Integrated Urban-Ecological Planning: Review and Recommendations for Practice

NOTE: On 2-15-16, a section titled "Eco-Science Integration of Urban and Ecological Realms" was addd to this post.

Abstract

For decades, North American planners have been searching for a specific nexus that would integrate urban and environment in a single unified system, investigating such concepts as ecological planning, sustainable development, smart growth, and ecocities among many others. At the same time, researchers in landscape ecology, urban ecology, social-ecological systems, and sustainability science have independently proposed the integration of urban and ecological realms. Review of the Journal of American Planning Association reveals that environmental planning papers infrequently cite that eco-science research. This article introduces planners to the eco-science disciplines and literature that have called for the integration of urban and ecological, briefly reviews the planning literature to demonstrate where the discipline is with respect implementing “green” policies, plans, and programs, and identifies innovative techniques planners can apply to increase adoption rates of urban-ecological measures.

Key Words: integrating urban-ecological, urban-ecological planning, using values to frame pro-environmental measures.

Introduction

North American planners[1] are well aware of the focus on green, smart growth, or sustainability issues (Campbell 1996; Connolly et al. 2013; Rees and Wackernagel 1996; Turcu 2013; Young 2011). Organizing concepts in the planning literature that demonstrate an on-going awareness of the contributions of urbanization to various environmental problems include McHarg’s (1969) pioneering ecological planning, ecodevelopment (Riddell 1981), new urbanism (Katz 1993), urban ecosystems (Rebele 1994), sustainable development (Jepson Jr. 2001), smart growth (Meck 2002), landscape urbanism (Waldheim 2006), ecocities (Register 2006), integrative ecological planning (Vasishth 2008); biophilic cities (Beatley 2010), ecological urbanism (Mostafavi and Doherty 2010), and ecoregional planning (Mason 2011) among others. Efforts in the last several decades by practicing planners have sought to address urban-environmental compartmentalization and resource use issues through application of the above concepts as well as techniques such as increased urban densities/compact cities, mass transit, growth boundaries, and reduced carbon footprints. Planners/designers seem to be trying to move beyond the built environments their profession helped create that degrade natural resources and ecosystems and contribute to a non-sustainable way of life by emphasizing pro-environmental actions (Berke 2009; Jepson Jr. 2004a).

After reading numerous articles published in planning journals on various North America pro-environmental issues, the author was struck by the few citations of peer-reviewed research by scientists whose work addressed urban-ecological topics. To determine if that impression was accurate, the author searched all issues of the Journal of the American Planning Association (JAPA) from 2003 to 2013 for articles concerning environmental topics. Since the focus of this paper is on North American planning, JAPA was used as a surrogate to represent all planning journals publishing papers based on North American environmental issues in urban, suburban, and peri-urban areas. Nineteen articles were identified, some of which focused on natural landscape issues while others addressed more general topics, such as sustainability, smart/compact growth, or citizen involvement in environmental matters. The references sections of those articles were then searched for citations of peer-reviewed scientific research published in ecological or environmental journals. The total number of references contained in those papers was 1,078; the number of peer-reviewed urban-ecological papers cited was 56, or 5.2 percent of the total. The JAPA article citing the most urban-ecological research contained 20; the paper with the least urban-ecological citations had zero. If the article citing the most eco-science research were eliminated as unrepresentative of the whole since it contained nearly 36 percent of all the peer-reviewed scientific papers found, the number of those citations drops to 36, or 3.4 percent of the total, indicating a low level of inclusion of peer-reviewed research in JAPA articles. Based on the percent of peer-reviewed urban-ecological research cited in planning papers, even if readers perused each scientific paper listed in the references section, their exposure to urban-ecological literature relevant to planning would be limited.

Although it is difficult to assess the multi-faceted practical effects of planners not being well-informed with respect to urban-ecological principles and practices, research by Brody (2003a) provides a certain insight. He analyzed a random sample of Florida jurisdictions to measure ecosystem protection components contained in comprehensive plans. He found that the strongest predictor of plan quality was a high level of disturbance or threat to biodiversity, indicating that plans included pro-environmental measures only after the jurisdictions experienced significant adverse effects to biodiversity and not before. Brody concluded: “This style of environmental management is costly, inefficient, and in many cases practically not feasible” (2003a, 829). Brody determined that the driver of environmental plan quality was adverse ecological effects and not leadership by practicing planners. A closely related study of local comprehensive plans by Brody (2003b, 533) determined that Florida jurisdictions “have not been able to effectively incorporate the principles of ecosystem management into their planning frameworks.” According to Brody, the resulting comprehensive plans fail to incorporate specific measures to protect natural resources, lack the basic building blocks for cross-jurisdictional cooperation, and are not fully implemented after adoption.

Since the study of urban ecosystems is part of terrestrial ecology, a search by the author identified internally organized and externally recognized sub-disciplines that apply ecological principles and approaches to urbanized areas and hinterlands and interlink that information with principles and concepts from both social and physical sciences and particularly with planning and design disciplines. Landscape ecology, urban ecology, and social-ecological systems were selected as being the most representative of ecological disciplines that study human-dominated systems. Sustainability science was added after the author became exposed to the nature of the research performed by scientists self-identified as working in that discipline. In this paper, the characteristic attributes of landscape ecology, urban ecology, social-ecological systems, and sustainability science are briefly examined as is their literature with regard to research that integrates ecological and urban/regional realms or has relevance to planning practice.[2]

As a partial remedy to overcoming the challenges associated with implementing urban-ecological policies and programs, Berke (2007) and Spirn (2003) advocated expanding planning education to include ecological concepts and analytical methods. More recently, Spirn (2012, 21) called for “a series of literature reviews on ecological urbanism and its subfields, reviews that provide a critical, comprehensive overview . . .” This paper addresses those concerns by introducing planners to the eco-science disciplines that have been calling for the integration of ecological and urban realms, briefly reviewing the planning practice literature to demonstrate where the discipline is regarding implementing “green” measures, and identifying techniques planners can apply to increase adoption rates of urban-ecological measures.

Four Eco-Science Disciplines: An Overview

Landscape Ecology (LE)

Landscape ecology, one of the first concepts[3] to address connections between culture and environment, was articulated in the 1930s by Carl Troll (1971),[4] a German biogeographer focused on identifying relationships between human agency and ecological processes in various scales and spatial development patterns. His ideas were further developed in landscape architecture (Spirn 1985) and became the basis of what is known as the “European” School of LE that emphasizes typology, classification, and land planning and is largely concerned with environmental systems influenced directly by human agency (Beatley 2000). Despite its name, those ideas are well represented in North America and elsewhere and inform much of the recent movement to integrate urban and environment. Although in the past adherents of that tradition paid less attention to the ecosystem aspect of the urban-environment nexus than to the “built” landscape, that focus has been changing over the last several decades (Spirn 2012; Stremke and Koh 2010) under the influence of proponents working to eliminate barriers between nature-focused environmentalists and human-focused urbanists (Farr 2007).

The “American” School of LE arose in the early 1980s (Forman and Godron 1981; Naveh and Lieberman 1984) in the U.S. and has been largely influenced by ecologists concentrating on natural or semi-natural ecological systems. That School is more involved in abstract ecological theory and dynamic computer-based models (Brown, Aspinall, and Bennett 2006) than the European School, though Wu (2006) maintained those differences are overemphasized and instead focused on underlying commonalities. Although the American School is largely integrated with ecological science (Turner 2005) several leading researchers have called for greater emphasis on culture as the critical glue that unites the natural and social sciences in the study of landscape (Hersperger 1994; Musacchio 2011; Wu 2010).

Urban Ecology (UE)

Urban ecology is a multi-disciplinary field that seeks to understand how ecological and cultural processes intertwine in human-dominated urban and urbanized landscapes and to engage in research that enables those coupled human-natural systems to become more sustainable (McIntyre, Knowles-Yánez, and Hope 2000). The field has its origins in ecology, systems ecology, resource economics, landscape architecture, geography, urban planning, sociology, and anthropology among others (Marzluff 2008). Proponents believe that understanding urban systems requires them to be studied as landscapes integrating context and spatial relations with cultural and ecological processes (Cadenasso and Pickett 2008; Grimm et al. 2008). That new landscape perspective emphasizes heterogeneity, cross-disciplinarity, holism, and the integration of pattern, process, scale, and hierarchical linkages in urban areas (Cadenasso, Pickett, and Schwarz 2007).

Social-Ecological Systems (SES)

The SES concept was first defined by the ecologist, C. S. Holling (1973), and elaborated upon by numerous colleagues (Gunderson, Holling, and Light 1995; Olsson et al. 2006). According to those ecologists, an SES consists of a biogeophysical unit delimited by spatial/scalar or functional boundaries and associated social actors and institutions that together constitute a dynamic and complex system of natural and socioeconomic resources (Bengtsson et al. 2003).

Proponents have identified three related attributes of SES that influence their future paths: resilience (Folke 2006), adaptability (Smit and Wandel 2006), and transformability (Gunderson and Holling 2002). Resilience is defined as the capacity of a system to absorb shocks and reorganize while undergoing change so as to retain essentially the same identity, function, structure, and feedbacks (Adger et al. 2005a). For planners, the implications are significant because understanding how urban-environmental systems react to stress is a critical element in managing the capacity of those systems to cope with, adapt to, and shape change and thus become sustainable (Berkes, Colding, and Folke 2003). Adaptability is the capacity of the human agents in the system to influence resilience, meaning to purposefully manage/govern an SES (Smit and Wandel 2006). Thus, human intentions and actions, which are critical elements in the roles played by planners/designers, directly affect the system’s resilience and future (Walker et al. 2004). Transformability is the capacity to cross thresholds and create fundamentally new development scenarios when ecological and socioeconomic conditions make the existing system untenable (Folke et al. 2010). Transformational change may occur at larger scales and enable resilience at smaller scales (note that scale is used here in the sense of map scale).

Sustainability Science (SS)

Sustainability science emerged in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries when the U.S. National Research Council (1999) and Kates et al. (2001) identified sustainability in terms of a stronger analytic and scientific approach to nature-society interactions along evidence-based quantitative indicators and trajectories. Thus, defined by the problems it addresses rather than by the disciplines it employs, SS is a new scientific approach that focuses explicitly on dynamic interactions between natural and social systems (Clark and Dickson 2003) and on how those interactions affect the challenge of sustainability (Reitan 2005). A complementary view by Kajikawa (2008) emphasized the multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary characteristics of the emerging discipline. The backgrounds of most SS researchers are in the environmental sciences; their research topics typically reflect that orientation. An analysis of titles of 232 research papers in the sustainability section of PNAS demonstrated the major focus of 62 percent was on sustaining environmental life support systems, contrasted with 38 percent that primarily addressed human well-being (Kates 2011). According to Clark (2007, 1737), “Sustainability science is a field defined by the problems it addresses rather than by the disciplines it employs” and focuses “on understanding the complex dynamics that arise from interactions between human and environmental systems.” That emphasis on an integrated and coupled human-environment system (Jianguo Liu et al. 2007) defines SS’s core and differentiates it from political and human ecology. Clark (2007) suggested SS as a promising approach in addressing systemic human-nature relationships and complex place-based problems because it serves as a bridge connecting blue-sky theorizing and pragmatic problem solving.

