African American Perspectives on Political Science

CHAPTER 2. The Race Variable and the American Political Science Association's State of the Discipline Reports and Books, 1907-2002

C H A P T E R T W O The Race Variable and the American Political Science Association’s State of the Discipline Reports and Books, 1907–2002 HANES WALTON JR. AND ROBERT C. SMITH Introduction MATTHEW HOLDEN JR. has written that the study of race has been viewed as an “academic graveyard” for any young scholar who sought “academic respectability ” because white political scientists did not perceive it as raising “critical intellectual problems.”1 This essay addresses a simple research question: How has the race variable been explored and analyzed in the official reports and books of the American Political Science Association’s State of the Discipline studies? These official reports and books, which cover the period from 1907 to 2002, can tell us how the Association both defined the “state of the discipline” and how it developed a vision for the discipline from these official studies, as well as the relationship of the race variable to the definition and vision of the state of the discipline. Herein lies the testable hypothesis of this work. If researchers are to develop an African American perspective on the state of the discipline, it goes without saying that one must of necessity know what the official professional portrait of the discipline is and how it has evolved during the first hundred years (1903–2003) of its existence. Once that is established, then it follows that, from this official portrait(s), readers and researchers can discern what the unofficial portraits of the state of the discipline are. These unofficial portraits are the ones emanating from the official ones, and they act like an update and extension of them. They are the journal articles and single and multivolume studies that are published in the periods and time frames between the official reports and books. By providing addendums and updates, these unofficial scholarly studies highlight the limitations, weaknesses, and omissions of the official studies. These outsider perspectives are thus helpful in assessing and evaluating the official studies and are needed to construct the holistic portrait of the state of the discipline. But we are not simply interested in these official State of the Discipline reports and books in and of themselves. We are searching these official documents for their discussion of the race variable and its relationship to the definition and vision of the discipline. What do they tell us about the role and function of the race variable as an independent factor shaping the political behavior of individuals , groups, organizations, institutions, the state, and the global political system? Or do they tell us anything at all? Has the race variable been considered at all? Is it one of the independent variables in the study of the science of politics? Is it a variable that tells us about the very essence of the state of the discipline? And finally, has the state of the discipline even been conceptualized to include this variable, and if so, how does it factor into the very vision of the discipline itself? Thus, we want to know about the official portrait of the discipline for what it can reveal about the role and function of the race variable. Only when we know that can we effectively determine an African American perspective about the state of the discipline. In this study, the role and function of the race variable and the state of the discipline are intimately linked and related. Our task is to uncover, delineate, and assess this linkage and relationship. Data and Methodology Several of the contemporary studies of political science as a discipline reflect its intellectual evolution from a “science of the state” to a “science of group political behavior” to a “science of individual political behavior” to currently a “science of institutional political behavior.”2 And in each of these eras, there is at least one, if not more, State of the Discipline reports and sponsored books by the American Political Science Association (APSA). In this material is contained the discipline’s official portrait and story. Table 2.1 identifies the five committee reports, two of which would later become monographs, and the four sponsored books of APSA. Although the last three books are numbered as Volume I, II, and III, this is incorrect because the first book, which came out in 1939, was not acknowledged by the editor of Volume I, Ada W. Finifter. However...