The Era of Bush and Regan Administrations and its Effect on the African American - Essay Example

The era of Bush and Regan administrations and its effect on the African American Community No doubt Reagan's academic critics conclude that his efforts to roll back the size and scope of the federal government concealed his real hidden agenda of appealing to white racial resentment against blacks by attacking big-government policies, but this is also true that his efforts towards policy making in the favour of African Americans benefited them socially as well as economically, especially affirmative action policies, civil rights regulations policies, and welfare policies, mostly benefited people of color and the poor 1. Affirmative Action Policies impact: A major issue dividing liberals and conservatives concerned the best to realise the constitutional guarantee to all individuals of equality under the law. Conservatives argued in favor of equality of opportunity, in which economic opportunities jobs, government contracts, and university admissions were allocated among all individuals based upon merit, regardless of race or gender. The policies introduced by Reagan in such aspect assured African Americans the right to fairly compete for access to all available economic opportunities. However, the government failed to guarantee the outcome of that competition: the state remained unable to require that a designated share of economic opportunities go to minorities and white women in order to correct socioeconomic disparities which are the result of America's past legacy of racial and gender discrimination 2. The government does not, for example, require that a certain share of jobs, government contracts, or university admissions be set aside for African Americans to rectify past racial injustices against blacks. The government only guarantee that African Americans are treated fairly, along with members of all other racial groups, in competing for economic opportunities, and that all individuals will be judged on the basis of merit, regardless of race 3. Reagan took office determined to write a new chapter in America's long and troubled history in race relations. In the wake of a long history of discrimination directed primarily against African Americans, the United States embarked on a new path of race relations during the 1960s, marked by the establishment of affirmative action programs designed to guarantee equality of opportunity for all. Given his adamant opposition to racial and gender preferences and quotas, one would have expected Reagan to make reforms in affirmative action, in light of the abuse, both potential and real, inherent in the program. However, this was not the case. The White House Domestic Policy Council failed to even make recommendations to Reagan concerning what reforms, if any, he should make in affirmative action . By leaving affirmative action intact, the Reagan administration allowed all the potential and actual abuses in the program to continue. The most positive impact of such policies upon African Americans was the assured guarantee to provide African Americans with equal employment opportunity; employers may resort to the use of racial and gender preferences and quotas in hiring to assure racial diversity and gender balance in the workplace. Civil rights regulations policies Impact Reagan and Bush by representing themselves and the conservative cause as committed to the principles of equality under the law, provided the African Americans with a merit-based hiring system, and the right of every individual be treated fairly, regardless of race or gender, Reagan succeeded in attracting to the Republican Party millions of white working-class families, who had traditionally voted Democratic in presidential as well as congressional elections. These Reagan Democrats expanded the political base of the Republican Party, which, for the most part, had been confined before the Reagan presidency to business and the wealthy. During the 1980s, Reagan Democrats defected from the Democrats in presidential elections, convinced that their party had fallen captive to the demands of minorities and the poor, which sought to use the government to expand their share of the economic pie, at the expense of the white middle and working classes 4. Reagan and Minority set Aside Program The minority set-aside program established by the Small Business Administration (SBA), served the federal government with a certain share of its contracts reserved exclusively for firms owned by "socially or economically disadvantaged" African American individuals. The SBA defined a socially or economically disadvantaged individual as any member of the African-American community. In 1969, African American communities benefited from Nixon Executive Order 11458 establishing the Office of Minority Business Enterprise (OMBE) in the Commerce Department, which was given the responsibility of reserving $100 million in federal contracts exclusively for black-and Latino-owned businesses. In 1973 the SBA issued regulations defining all African Americans and Latinos as socially and economically disadvantaged individuals, who would qualify for participation in the minority set-aside program. On December 17, 1982, Reagan issued a statement announcing his decision to expand the minority set-aside program. Reagan announced that he was directing the Minority Development Business Agency of the Commerce Department and the SBA to provide assistance in the formation of 60,000 new African American owned businesses representing 10 percent of all minority-owned firms, during the next ten years 5. The Reagan administration assisted in the expansion of an additional 60,000 African American-owned businesses, during the same period. The federal government procured $15 billion in goods and services from African American-owned businesses during fiscal years 