Brief Comparison of the Four Eco-Sciences

LE, UE, and SES differ in several important ways. The LE research approach is more broadly focused spatially within the foundational context of ecosystem ecology. Research in UE emphasizes analysis of urban settings in the context of ecosystem ecology and has a greater focus on planning communities using ecologically appropriate designs. Despite those differences, the technical approaches of the two disciplines are similar, with UE perhaps applying more analytical techniques (Ridd 1995) and computer-based models (Polasky et al. 2008). Both disciplines study the structure and function of various types of landscapes, though urban ecologists are, by definition, much more involved with urban-focused topics and the effects of human occupance (Pickett et al. 2001) and governance (Benvie 2005) while landscape ecologists are typically more concerned with natural, semi-natural, forested, and agricultural environments (Bennett, Radford, and Haslem 2006). Both involve research into issues of scale, spatial patterns, ecological process, non-linear interactions, and land use legacies.

The dominant approach in SES differs from those characterizing both LE and UE in its reliance on systems theory, resilience, and adaptive management emphasizing linkages and feedback controls in developing the capacity to manage complexity and change (Berkes and Folke 1998). Because the SES approach is highly integrative—involving non-linear economics, complex systems theory, ecosystems science, and institutional theory—and focuses on crisis and change as well as resource use and management, it is more people- or cultural-oriented than LE (Becker and Ostrom 1995). However, much like UE, SES research is built on an empirical practice that acknowledges the complex web of synergies, constraints, and opportunities that develop between nature and culture and attempts to overcome the disconnect that limits the theoretical and practical integration of evolution/ecology and economy/institutions.

Ecology is the glue that binds LE, UE, and SES. As ecological sciences, all three are grounded in the biogeophysical world of spatial-temporal phenomena complete with boundaries and limits, gradients and patterns, cross- and multi-scalar issues, systemic interdependencies, and a combination of the myriad structural and functional factors that constitute natural, social, and hybrid systems. The question then arises as to how SS fits into an urban-ecological planning model. It does so through the concept of sustainability with regard to the cultural element that is inextricably intertwined with the natural world (de Groot et al. 2010). Sustainability research typically involves interdisciplinary groups of researchers engaged in cross-disciplinary processes and investigates such issues as depletion of natural resources, biodiversity loss, and land use change (Jerneck et al. 2011). In a significant way, the dynamic interactions between society and natural Earth systems form the glue that binds SS to LE, UE, and SES. Place, as the nexus of human interaction with nature, appears at the interdisciplinary center of SS and forms the integrating element that draws together the ecologically-based disciplines.

What all four disciplines have in common is their scientific approach to investigating nested attributes of an environmental system and resources created by that system that affect people who use the system and rely on those resources, which is where culture, cities, and planning are interlinked. Urban-ecological research in the four sciences is conducted within a set of constraints or rules initiated by formal and informal local and regional governance systems that influence temporal and spatial interactions and outcomes. Although constraints among the four sciences may vary, the common intersections of research trends and issues are numerous.

Research in the four eco-sciences has focused on a variety of topics/issues that directly or indirectly involve the integration of cultural-urban with ecological realms. Much of that research is on issues practicing planners deal with professionally and is likely to attract their attention. Several common integrated urban-ecological research themes are identified below and representative studies from the eco-sciences are cited: land use/land cover (Foster et al. 2003; Quay 2004; Theobald and Hobbs 2002), governance and adaptive management (Adger et al. 2003; Fabricius et al. 2007; Folke et al, 2005), scale and cross-scalar interactions in human/natural systems (Cash et al. 2006; Chowdhury et al. 2011; Hein et al. 2006), spatial patterns of urbanization and ecosystems (Alberti 2007; Kinzig et al. 2005; Wu et al. 2011). Innovative research in the four eco-sciences demonstrates that they are not simply “repackaging” the truism that development should be more environmentally sensitive. That research has focused on integrating humans into models to build a more complete understanding of how ecological systems work under the constraints formed by human use of natural resources. It is only in the last four decades that ecologists have come to recognize that “most aspects of the structure and functioning of Earth’s ecosystems cannot be understood without accounting for the strong, often dominant influence of humanity” (Vitousek et al. 1997, 494).

The eco-science approaches and the topics investigated are sufficiently similar that they can be synthesized with planning under a single rubric, Integrated Urban-Ecological Planning (IUEP), a term expressing the concept of multiple disciplines and multiple participants, including jurisdictions, stakeholders, and citizens addressing a common theme. IUEP is presented in this paper in an integrated, generic, decision-making arena of action and practice rather than as a discipline-specific object of academic study or a simple technique to be mastered. It is a model to be used by urbanists from a range of disciplines working together to address social and environmental issues from an urban-ecosystems perspective (Polasky et al. 2008).

Eco-Science Integration of Urban and Ecological Realms

Many planners may not be aware of significant contributions by researchers in LE, UE, SES, and SS to the integration of urban and environment. Although those scientific approaches are far from identical, their similarities are many and incorporate, at least in part, urban-environment nexus concerns comparable to those articulated by planners and other urbanists. Research in the four eco-sciences has been focused on a variety of topics/issues that directly or indirectly involve the integration of cultural-urban and ecological realms. Much of that research is on issues practicing planners deal with professionally and is likely to attract their attention. That urban-ecological research is briefly reviewed below.

Landscape ecology research contained in professional journals includes numerous topics of interest to planners: governance (Görg 2007; Termorshuizen and Opdam 2009), land use/land cover (Buyantuyev and Wu 2010; Foster et al. 2003; Mercer Clarke et al. 2008; Nassauer et al. 2009: Quay 2004), scaling issues (Cain et al. 1997; Musacchio and Wu 2004; Turner, M., 1989; Turner, M., et al. 1989; Wu and Hobbs 2002; Wu 2004), spatial patterns of urbanization and ecosystems (Biamonte et al. 2011; Luck and Wu 2002; Nassauer et al. 2004; Wu et al. 2011), integrating natural and social sciences within the planning process (Jackson and Steiner 1985; Silva et al. 2008), operationalizing landscape sustainability and design (Musacchio 2011; Nassauer and Opdam 2008), social processes and landscape patterns (Field et al. 2003), coupled human and natural systems (Monticino et al. 2006), urbanization gradients (Minor and Urban 2010), connectivity and heterogeneity in urban landscapes (Schleicher et al. 2011; Zipperer et al. 2000), spatial tools and modeling in sustainable landscape planning (Dzialak et al. 2011), and human settlement and ecosystem function (Collins et al. 2000). Landscape ecologists have examined in considerable detail such planning-related topics as barriers to implementation of low-impact and conservation subdivision design, paying specific attention to developer perceptions and resident demand (Bowman and Thompson 2009), and the cost effectiveness of native plants in residential landscape designs (Helfand et al. 2006).

Urban ecosystem research of significance to practicing planners includes the following topics: urban-centered governance and adaptive management plans (Benvie 2005; Kremen and Ostfeld 2005), land use (Bain and Brush 2008; Cadenasso et al. 2007; Kremen et al. 2007; Theobald and Hobbs 2002; Wear et al. 1998), scale and cross-scalar interactions in human and natural systems (Cash et al. 2006; Michael Conroy et al. 2003; Peterson 2000), urban patterns and ecological function (Alberti 1999 and 2007; Alberti and Marzluff 2004; Grimm and Redman 2004; Mitchell and Parkins 2011), human agency and ecosystems (Elias et al. 2013; Wolf et al, 2013), cultural influences on animal behavior (Clucas and Marzluff 2012; Kertson et al. 2011; Webb et al. 2011; Withey and Marzluff 2009), urban gradients (Blair, 1999; Grimm et al. 2008b; McDonnell and Pickett 1990; Nagy and Lockaby 2011), spatially interlinked socioeconomic and environmental sub-sets (Gergel et al. 2002; Kinzig et al. 2005; Pickett et al. 2008; Rees 1997), ecological networks and spatial planning practices (Opdam et al. 2006; Zellner 2007 and 2008), interlinked ecological and socioeconomic systems (Pickett et al. 2001; Redman et al. 2004), restoring and designing ecosystems (Martinez and Lopez-Barrera 2008), coupled human-natural systems (Jianguo Liu et al. 2007), effects of human agency in altering ecosystems (Pickett and Cadenasso 2008 and 2009), and urban variables as determinants of environmental stewardship (Troy et al. 2007).

Major urban-ecological themes addressed by SES researchers of interest to practicing planners include: governance and adaptive management (Armitage 2005; Becker and Ostrom 1995; Brondizio et al. 2009; Colding et al. 2006; Danter et al. 2000; Dietz et al. 2003; Ernstson et al. 2010; Fabricius et al. 2007; Folke et al, 2005; Lebel et al. 2006; Rathwell and Peterson 2012), spatial-temporal scales and levels (Armitage et al. 2009; Chowdhury et al. 2011; Cumming et al. 2006; Zurlini et al. 2006), ecological systems and land-use (Colding 2007; Daily et al. 2009), economics and carrying capacity (Arrow et al. 1995), human agency/occupance and adaptive ecosystems (Bengtsson et al. 2003; Folke et al. 2004), how an integrated approach by SES researchers would affect policy and practitioners (Miller et al. 2004), sustainability of SES systems (Ostrom 2009), and natural and man-induced ecological changes and land planning (Zurlini et al. 2006). Perhaps the two most important trends in SES research for planners is the prominence of governance and scale since land use regulation and spatial planning are integral elements in how humans structure their settlements. Certainly one measure of the growing significance of the contributions of social scientists in general to SES research was the 2009 award of the prestigious Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to the well-known public policy analyst, Elinor Ostrom (1990, 2005, and 2009; also see Ostrom et al. 2007), for her analysis of the multi-faceted roles of non-governmental stakeholders in the political-economic governance of commonly held natural resources.

The Sustainability Science approach emphasizes the complex, intertwined character of humanity and the natural resource base on which it depends, focusing on how human institutions, systems, and beliefs influence complex interactions between culture and environment. That approach functions as the place-based bridge linking the multiple scales and domains of the biogeophysical, social, and technological world. Among the numerous SS research themes of interest to practicing planners are: governance (Adger et al. 2003; Adger and Jordan 2009; Dernbach and Mintz 2011; Karl and Turner 2002; Pretty 2003; Turner II and Robbins 2008), land use (DeFries et al. 2004; Nielsen-Pincus et al. 2010; Turner II et al. 2007), scale (Adger et al. 2005b; Hein et al. 2006), coupled human-natural systems (Turner II et al. 2003a and 2003b), participatory tools in natural resources management (Kearney et al. 2007), urban impacts on soils and their implications for restoration planning (Pavao-Zuckerman 2008), innovation and a sustainable urban future in industrialized cities (Han et al. 2012), conservation planning and the mitigation of adverse environmental effects (Kiesecker et al. 2010), community-level vitality in sustainable development (Dale et al. 2010), sustainable urban ecosystems (McPherson et al. 1997; Mincey et al. 2013), and urban sustainability indicators (Kennedy et al. 2011; Munier 2011).

