In Feminism Wit/tout Illusions, I attempted to sift
through the implications of recent developments and de-
bates with a view to inviting further discussion. With the
collapse of the world socialist movement, the declining
productivity of the American economy, and the broad
recognition of compelling social problems, such as the
growing gap between rich and poor, the proliferation of
violence, the feminization of poverty, and the increasing
pressures on families, discussion seems more necessary

One Feminism Is Not Enough

than ever. What above all has saddened me has been the
tendency among many (not all) of those on the Left and
many (not all) feminists to dismiss the invitation to dis-
cussion as heresy or treason. Just at the moment when
inherited certainties have collapsed, some apparently
have decided to cling more tenaciously than ever to the
tattered shreds. The times, as many members of the Left
orthodoxy used to like to remind us, are a-changing . . ..
Presumably our conversations should too. 

 

Nancy Hewitt

ven before the Clarence Thomas hearings and

the rape trials of William Kennedy Smith and

Mike Tyson brought renewed passion and im-
mediacy to debates Over women?s place in American
society, feminist activists and scholars had embarked
on a penetrating and sometimes painful effort to take
stock of the modern women ?s movement. Elizabeth Fox-
Genovese adds her provocative voice to this chorus of
concern. Her primary goal is ?to address the theoreti-
cal debates within academic feminism and the reSpon-
sibilities of, or relations between, academic feminists
and women in the real world.? It is a goal shared by
many of us who came to academic careers through fem-
inism, building those careers in the very years that have
seen our political agendas contested and sometimes
eclipsed by the resurgence of the Right.

It is with a sense of urgency, then, that I join in the
conversation begun by Fox-Genovese, but also with a
sense of humility. For feminism seems to have served me
far better than it has served the vast majority of women
in the United States, much less the world. Is this the re-
sult of my own relative privilege?white, native-born,
and, at least for the latter half of my life, middle-class?
Or is this outcome related to misguided analyses and
agendas formulated by the various feminist groups in
which I was active? Or is it the inevitable consequence
of movements for change that are continually distorted,
when even our limited victories must be implemented
in a society and polity that remain patriarchal and
capitalist to the core? Of course, the legacies of any

 

Nancy Hewitt is professor of history at the University of South
Florida. She is the author of Women?s Activism and Social
Change: Rochester, New York 1822-1872 (Cornell University
Press, 1984) and editor of Women, Families and Communities:
Readings in American History (HarperCollins, 1990). She is
currently completing a study ofAnglo, Black, and Latina
women?s work and politics in twentieth-century Tampa, Florida.

34 VOL. 7, N0. 3

movement for social change are constructed through a
diverse array of personal histories, ideological analyses,
and political contexts; but in the case of modern femi-
nism, the last has been, in the final analysis, the great-
est barrier to change.

Thus I share FOX-Genovese?s concern that giving the
state the power to intervene on behalf of women may
improve women?s position vis-a-vis men, but only by
reinforcing the power of the state vis-a-vis individuals
and communities. I also agree in large measure with
Fox-Genovese?s attack on bourgeois individualism as a
basis for feminist analysis and action, particularly when
it encourages women to seek entry into male areas of
privilege rather than subvert them. Given the ambigu?
ous legacies of bourgeois individualism and the ideo-
logical allegiances of those who now wield state power
in the US, I find alliances with, much less reliance on,
either the individualist tradition or the state a troubling
prOSpect. Moreover, I also join Fox-Genovese in ago-
nizing over the relationship between women?s assertion
of newfound rights and men?s reassertion of traditional
forms of anti-female violence.

or despite this common ground, there is much

contested terrain left to cover, many conversa-

tions yet to be had. Though Fox-Genovese and
I are both historians, we draw different historical per-
spectives in analyzing modern feminism. She traces the
intellectual origins of one (very in?uential but trouble-
some) strand of feminist politics; and, despite her own
recognition that this emphasis is necessarily partial, she
often leaves the reader with the sense that the individu-
alist strand forms the theoretical heart of the movement.
In focusing on the intellectual origins of contemporary
feminist thought, Fox-Genovese assumes that only in-
tellectuals can be feminists and thus overemphasizes the
impact of bourgeois women on the movement.

