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

4. The Black Science in Political Science

93 4 The Black Science in Political Science KATHERINE TATE The study of blacks in American politics was once an invisible field of inquiry. Since the 1980s, the field has since taken off. More scholars produce work in this field. And while publication in the toptier journals remains rare (e.g., Smith 1981), many more scholars are publishing book-length treatments of African American politics. Members of this field have participated in the movement to create new journals receptive to the studies of minority groups. In 1989, the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS) began publishing the National Political Science Review, featuring political science work with a special emphasis on disadvantaged groups. In 2004, the Du Bois Review focusing on social science research on race was founded. In 2007, Wilbur Rich published an edited volume entitled African American Perspectives on Political Science, which provides an analysis of the discipline from the vantage point of many scholars working in the field of African American politics. A blistering, important critique of the existing body of work in race and American politics emerged with the 1985 publication of Hanes Walton Jr.’s Invisible Politics. While Walton’s critique was largely aimed at the new behavioral studies in political science, it applied broadly to studies of American politics. From Walton’s work, it was clear that a true understanding of the politics of black Americans could not emerge comparatively, specifically in contrasting black political behavior against white political behavior. The politics of African Americans requires an exclusive focus on black politics, and it should constitute a separate field of study. Black politics scholars 94 Katherine Tate have a special mission. On the website of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, Mack H. Jones, an NCOBPS founding member, is quoted stating that while “American political scientists in general serve to camouflage the illegitimate exercise of power, we as black political scientists bear the responsibility of clearly and brutally unraveling the devious ways in which the American political system serves to exploit the many for the benefit of the few” (http://www. ncobps.org/?page=AboutUs). And yet, while no longer invisible, studies of black politics remain segregated from mainstream work. New works in black politics are rarely discussed in mainstream political science publications. A report on the treatment of African Americans in introductory textbooks on American government, in fact, finds that most still limit their focus to a single chapter on civil rights and that many also exclude major historical events involving blacks, such as Reconstruction , when twenty blacks served in the U.S. House of Representatives and two in the U.S. Senate (Wallace and Allen 2008). The segregation is so profound that the scholarship produced by those working within the field of African American politics and law can be called the “black science” in political science. It is the “black science” not so much because many scholars of black politics are also of black descent but simply because of its segregation within the discipline. Labeling the type of scholarship produced within black politics as the “black science” will likely offend those who reject views that the mainstream suffers from a white racial cultural bias. Some may also contend that the preference of those working in the black science tradition is to remain separate and segregated from the discipline . However, black science views need to be represented in the scientific production of knowledge. The segregation of black science work prevents the integration of key research findings from black politics and allows factional views within the discipline to dominate. Thus, the segregation of research findings violates an important tradition of science, namely, that research is verified, reproduced, and extended by others through review, replication, and teaching. The exclusion of black science work in the classroom also means that the normative biases that exist in political science work are never challenged. Obviously in attaching a racial label to a subfield of work, I reject assumptions that the politics and personal attributes of researchers The Black Science in Political Science 95 are irrelevant to the science they produce. Postmodernists also reject broad claims of neutrality in science. Scientists produce work profoundly influenced by cultural biases. The enterprise of science is shaped as well by institutional and personal incentive systems, social networks, and the exclusion of marginalized groups. Others have claimed that bias is one-sided, found only among minority scholars who have an...