-Americans migrated out of the south for economic opportunities, they encountered both subtle and blatant forms of prejudice in other parts of the country and found themselves in new conditions of economic disadvantage. It became clear in the civil rights movement that the redefined egalitarian issues extended beyond legal and institutional discrimination to more elusive problems such as private prejudice and inequalities of opportunity.

As the dominant nonwhite group in America, blacks assumed leadership positions in the post-war civil rights movement and in progressive political alliances. They were the intended beneficiaries of Great Society civil rights and anti-poverty legislation. Indeed, as well be discussed in greater detail later, much of this legislation was modeled after and tailored to the African-American experience. Other groups could claim these protections only are analogy to the black experience, but this has sometimes created problems because the experiences of different racial and ethnic groups are to some significant degree unique.

This phase in American minority politics began to change in 1965 with the termination of racial and ethnic immigration quotas. America entered a second period of extensive mass immigration that differed from the earlier period in several important ways.

To begin with, substantially higher fractions of the new immigrants were nonwhite, coming from Asia and Latin America. Secondly, whereas the immigrants in the earlier period took up residence in areas where blacks for the most part did not live, the newest immigrants moved into cities where African-Americans had resided since World War II. Thirdly, the legal protections and government programs that had been put in place to assist the African-American population were gradually extended to other nonwhites during the 1970s in recognition of past discrimination against them. The combination of these factors merged egalitarian

Protestant, and English speaking. Certain elements of this population feared the impact of immigration upon American culture, as they knew it and labor competition and new immigrants took different forms in various parts of the country. In the Midwest, for instance, there were bitter conflicts over the creation of bilingual education for the German-speaking immigrants, and in many eastern states, inner-city Irish and Italian ethnic political machines fought for electoral control against suburban and rural native Protestant population (Erie, 1988). In the west and southwest, state legislatures passed a series of laws that restricted the economic and educational opportunities of their growing Latino and Asian populations (Acuna, 1981). By the outbreak of World War II, increasingly restrictive immigration laws and the Great Depression had brought mass immigration to a virtual halt. With the supply of new immigrants shut off, social mobility and intergenerational assimilation eroded the differences between second generation Irish, Italians, Jews, and the white Protestant majority, and gradually lessened the national salience of assimilationist concerns (Wolfinger, 1965; Parenti, 1967).

In the nineteenth century, the vast majority of the immigrants were European and white. The discrimination and hostility they faced was the result of their foreignness – i.e., that they spoke different languages, practiced different customs, or worshiped different religions. Nonwhite immigrants (i.e. Latino and Asian) in the first immigration than today, were more severely discriminated against, and were eventually excluded as part of official immigration policy. The fact that a higher proportion of contemporary immigrants come from Asia and Latin America has widened the cultural/linguistic gap and exacerbated assimilationist fears, but the fact that they are also predominantly nonwhite has added an egalitarian dimension to the debate. In addition to thinking of themselves as different by virtue of being in a foreign land, immigrants are more likely to think of themselves as different in the sense that they are nonwhite dealing with prejudices of a majority white society. This new construction of the earlier egalitarian conflict brings Latinos and Asians closer to African-Americans and constitutes the basis of a potential political alliance.

However, the egalitarian and assimilationist themes have also merged in a second way that serves to separate Latinos and Asians from African-Americans. The expansion of civil rights protections throughout the 1970s and 1980s to linguistic and ethnic minorities extended the egalitarian logic to the assimilationist debate. It was now possible to speak of protecting an ethnic and racial group’s equal right to its distinctive language and culture. Since this is not an interest shared with most African-Americans, it pits native-born blacks and whites against immigrant Latinos and Asians.

TABLE 1 Distribution of states by percent minority population
	< 10%	11-20%	21-30%	31-40%	41-50%	>50%
African-American
1980	33	10	6	1	0	0
1990	33	10	6	1	0	0
Hispanic
1980	45	3	1	1	0	0
1990	42	5	2	1	0	0
Asian-American
1980	49	0	0	0	0	1
1990	49	0	0	0	0	1

In short, the key new development in American racial and ethnic politics is the emergence of multiculturalism and its implications for the old civil rights coalition and its agenda. The remainder of this issue will review the growth and extensiveness of multiculturalism. Then we will examine the implications that this has had for the political strategies and interests of American minority groups. Finally, we will consider the problems that ate caused when legal protections and polices forged in the biracial area are applied to new groups and in multiracial settings.