We can obtain a more representative picture of the
relevant political tradition by attending to the diverse
and competing positions of American feminists through-
out our history. I see the history of the women?s move-
ment in the US. as a source of rich and variegated
visions for setting our current dilemmas in context,
rather than the circumscribed and insular resource
Fox?Genovese takes it to be. I would include here the
concerns of white middle-class women and those of
working women and women of color, now often labeled
?womanist,? who were concerned with the simulta-
neous oppressions of race, class, and sex?and the
individualist and communitarian strains within each of
these traditions. By focusing not only on the writings
of bourgeois feminist theorists but also on the practi-
cal actions of grassroots activists, we can find impor-
tant challenges to bourgeois individualism?and to
the other reigning ideologies of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, such as nativism and racism. Indi-
vidualist, communitarian, and corporatist strains have
long vied with one another in women?s struggles for
individual rights and collective liberation. In the mid-
nineteenth century, for instance, leaders such as Eliza-
beth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony viewed the
vote as the centerpiece of the women?s rights agenda. Yet
radical Quaker activists such as Lucretia Mott and Amy
Post questioned the value of gaining the franchise under
a Constitution that protected property in slaves. Post and
her western New York co-workers participated in
racially integrated political organizations, attacked es-
tablished religion and medicine, founded utopian com-
munities, and demanded women?s rights as part of a
?thorough Re-organization of Society.?

bus from the founding moment of a formal

women?s movement in America, its adherents

disagreed over the advocacy of specific rights
versus the reorganization of society as a whole. By the
early twentieth century, the term feminism itself entered
American political discourse as a way for those who
sought changes in the relations between the sexes in
all areas of life to distinguish themselves from those
who advocated narrower reforms of legal and juridical
rights. It was then that one of the contradictions that
continues to haunt feminism was born?the movement
assumed the corporate identity of women even as it
sought to liberate them from the oppressive conse-
quences of being defined by collective rather than indi-
vidual characteristics and desires.

The near impossibility of alleviating women ?s Oppres-
sion by eradicating sexual difference has led some fem-
inists to celebrate women?s unique nature, fueling the
difference/equality dilemma that Fox-Genovese sketches

 

here. Yet both poles of this dilemma do not necessarily
derive from or build upon the theory of bourgeois
individualism. Indeed, I would argue that feminists, in-
cluding those of both the difference and equality per-
suasions, have produced some of the most innovative
political thinking related to corporate and communitar-
ian social relations. Historian Nancy Woloch illustrates
this point by analyzing the writings of Charlotte Perkins
Gilman, who authored theoretical tracts advocating co-
operative housekeeping and other collectivist plans,
alongside the efforts of Marie Stevens Howland, who
moved from the Lowell mills to an experimental com-
munity in Mexico, and who collaborated on detailed ar-
chitectural and engineering plans that incorporated
collective childcare and housekeeping into communitar-
ian settlements for workers. Such political inventiveness

RETHINKING FEMINISM 35

- I

also served women in a range of different circum-
stances at the turn of the twentieth century?notably
in the work of Puerto Rican labor activist and suffrag-
ist Luisa Capetillo, African-American community orga-
nizer Maggie Lena Walker, and Jewish garment worker
Clara Lemlich.

Individualist, corporatist, and communitarian im-
pulses vied for feminist imaginations in the 19605
and 19705 as they had in the 18405, the 18805, and the
19205. And once again these impulses were not just
translated into abstract rights, but also into such grass-
roots self-help organizations as rape crisis centers,
spouse abuse shelters, and abortion clinics that have
empowered individual women through voluntary and
communal support.

 

If violence against women is on
the increase, if violent pornography
is more prevalent, if women and
children are living in poverty in
greater numbers, it is not hecause
some feminists chose the wrong
theoretical stance. One almost
wishes it were that simple.

 

It was often the very socialist-feminists that Fox-
Genovese excoriates who implemented these community-
based alternatives to existing state institutions. That
socialist-feminists also advocated protective labor legis-
lation for women in the 19105 and welfare rights in the
19703 is not, I think, a rejection of socialism in favor
of some version of welfare-state capitalism or testimony
to some incorrigible weakness for individualism. In-
stead, as Ruth Rosen demonstrates in her review of
Feminism Without Illusions, such strategies acknowl-
edged that long-term revolutionary change fails to ad-
dress the immediate needs of millions of poor and
working-class women in the present.

