African-American Ideas

Black conservatism has a long history and includes a large number of prominent African-Americans. Nevertheless, it has never become a salient ideology for a significant number. Jupiter Hammond (1711–c. 1800) during the slave period, William Hooper Council (1848–1909) during the first nadir, George Schuyler (1895–1977) during the 1940s and 1950s, as well as A. G. Gaston (1892–1996) during the 1960s, represented conservative ideologies. However, none of these individuals shared the virulent antiblack positions of contemporary black conservatives. Black neoconservatives differ from previous generations of black conservatives in that they are often alienated from the black community and divorced from its institutional networks, especially political organizations.

Black conservatism articulates better with its mainstream equivalent than do the other black ideologies. Conservative approaches are premised on white American cultural values, particularly notions of individualism, which advocate colorblind individual incorporation into the U.S. political economy, polity, and mainstream white civil society. According to psychologist William Cross, Jr., race and the history and continuing practice of racial oppression are either denied or viewed as not salient by black neoconservatives in constructing their identities. Twenty-first-century black neoconservatives, Thelma Duggin, Clarence Thomas, Gwen Daye Richardson, and Ward Connerly, share the assumptions, interpretations, and goals of the leading white neoconservatives. Black neoconservatives blame the dislocations endemic to poverty on welfare and government subsidies. They claim the Great Society programs, instituted in the 1960s by President Lyndon Johnson, created a "culture of dependency" among the black poor. According to this perspective, instead of providing a social safety net, the Great Society created dependent personalities and an antiachievement culture in the black community. Perhaps more fundamental than the adoption of European-American cultural values is their reduction of African-American culture to a composite of pathological behaviors. Conservatives, including autonomic conservatives, generally reject the African cultural survival thesis.