The Spread of Multiculturalism

he emergence of increasingly multiracial and multiethnic circumstances in the United States is a function of several factors, but the most important one is immigration. The rate of legal immigration into the United States has increased every decade in the postwar period, rising from 1.7 immigrants per 100,000 residents in the 1960s to 3.1 in the 1980s. During the 1980s, 9 million immigrants entered the United States – 7.3 million legally (the largest number of legal immigrants in any decade in U.S. history, except for 1901-10) and an estimated 2 million illegally. The largest immigrants groups came from Asia (2.47 million), Mexico, and Central America (1.28 million), and Europe (593,000); and, specifically by country, from Mexico (974,000), the Philippines (431,000), China (341,000) and Korea (306,000).

The vast majority of recent immigrants entered the United States for economic opportunities, but there were also 916,000 political refugees admitted during the last decade, the greatest numbers coming from Vietnam (303,916), Laos (132,140), Cambodia (109,345), and Cuba (105,699).

At the earliest stages of the post-1965 wave of immigration, the Latino immigrants, who were primarily Mexican, tended totake farm labor job in rural areas in southwestern states such as California and Texas. These rural workers were typically young male “sojourners” who left their families behind them, sent money home, and entered and left the United States periodically upon seasonal demand. Increasingly, however, Mexican immigrants in the 1980s began to find service and manufacturing jobs in urban areas. With the stability of nonseasonal work, the modal immigrant pattern shifted from young male sojourner to families with children taking up permanent residence in urban areas.

The pattern of Asian immigration since 1965 has been primarily urban and suburban, with the exception of some Indochinese political refugees residing in rural areas such as the Central Valley of California. The Asian immigrants have focused on establishing small businesses, often with family employees. Since the start-up costs for businesses are lower in poorer neighborhoods, many of the Asian immigrant businesses are located near or in inner city black or Latino neighborhoods. The fact that these businesses are family run and located in areas of high unemployment lays the groundwork for many of the inter-ethnic tensions that found such violent expression in the Rodney king riots.

he Asian shopkeepers are driven by economic necessity to do business in ghetto areas with relatively cheap family labor, sine they are competing in a market sector in which the odds of failure are much higher than the odds of success. At the same time, this strategy limits employment opportunities for the neighboring residents and contributes to the chronic ghetto problem of circulating more money out of the neighborhood than back in.

The pattern of economic forces attracting Asian and Latino immigrants into areas that were previously inhabited by African-American is quite common. For instance, the states that attracted the most immigrants in 1990 were, in order, California, New York , Texas, Illinois, Florida, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Arizona, and Virginia – all of which had comparatively large minority populations to being with. Thus, some states (e.g., New York or California) became increasingly minority in composition, while others (e.g., North Dakota, Iowa, and Manie, New Hampshire) remain relatively untouched by the demographic ferment of the last two decades.

Table 2 Distribution of Congressional districts by minority populations
	Majority	Plurality	No plurality
	Majority	Plurality	> 20%	10-19%
Black	17	3	65	78
Hispanic	11	6	39	48
Asian	2	0	2	23

In the aggregate, the 1990 census found that the white share of the total American population had decreased over the decade from 83.1 percent to 80.3 percent while the black share of the population increased from 11.7 percent to 12.1 percent, the Latino share from 6.4 percent to 9 percent and the Asian share from 1.5 percent to 2 percent. The geographic concentration of minority groups across the country is by no means uniform.

Over half the blacks still live in the south, and the black population share is greater than or equal to 10 percent in only 17 of the 50 states (the same as in 1980). Fifty-five percent of all Asians live in the west, but only one state has greater than a 10 percent of all Latinos in live in the south and west, but only eight states have Latino populations above 10 percent (up from 5 in 1980; see table 1).