In seeking both long-term change and immediate re-
lief, feminists have periodically allied with other pro-
gressive movements. Such alliances are natural, if often
thorny, outgrowths of the ways in which struggles .to im-
prove women?s lives have been deeply intertwined with
campaigns for racial and economic justice. Most mid-
nineteenth-century women?s-rights advocates came of
political age in the antislavery movement, just as many
of their mid-twentieth-century counterparts did in the
civil-rights movement. To claim that ?feminism?with

36 VOL. 7, No. 3

all due respect to the civil-rights movement?has
emerged as the most far-reaching challenge to inherited
political and intellectual assumptions and practices? or
?that sex, even more than class and race, exposes the
limits? of bourgeois individualism is to ignore the un-
breakable bonds between these movements. Recogniz-
ing such connections forces us to examine more closely
not only the alliances, but also the conflicts, among
women?not only the similarities rooted in sex, but also
the differences rooted in race and class.

ence as a form of individualism, but it can be, in?

stead, a challenge to the individualist tradition.
Those who view all women as potentially equal individ?
uals obscure differences rooted in historically based
communities. By highlighting difference we can re-
cover the complex relations of race, class, and sex con?
structed in voluntary and involuntary communities
where individualism is confounded by corporate identi-
ties. Analyzing which forms of difference are most
salient at any one moment and over the long term is the
most productive way both to explode the enduring
of bourgeois individualism and to develop the
political theories and strategies most conducive to
women?s emancipation in all its various forms. For ex-
ample, for affluent white women, the advocacy of birth
control might well be rooted in an individualist theory
of liberation. But, as Jessie Rodrique has argued, for
black women of whatever class, the demand for birth
control was part of a larger strategy to improve the
conditions of the family, the community, and the race as
well as women as individuals. This approach eliminates
the possibility of creating a feminist theory or practice,
for it endorses the postmodernist rejection of universal
models or modes of explanation.

Recognizing that feminism has never been a single
movement, but rather always had multiple forms and
faces, some of them Black and Asian and Latina, may
help us let go of the notion that what is now needed is
ideological purity and unified action. Instead, as we con-
front a resurgent right wing, a powerful state, and a gasp-
ing (but probably not dying) capitalism, ideological
innovation and coordinated action on a range of fronts
offer the best chance of forward movement.

Such coalitions are also important as a way of coun-
tering the coercive power of particular communities.
For though bourgeois individualism run rampant may
undermine many feminist objectives, so too can some
community-based notions of justice and morality. If, as
Fox?Genovese argues, the community exists prior to the
individual and concepts of justice must be derived from

(Continued on p. 84)

ome critics, including Fox-Genovese, see differ-

4.

1

role of people like Himmler and Heydrich, the behav-
ior of witnesses (like the Poles) or accomplices (Lithua?
nians, Croats, French), and much more. In the end,
however, we are still left to grapple with the agonizing
and overpowering question of how a demagogue almost
succeeded in mesmerizing one nation into committing
suicide by having it murder another. This question, I
fear, will haunt us to the end of time. 

FICTION
Continued from p. 28)

urgent voices. What were they saying? Why were we,
and Pepi, being treated so rudely?

My husband said, hesitantly, is
wrong? You do it for others, don?t youP?ley not for us?

Preparing to leave the room, as if he could not bear
our presence another moment, the doctor said, Im-
possible. Just take it?him?out of here. Of course we
don?t do such things.

My husband repeated, You do it for others, doctorjoined in, pleading, my fingers stretched as if
to touch this intolerant young man?s arm, though of
course I did not dare touch him, Oh, Doctor, yes,
please?why not for us?

Our words hung in the air. The doctor did not reply,
but strode out of the room, and shut the door firmly be-
hind him. Was anyone in such a position of authority
ever so rude to those who have come begging for help?

Was there some error??-??some terrible misunder-
standing? We looked at Pepi, in dread of what we might
see. But it was only Pepi?our Pepi.

Lying there on the metal table, beneath the unwink-
ing flourescent lights, watching us, hearing every word.