Eco-scientists were the first to document in scientific detail and with a full suite of concepts the nature of the reciprocal influences between human activity (disturbance) and ecosystem dynamics. That research has demonstrated the significance and utility of such conceptual frameworks as urban-rural gradients; energy flow and nutrient cycling in urbanized areas; and species distribution, abundance, and interactions caused by land use changes and the consequent effects on ecological pattern and process. In discussing the scientific basis of design in promoting landscape sustainability, Musacchio argued that the eco-sciences “can contribute to systemic relationships among landscape sustainability, people’s contact with nature, and complex place-based problems” (2009, 993; see also Musacchio and Wu 2004). It is vital for planners determined to integrate urban and environment to expand their awareness of that research and develop a fuller understanding of how to best apply information developed by eco-scientists to urban challenges.

Planning Practice and IUEP Challenges: A Review

The literature discussed herein is a small part of the body of eco-science and planning research that has focused on urban and ecological realms. Cook et al. (2004) expanded a developing integration concept by proposing “adaptive experimentation” to take advantage of overlap between ecologists and urban planners/designers. Applying the same logic, Felson and Pickett (2005) proposed a strong interdisciplinary partnership between planners, landscape architects, and ecologists in “designed experiments,” the products of which would become part of the urban mosaic. They advocated using urban design projects as ecological experiments, making planners/designers, architects, and ecologists integral to the improvement of cities. Pickett et al. (2011) advanced the integrative concept by proposing the “Humane Metropolis” as an interdisciplinary tool to promote environmental and social quality, linking the eco-sciences with planning/design. Musacchio (2009) and Nassauer and Opdam (2008) supported the coupling of design and scientific method and emphasized the critical role played by sustainability in integrating environmentally responsible issues into landscape research and practice. Their compelling arguments proposed planning/design as the cement that would bind ecological scientists and urban practitioners with the goal of science affecting urban landscape change through increased sustainability. In a similar argument, Clark and Dickson (2003, 8059) maintained that sustainability focuses “on the dynamic interactions between nature and society, with equal attention to how social change shapes the environment and how environmental change shapes society.” Clark (2007, 1737) further held that sustainability research addressed systemic relationships and complex place-based problems while supporting the “integrative task of managing particular places where multiple efforts to meet multiple human needs interact with multiple life-support systems in highly complex and often unexpected ways.”

Although the functional integration of eco-science with local planning requires many steps (Pickett, Cadenasso, and Grove 2004), geographically targeted research programs have been operational for several decades. Examples include the National Science Foundation’s Long Term Ecological Research Network and Urban Long-Term Research Areas and Exploratory Research Projects. Another example of the functional integration of urban-natural communities is the Natural Community Conservation Planning program organized by California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife. Other broad-based initiatives may be similar to the Puget Sound Partnership[5] and Chicago Wilderness (Conroy and Beatley 2007). Locally-focused efforts like the Binghamton (NY) Neighborhood Project/Urban Ecosystems Initiative, a cooperative venture among local university faculty and various community partners, also can play significant roles. Implementing those and other integrative measures would enable eco-scientists and planners to develop more insight into how scientific knowledge and tools affect both societal and local processes and contribute to the quality of future urban landscapes (Termorshuizen and Opdam 2009).

For several decades, numerous eco-scientists, planners, and landscape designers have proposed what this paper identifies as IUEP (Alberti et al. 2003; Opdam, Foppen, and Vos 2002; Pickett, Cadenasso, and Grove 2004; Redman, Grove, and Kuby 2004; Vasishth 2008). Despite those and other calls for cooperation and collaboration between science and planning, examination of the planning literature reveals little awareness of place-based contributions of the eco-sciences. Although the time seems appropriate for planners to initiate community outreach and education efforts to increase understanding and local implementation of urban-ecological principles (Berke 2007; Brody and Highfield 2005), the lack of adoption of IUEP techniques by planners indicates significant constraints to integrating the urban and ecological realms. As mentioned previously, among those constraints is that many planners seem marginally aware of the substantial body of research in urban-ecological planning issues that has been undertaken in the last several decades. 

Two explanations may account for that situation. The first is much of that research appears in scientific journals planners may not associate with urban-related topics. The second is that many North American planning programs lack emphasis on urban-ecological sciences and thus their graduates are not well informed as to urban-ecological processes (Berke 2007). Even a cursory glance at the curricula of most university planning departments reveals the rarity of faculty members with doctorates in ecology or ecosystem sciences, the paucity of core program requirements in urban-ecological courses, and the general lack of focus on urban-ecological principles and practices (see Berke 2007). Exceptions to that generalization exist, for example, planning programs at the universities of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Washington, British Columbia, and several others, but the greater majority of planning departments lag behind those exceptions.

The planning literature devoted to investigating the adoption of green measures is briefly reviewed to identify other constraints to planners adopting urban-ecological principles. Betsill (2001) determined that institutional barriers—inappropriate bureaucratic structure, lack of administrative capacity, and budgetary constraints—make it difficult for local jurisdictions to implement targeted pro-environmental policies and actions. In research that measured the collective planning capabilities of local jurisdictions in southern Florida to manage ecological systems, Brody, Highfield, and Carrasco (2004, 47) found that “Without the warning signals of habitat fragmentation and loss of keystone species, planners seem to lack motivation to initiate early protection measures.” They specify the central problem as: “. . . how to motivate communities to protect critical ecosystem components before they are severely impacted by human growth and development.” Brody and colleagues did not speculate on the causes of that lack of motivation but concluded that “reactionary style of environmental planning is costly, inefficient and, in many instances, practically infeasible” (2004, 47).

In several surveys of practicing planners, Conroy (2003, 2006) found that a general understanding of the sustainable development concept existed but had not been accepted as a new or different standard for planning practice. Downs (2005) asked why few cities have adopted smart growth principles. Much like Betsill (2001), he argued that political resistance at state and local levels to changes in governance and authority would make adoption of pro-environmental practices problematic. Downs was critical of the ability of local government to change in a relatively short time what are deeply held land use preferences and discussed an increased role for state government in regulating urban growth boundaries, despite the numerous practical difficulties attending that issue (see also Bengston, Fletcher, and Nelson. 2004; Nelson and Duncan 1995).

Berke (2007) analyzed barriers to the adoption of urban-ecological planning techniques and found that local governments have built-in difficulties that hinder such adoption. He identified critical barriers that inhibit increased local adoption of pro-environmental policies and programs. The first he defined as “a low level of commitment for proactive planning to protect critical natural resources” and emphasized “communities lack ample motivation to take action.” (Berke 2007, 61). The second barrier involved taking action only after significant ecological damage or destruction occurred, a condition Berke identified as the land use management paradox (Burby and French 1981). According to Berke, “The paradox arises when communities adopt high quality plans and plan implementation practices only after the critical natural resources they intend to protect have been lost” (2009, 412). The studies by Berke and Brody suggest “a low level of political commitment for proactive planning to protect critical natural resources” (Berke 2009, 414). Another constraint Berke identified was the spatial mismatch between the local scale characteristic of non-state political jurisdictions and the regional to national scale of ecological issues. That mismatch makes multi-scalar and cross-boundary relationships difficult to address in an ecologically sound manner, especially since local government is ill-equipped to deal with multi-level decision-making, a conclusion shared by Betsill (2001) and Downs (2005).

When Edwards and Haines (2007) evaluated smart growth principles in local comprehensive plans under Wisconsin’s smart growth planning law, the communities analyzed were found to have not fully embraced the smart growth agenda and appeared to be largely paying lip service to state regulations. In a survey of planning directors of communities in the Midwest, Conroy and Iqbal (2009) made two key determinations. First, larger communities have more sustainability-related programs in process or planned for than less populated cities. And second, “communities whose local planning organizations are more overtly aware of sustainability are significantly more likely to be planning for and implementing sustainability activities” (2006, 122). They concluded that although communities may be moving towards consensus through discussions among in-house planning professionals, that process is not linear and “does little to address the reality of a fragmented policy and implementation of decision-making environment” (2006, 122). Grant’s (2009a) study of Canadian cities found that weak political commitment and market/developers constraints to continue building traditional subdivisions combined to frustrate desires of planners to create more environmentally responsible communities. Berke (2008) and Stevens, Berke, and Song (2010) found a widely shared dissatisfaction with the effectiveness of efforts to integrate the dimensions of green or environmentally responsible communities into the ways cities are designed and built. Survey research gathered from five states by Lewis and Baldassare (2010) found the only variable consistently associated with opposition to compact development was conservative political ideology. Research by Garde et al. (2010) that involved 180 Southern California cities found that, even in neighborhood projects identified by local political jurisdiction planners as innovative, sustainable development was not a high priority. Booth and Skelton (2011) presented a case study of an initiative to establish sustainable landscaping demonstration sites in a northern, resource-dependent Canadian community. They found unexpected resistance from within the municipal government that proved critical to the initiative’s lack of success. They attributed the resistance to shared fear of negative public response on the part of municipal staff and council members. In two separate studies that analyzed exurban plans in terms of sustainable development in the Atlanta Metropolitan Area and township plans in Central Ohio, Jun and Conroy (2013 and 2014 respectively) determined that the comprehensive plans did not provide balanced support of sustainability principles.

The situation today in North American planning regarding urban-ecosystem measures has remained relatively unchanged since Stein (2007, 52) reported, “Many land use planning decisions still only incorporate ecological principles and biodiversity considerations in a cursory way, if at all.” Berke’s conclusion in his introduction to the Journal of the American Planning Association Special Issue on green communities was strikingly similar: “. . . there is a widely shared dissatisfaction with the effectiveness of efforts to integrate the dimensions of green communities into the ways we build human settlements” (2008, 393).

Although the above brief review may seem to portend limited prospects for the adoption of IUEP, that is not necessarily the case. Not all indicators concerning adoption of IUEP by individuals and jurisdictions are negative. In an empirical analysis of the effects of stakeholder participation on the quality of local ecosystem management plans, Brody (2003c) found that the presence of specific stakeholder groups significantly improved plan quality. That research tested and rejected the hypothesis that broad and diverse stakeholder representation in the planning process would have a statistically significant positive effect on plan quality. Rather, Brody determined that the participation of resource-based industry organizations had the strongest positive influence on ecosystem plan quality, a finding that has implications regarding the adoption of urban-ecological measures. O’Connell (2009) determined that, even though politics prevented many cities from adopting comprehensive smart growth policies, as the number of types of groups promoting smart growth increased cities adopted more smart growth policies. That finding is likely to be significant to IUEP acceptance when the role of social networks in the adoption of innovations is considered. In a modification of the theory of diffusion, Darley and Beniger (1981) proposed that social networks are key moderators of influence in the acceptance of innovations. In situations characterized by ambiguity and uncertainty, people rely on information received from social networks of similarly situated individuals as a major input into their decision-making process, a finding that supports O’Connell’s conclusions. According to Rogers (2003), adoption of innovations by organizations and individuals is a process comprised of five stages: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, and confirmation. Since IUEP is an innovation in an early stage of diffusion, challenges to adoption must be expected, especially considering most planners have had little to no formal academic training in ecosystem science and thus have limited knowledge of urban-ecological principles and practices. Introducing planners to urban ecology will take time but that training would likely improve IUEP adoption rates. Supporting that argument, Jepson Jr. and Edwards (2010) found that planners generally had only vague impressions about ecological urban development but that their support for it rose as their familiarity increased, indicating a strong role for continuing education and professional development. Outside the field of planning, numerous researchers in psychology argue that the adoption of pro-environmental behavior is dependent on knowledge and learning (McDaniels and Gregory 2004; Simmons and Widmar 1990), which emphasizes the information dissemination role practicing planners frequently play. Meinhold and Malkus (2005) indicated that information can function as a significant moderator for the relationship between environmental attitudes and behaviors, pointing to reasons for strengthening the environmental information dissemination role for planners in the IUEP adoption process.

