African Americans and the Progressive Movement

African Americans and the Progressive Movement

A Background Report for Strategic Communications

Robert P. Jones, Ph.D. Director and Senior Fellow

Dan Cox Policy & Values Research Associate

April 2006

At People for the American Way Foundation

Background Report on African Americans

The Center for American Values in Public Life The mission of the Center for American Values in Public Life is to advance bold progressive ideas rooted in fundamental American moral and religious values. The Center achieves this goal by conducting rigorous research and analysis, innovative message testing, and movement-building collaboration.

The Center is dedicated to promoting a progressive vision of American public life that hears in the diversity of our voices fundamental values that have the potential to bring together a lasting progressive majority to work for a better, more just America. The Center celebrates the vibrancy and pluralism of American religious life and affirms an appropriate public role for religion that is consistent with our basic constitutional principles. As a nonpartisan educational and research project founded by People for the American Way Foundation, the Center is a collaborative partner in building progressive intellectual infrastructure and advancing the progressive movement.

The African American Ministers Leadership Council People For the American Way Foundation created the African American Ministers Leadership Council (AAMLC) in 1997 with the guidance and active leadership of Board member Rev. Timothy McDonald of Atlanta's First Iconium Baptist Church.

The mission of the AAMLC is to create and sustain a progressive ministers' alliance that will: ? Counter the Religious Right's efforts to secure the support of Black churches through disingenuous use of so-called "moral values" and faith-based initiative incentives; ? Increase ministers' skills through training on media, communication, messaging, nonpartisan voter registration and GOTV, advocacy and public policy; ? Strengthen the leadership of individual progressive African American ministers, enhance their visibility and influence in the public debates, and increase their ability to educate, mobilize, and increase the civic engagement of their communities; ? Unite progressive African American ministers across the country into a cohesive network that can bring added power to their efforts for change.

AAMLC is unique because it represents a sustained, ongoing effort to support, strengthen, and mobilize churches, the most influential institutions within the African American community. The inspiring ministers who make up this network are the true leaders of the program, setting priorities, actively recruiting other members, and serving as much needed voices to convey progressive values in meaningful ways to persons of faith and the broader community.

About This Document This working document, and the collaborative methodology of which it is a part, is representative of the heart of the work of the Center for American Values in Public Life, which utilizes its own original research and analysis, the best of existing survey research and focus group research, academic literature, and input from leading experts in order to provide multiple lenses on the state of knowledge about demographic constituencies of strategic importance to the progressive movement.

Major sources for this document include the following: ? The Center's own focus groups among progressive ministers from 17 states (Out of the Boat and into the Storm: A National Conversation with African American Ministers, October 2005); ? The 1996 National Black Politics Study and leading academic analyses of this key study; ? Two recent surveys of African Americans (CBS/BET survey and Human Rights Campaign survey); ? Presidential election national exit polls, the National Election Study and U.S. Census Bureau information; ? Surveys and analyses by the Joint Center for Political an Economic Studies, the National Urban League, the Pew Research Center, and others; ? Leading scholarly studies of African American politics, culture, and religion.

This document is certainly not meant to be the last word on any of the issues covered, and we hope it will spark debate. We have endeavored to gather a diverse set of materials that would serve as a primer to spur creative thinking about strategic communications with this important core progressive constituency.

Background Report on African Americans

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The extreme Religious Right and its political allies have embarked on a concerted effort to recruit African Americans to conservative causes with a two-pronged, religion-based strategy that focuses on same-sex marriage and faith-based initiative funding.

Despite some signs of economic progress, African Americans still experience significant and persistent equality gaps--an indication that for many African Americans, the American dream is still "a dream deferred." Campaign outreach patterns and national political party priorities have done little to convince African Americans that their issues are central to the wider progressive movement.

Over three-quarters of African Americans express disillusionment about American promises of equality and express feelings of alienation from public life. African Americans still widely support the basic tenets of American liberalism, but they support an egalitarian form of liberalism that differs from mainstream liberalism in its emphasis on equality over liberty and community over the individual. Moreover, support for liberalism is tempered by disillusionment. These high levels of disillusionment also provide increasing support for community nationalism, which is the most influential ideology on black public opinion.

In terms of national political typologies, the majority of African Americans fall in the Conservative Democrats and Disadvantaged Democrats typology groups.

The most important issues for African Americans are issues relating to economic security--job opportunities, increasing the minimum wage, and access to quality education and health-care.

A majority of African Americans believe that homosexuality is morally wrong, oppose same-sex marriage, and resist equating the struggle for equal rights for gays and lesbians with the civil rights movement. However: very few (< one percent) rank same-sex marriage as an important issue; African Americans generally support antidiscrimination laws that are about upholding human rights; and the key difference may be which frame, the morality of homosexuality or the discriminatory nature of anti-gay laws, is most operative in the public debate.

Younger African Americans of the Hip Hop generation are more politically independent and individually oriented than the older generation; they are less connected to traditional forms of Black culture (e.g. the Black church); a majority do not believe they can make a difference in their communities, and many feel isolated not only from mainstream society but also from older Black leaders.

African Americans have a long tradition of using strong moral language in politics, appealing to what is right and just. The vast majority of African Americans are also highly religious and look to religion for guidance in everyday life. Historically, religion has not only provided an important lens for seeing the world, but religious institutions have served as central social institutions and "the cultural womb" of the black community.

The traditional Gospel of Liberation that made the Black church the heart of the civil rights movement and encourages political action for social justice is being challenged by a growing Gospel of Prosperity that threatens to turn the Black church away from political action toward individual prosperity.

Background Report on African Americans

TABLE OF CONTENTS

African Americans and the Progressive Movement: Strengths and Challenges........................................................ 1

Economic Well-Being and Inequality.............................................................................................................................. 2 Economic Status Other Measures: Education, Health Care, Justice and Civic Engagement

African American Political Identity ................................................................................................................................. 5 The 2004 Election Partisan Loyalty Voter Turnout

Conservative Outreach Strategies to African Americans ............................................................................................. 7 Ban on Same-sex Marriage and Adoption by Same-sex Couples Faith-Based Initiative

Issues ................................................................................................................................................................................. 10 Salient Issues: The Economy and Jobs Wedge Issues: Same-sex Marriage

Divisions ........................................................................................................................................................................... 13 Generational Divisions Ideological Divisions African American Representation in National Political Ideologies Religious Divisions

Appendix A: The Black Contract with America on Moral Values............................................................................ 23

Appendix B: The 21st Century Mayflower Compact................................................................................................... 24

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