The doctor?s assistant handed us Pepi?s blanket as if it
were contaminated, and said, with an air of righteous
disgust, You may leave by this door at the rear.

And so?don?t judge us did it
ourselves.

For, after all, society failed us. We had no choice.

About fifty yards behind the pet hospital was a deep
drainage ditch filled with brackish, ill-smelling water,
in which there ?oated, like shards of dream, threads of
detergent scum. Trembling, sick at heart, tears brimming
in our eyes, my husband and I carried Pepi to the ditch,
to put the poor thing out of his misery.

For we had resolved not to bring Pepi back home with
us. No, we simply couldn?t go through all that again!

Not in our very worst dreams could we have anti-
cipated such an ending to Pepi?s life in our family.
So heartbreaking a task, yes, and so arduous and

84 VOL. 7, N0. 3

physically demanding a task?forcing poor Pepi into
that cold, foul water, and pushing his head under! And
how fiercely he fought us!?he, who had seemed so
feebleI?he, our beloved Pepi, transformed into a
stranger?an enemy! We would think, afterward, that
Pepi had never so willfully disobeyed us, and he?d never
demonstrated such strength: as if, in the years he?d lived
in our household, be had been unknown to us in his deep-
est, most secret self.

Pepi, no! we cried.

Pepi, obey!

The hideous struggle must have required ten minutes.
I am still trying to forget. Never had I, who?d loved him
so, dreamt that I might one day be Pepi?s executioner?
never had I dreamt I might be anyone?s executioner. My
clothes were Splotched with filthy water, my good kid-
skin gloves punctured and torn from Pepi?s teeth! Nor
did my husband, the gentlest and most civilized of men,
ever imagine he might find himself provoked to rage,
grunting, cursing, ugly veins standing out in his fore-
head, as he held this thrashing, squirming, desperate
creature beneath the surface of ditch water in a subur-
ban field, at dawn! For we soon forgot what we were do?
ing, in the human desperation of doing it.

And you, you damned hypocrites, what will you do
with yours? El

RETHINKING FEMINISM
(Continued from p. 36)

the former, how do we protect the lesbian living in a
homophobic community or the Black, Vietnamese, or
Haitian woman living in a racist community? Until we
have some clearer sense of how we are to form the
egalitarian and non-exploitive communities envisioned
by Fox-Genovese, we must provide individual women
of all races, classes, and sexual and ideological orienta-
tions with protection against oppressive community
standards through extracommunal networks of advo-
cacy and action.

If we consider the issue of reproductive rights, for in-
stance, a multifront strategy is essential both to defining
an agenda that will meet the needs of the broadest spec-
trum of women and to defeating those conservatives who
have successfully redefined the issue as simply pro-life
or pro?choice. Fox-Genovese notes that as re-
productive rights have come under increasing attack
some feminists have come to claim access to birth con-
trol and abortion on the narrowest possible grounds of
privacy and individualism. Yet to assume that the debate
is fundamentally about the rights of women versus the
rights of fetuses and fathers is to miss the opportunity
to rethink the entire issue in more radical terms. As the

we can make any progress in redefining and resuscitat-
ing feminism if we keep our conversations confined
to traditional participants or to the categories of tradi-
tional political theory. When Fox-Genovese argues that
in ?an attempt to reduce the power of men over women,
feminists have significantly contributed to destroying
the corporate power of the family,? the key question
seems to me to be, ?Whose version of the family?? Many
feminists, and particularly lesbian feminists and femi-
nists of color, have made brilliant contributions to re-
defining the responsibilities and rights of individuals
who have committed themselves to long-term relation-
ships, which sometimes include joint guardianship of
children or care of the ill or elderly. For some women,
destroying the corporate power of the family as it has
been historically constituted is precisely what is needed,
whereas for others, such destruction leaves them more
exposed to exploitation. Some feminist scholars have
been rethinking relations between the individual, the
community, and the state. Others are struggling with
the concept of privacy and the hazards of inviting
the state to intrude in certain areas without giving it li-
cense to ?intervene in every recess of our lives.? A few,
most notably Patricia Williams in The Alchemy of Race
and Rights, are reconceptualizing notions of prOperty
and contract that have been basic to bourgeois indi-
vidualist theory. Though we have not yet arrived at
a new the diversity of these projects shows
that feminists have long recognized the critiques ad-
vanced by Fox?Genovese. What we need now is not
ever more re?ned critiques but ever more ingenious
responses to them.

