Class and status in american law: race, interest, and the anti-transformation cases

“Traditional” districting practice in North Carolina would not bring working class districts together into electoral power. The state prevented that outcome by design. Bringing industrial districts together would necessitate linking them across farming areas and other regions. In the American legal system, there is no leverage that will force legislators to maximize working class electoral strength. The “one man, one vote” decisions brought greater democracy to urban areas in which many working-class voters were packed; beyond that, nothing forced the South to empower workers. Empowering workers generally in the South would run counter both to anti-union sentiment and to racism.

Disfranchisement in North Carolina at the end of the nineteenth century primarily sought to deprive African Americans of participation in the political process.³⁶¹ The state succeeded in this goal but hurt low income whites as well.³⁶² The modern shift on civil rights that swept into action during the Reagan administration and bore fruit in the Shaw cases was part of an attack on gains made by people of color—in North Carolina, particularly by African Americans—after many years of struggle. But its rationale is part of a political battle that has a message for working class whites as well. Elsewhere, I have described how white workers in Greensboro gained from black community leadership in a union organizing drive.³⁶³ The Greensboro area has been part of the challenged electoral district along the highway in North Carolina, but the interest of white workers in minority leadership has not yet been part of the public discussion or litigation in this case.

What is working class interest in the voting rights cases? First, overcoming the shibboleth that black domination was dangerous for white people in the South. The core logic of the recent voting rights decisions recreates that myth by presuming harm to any white who complains of being placed in a district with a black majority. Striking down majority-minority districts therefore is part of an entire history of Southern politics, repeating the most reactionary messages to white workers.³⁶⁴ If “class” is understood as a process in which consciousness and action interact, then the claim of harm from black dominance is plainly part of the attack on working class mobilization. Working class people placed in wealthier white suburban districts may find their elected leadership consistently opposing their class interest. Because consciousness and organization interact in making class, and because Americans have little social awareness of class, placing white working class people in wealthy white districts may increase their cultural identification with people of “middle class” status and diminish class consciousness, as well as diminishing opportunities for class mobilization.³⁶⁵

When white workers rely on white privilege, they tie their future to individuals and interests who do not share their class insecurity, their potential for multiracial solidarity, or their dependency on the bottom end of the regulatory scheme. Therefore, my second claim does not focus on the interest of African Americans in creating majority-minority districts, nor do I engage here the question of whether majority-minority districts best secure democratic representation for minorities. Rather, my argument concerns shared self-interest among working people of all races in that North Carolina District—and therefore, the self-interest of some white people. When a white worker wants to pursue class-conscious interests in America today, he or she may be best represented within a majority-minority district. Leadership arising from majority-minority districts may serve class needs of white workers far better than cross-class white majority political representation.³⁶⁶

The interest of whites in black leadership is seldom explored in law. When the Supreme Court finally found the redrawn lines of District 12 constitutional,³⁶⁷ the decision was based not on coalitional interest or working class interest but on the plaintiffs’ failure to prove racial motive in creating the district. The Supreme Court recognized the tendency of white registered Democrats to “cross over” and vote Republican vastly more often than black registered Democrats.³⁶⁸ Indirectly, the opinion recognized the persistence of segregation (by noting a reference to the “Greensboro black community”) and racial division (by recognizing differences in voting behavior).

But the Court did not recognize inequality. Racial inequality played no role in the majority opinion, which remained formalistic about racial motive while adopting a slightly more deferential approach to proving motive. The Court recognized only the self-interest of legislators, who might have sought to protect their incumbency as a motive for structuring the district. The latest North Carolina case therefore left the reasoning about white interest in Shaw unchallenged. The ten-year fight about voting districts in North Carolina is an example of the formation of discourse and social groups around issues other than relations of economic power.

When racial classification, or intentional placement in a majority-minority district, is itself defined as harm to whites, exploration of the nature of subordination disappears. The reasoning of Shaw makes it impossible to hold the searching inquiry into the real nature of harm and interest that is fundamental to increasing class consciousness today. Had the Court permitted the decisions about collective interest struck down in Wygant, or had it recognized class structure in any of these cases, it would help avoid renewing the Old South myth of the danger of black domination for white working people.

I argued earlier that when either whiteness or class is ignored, white workers are placed in an inherently more reactionary position than when both are considered together. If we notice only whiteness, then working class whites see only those aspects of self shared with more elite whites, and fail to see those aspects of self shared with people of color. If we emphasize only class, this shift does not make race disappear from American society. Rather, because whites do not see white privilege and white norms as a matter of course, demands for inclusion from people of color are experienced as disruptive and destructive of a natural state of affairs.

Formalism on race combined with the invisibility of class–the approach in Shaw and its progeny—places white workers in the most reactionary position. For white workers, transformative work requires recognition of structures of power and of mutual need. This includes, eventually, developing of an understanding of the limits that racism structures into class advancement. It includes recognizing the potential for labor mobilization in majority-minority districts. It includes the need to integrate union leadership and the need to work with leaders of minority communities as allies in labor struggles.³⁶⁹ Transformative work, in other words, will mean reconciling concepts of mutual interest and self-interest that are not often explored in America, articulating shared interest and working to put that vision into practice.

VI. Conclusion: Power, Harm, and Interest

Change in material life determines the conditions of [ ] struggle, . . . but the particular outcome is determined only by the struggle itself.³⁷⁰

Class matters to legal doctrine. If class were cognizable, the cases would have come out differently. Class also matters to justice. The cases should have come out differently, and the exploration of class and power provides a method that can change the ways conflicts have been framed and turn the framework of legal thought in a better direction. Finally, justice matters to class. Claims about morality, about interest, and even about legality are part of the mobilization of social groups and the construction of conditions that promote, or obstruct, solidarity.

Law has not been the only force diminishing class consciousness in America or discouraging solidarity. Law alone cannot determine whether white people voluntarily work with people of color on terms of equality, or whether they find common ground in politics.³⁷¹ But law does affect the interaction of whiteness and class. Explicitly and implicitly, it identified harm to white people from transformative programs that included people of color within the workplace. Also, law shapes race-biased political standards under a guise of race-neutrality. By pretending that the status quo in political districting was neutral, these standards disempower people of color. By ignoring the ways in which the status quo disempowers working class people, the cases keep questions of class and power out of public debate.

The Rehnquist Court has not protected working class interests, and the cases limiting racial transformation do not address class interest directly. Searching examination of class and interest is necessary in many contexts. For example, rather than cooperating in the treatment of “class-based affirmative action” as a category opposed to “race-based affirmative action,” defending affirmative action as a tool of shifting power is important to people of color and to labor. Defending affirmative action involves structuring programs for inclusion on the basis of both race and class and recognizing, in both contexts, group relationships of power. The different goals of aiding businessmen, students, and laborers should be addressed by courts with specificity. Challenges and revisions to municipal set-aside plans should be addressed in terms that favor an end to racial exclusion and take class interest seriously, rather than merely protecting the white businessmen. The capacity of labor to organize and to speak politically needs protection. Antiracist, class conscious leadership needs support within unions and within communities.