What Has This Got to Do with the Liberation of Black People?: The Impact of Ronald W. Walters on African American Thought and Leadership

3. Reflections

85 3 Reflections RONALD W. WALTERS My most recently completed project was a coedited work, with Dr. Toni-Michelle Travis, on the District of Columbia, Democratic Destiny and the District of Columbia (Rowman & Littlefield 2010). This was a unique project that was brought to me by a group of freshly minted African American PhDs who had worked with me on a leadership conference on the black economic condition. Eventually, I agreed to edit the project, if Dr. Travis would join, and it became a very productive enterprise that was focused on politics and public policy. That is, the work interrogated, from the perspective of all of the mayoral administrations except the current one, and five selected public policies, to what extent the constitutionally mandated but strange relationship between the District of Columbia and the Congress has distorted the quality of democracy experienced by the governance of the District and the outcomes for citizens. We conclude that for many reasons, this relationship has been damaging to the just aims of government and must be changed. The initiation of this project was unorthodox inasmuch as authors generally initiate a project, but it was delightful to work with motivated contributors, for whom, except in a couple of cases, this would have been their first publication. In that sense, it was also exceptionally rewarding to me, and I am sure that this project would help to launch the careers of several new professors in the discipline of political science. For over forty years, my research has sought to address the political condition of African American peoples. I came of age during the civil rights era and, like many of my colleagues, inherited the 86 Ronald W. Walters progressive values of that age with respect to how I would utilize my profession. The pressures were also substantial because it was the dawn of black studies, and the thirst of those who had inherited new political rights in 1964 and 1965 pushed many of us to engage the aspirations of our communities for empowerment tactics and strategies. I remember that a friend of mine and I would talk on the phone and one question we would ask each other at odd intervals was, “What does that have to do with the liberation of black people?” This question has guided my selection of research topics since that time. My work is and has been interdisciplinary, since as a young scholar attempting to break through the rejection slips of the major journals, I came to understand the standards by which I was being evaluated for publication and decided that many of them, while useful to the discipline, were not useful to the truth I was attempting to discover, consistent with my larger objectives. So, I came to be somewhat suspicious of the disciplinary narrowness , not only with respect to subject matter but methodologies, and came to believe that what was needed more than anything then was the correct interpretation of the studies that were done on African American political life. The sum total of that concern was that I was not led to produce much original data from self-initiated studies but to test the studies that were being done against what I knew from my deep involvement in community politics to arrive at concepts that were consistent with the black truth as I understood it. Perhaps I should say that my work has been even more eclectic than usual because my MA and PhD degrees were in International Affairs, but when I began my profession as head of the Department of Afro-American Studies at Brandeis University, the student demand for courses in African American politics led me to specialize in this field. Thus, for most of my career I have carried two specialties— African American politics and comparative politics—which at many times provided enlightening insights in my work, especially on the African diaspora. The two people who influenced my development most were Professors Marion Irish and Thomas Schelling. Dr. Irish came to American University as I was selecting the topic of my doctoral dissertation on U.S. Foreign Policy toward Africa, and although she was not an internationalist, she became my chair. That was a very special Reflections 87 relationship because as a southern political scientist, she knew a great deal about what was happening in civil rights, such as the Emmett Till killing, Dr. King’s writings, and other things that were...