1983 to 1985. During the Reagan and Bush senior administrations, major cuts were made by Congress and state legislatures in programs that primarily serve the unemployed poor, the working poor, single parents, and children particularly those who belong to the African American communities: Such communities were provided with the Medicaid, Food Stamps, school food programs, nutrition programs for women, AFDC, energy assistance grants, public service jobs and training, community development grants, resulting in the elimination of low-income housing. At the same time, profit-making human service corporations (especially nursing homes, hospitals, and childcare facilities) dramatically increased their share of public funds through the use of "contracting out" by local and state governments just for the sake of African American communities 6. Today, contemporary welfare policies largely ignore the needs of unemployed black men for education and job training in Los Angeles. Workfare today serves primarily as a labor market regulator for hundreds of thousands of poor African American women, who are pushed into an already saturated low-wage labor market, thus decreasing the earning power of this whole sector of the labor force. The 1962 Community Work and Training Program (associated with the War on Poverty) was one of few welfare programs, which aimed at the needs of unemployed black fathers 7. In the last couple of years, policymakers have abandoned such kind of programs. Ironically, one of the few places that poor men can now find work albeit exploitative and grossly underpaid and mental health counseling is in prison. With a daily count of over fifteen hundred people suffering from severe psychological illnesses, Los Angeles County Jail is considered as the country's largest mental institution 8. Imprisonment and welfare are not so much polarized opposites, as they are constitutive elements of an interrelated policy. Similar to the poor houses of the past, which combined work with imprisonment, today's welfare and criminal justice policies represent a division of labor between different managerial agencies, with jails and prisons primarily containing unemployed men, and welfare agencies primarily regulating unemployed women and their children. Both sets of institutions disproportionately target the most exploited sectors of African-American, Latino, American Indian, immigrant and poor Anglo communities. Some 12 percent of African-American men ages twenty to thirty-four are currently in jail or prison, while African-American women are disproportionately on welfare 9. Civil rights leaders still tag the Reagan presidency as the single worst period for racial progress in recent U.S. history. But despite black fears, and to the bitter disappointment of many conservatives, Reagan did not end affirmative action, dismantle welfare or totally gut social programs. His administration's policy toward civil rights was, like that of many past administrations, considerably more mixed 10. Conclusion Los Angeles culture, proved to be a nightmare of war, rather than a dream, war embedded in politics by other means, and as race surfaced as a primary basis of political conflict in Southern California it attained a heightened saliency in the representational realm of popular culture. No doubt the African Americans of Los Angeles despite of experiencing a tough and catastrophic time enjoyed the benefits of being Angelinos. By the postwar period, Los Angeles had finally shed its notorious identity as an open-shop town, but the racial violence that had marred the regional landscape since the Mexican-American War only intensified. Though a long history of racist practices precipitated the formation of a black ghetto in postwar Los Angeles, the Watts riots of 1965 brought a violent climax to the region's "racial turn, " in which Southern California's political culture evidenced a primary struggle between black and white peoples and suburban white homeowners. It went on for long decades started from the slavery and ended up somewhere between corruption and political war, the war is still going on for the fight of abolishment of slavery, the slavery is still on its way in the form of a political conflict. The inclusiveness of modern city culture, however, was predicated on the strict exclusion of African Americans and, to a lesser extent, other racial groups. European immigrants to the American city at the turn of the twentieth century converged on the shared spaces of work, housing, and leisure, but African Americans encountered rigid racial barriers that blocked their access to white neighborhoods and jobs in cities of both the North and the South. Their exclusion extended to the public venues of the new mass culture. Blacks sat in the balconies of movie theaters, just as they sat in the back of streetcars. The operators of amusement parks, nickelodeons, dance halls, and ballparks typically adopted a whites-only policy, forcing African Americans to pursue their appetite for diversion in separate and sometimes inferior cultural facilities. When African Americans did appear in such venues, it was generally through a set of vicious misrepresentations that emphasized the innate immorality of "darkies" and "coons." So, whether it felt as American dream or American nightmare, it both the cases Los Angeles African Americans paid the price for it! References Edsall and Edsall, "Chain Reaction", p. 182-83. Laham Nicholas, 1998. "The Reagan Presidency and the Politics of Race: In Pursuit of Colorblind Justice and Limited Government": Praeger Publishers. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Pearce W. Barnett & Weiler Michael, 1992. "Reagan and Public Discourse in America": University of Alabama Press. Place of Publication: Tuscaloosa, AL. Platt Tony, Monthly Review, available from < http://www.monthlyreview.org/1003platt.htm > Read More