Conroy and Beatley (2007) reviewed a variety of sustainability related implementation efforts in Chicago, Illinois, and Cleveland, Ohio, cities whose sustainability efforts they contended are often overlooked in the literature. They argued that small steps towards sustainability, which they characterized as “low hanging fruit,” could prove effective and lead to integrated efforts that may be more theoretically appealing. In an effort to explain why one community-initiated environmental stewardship program has been successful, Shandas and Messer (2008) used data generated by Portland’s Community Watershed Stewardship Program to characterize the prerequisites to developing an effective community-based environmental management program. They found that “community-based watershed stewardship programs, if designed correctly, have the potential to increase citizen trust in government, improve the biophysical environment, and foster participants’ ecological understanding” (2008, 408). Grant (2009b) highlighted the role of effective practice in Vancouver, British Columbia, as a powerful force for social transformation as well-informed planners work in a responsive way with community members and political leaders to achieve pro-environmental policies and programs. Those finding were supported by Hanna (2005), who studied two communities in the Canadian Pacific Northwest where planners played influential roles in the planning process by helping to define realistic possibilities for transition to a more environmentally responsible future. He concluded that the study illustrated the success of planning-based efforts to manage environmental change.

Because IUEP has been proposed as an action-research process, it is necessary to determine if it fits well with the capabilities of practicing planners. Although information dissemination and education-based policies and programs were identified previously as a good fit for planners (Brody 2003b), perhaps the best match is that of public participation that features a collaborative, consensus building, and problem-solving context that engages individual competence and a sense of community pride (De Young 2000; Kaplan 2000; Pelletier and Sharp 2008). De Young (1996) and Kaplan (1990) also found that context-appropriate environmental information provided in a citizen participatory effort helps reduce individual confusion and uncertainty about how to proceed and gives people the opportunity to develop familiarity, confidence, and competence in terms of the proposed urban-ecological program and thus raises the likelihood of adoption. Planners should also be aware that step-by-step procedural guidance in a public participation effort is an essential form of behavior-relevant knowledge transfer (Halford and Sheehan 1991) that can play a critical role in the adoption of IUEP measures. A key study by Burby (2003) of citizen involvement determined that evidence from plan-making processes in the States of Florida and Washington indicated that greater stakeholder involvement resulted in stronger comprehensive plans, a finding applicable to urban-ecological planning. He also found that with greater stakeholder involvement planning proposals were more likely to be implemented. In the context of understanding of local policy making, Xinsheng Liu and colleagues (2010, 87) determined that “The local policy process appears to be most influenced by consensus- and coalition-building,” a conclusion that resonates with well-known participation techniques discussed by numerous planners (Cohen 2012; Forester 1999; Healey 2003; Innes and Booher 2004). Another method of promoting the adoption of pro-environmental measures that has been advocated by planners is creating a more persuasive approach that appeals to common environmental values to minimize opposition and generate support that crosses political and ideological lines (Goetz 2008; Lewis and Baldassare 2010; Merrick and Garcia 2004).

Techniques to Increase IUEP Adoption Rates

The question that must be addressed is how practicing planners, the greater majority of whom are not familiar with scientific research into urban, suburban, or exurban ecosystems, are going to be able to build support from the public and jurisdictional governing bodies for natural resource policies, programs, regulations, and outreach actions. One answer is for planners to apply the recommendations of academic planners like Berke, Brody, Conroy and Beatley, and others to increase the rate of adoption of environmental measures. The dilemma posed by that course of action is the majority of those recommendations are of the business as usual variety, albeit promoting innovation and increased intensity of effort, such as improved factual basis of plans, increased use of GIS, increased monitoring, better comprehensive plans, more regional partnerships, prioritizing ‘low-hanging fruit’ opportunities, better diagnostics, etc. (Berke 2007, 2009; Brody 2003a, 2003c; Conroy and Beatley 2007). But those approaches fail to address the issues identified as related to the lack of environmental progress in local jurisdictions, specifically: little motivation to change, weak political/institutional commitment, political ideology, and market constraints (Berke 2007, 2009; Booth and Skelton 2011; Brody 2003a, 2003b, 2003c; Brody, Highfield, and Carrasco 2004; Grant 2009a; Jacques, Dunlap, and Freeman 2008; Lewis and Baldassare 2010). As Brody, Highfield, and Carrasco (2004, 47) stated clearly: “A central issue for local watershed planning thus becomes how to motivate communities to protect critical ecosystem components before they are severely impacted by human growth and development.” If those commentators and others are accurate reporters of the reasons why “green” principles have not been widely adopted, then marginally changing business as usual will have limited beneficial effects on adoption of IUEP measures because causative factors were unaddressed, i.e. lack of motivation, political/institutional resistance, market constraints, ideology, etc.

A game-changing effort is required to derail the status quo. That effort must address causative factors identified in the planning literature as barriers to IUEP adoption or it will be minimally effective. This paper focuses specifically on those causative factors by proposing the use of social psychology techniques to motivate pro-environmental behavior that focus on widely shared American values. Those techniques have been identified through four decades of intra- and cross-cultural empirical research and have been tested for validity and reliability (Alibeli and White 2011; de Groot and Steg 2008). Building on the Norm-Activation Theory (Schwartz 1977), Model of Human Values (Schwartz 1992), and New Environmental Paradigm (Dunlap and Van Liere 1978), Paul Stern and colleagues (Stern, Dietz, and Kalof 1993; Stern and Dietz 1994; Stern et al. 1995) constructed the Value-Belief-Norm Theory that posited a causal chain of variables—values, ecological worldview, adverse consequences, perceived ability to reduce threat, and personal norms—that lead to environmentally responsible behavior. Stern and colleagues demonstrated that attitudes of environmental concern are rooted in a person’s value system. That system of widely shared values can be used by planners to increase agreement on pro-environmental measures. The three approaches listed below as Primary Techniques to increase adoption of IUEP measures are recommended in this paper specifically because they have been shown through decades of empirical psychology research to be effective in motivating environmentally responsible behavior.

Primary IUEP Adoption Techniques

Use of Widely Shared Values to Frame Pro-Environmental Measures

Practicing planners can use core beliefs that characterize Americans as a group (Schwartz 1992) to frame pro-environmental messages that appeal to people who hold differing political/ideological positions and thus increase individual and group agreement. Those widely shared values are self-enhancement and openness to change. Self-transcendence values, including social and biospheric altruism, are also shared by Americans but at lower levels (see Schultz and Zelezny 2003) and can be combined with self-interest and openness to change since pro-environmental behavior is multiply determined with respect to values, motivations, and intentions (Allen and Ferrand 1999; Brandon and Lewis 1999; Lindenberg and Steg 2007). Creating frames with broad-spectrum appeal that ensure that self-motivating values are compatible with openness to change, self-transcending, and biospheric domains requires weaving together various shared value threads. Although those value or moral positions may have separate, multiple origins, when combined and applied to message frames they increase the effectiveness of the message and motivate individuals to adopt pro-environmental attitudes despite differences in ideological/political beliefs (Feinberg and Willer 2013; Schultz 2002; Schultz and Zelezny 2003).

Competence-Based Participation

The idea of public participation that frames pro-environmental behavior as a value-based dimension is grounded in the research of urban planner Raymond De Young and psychologist Stephen Kaplan. De Young (1996, 2000) developed the concept of intrinsic satisfaction as motivation for individuals to act environmentally responsibly. Those satisfactions include the drive for personal competence as well as participating in community activities. Kaplan’s Reasonable Person Model of pro-environmental behavior (2000, 491) focused on reducing “the corrosive sense of helplessness” individuals may feel about serious environmental problems through participatory problem-solving and personal competence gained by working with others to find solutions that are satisfying as well as environmentally responsible. Both approaches are information/knowledge-based and grounded in step-by-step procedures that reduce uncertainty by guiding process. Those approaches allow for multiple motivations (e.g. self-interest and altruistic/biospheric values) and also require the participation of experts (planners). The related Self-Determination Theory (Deci and Ryan 2000; Ryan and Deci 2000) contends that autonomy supportive contexts that encourage people to make informed, un-coerced decisions and are informational (characteristics of well-structured citizen participation efforts) are likely to enable intrinsic motivation and competence, elements that are necessary for effective pro-environmental behavior. That Theory shares critical elements with De Young’s intrinsic satisfaction and competence research and Kaplan’s focus on competence and participant-based problem-solving, which strengthens the argument for planners to apply those factors to public involvement programs associated with value-based pro-environmental messages. However, it should be noted that not all citizen involvement efforts can be assumed to meet the competence-based standard.

Information/Knowledge/Learning

Many researchers believe that environmentally responsible behavior is dependent on knowledge and learning and that information can function as a significant moderator for the relationship between environmental attitudes and behaviors. As mentioned previously, step-by-step procedural guidance in public participation is an essential form of behavior-relevant knowledge transfer (Halford and Sheehan 1991) that can play a critical role in the adoption of IUEP measures, a conclusion shared by Gamba and Oskamp (1994), who found the relationships between environmental values and behavior are stronger when environmental knowledge is higher. Activities in this category include planners raising public awareness of local ecological conditions through science-based educational programs, recognizing the importance of infusing plans with ecology-based information, as well as participating in continuing education, professional development, and Certification Maintenance (Brody, Highfield, and Carrasco 2004; Jepson Jr. and Edwards 2010; Koontz 2014; Meinhold and Malkus 2005; Simmons and Widmar 1990; Theobald et al. 2008).

The three Primary Techniques form a unified approach that interweaves widely shared values, the intrinsic satisfactions of competence and participation, and context-appropriate environmental information/knowledge/learning that reduces confusion and uncertainty about how to proceed and presents people with opportunities to develop familiarity, confidence, and competence in terms of the proposed environmental message (De Young 1996; Kaplan 1990). The following Secondary IUEP Adoption Techniques should be combined with the Primary Techniques in response to specific local context.

Secondary IUEP Adoption Techniques

·         Planners should encourage local jurisdictions to hire planning staff with urban-ecological capabilities (Miller et al. 2008) and to collaborate with local academic eco-scientists (Broberg 2003).

·         Apply constraint-based planning techniques to help resolve barriers and challenges to IUEP adoption (Ernst 2011; McKenzie-Mohr 2000).

