whole issue. The students went back tontheir dilapidated dormitories in the beliefnthey had routed the foe.nMr. Atwater’s embroglio at Howardnought to suggest to him and othernRepublican strategists that the blacknmiddle class is not about to desert thenparty and the programs that created it,nand that it is deeply aware that the partynis Democratic and the programs socialist.n”Middle-class blacks,” say politicalnscientists Michael Dawson of the Universitynof Michigan and Gary Orefieldnof Chicago, “more than poor blacks,nhave been the beneficiaries of court andnlegislative interventions in the privatensector, moving up the economic laddernon affirmative action programs, minoritynset-asides and other programs oftennopposed by Republicans.” They pointnout that middle-class blacks, far morenthan whites, have benefited from directngovernment employment. “A muchnhigher percentage of blacks havenachieved middle-class status through thenpublic sector than whites.” Whatevernthe black middle class might think aboutnthe social and moral issues, economicallynit wouldn’t exist without democraticnsocialism and its legacy, and its supportnfor free-market, small-government candidatesnand ideas would be tantamountnto class suicide.nMoreover, say professors Dawsonnand Orefield, middle-class blacks arenmore conscious of racial and housingndiscrimination than poor blacks. Afternall, it’s the former who are trying tonmove out of the inner city and intonwhite neighborhoods, and it’s probablynfair to infer that black racial consciousnessnis most intense among the middlenclass. Just as nationalism served thenpsychic, social, and political needs of thenEuro-American bourgeoisie in the 19thncentury, so a species of racialism (sometimesnnone too subtle) serves blacknmiddle-class aspirations today.nBut the Republican strategy to attractnblack votes ignores this consciousness,njust as it ignores American nationalnconsciousness in its prattle about “globalndemocracy,” human rights, and anglobal economy. Mr. Atwater, JacknKemp, Bill Bennett, and NewtnGingrich love to talk about the Lincolnnlegacy and the ideals of Martin LuthernKing, but that legacy and those ideals, atnleast in popular mythology, are liberal,negalitarian, and universalist. The racialnconsciousness espoused by black leadersnsuch as Jesse Jackson is a horse ofnanother color. It doesn’t want to integratenwith white institutions but to legitimizennonwhite ones. It doesn’t want tonjoin Western culture but to extirpate it.nIt doesn’t want to share and share alike,nas nice liberals and neoconservativesnwant, but to dominate. That’s why Mr.nJackson ran around with explicit racistsnlike Louis Farrakhan, and that’s whynMr. Farrakhan can meet comfortablynwith explicit white racists like TomnMetzger.nIt’s also why Mr. Jackson wantsnblacks to start calling themselvesn”African-Americans,” in the tradition ofnStokeley Carmichael and Rap Brown.nIt’s a label that helps to delegitimizenblack inclusion in American society andnto formulate a new identity based onnracial solidarity with the nonwhite peoplesnof the worid. Dr. King himselfnplanted the seeds of this growth with hisnobservation, in his Letter From thenBirmingham Jail, that the Americannblack in the civil rights movement “hasnbeen swept in by what the Germansncall the Zeitgeist, and with his blacknbrothers of Africa, and his brown andnyellow brothers of Asia, South Americanand the Caribbean, he is moving with ansense of cosmic urgency toward thenpromised land of racial justice.” Butnyou can’t ride the tiger of racial consciousnessnfor long before it slips itsnreins and begins hunting for somethingnother than the right to sit in the front ofnthe bus.nAmerican blacks are indeed rejectingnliberalism, as are American whites.nBut that doesn’t mean that eitherngroup will find the universalism andnegalitarianism that today travels thencountry under the name of conservatismnany more to their taste. In regurgitatingnthe premises of the same indigestiblenliberalism, Mr. Atwater and hisnwunderkinder at the Republican NationalnComrnittee are walking into antrap that Aristotle and Machiavellinwould have been wise enough to avoid.nSamuel Francis is deputy editorialnpage editor of The Washington Times.nSCORPIONS IN A BOTTLE:nDANGEROUS IDEAS ABOUT THE UNITED STATESnAND THE SOVIET UNIONnMoral Equivalence. Glasnost. Find out hownthese notions are a deadly threat to thenWest in essays by William Bennett, PeternBerger, Sidney Hook, jeane Kirkpatrick, IrvingnKristoi, Melvin Lasky, Michael Novak,nand Joseph Sobran, produced from thenHillsdale conference profiled in TimenMagazine.n|’,V’^ ‘Is/’sco’rplons In a bottle.’nMidge Dector, Executive DirectornCommittee for the Free World-nSB.00 PAPERBOUND, (Michigan residents add 4% sales tax)nVISA AND MASTERCARD ORDERS 800-253-3200, EXT. 801nHILLSDALE COLLEGE PRESSnHillsdale. Michigan 49242nnnJULY 1989/39n