If we leave out Texas and Florida, the south is still primarily biracial – i.e., white and black. The mountain states, certain parts of white, with only small concentrations of racial and ethnic minorities. Multiracialism is found mainly in the west (especially in the state of California with its 25 percent black population, and in Washington), Texas (especially Dallas and Houston), Florida (Miami-Fort Lauderdale), New York, Boston, and Chicago. In other words, it is a growing trend in some, but not all, parts of the United States.

The Asian component of this mix, in particular, is still relatively small in all but a few areas. There is only one majority-Asian metropolitan area (Honolulu), and only one other (S.F.-Oakland-San Jose) in which the Asian populations share is over 10 percent (14.8 percent). While Asians own and operate businesses in urban ghetto areas, they tend to reside outside the ghettos in predominantly white cities and countries.

Thus, the most common pattern for congressional districts with appreciable Asian population concentrations is Asian-white. Of the 27 Congressional districts with 10 percent or above Asian population shares in 1990, Asians were the largest racial group in only two districts, whites were the largest in 10, and blacks/Latinos were the largest group in none.

The more frequent patterns were biracial or triracial combinations of Latinos, blacks and whites, and in a majority of instances whites were still the largest voting group in the district. Prior to the 1991 redistrictings but after the 1990 census, there were 17 majority black congressional districts and 68 others in which blacks constituted at least 20 percent of the population. Of those, blacks were the plurality population group in only three seats and Latinos in six, while whites were the largest bloc in 33. The same point about the continued importance of white voters holds for congressional districts with sizeable Latino populations. There were 11 majority Latino populations of at least 20 percent. Blacks constituted 10 percent or more of the district populations in 21 of these districts, and whites had a 10 percent or greater share in all but three.

learly, there is a variety of racial and ethnic mixtures emerging in American political districts. Indeed, some of the uncertainty about what multiculturalism means in terms of politics and public policy stems from the variety of racial and ethnic combinations in different areas of the country. In a few Congressional districts, multiculturalism means the interaction of all four major racial and ethnic groups – i.e., white, black, Latino, and Asian. Moreover, more frequently it means a mixture of two or three racial groups and a variety of different nationalities.

BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC

Anglo America- Black

Boss at last Having come under attack from the South African government, Anglo American has appointed its first black CEO. Grant Clark looks at the challenges facing him

he famous biblical tale of Jesus raising his beloved friend from the dead has made the name ‘Lazarus’ virtually synonymous with resurrection. The bosses at the world’s most powerful mining firm, Anglo American plc, might not have read any deeper meaning when they named Lazarus Zim as new head of their South African operation but they are hoping the appointment will give the country’s largest company a new lease of life, especially in its troubled relationship with President Thabo Mbeki’s government.

In early February, amid much trumpeting of its black economic empowerment ambitions, the London-based mining giant named Zim as CEO of Anglo South African town, where he lived in a tin shack for most of his formative years.

Almost 25 years after wining a bursary from Anglo American to study commerce, he now runs the group’s most important division, responsible for 35 per cent of its total profits. Zim’s corporate rise included stints at the helm of pay TV channel M-Net and mobile phone operator, MTN.

The 88-year-old mining conglomerate has invested US$ 17 billion in South Africa in the last five years and maintains multi-billion dollar interests in gold, platinum, diamonds, coal and other mineral production on five continents. While the historic appointment was welcomed by labour unions and the media, it was somewhat anticipated. “Anglo realized that the future lies with black-run business and I think it was important for them to have a black face as CEO,” says economist Azar Jammine. The South African government has been turning up the heat, particularly on the large, more established mining houses, to play their part in Black Economic Empowerment (BEE).

Mining is a pillar of the South African economy, employing more than half a million people and contributing to more than half a million people and contributing to more than 40 per cent of the capitalization of the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE).

This makes it a natural target of the government’s concerted drive to transform South Africa’s white-dominated private sector. New mining laws, passed last year, set out a five-year empowerment policy, which includes transferring about US$ 17 billion or 15 percent of the industry – into black hands. The legislation came with a mining charter, chiefly aimed at promoting the government’s BEE strategy but which many firms saw as an attempt by the state to dictate to private enterprises the way they should operate.