·         Develop effective and context-focused IUEP practice and outreach techniques (Grant 2009b; Hanna 2005).

·         Open dialogue between ecologists, planners/designers, park/recreation professionals, and public works engineers regarding cooperating/collaborating on environmental issues to achieve buy-in from all departments (Grant 2009a).

·         “Construct and support regional networks among stakeholder groups and government agencies that operate across local boundaries” (Berke 2007, 68).

Concluding Remarks

As has been demonstrated by numerous researchers, the insights of IUEP can be incorporated into urban planning and design (Odell, Theobald, and Knight 2003) as critical elements in comprehensive and district plans, codified in land use and zoning regulations, and realized in urban planning projects (BenDor and Doyle 2009). In that sense, IUEP is a process that can be added to planners’ capabilities in much the same manner geographic information systems was incorporated years ago. Yet, in another sense, that involving the education and training of planners, it is a different matter entirely since specific practical roles IUEP might play have yet to be fully identified.

Collaboration between planners and eco-scientists has several major facets that should be addressed as the process of interlinking planning and ecology unfolds. First, the IUEP praxis opens new action-research opportunities that would connect to the growing emphasis on local participatory planning and the changing relationships between “experts” and citizens (Beunen and Opdam 2011). Since scientific knowledge can only influence local decision-making if it is understood, accepted, and acted on by governing bodies, stakeholders, and citizens in the affected areas, eco-scientists wanting to contribute to societal change must recognize that they need to participate in networks that use different criteria to assess the value and utility of scientific knowledge (Susskind, Field, and van der Wansem 2005) and to limit use of scientific “jargon” when communicating with policy makers and the public. Although that interaction may result in “culture shock” that may prove difficult for some scientists to accept (Norgaard, Kallis, and Kiparsky 2009), meaningful collaboration has the potential of allowing the infusion of ecological goals and approaches into planning projects and incorporated as appropriate into regulations that guide urban development. Second, eco-scientists working to integrate urban-ecosystems need to incorporate more practicing urban planners as essential members of their research efforts at the same time as practicing planners need to reach out to eco-scientists to help devise policies, regulations, and programs to create better cities (Alberti et al. 2003). That two-way street is yet to be built though foundational work has been accomplished in the research cited above. Third, scalar and cross-boundary issues are viewed very differently by planners and eco-scientists. Planners typically work at scales ranging from site-specific to jurisdiction-wide and seldom engage in cross-boundary issues unless regional planning is involved, while eco-scientists typically work at much broader scales and only pay attention to ecosystem boundaries, unless governance is an issue. Fourth, the “environment” understood and regulated by planners is not the same as the “ecosystem” understood and studied by scientists. For example, the environmental sections of most comprehensive or district plans do not even skim the surface of detail required by eco-scientists in their research. And fifth, the “environment” has no natural home in the structure of most American local political jurisdictions. Environmental issues are typically treated on a piece-meal basis in existing departments of planning/urban development, parks/recreation, and public works. Initiating a new department would require increasing budget allocations for professional staff, projects, and programs (Betsill 2001; Downs 2005).

Appealing to widely shared values is not a technique with which most planners are familiar, but the advantages include increased agreement/decreased opposition, fewer adversarial positions in which parties attempt to defeat their opponents, and de-emphasis on political/ideological issues by appealing to values and environmental concerns shared by most citizens/stakeholders. Although moving society toward a more environmentally beneficial future is difficult (Gunder 2006; Millard-Ball 2013; Rees 2009), implementation of an integrated urban-ecological planning praxis is a significant step in the direction of creating more environmentally responsible cities (Spirn 2012). Despite the political and market pressures aligned under the “In Growth We Trust” banner, now is the time for planners to “walk the talk” by integrating urban and environment into a single, balanced reality to help resolve numerous environmental, economic, and equity conflicts that are certain to arise as planners strive to make cities better places in which to live, work, and visit (Campbell 1996). As Spirn (2012, 21) has boldly stated: “The reasons for embracing and promoting ecological urbanism are compelling. At stake is the future of humanity . . .”

September 2014

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Notes

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[1] This paper focuses on North American planning, therefore the majority of the literature cited is from U.S. and Canadian sources.

[1] Political ecology and human ecology are not included in this analysis as their orientation to the environment leans heavily on social-cultural-political factors rather than on ecosystem science itself (Bassett and Zimmerer 2004; Walker 2005).

[1] This point is not meant to ignore the pioneering work of Andrew Jackson Downing, Calvert Vaux, or Frederick Law Olmsted in defining landscape architecture as a major planning and design discipline.

[1] The seminal ideas on human agency and the environment expressed by George Perkins Marsh (1874) in the mid-1800s became well integrated into concepts developed by geographers in the U.S. and Europe, including those of Carl Troll.

[1] A State of Washington agency established to lead efforts to protect and restore Puget Sound and its diversity of life. See http://www.psp.wa.gov/

Black Americans and Intelligence

For a great deal of my adult life the topic of intelligence and race has intrigued me. I remember well many discussions (typically they were heated arguments) with colleagues over the matter, with quite a few of those colleagues citing the results of standardized tests and SAT/ACT scores by race to "prove" their opinion that blacks just didn't have it intellectually, a point I refused to accept since I thought those differences were cultural and were related to inadvertent bias in test construction.

For the last several days I have been reading about the professional research of Claude M. Steele, a prominent American social psychologist whose life's work has been into that very topic. His book, Whistling Vivaldi, was mentioned by Ta-Nehisi Coates in Between the World and Me, which prompted my interest. Although Steele is currently the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost of the University of California -- Berkeley, when he was actively engaged in full-time research his work focused almost entirely on self-image, self-affirmation, stereotype threat, and identity threat, all of which turn out to be closely related.

Since the book, Whistling Vivaldi, is basically a summary of nearly four decades of empirical research by Steele and many colleagues in the U.S. and Europe, I can’t possibly do it justice in a scant paragraph or two in this post. But, it is a breathtakingly significant work that demonstrates through those decades of research that when stereotype and identity threats are removed, racial as well as gender differences in test scores simply disappear. He also demonstrates that those threats are related to higher incidences of elevated blood pressure in black Americans, physiological conditions that do not characterize black Africans and that are almost certainly caused by the tensions characteristic of black-white relations in the U.S.

I know most people lead very busy lives but I fervently hope readers of this post find the time to examine Steele’s groundbreaking research. Although his book was not a quick read for me because it addresses unfamiliar topics in social psychology, it is an extraordinarily powerful work that is critical to a more complete understanding of the real world elements of race in America.

America IS Exceptional: Count the Ways

1. The U.S. imprisons more people per capita than any other country. As of the 
end of 2015, the United States had the highest incarceration rate in the world,
with 716 people per 100,000 behind bars; the comparable rate was 475 in Russia
and 121 in China. The U.S. has five percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2016 black Americans represented 12 percent of the U.S. adult population but 33 percent of America's prison population.

2. The United States is currently the only country in the world where juvenile offenders
may legally be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

3. The U.S. spends more money ($560.4 billion in 2015) on its military than any other country and more than the combined defense budgets of the next nine largest countries in the world.

4. The U.S. is number one in the world as measured by our willingness to project
violence, meaning military action, on nations and organizations whose
values and policies we reject.

5. The U.S. spends more money on healthcare than any other country yet has higher rates of illness/disease per capita than any Western European country, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand.

6. U.S. rates of infant mortality exceed those of every Western European country, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

7. People in the U.S. have more weapons per capita than in any other country.

8. More people die annually of gun violence in the U.S. than in any other country.

9. More people in absolute numbers and per capita are murdered in the U.S. than in any other country.

10. Per capita and in absolute numbers, more black people in the U.S. die in custody or at the hands of the police than in any other country.

11. A smaller proportion of the U.S. electorate votes in national elections than in any other developed country.

12. U.S. college students borrow more money for their education than do students in any other country.

13. Income inequality in the U.S. is greater than in any other developed country.

14. America has lower social mobility than most other developed nations.

15. The CEO-to-worker pay ratio in the U.S. exceeds that of any developed country.

16. The U.S. spends less on social support for families (welfare) than any developed nation.

Conclusion: People who claim that America isn’t EXCEPTIONAL don’t know what the Hell they are talking about. America, it's a wonderful country.

Conservative vs. Progressive: The Role of Communication

Well before the November 2016 elections I thought the time was appropriate to reflect on what political labels mean in the real world. My purpose was to take a no-nonsense look at the traits and ideals that are characteristic of Americans who hold conservative and progressive world views. I was eager to understand why people in both camps who appear to be rational in other aspects of their lives hold political points of view that they seldom take time to analyze. What I found is very briefly summarized in this post.

At their core, political conservatives base their ideology on what social psychologists have recently identified as five moral standards: harm/care, fairness/cheating, authority/subversion, loyalty/betrayal, and sanctity/degradation.[1]  That ideology is individualistic by nature and positioned in staunch opposition to a strong national government. Progressive/liberal ideology is largely based on two moral standards: harm/care and justice, which is understood as fairness, reciprocity, rights, and equality leavened with compassion and tolerance and is more collective than individual and generally favors a strong national government.[2]

Conservatives are more committed to individual liberty and curing society's ills through individuals’ choices to better themselves and others and a free market unencumbered by government regulations. Progressives are more committed to individual equality under the law and seek to ameliorate society's ills through targeted government intervention. Because of those and other critical differences, conservatives view powerful centralized government with deep suspicion and even loathing. Liberals, on the other hand, see strong government as a marvelous opportunity to effect change for the greater societal good.

As a life-long progressive, I must admit both to a great curiosity about and an almost visceral distrust of political conservatism. Please note that while intellectually I understand what some psychologists posit as the moral foundations of conservatism, specifically the five moral standards mentioned above, I have relatively little sympathy for that interpretation. Rather than taking a supposedly moral foundations approach, I see the basis of conservatism more conventionally as resistance to change (expressed as commitment to tradition, authority, and social convention) and acceptance of inequality as natural and unavoidable.[3] I believe those critical foundations are driven by personal needs to reduce uncertainty and fear through threat reduction or avoidance, which, of course, I realize may be a reflection of my personality and core principles, though I can live with that awareness.

The problem is both conservatives and progressives are convinced they, and only they, are on the side of the angels. As a direct result of those deeply held convictions, both sides spout “facts” that support their positions while ignoring or denigrating other “facts” that do not. If you pay attention to the travesty that constitutes cable news commentary on Fox News, MSNBC, and occasionally CNN, you know the salient reality: the louder you shout and the more effectively drown out your opponent, the greater likelihood you will “win” the argument and be proved “right.” Which is idiocy, pure and simple, whether your name is Bill O’Reilly, Keith Olbermann, or Joe/Jane Lunch-Box.

We have stopped talking to each other and, far worse for our future, we no longer listen to those with whom we disagree. We yell our points of view with no regard for rationality or civility. From my vantage point, the critical political problem for the U.S. in 2015 and coming years seemed straightforward: if our myriad problems have any chance of being positively addressed, both sides need to engage in genuine civil discourse and acknowledge that no single political ideology has a lock on “truth” or moral rectitude.