Moreover, many of the problems that Fox-Genovese
lays at the door of ?awed feminist theory can be more
justly ascribed to the conservative backlash against fem-
inism. Since this phenomenon has now been eloquently
described in Susan Faludi?s Backlash: The Undeclared
Against American Women, I will not recount it at
length here. But I do think that as we reconceptualize
feminist agendas in company with those fighting racism,
homophobia, class inequities, anti-Semitism, and other
forms of oppression, we must be careful in diSpensing
blame as well as credit. If violence against women is on
the increase, if violent pornography is more prevalent,
if women and children are living in poverty in greater
numbers, it is not because some feminists chose the
wrong theoretical stance. One almost wishes it were that
simple. Until those with greater power?in the family,
the workplace, the community, and the state?change
themselves or are forced to change by Oppositional
movements, even feminist victories will sometimes be
used against women. Neither moral suasion nor theo-
retical consistency has, historically, persuaded those

86 TIKKUN VOL. 7, N0. 3

with power to relinquish it. Rather, change will only
occur by shifting the balance of power; by forging new
coalitions that advocate broad, eclectic programs for
change among people who are willing to renegotiate
priorities as opportunities present themselves.

ithin such coalitions mistakes will certainly

be made, and feminists will make their share.

In the past, some self-proclaimed feminists
have defined their agenda as getting a bigger share of
the political or corporate pie, following the bourgeois
individualist path that Fox-Genovese so penetratineg
critiques. Even more radical feminists have been con-
tradictory and inconsistent at times in challenging the
seemingly impermeable hulk of capitalist patriarchy.
And we have fallen short from the beginning of the mod-
ern women?s movement by omitting women of color,
poor women, lesbians, and others who fall outside the
American mainstream.

But such limits, detours, and miscues should not
blind us to the legacy of innovative thought and action
that this generation has inherited from our feminist
foremothers. Feminists have, over the last century and
a half, reconceptualized the family, the household,
the community, and the state. Some have provided prac-
tical resources for women in local communities across
the country while others were pursuing more global
changes. Some have given women access to basic polit-
ical and economic rights at the same time that others
challenged the political and economic system. We have
shifted our positions over the years as the boundaries
and definitions of familial, communal, and political
rights and powers changed. And we have, in our best
moments, recognized the connections that working-
class and African-American womanists have made be-
tween the plight of women and the plight of other
Oppressed groups?connections that provide the basis
for a more inclusive feminism.

This is a critical moment for rethinking feminist the-
ories and actions. The work of scholars such as Eliza?
beth Fox-Genovese helps to generate and intensify that
rethinking. We should all be pleased when our work elic-
its such widespread debate, for that, after all, is how fem-
inists have formulated new ideas and agendas for more
than a century. But even as Fox-Genovese provokes con-
troversy, she must be cautious not to mislabel the enemy
or to misconstrue the historical record in such a way that
feminists are made reSponsible for the very evils they
have attacked. We have a long way to go before secur-
ing, once and for all, even the most basic forms of gen-
der justice; and an even longer way once we recognize
that gender justice is impossible to achieve unless it is
linked to racial and class justice. If we are to keep the

- 
lines of communication open, both among those of us
who have long claimed the feminist label and with oth-
ers who in the past have felt excluded, we need to tem-
per our critiques with compassion, our judgments with
generosity of spirit, our future agendas with humility
gained from past experiences. 

RACE AND THE COURTS
(Continued from p. 44)

was true? In the face of uncertainty, is it so clear that
the Court?s resolution of this controversy was unfair?

To acknowledge that purposeful, invidious discrimi-
nation has been stigmatized is not to ignore the limita-
tions of the Court?s doctrine or the difficulties that beset
its implementation. Ironically, one set of difficulties
flows from the positive changes mentioned above. Be-
cause disfavoring a person or group on account of race
is widely viewed as immoral as well as illegal, officials
engaging in such conduct take care to cover their tracks.
At the same tirne?and again, because purposeful in-
vidious discrimination has been so stigmatized?judges,
in a close case, are hesitant to reach the conclusion that
an official or agency has engaged in such deplorable be-
havior. As in a criminal prosecution, a charge of pur-
poseful discrimination inclines many judges to give every
benefit of the doubt to the accused.