“The charter represented a compromised agreement. None of the parties – government, business and labour – were entirely happy with the outcome. You are going to get hiccups along the way. It is not going to be all plain sailing,” says Roger Baxter, chief economist with the SA Chamber of Mines, which represents most mining companies. The relationship between South Africa’s new rulers and old industrialist has tended to be adversarial.

“There is a serious disjuncture between business and political leadership this country,” President Mbeki said in a stern online column in August last year. Mbeki lambasted Zim’s predecessor Tony Trahar for commenting that political risk still exists for investors in South Africa. “Throughout the colonial and apartheid years, Anglo American did not seek a London listing and did nothing that would generate speculation about the future of its Johannesburg head

office. Is it now saying that democratic South Africa presents the business world and our country with higher political risk than did apartheid South Africa?” Mbeki fumed.

Anglo American listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1999 and moved its headquarters there, reportedly for better access to cheaper capital. Trahar quickly moved to patch things up but the presidential chiding marked yet another scar on an embattled relationship. A big part of Zim’s job will involve mending fences and proving to the government that his firm is committed to change.

"CEO Zim lived in atin shack for most of his formative years"

He began by pledging to increase Anglo South Africa’s procurement from BEE companies by between 20 per cent and 30 per cent every year. The group says it spent close on US$ 1 billion lat year procuring goods and services from black enterprises.

The ANC government has traditionally seen white-run big business as generally resistant to their vision of an economy that reflects the country’s demographics. This is in sharp contrast to thei

attitude towards black empowerment mining houses such as African Rainbow Minerals (ARM) and Mvelaphanda resources, run by billion-aires Patrice Motsepe and Toxyo Sexwale respectively, both firm ANC supporters.

RM, which is valued at US $1billion, has a sizable stake in the world’s sixth largest gold producer harmony Gold while Mavelaphanda, valued at almost US$500 million, owns 15 percent of mining giant Goldfields. Both men came into mining on what’s called the first wave of black empowerment in the mid-to late 1990s.

The trend in BEE now is more towards empowerment of mass-based groups, away from the deals that were largely seen to make individuals like Sexwale and Motsepe billionaires overnight.

This follows a rising chorus from different quarters that small black elite seemed to be benefiting from the policy and not the disenfranchised masses it was intended for. Stringent empowerment policies are not the only headaches for well established mining groups. The government’s robust promotion of beneficiation – the processing of minerals into higher value goods – has been sparking discontent too.

At an Investing In Mining conference held in February, foreign affairs minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma again stressed an Mbeki vision: to see Africa moving away from simply being an exporter of raw materials.

But many players feel that pushing an already struggling industry into manufacturing would be too taxing right now. An over-firm rand, which together with rising production costs and falling production levels, has been responsible for massive job and revenue losses, particularly among gold and platinum miners. At round six South African rand to the dollar- compared with almost 13 rand four years ago-the strengthened currency is making it difficult for South African outfits to compete in global markets. In 2003, the mining sector lost more than US $3 billion in revenue.

ne of the most important trends affecting the downturn, says Jammine, is the diminution of gold – the country’s top exported product – in relation attitude towards black empowerment mining houses such as African Rainbow Minerals (ARM) and Mvelaphanda resources, run by billion-aires Patrice Motsepe and Toxyo Sexwale respectively, both firm ANC supporters.

The trend in BEE now is more towards empowerment of mass-based groups, away from the deals that were largely seen to make individuals like Sexwale and Motsepe billionaires overnight.

ne of the most important trends affecting the downturn, says Jammine, is the diminution of gold – the country’s top exported product – in relation to other minerals such as platinum and local. “It is going to be a challenging year for the mining industry,” says Baxter, summing up the new state of affairs in the sector.

Not least of all for Zim-the most powerful black man in South African commerce who is charged with resurrecting his firm’s once-glittering performance levels while burying the baggage of the past.

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