When I embarked on this effort several years ago, I was convinced both conservatives and liberals must, as a first step, understand what their opponents believe. That conviction meant we all must work hard at stepping outside our protective shells of self-righteousness and certitude to see the full dimensions of the other’s viewpoint. Regardless of what we believe as individuals, our political opponents are like us, convinced our position is the only correct one. To admit the slightest weakness or uncertainty regarding a specific policy or program (like Social Security or immigration) is to invite attacks from opponents as well from like-minded ideologues intent on toeing the party line. I thought then that only open and honest dialogue could take us past the present impasse to a middle ground that does not require either side to abandon deeply held beliefs.

After several years of reading largely academic literature in sociology, political science, and psychology and reflecting about what it means to be conservative and progressive, I was blindsided by an insight I had not previously considered. It struck me that four significant problems contradict the seemingly sage position espoused above about engaging in genuine discourse and acknowledging that no one political ideology has a lock on the “truth.” First, in terms of practicality, almost no one would do it. Second, doing so would run counter to key conservative personality traits. Third, political ideologies are not based on rationality thus at least some of their adherents respond poorly to interactions that rely on reason or logic. The fourth issue also involves rationality and is discussed several paragraphs below.

As far as the first problem is concerned, most of us are happy to dislike, demean, and attack people with whom we don’t agree and to bond with those with whom we do. We seem disinclined to change those behaviors. Each side knows they are right and their opponents are a combination of dishonest bastards and stupid assholes. It’s that simple, especially where politics are concerned.

Here’s a real world example of people happily attacking those with whom they do not agree and in the process irrationally denying part of the moral foundations that supposedly define who they are. Many millions of conservatives claiming to be God-fearing, church-going, Christians vigorously applauded the U.S. Justice Department’s definition of torture as only actions that "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." In real life that definition means when I attach an electrode to an enemy combatant’s penis and deliver one severe electrical shock after another or shove bamboo splinters under his fingernails and set them on fire, or imprison an enemy in a freezing cell without blankets or adequate clothing for weeks those same self-professed, God-fearing Christians fervently profess not to believe that I’m committing acts that are torture, illegal/immoral, and are prohibited by international treaties to which the U.S. is signatory.

If those scenarios do not blow your mind then you already must have realized that people who have intense loyalty to members of their in-group (in this case patriotic fellow Americans) have little to no regard for the personal well-being or safety of members of a despised out-group (potential Muslim terrorists) and that intense patriotism/loyalty is a far more significant and deeply held “moral” precept than their vaunted Christianity. Anyone wonder how Jesus Christ would react to that “reasoning?”

With respect to the second reason for my change of mind, it may come as no surprise that I disagree entirely with Jonathan Haidt’s or Jesse Graham’s well-meaning conclusion that the wall separating conservatives and liberals can be taken down brick by brick by each understanding the other’s concerns. The major problem Haidt and his colleagues fail to recognize or address is that conservatives as a group have never valued open-mindedness or tolerance for diversity of opinion. So, asking them to be open-minded or tolerant with respect to progressive beliefs or to be positive about changing the world for the better flies in the face of the very personality traits and “moral precepts” that make them conservative in the first place. Thus, dialogue would be a waste of time and effort unless progressives alone would be expected to compromise their values. Which is the precise position elected conservatives have taken in Washington, DC.

The third reason I believe dialogue between conservatives and liberals would prove non-productive in terms of achieving genuine understanding is political ideologies are not based on reason. According to Haidt and many other social psychologists, ideology is based on innate moral principles that enable adherents to distinguish between right and wrong. Most conservatives are moral realists who believe in the existence of true moral statements that report objective moral facts and deny that cultural norms and customs define morally right behavior. Most liberals are moral relativists who believe that right behavior has no correct or universal definition and that morality can only be judged with respect to the standards of particular belief systems and socio-historical contexts. In either case, attempts to use reason and understanding as a basis for effective communication are bound to fail since, for conservatives, that dialogue comes down to good v. evil.

The fourth reason that constructive dialogue is impossible is that when people, for whatever reasons, refuse to recognize reality, meaningful exchange will never occur. Black is white, white is black. Water boarding or weeks of sleep deprivation under temperature extremes are not torture. Our (pre-Affordable Care Act) market-based healthcare system was the best in the world. Trickle-down economics and the free market work financial miracles. Evolution is a figment of Darwin’s imagination. The Earth is between 6,000 and 10,000 years old. America doesn't have gun problems or race problems. Global warming doesn’t exist; scientists who claim so are charlatans and liars.

No amount of evidence will change those beliefs because they are not based on objective rationality. And progressives are supposed to dialogue with people who believe and spout such nonsense? Hello Alice in Wonderland.

Here’s a personal example. A man I respect and regard as a friend and who I worked with for nearly ten years is a conservative Republican. Several years ago, when the debate over some sort of national healthcare system was hot and heavy, my conservative friend and I engaged in a lengthy e-mail discussion of the problems with healthcare in America. Naturally, given my leftist convictions, I argued that we needed a government-regulated system, a position he adamantly opposed. After I ranted about the historically abysmal ranking of the U.S. in a broad array of medical statistics with respect to other industrialized nations, my friend wrote back that the best way for adequate healthcare to be delivered to all Americans was through free market functions. I was astounded and aghast. His email was written several years after the collapse of the economy in the Great Recession of 2007-2008 and even after the once venerable and deeply embarrassed Alan Greenspan recanted his previous Milton Friedman look-alike economic ideology, hung his head in public ignominy, and admitted to Congress that the market was in obvious need of more stringent government regulations to control Wall Street’s immeasurable and rapacious greed.

Even though I readily admitted my friend was right about the technological superiority and post-diagnosis efficacy of American medicine, at least for those who have employer-based medical insurance or Medicare, he refused to acknowledge our then system was characterized by flaws and constraints in access to healthcare that callously and regularly resulted in denied coverage and excess illnesses and deaths. No matter how many decades of medical statistics documented how poorly and consistently our national healthcare system performed, he believed those flaws either were figments of my imagination or just didn’t matter in terms of our world-class healthcare system. He simply refused to acknowledge inequities.

Thus, I’m convinced that attempts by conservatives and liberals at dialogue, no matter how well-intentioned, will do no good whatsoever in terms of an open exchange of ideas. After all, what good is it if l understand the conservative point of view since I do not find it credible or even based on rationality or honesty? Because, for all too many conservatives, rationality, and even historical reality, plays no part in the discussion. That said, as a professional urban/regional planner whose work was always grounded in rigorous data collection and analysis, I have never based my political or socioeconomic beliefs on a refusal to honestly examine and engage real world conditions. That is why it astounds me that many of not most conservatives refuse to accept any number of evidence-based positions (evolution, global warming, the age of the universe/Earth, dating of geological materials, etc., etc, etc.). It has gotten to the point where millions of conservatives believe science itself has been politicized and must be attacked as a bastion of evil liberalism.

Today, an enormous number of Americans have stopped thinking and only react to political stimuli on a visceral/primitive level that excludes, overrides, or minimizes rationality. We no longer are concerned with anything that could be identified as “objective truth" or "objective evidence" but only with selective “factoids” that support our ideological position. That way we can defend Brack Obama’s outrageous actions because he’s a life-long Democrat and needs liberal support. Or defend Mitch McConnell’s outrageous actions because he’s a life-long Republican and needs conservative support. Or champion the astonishingly empty-headed Donald Trump for whatever pseudo-reasons people invent. It’s an utterly bizarre world when we are convinced, deep in our hearts, that ideological shit is 24-carat gold.

Although people today seldom read plays, especially those written 50 years ago, Eugène Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros” has an eerie, contemporary feel. In that play, people are transformed into rhinoceroses and start following the rhinoceritis political movement. They can no longer speak but bellow and delight in trampling humans. What better metaphor could we have for our contemporary situation with Republicans fully prepared to drive the country into default rather than compromise on taxes?

Today, to complete the irony—or is it absurdity?—Tea Party supporters see liberals as unthinking rhinoceroses. Hello Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi; the list goes on and on. And liberals see anyone they classify as right-wing nut jobs as unthinking rhinoceroses. Hello Scott Walker and The Donald; the list goes on and on.

With unerring accuracy, Ionesco put his finger on the problem:

People allow themselves suddenly to be invaded by a new religion, a doctrine, a fanaticism . . . At such moments we witness a veritable mental mutation. I don’t know if you have noticed it, but when people no longer share your opinions, when you can no longer make yourself understood by them, one has the impression of being confronted with monsters — rhinos, for example. They have that mixture of candor and ferocity. They would kill you with the best of consciences. Source: Martin Esslin. 2001. The Theatre of the Absurd. New York: Vintage Books, pp. 181-182.

That’s where we are today. Even though I know on a theoretical plane it’s appropriate to engage my right-wing friends in dialogue, I am convinced such actions would be absolutely counter-productive. The only result would likely be for them to strengthen and reconfirm their conservative beliefs.

Of course, I have other problems with conservatism. Understanding the well-documented characteristics of conservatives to be closed minded, prefer tradition over change, favor their in-group and be hostile to out-groups, and believe in authoritarianism, gender hierarchy, and social dominance will never lead me to accept the implications of those values, which I reject outright and regard as suspicious on every level. Needless to say, I do not recognize those beliefs as having positive moral value, especially since their practice has historically resulted in one group wielding power and dominion over others, usually with the dominant group using violence and the threat of violence to control subdominant-groups. People who strongly believe in authority, order, and stability, even with adverse costs to “others” not included in their in-group, are highly unlikely to change their belief system simply because they want to “understand” where progressives are coming from.

Only now do I understand the invisible wall separating progressive and conservative ideologies. No way can I overcome that division. Fundamentally, my conservative friends and I have nothing to say to each other. We do not communicate on a meaningful level and I doubt we ever did. Thinking we could was only an illusion.

Of course, that impasse has filled me with ambiguity and sadness. I still have affection and respect for many conservative friends. But that didn’t and doesn’t make me rush to the phone or e-mail, to reach out to heal the wounds. In my heart, I know those attempts would not result in substantive changes to our respective political positions or in our convictions. I cannot understand their point of view and they, obviously, cannot fathom why I believe what I do. I see the world one way, my conservative friends see it another. I now believe that those differences arise from personality traits, though I firmly believe they may be even deeper seated in the psyche. In any case, it is as if we live on parallel universes that do not intersect or interact. So be it.

Those conclusions, combined with my judgment that the American political system is one of the most inherently corrupt and morally bankrupt on Earth, have led to a decision to pull back from all but the most basic political interactions, such as voting. Regardless of what that charming and utterly untrustworthy chameleon, Obama, has said, for meaningful political change to occur, the America we live in will have to wait until a monster tsunami-like wave washes away the current political system wherein oceans of campaign money corrupt nearly every elected representative at state and national levels. A hypothetical that, of course, has zero chance of seeing reality.

Like Mark Twain, I am supremely confident of one thing: Washington politicians on both sides of the aisle will continue bending over backward to prove they are conscienceless hypocrites who gleefully pad their pockets and those of their campaign contributors at the nation’s expense. And thanks to the partisan rulings of an ideologically charged U.S. Supreme Court, that situation is unlikely to change anytime soon.

