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C H A P T E R T H R E E African American Political Scientists in Academic Wonderland WILBUR C. RICH Introduction THIS ESSAY EXAMINES African American political scientists’ encounters with the academic workplace environment. The “Wonderland” analogy comes from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking Glass. As a newcomer to this odd world, one can understand why some African Americans might think that they have fallen down a rabbit hole and entered a bewildering universe where nothing is quite as it seems. In this chapter the emergence of African Americans in the discipline, tenure dynamics, and networking opportunities are examined. I will also discuss academic superstars and the lure of prestigious universities. As a discipline, political science has come a long way since the turn of the 20th century when most colleges and universities did not have separate political science departments. In many institutions political science and history were combined into one department. Today, by contrast, political scientists in most institutions are housed in free-standing departments of political science, government, and politics. These departments are grouped with other social sciences, such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, and economics in liberal arts colleges or public affairs schools. Today, political science scholars focus on understanding governments , political actors, and public policies. Political scientists play a critical role in framing the interpretative construction of American politics—they write the books and articles that explain political events and their meanings. Writing books about political power can have a curious effect, causing some political scientists to identify, consciously and unconsciously , with the government of the day or the establishment. Martin Kilson has called these individuals “establishment pretenders.” They operate under the illusion of being intimately involved in the governing of the nation and are what Loren Baritz calls “servants of power.” In The Servants of Power Loren Baritz chronicles how industrial psychology and sociology were placed in the service of capitalism. He concludes, Many industrial social scientists have put themselves on auction. The power elites of America, especially the industrial elite, have bought their services—which, when applied to areas of relative power, have restricted the freedom of millions of workers. Time was when a man knew that his freedoms were being curtailed. . . . A major characteristic of twentieth-century manipulation has been that it blinds the victim to the fact of manipulation. Because so many industrial social scientists have been willing to serve power instead of mind, they have been themselves a case study in manipulation by consent.1 Andrew Stark makes an interesting argument that political scientists do not interact with what he calls “practitioners and identifiable clients” and so are in less danger of co-optation than are psychologists and sociologists.2 What about the role of political scientists in misinforming the American public? Are political scientists engaging in the manipulation of the public when they downplay the saliency of racial cleavage in American politics? Do they provide solace to political leaders when they make light of declining voter turnouts—offering methodological solipsism that suggests that this decline does not matter? In making their work unreadable by the general public, are they denying their insights to the masses? Or are they comfortable within the walls of the university teaching middle -class aspirants and writing notes to the elite? Or are they trapped in the structural hard place, as Stark suggests?3 As Stark points out, some political scientists are public intellectuals, but the majority are not. This is not to deny that some political scientists are committed and public critics of the establishment. Some are, but they are the exceptions. These distinctions are important because each type of political scientist serves as a role model for new groups entering the discipline. African American political scientists entered the discipline at a time when the nation was undergoing profound social transformation. The late sixties brought the issue of race to the forefront of American politics. It was a time of boundless optimism about solving the nation’s festering race problem. However, history shows that the nation’s white leading political scientists did not assert themselves during this historical and social transformation. These political scientists left no legacy to their progeny. Part of the explanation for this “flat-footedness ” on the part of political science of that era is the extant organizational culture of universities. African Americans were the newcomers to this culture. The Wonderland of Academia American colleges and universities have distinct organizational cultures and idiosyncratic...

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