A second set of difficulties ?ows from the Court?s fail-
ure to recognize that merely prohibiting purposeful dis-
crimination is all too modest a step forward, given our
need not only to discourage ongoing invidious discrim-
ination but also to redress the legacy of racial subordi-
nation. As Kairys points out, intentional, invidious
discrimination is not the only form of decision making
that should be deemed to violate the constitutional norm
of governmental equality. The courts, for example, need
to closely review thoughtless practices that unintention-
ally burden historically disadvantaged groups when less
burdensome alternatives could be pursued without un-
due costs. Decision making of this sort is not as evil as
intentional, invidious discrimination. But it is certainly
morally tainted and warrants judicial rebuke.

Another difficulty with the Court?s methodology is
that, in making discriminatory purpose the indispens-
able element of an Equal Protection violation, it almost
wholly exempts states from reSponsibility for the sub-
stantive consequences of their actions. States, under the
Court?s doctrine, are responsible for excluding only
the most objectionable prejudices from the process of
their decision making. But to paraphrase a statement
by Justice Warren Burger in his landmark decision in
Griggs v. Duke Power Company, absence of discriminatory

intentions?or even the presence of good intentions?
does not redeem a policy that adversely affects racial
minorities and cannot be shown to be closely related to
advancing government?s legitimate goals.

So, like Kairys, I acknowledge that the courts must
seek to prohibit more than purposeful, invidious dis-
crimination by the government. Here is where we
disagree: He focuses on hidden purposeful racial dis-
crimination and the courts? alleged failure to detect it. I
maintain that purposeful discrimination has been widely
and effectively stigmatized. In his view, the Reagan-
Bush Court is undoing fundamental gains made during
the civil-rights revolution. In my view, there has been no
substantial retreat from the baseline set by the Warren
Court?but also no substantial advances. Instead of in-
vesting all or even most of our energies in struggles that
we have largely won?such as the struggle to stigmatize
and outlaw purposeful, invidious racial discrimination?-
we ought to invest our energies explaining why and bow
?government at all levels [should] carefully question and
scrutinize any governmental measures that harm mi-
norities.? Kairys notes that measures that harm minori-
ties should not automatically be deemed unconstitu-
tional. But how do we determine a ?harm?? And how
do we distinguish between constitutional and unconsti-
tutional harms that are disproportionately imposed
upon racial minorities?

nfortunately, Kairys?s article is most glib and

least illuminating at precisely the points where

issues become most difficult, where progres~
sives begin to debate among themselves, and where the
best answers require not only good-heartedness but
intellectual acuity. For instance, he writes as a brief
aside that liberals have been, at times, ?too quick to
dismiss the deeply felt and legitimate concerns about
crime and other problems? and have thereby made
themselves more vulnerable to political isolation. That
is a deep point urgently in need of exploration and
elaboration. Yet he dr0ps it in favor of stating familiar
conclusions that will likely offer little nurturance or
challenge to the moral, political, or intellectual inclina-
tions of most Tz'kkun readers.

Kairys could have done what I am suggesting by ask-
ing more questions of the materials with which he deals.
For instance, he rails against McCleskey v. Kemp, the
Supreme Court decision that rejected the claim that
Georgia administers the death penalty unconstitution-
ally, since people who murder whites there are 4.3 times
more likely to be sentenced to death than people who
murder blacks. I agree with him that the Court?s han-
dling of the case was egregious; a five-to-four majority
maintained that, even against the backdrop of Georgia?s