So, what’s left for progressives and conservatives? Here’s a directly related question: Why did I write this essay? The answer to both questions is the same: to appeal to people who are supposedly in the middle, the moderates or centrists who are not overtly committed to either ideology. My hope is that rational appeals to mainstream independents will carry the day, which is why I’m absolutely ecstatic to see that pompous gasbag dipshit Donald Trump pushing all the GOP Presidential wanna-bes way off to the right on issues like immigration and birthright citizenship. Does anyone out there think that when it comes time to vote in the national election, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, and various other immigrants will quickly forget the racist slurs and vulgar slights that now crawl out of the mouths of most of the GOP contenders? Peoples’ memories are not that short and anyway the eventual Democratic candidate will never let them forget those heinous comments that GOP candidates made during the primary to their batshit crazy base about rapist immigrants, anchor babies, and illegal aliens intent on stealing jobs from white Americans.

Reminding voters in the presidential election that the GOP is the party of white identity whose burning desire is to remain in control despite their coming loss of majority status shouldn’t be too hard or even much of a stretch.

Here’s my strategy and it should be the Democrats as well, to engage mainstream independents with rational arguments about immigration, voting rights, healthcare, the environment, government regulations reining in Wall Street, taxation, etc. My guess is that well-reasoned arguments will win the day and that progressive candidates will also benefit.

Have to wait and see what develops in the real world. In truth, I'm not optimistic.

Endnotes

[1] See http://www.moralfoundations.org/ and Graham, Jesse, Jonathan, Haidt, Sena Koleva, Matt Motyl, Ravi Iyer, Sean P. Wojcik, and Peter H. Ditto. 2012. Moral foundations theory: The pragmatic validity of moral pluralism. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 47: 55-130.

[2] For a fascinating but, for me, ultimately disappointing evaluation of the moral basis of politics and what has been proposed as a way out of our present dilemma, see: http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html. See also the work of psychologists Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham, “When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize.” Online source: http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/articles/haidt.graham.2007.when-morality-opposes-justice.pub041.pdf.

[3] See Jost, John T., Arie W. Kruglanski, Jack Glaser, and Frank J. Sulloway. 2003. Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129(3): 339-375; available online at http://www.sulloway.org/PoliticalConservatism(2003).pdf

American Exceptionalism: Beautiful Myth vs. Historical Reality

Although the passionate belief that America as a country is morally superior and truly Exceptional is not confined to Republicans, it typically characterizes those who lean to the right, though some may self-identify as moderates or even as centrist Democrats. To illustrate the nature of Exceptionalism I have provided three quotes from nationally known conservatives. The first is from Mitt Romney; the second from Marco Rubio; and the third is from an article in the National Review by Ramesh Ponnuru. Similar opinions have been issued by hundreds of well-known conservative politicians and pundits and are widely available on the internet.

"We are a people who, in the language of our Declaration of Independence, hold certain truths to be self-evident: namely, that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. It is our belief in the universality of these unalienable rights that leads us to our exceptional role on the world stage, that of a great champion of human dignity and human freedom."[1]

"America is the first power in history motivated by a desire to expand freedom rather than its own territory."[2]

"Our country has always been exceptional. It is freer, more individualistic, more democratic, and more open and dynamic than any other nation on earth. These qualities are the bequest of our Founding and of our cultural heritage. They have always marked America as special, with a unique role and mission in the world: as a model of ordered liberty and self-government and as an exemplar of freedom and a vindicator of it . . ."[3]

From the extensive public record on Exceptionalism it appears that, for many conservatives, merely pointing to the existence of those core values in our history is sufficient proof of America’s exceptional nature. It’s as if conservatives are convinced that good intentions are all that are required to achieve the condition labelled Exceptional. Simply stating that “all men are created equal . . . with certain unalienable rights . . .”, that America is the “great champion of human dignity and human freedom,” and the U.S. is “an exemplar of freedom” seems for many to mean that that was the case and no one with a patriotic bone in her/his body would think of questioning it.

But some Americans take a more critical view of our history and wonder if Exceptionalism is nothing but a beautiful myth with which we comfort ourselves to avoid what is a much harsher reality. To shed light on that challenge, in this essay I examine specific elements from American history that many may have never learned, have ignored or are indifferent to, or have discarded as irrelevant as to who we are. My direct focus is on white/non-white issues rather than on land-based conflicts between Native Americans and whites. Readers desiring additional information on how the U.S. treated Native Americans might consult my post of February 5, 2015, titled: American Exceptionalism: An Evaluation.

The critical question I begin with is straightforward: How did our country act, considering the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution declares as self-evident truths that all persons are created as equal under the law and are possessed of inalienable rights, including among others freedom of speech and assembly, personal security, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

The first part of the answer to that question should be evident since even before we become an independent country black Africans were enslaved in every colony and, after the Revolution, in every newly formed state. In addition, according to the U.S. Naturalization Law of 1790, only white men of good standing could become U.S. citizens. That law as applied to blacks stood until passage of the Civil Rights Law of 1866 but was still in effect after that for Hispanics, Native Americans, and Asians until the mid-20th Century.

Thus, in historical reality, from our earliest founding as a country until the end of the Civil War, American core values of freedom, dignity, and equality were reserved for whites only, with non-whites treated as distinctly inferior and legally subordinate. But, what happened after the Civil War? Perhaps things changed dramatically for the better. A number of examples are presented below to illustrate that historical reality, starting with Reconstruction and working toward the present day.

Reconstruction Era, 1863-1877

Although the Civil War ended in 1865, Reconstruction almost immediately evolved into an extension of that war. It became a struggle between northern Radical Republicans and their allies who wanted to punish both Southern states for traitorous acts and Southern white supremacists committed to racial segregation as the foundation of their way of life.

President Andrew Johnson, a Southern War Democrat from Tennessee, was an open advocate of white supremacy and an opponent of extending civil and human rights to newly freed blacks. Johnson’s Reconstruction policies granted amnesty to former Southern rebel soldiers and permitted only white men to vote or to participate in the framing of the new state governments. He appointed provisional governors from the white Southern power elite and outlined steps for the creation of new state governments that would allow the election of representatives to the U.S. Congress. Johnson strongly supported state sovereignty and the right of each state to decide how to treat blacks.

It is critical to view Johnson’s conduct in context of the times. For example, by 1865 only a few New England states had granted Black American men the right to vote and, between 1865 and 1868, Connecticut, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin voters rejected proposals to enfranchise Black American men.[4]

Many Radical Republicans became outraged that the recently defeated but unrepentant Southern rebels would be returning their former Confederate leaders to national political power, that none of the Southern state conventions had granted freedmen the right to vote, and that every Southern state had immediately passed legislation (Black Codes) that tightly restricted the freedoms of former slaves. That anger seemed more than justified when Benjamin F. Perry, South Carolina’s provisional governor, declared at that State’s constitutional convention: “. . . this is a white man’s government.”

With President Johnson's support, Southerners focused on strengthening white supremacy to ensure that blacks were held in a debt peonage and socio-political vise that was slavery in every aspect but name. That system was enforced by threats and violence by armed white vigilantes that included home burning, rape, public whipping/beating, genital mutilation, lynching, and countless acts of physical violence that terrorized black communities in every Southern and Border State and that were encouraged and sanctioned by state and local governments.

After the 1866 election, angry Radical Republicans in Congress wrested control of Reconstruction from President Johnson, who had rejected the idea that blacks had the same rights of property and person as whites, passing the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 that divided the former Confederate states into five military districts, with the exception of Tennessee, which had already been re-admitted to the Union. To be re-admitted into the Union, each state was required to accept the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution, which granted citizenship and political rights to Black Americans.

Under Reconstruction’s military occupation and the oversight of the Freedmen’s Bureau, Black Americans received the right to vote, own property, and to hold political offices that had formerly been restricted to white Southern Democrats, a situation that was abhorred and opposed at every turn throughout the South. President Johnson vetoed all the Radical Republican initiatives but those vetoes were overridden in the Senate. In 1868, the Radical Republicans impeached President Johnson but the Senate failed to convict him by a single vote. Although the impeachment effort failed, Johnson’s power to influence the direction of Reconstruction was greatly compromised.

As early as the late-1860s, Southern and Border State Democrats had initiated the process of regaining political power by suppressing black voting through systematic acts of fraud, intimidation, and violence carried out by ruthless white sheriffs, local judges and election officials, and armed extralegal, all-white paramilitary groups variously known as the Ku Klux Klan, White Brotherhood, Redeemers, Sabre and Rifle Clubs, Knights of the White Camellia, White League, White Liners, and Red Shirts. By the early- to mid-1870s, organized white intimidation and violence against blacks was the norm in every Southern and Border State.

The stakes in controlling the political infrastructure of the South were extraordinarily high. In effect, passage of the 13th Amendment increased representation from Southern states in the U.S. House of Representatives because it made the infamous three-fifths slavery Compromise in the Constitution meaningless since those who had been slaves would thereafter be counted as whole persons in apportioning seats in the House. If Congress seated unrepentant Southerners, political power would immediately swing to the Democrats. To expect Republicans who had just won the Civil War to surrender national power to a region that had been defeated on the battlefield and to a population they viewed as traitors was totally unrealistic. With Reconstruction and passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, Radical Republicans in Congress had focused all their efforts on changing the balance of power in the South and on effecting a political revolution that they thought necessary to ensure Black Americans would be able to achieve the full freedoms guaranteed in our Constitution.

Radical Republicans not only failed to secure Constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms for blacks through the Reconstruction effort but also inadvertently insured that the political order in the South that would control the lives of four to five million Black Americans for nearly a century would be based on white bigotry and supremacy. Many factors helped ensure Reconstruction’s failure, among them national economic problems like the Panic of 1873, the rise of a national conservative consensus, a general feeling that Reconstruction had failed to achieve worthwhile goals, the national resurgence of the Democratic Party, and a growing national climate that accepted bigotry and racism as normal. As painful memories of the Civil War faded, most Northerners lost interest in maintaining what turned out to be a difficult and prolonged struggle to ensure Black Americans would be granted the freedoms, dignity, and equality guaranteed by the Constitution. The insurmountable problem was that the South that emerged after Reconstruction was remarkably like the pre-war South in terms of its foundation on white bigotry and supremacy, with the exception that overt slavery of blacks was replaced by a system of debt peonage and social controls enforced through intimidation and violence sanctioned by every level of government and by every element of Southern white society.

By the mid-1870s, most moderate Republicans as well as Northern Democrats had begun classifying Southern blacks as simply another special interest group that they thought had to start standing on its own feet, despite slaves having been systematically denied freedom and education for more than 250 years and being totally unprepared to face hostile Southern legislatures and violent white Southerner bigots without the continuing support of the federal government. But by the late-1870s, all three branches of the federal government had effectively turned their backs on enforcement of the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of Black Americans and left them to their fate at the hands of Southern white supremacists.