TIKKUN VOL. 7, No. 3 87

I

shameful history of racial discrimination in the ad-
ministration of justice, the statistic noted above did not
provide federal courts with a sufficient basis for inter-
vention. At the same time, however, we must acknowl-
edge that a case like McClerkey poses a variety of vexing
issues. Kairys, like most liberal commentators who have
addressed this case, focuses on the plight of the black
defendant, Warren McCleskey-?-a violent hood who at
the very least participated in a robbery during which a
police officer was killed.* But what about the plight of
law?abiding black people whose victimization by mur-
der in Georgia is dealt with less rigorously than similarly
situated white victims? If the main problem in Georgia
is that black victims of crime are valued less than white
victims of crime?that black people receive the unequal
protection of the law?one possible remedy is to make
sure that people who murder blacks are dealt with as
severely as people who murder whites. The paradox, of
course, is that doing so would send more blacks to death
row or lead to longer prison sentences for them since
most murderers of blacks are other blacks (just as most
murderers of whites are other whites). Should progres-
sives be in favor of increasing the rate and severity of
punishment for those who criminally victimize people
of color, even though doing so would mean enlarging
the population of imprisoned or executed people of
color? That is the sort of complicated, prickly issue that
Kairys?s commentary avoids, leaving readers without any
inkling of the often cruel dilemmas that fester beneath
cases that at first seem so easy.

the affirmative action front, I agree with

Kairys that the Court acted wrongly in City

of Richmond v. Croron when it invalidated a
set-aside program that earmarked a certain percentage
of municipal contracts for minority entrepreneurs. He
errs, however, in suggesting that there is no difference
between affirmative action and desegregation because
?all racial progress has meant imposing limits on the
freedom and interests of the majority.? One of the great
achievements of the civil-rights movement was to
show that in fact, ?the freedom and interests of the

*Kairys writes that David Baldus?s statistics from Georgia indicated
that death penalty was more likely still when the murderer [of
a white person] was African American.? The issue is murky. When
Baldus disaggregated his data and examined urban and rural areas
separately, he found that in rural areas black defendants with white
victims still received somewhat more severe treatment. He observed,
however, that these differences were not statistically significant. He
found, moreover, that in urban areas, such as the one in which War?
ren McCleskey was tried and condemned, disparities tended to run
against white defendants. In the end he concluded that ?the discrim-
ination against black defendants in rural areas and the discrimination
against white defendants in urban areas canceled each other out? on
a statewide basis. For an extensive discussion of this case see Randall
Kennedy, ?McCles/eey v. Kemp: Race, Capital Punishment, and the
Supreme Court,? 101 Harvard Law Review 1388 (1988).

88 VOL. 7, NO. 3

[white] majority? would be enhanced, not diminished,
by striking down the racial oppression that burdens
people of color.

More importantly, Kairys neglects to distinguish be-
tween the constitutionality and the wisdom of busi-
ness set-asides, which are, in my view, a dubious form
of affirmative action. Business set-asides for minority
contractors came to the fore under the Nixon adminis-
tration. They are a perfect embodiment of trickle-
down social policy, the theory being that if black
entrepreneurs are given a boost through government
pressure, the benefits reaped will help not only the en-
trepreneurs but will be spread by them throughout the
black community. In the 19605 and 19705, various crit-
ics on the Left?I think, for instance, of Robert Allen
in Bloc/e Awakening in Capitalist America?derided mi-
nority set-aside policies, arguing that they would cer-
tainly do little good and likely do considerable harm.
Critics argued that the benefits of such programs
would be monopolized by privileged and conservative
sectors of the black community. They predicted that
black entrepreneurs, by exploiting white guilt or ex?
tracting white patronage, would obtain resources that
would be squandered on self-aggrandizement rather
than effectively invested in efforts to revitalize black
neighborhoods. Critics such as Allen suggested that the
Nixon administration?s business set-asides should be
seen as part of a strategy of c00ptation to defuse black
insurgency, purchasing social order on the cheap. Were
these critics wrong? In my view, much of their critique
seems to have been vindicated. Yet nothing that Kairys
writes even suggests the existence of such critics. Like
many, he prefers to sound the familiar chimes of rad-
ical sloganeering while advancing a position that is all
too conventional. 

THE BLOODIEST REVOLUTION
(Continued from p. 48)

female right next to you, was going to signal ?Yes? at
the same time. The male would just cheat and go to her.
In other words, the strategy of signaling would
have meant choosing the right moment, making sure
that all females in the vicinity were in this together.

Luckily, this would really have helped the males, too,
since they would have done better in the hunt when they
were working tOgether and coordinating their activities.
So the women had a rational stake in getting the men to
go off at the same time and do a collective hunt.

The women?s then, within this strategy, would
have had to be a collective signal. Remember, too, that
the females would have been living in groups and so