Reconstruction ended as a result of President Grant’s withdrawal of federal troops from Florida and the infamous and under-the-table Compromise of 1877 that resulted in the fraudulent election of Rutherford B. Hayes as President. By that time, Southern Democrats had used intimidation and violence by armed white mobs and extralegal militia to seize control of all Southern and Border State legislatures. In 1890, Mississippi adopted a new constitution that disenfranchised nearly all black citizens through literacy tests, poll taxes, multiple ballot box laws, white-only primaries, grandfather clauses, and residency requirements, cutting black voter enrollment from approximately 147,000 to around 8,600.[5]  When those discriminatory provisions survived legal challenges to a U.S. Supreme Court that was blind, deaf, and dumb to civil rights violations against Black Americans, nine of the other Southern states adopted similar constitutions, disenfranchising the far greater majority of their Black American residents. Other specific examples include: Louisiana adopted a new constitution in 1898, dropping the number of black voters from 130,000 to 5,000;, Alabama re-wrote its constitution in 1901 to establish white supremacy as the rule of law and reduced the number of eligible black voters from more than 180,000 to 3,000; and in Virginia, the number of black voters dropped from 147,000 to 21,000.

The Southern disfranchisement movement was so comprehensive that black people could not vote, serve on juries, or hold political offices, activities that were restricted to registered white voters. As a result, Black Americans were systematically excluded from any role in the socio-political system other than that of a lower caste.

Here’s another twist on denying black vote in the South. Since after the 1870s only Democrats were elected in general elections, in Southern States the most critical election was the primary. But because official state voter registration forms intentionally did not ask a voter’s party affiliation, county and local registrars were the only officials who determined party membership. Because no Southern Black Americans were acknowledged as members of the Democratic Party, they could not vote in primary elections even though they were formally registered voters. Those tactics and systemic white violence against black voters ensured the near total absence of blacks at the polls until the late-1960s.
But white-only primaries, poll taxes, and literacy tests were not the only obstacles to black suffrage. Black land owners and workers throughout the South were told that they would lose their jobs or be denied access to credit if they attempted to vote. In many cases, when a black farmer’s white neighbors found out he intended to vote, local merchants refused to extend credit, weigh his field crops, or deliver materials to his farm. Suppression of black vote was well-organized and systemic through the South and was specifically intended to oppress the black population and sharply curtail their rights.

As has been noted by numerous observers, the Confederacy may have lost the Civil War on the battlefield but the South won the struggle to maintain their white supremacist way of life and to continue oppressing blacks through intimidation and violence. The result was a century-long war of savagery and terror against black citizens carried out by armed Southern whites supported by local and state governments. An as illustration, Mississippi Governor James Vardaman famously stated that "If it is necessary every Negro in the state will be lynched; it will be done to maintain white supremacy."[6]  Many if not all Southern conservatives believed that black suffrage during Reconstruction had been an enormous political blunder because blacks were inherently inferior, unqualified, and unprepared to assume the responsibilities of citizenship and, thus, the near total segregation of blacks from whites was a necessary precondition to eventual citizenship.

*     *     *

Simply stating that Black Americans were denied the fundamental rights of freedom and human dignity guaranteed by the Constitution to all citizens does not reveal the specific nature of the inequities and violence committed by bigoted whites and hostile Southern state and local governments against Black Americans. Therefore, several examples are provided below to illustrate the reality of the term “lack of human freedom and dignity” in Southern States for Black Americans. These few examples, extending from the end of the Reconstruction Era to the mid-1960s, are but the tip of an enormous iceberg of racial intimidation and violence directed against Black Americans that characterized Southern and Border States.

Colfax Massacre, Louisiana, 1873
The Colfax Massacre on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, occurred during a confrontation between Louisiana Democrats in the White League, an armed extralegal militia organized to ensure white supremacy, and white and black Republicans in the nearly all-black and lightly armed official Louisiana State Militia. Between 100 and 150 blacks were killed, half had been murdered after they surrendered, had been disarmed, and held captive by the White League for several hours. Three whites were found guilty of the murders but were released when the legally clueless U.S. Supreme Court declared that their convictions had been unconstitutional because the Enforcement Act of 1870 (which was based on the Bill of Rights and 14th Amendment) applied only to actions committed by states and did not apply to individual actions or private conspiracies. That infamous and morally bankrupt decision—United States v. Cruikshank 92 U.S. 542 (1875)—left Black Americans throughout Southern and Border States at the mercy of bigoted state and local governments dominated by white Democrats determined to enforce white supremacy via violence and deny the constitutional rights of Black Americans.

Vicksburg Massacre, Mississippi, 1874
In 1874, armed, extralegal white militias in Vicksburg, Mississippi, worked to suppress black voting and succeeded in defeating all Republican city officials in the August election. By December, the emboldened white Democrats forced the black sheriff to flee to the state capital. Blacks who rallied to Vicksburg to aid the sheriff also had to flee in the face of superior white forces, as armed whites flooded the city. Over the next few days, armed white gangs murdered up to 300 Black Americans in the city and its surroundings. No one was indicted or prosecuted for those crimes.

Ellenton Massacre, South Carolina, 1876
In a brutal and relentless drive to regain political and social power in the South, conservative white Democrats used intimidation and violence to prevent Black Americans from voting. Prior to the election of 1876, armed conflicts took place in Ellenton and nearby areas of South Carolina. White supremacy supporters formed rifle clubs and other paramilitary groups that were established to prevent black Republicans from organizing, voting, and all other political activities.

The Ellenton Massacre occurred from September 15 to 21, 1876. Tensions over elections had been building for weeks and residents of the area had appealed to the governor to curtail the actions of numerous Democratic rifle clubs, which were mobs of extralegal, armed white vigilantes organized to control the election by suppressing the black vote through threats and violence. Although many details of the Race Riot are uncertain, at least in part due to whites who had participated in the violence concealing or destroying evidence, several facts stand out. On September 20, 1876, Simon Coker, a black State representative, was forcibly removed from the rail car on which he was traveling and shot to death by members of a white mob. It was estimated that one white man and between 100 to 150 blacks were murdered in the Ellenton Massacre. No one was indicted or prosecuted for those crimes.

Thibodaux Massacre, Louisiana, 1887
The Thibodaux Massacre is a tale of a bitter agricultural labor dispute leavened with racism, bigotry, and ruthless violence by armed white mobs. The plight of black sugarcane workers in 1887 was one of back-breaking labor and inadequate pay. Most field hands were paid approximately $13 a month in script issued by the plantation that was redeemable only at a plantation store, whose prices were arbitrarily set by the landowner and had little or no relation to market prices. Overcharged workers usually wound up in debt to the landowner. By Louisiana law, if an agricultural worker owed money to a landowner he could not leave the land or employment on the land until the debt was paid in full. That and similar laws throughout the South essentially reduced agricultural laborers, including tenant farmers and share croppers, to a type of serfdom known as debt peonage.

After a three-week sugarcane strike organized by the Knights of Labor union against plantations in southern Louisiana that demanded elimination of scrip, an increase in daily wages, and payment every two weeks, the Louisiana Sugar Producers Association rejected the demands and had the strikers evicted from the plantations by armed white militias. Violence erupted when two white militiamen were fired upon at a checkpoint where they were trying to prevent blacks from moving about the city of Thibodaux freely.

The incident enraged the white population of Thibodaux and unleashed mobs of armed white vigilantes that indiscriminately attacked the black population of Thibodaux in what can only be described as a racial massacre. Between 35 to 300 blacks were killed in the ensuing violence, including defenseless women and children, almost all of whom were unarmed. All of the dead were Black Americans. No one was charged with any offense.

Ocoee Massacre, Florida, 1920
On November 3, 1920, which was Election Day in central Florida, a deadly race riot began in the previously unremarkable, small semi-rural community of Ocoee and quickly spread to nearby Orlando, Apopka, and Winter Garden. The reason was that several Black Americans who had been legally registered to vote in Florida and had paid their poll tax had shown up at the polls to vote. They were physically assaulted and turned away by armed white men. An armed white mob went to the homes of the two black men who had attempted to vote and shots were fired; the situation quickly escalated out of control. The resulting mob violence spread to surrounding cities and nearly 500 blacks living in the Ocoee area were forced to flee for their lives. Before order was restored, nearly all the black-owned homes in Ocoee had been destroyed. The FBI later estimated that from 30 to 60 black men, women, and children had been murdered by mobs of white terrorists. No one was arrested or tried for the attacks. No Black Americans would vote in all of Orange County, Florida, for nearly 20 years after the massacre. Blacks did not re-inhabit the Ocoee area in any numbers until 1981, 61 years after the riot.

Tulsa Race Riot, Oklahoma, 1921
The Tulsa race riot was a large-scale, racially motivated conflict that occurred from May 31 to June 1, 1921, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a city that legally enforced racial segregation and disenfranchised Black Americans. After a black man had been accused of assaulting a young white woman and arrested, armed mobs of whites and blacks exchanged gunfire. A mob of approximately 2,000 armed whites then attacked the prosperous black Tulsa neighborhood of Greenwood, burned it to the ground, and murdered numerous black residents. During that assault, more than 800 blacks who had been attacked by white mobs had to be admitted to local white hospitals because the two black-only hospitals had been destroyed by white mobs. Local police and Oklahoma National Guard troops arrested and detained more than 6,000 black residents simply because of their race. No whites were arrested. An estimated 10,000 black residents were homeless and 35 blocks with 1,256 residences were reduced to rubble by fires set by armed whites. Estimates of black fatalities varied from 55 to 300, with estimates by modern historians at the highest end of that range. The black man originally arrested for assault was released when the young woman refused to press charges. No charges were filed against individual white rioters.

Rosewood Massacre, Florida, 1923
Rosewood was a small, stable, self-sufficient black community in west-central Florida near Cedar Key on the Gulf Coast. It had a thriving all-black population of about 150 until New Year’s Day, 1923, when a white woman in the nearby predominantly white town of Sumner accused a black man of beating her. Those accusations and the news that a black convict had escaped from a local chain gang combined to create the critical mass that erupted in an explosion of bigotry and violent racism. Hundreds of enraged whites formed an armed mob led by the County Sheriff and marched into Rosewood, ostensibly in search of the escaped convict. When they shot and lynched a black male Rosewood resident, other male members of the black community resisted.

Over the next several days more than 30 black Rosewood residents were murdered by an armed mob of at least 300 white men. Those who escaped the violence fled the area. Almost all of what was left of Rosewood was destroyed by fire for no reason other than racial hatred. An all-white grand jury investigation resulted in no indictments and the massacre was quickly forgotten by everyone except the survivors. After the massacre it was determined that the beating that had started the mob violence had been administered by the woman’s white lover. She had lied so that her husband wouldn’t learn of her affair. The Rosewood properties previously owned by black residents were later sold by the County for back taxes.

It wasn’t until 1983 that the incident became public when St. Petersburg Times investigative reporter Gary Moore wrote about the massacre. His article was followed by a segment on CBS-TV’s news magazine 60 Minutes, a documentary on The Discovery Channel, and by a Hollywood movie directed by John Singleton and featured Jon Voight, Ving Rhames, and Don Cheadle. The next twelve years was filled with political haggling and legal wrangling as a restitution claim for Rosewood survivors was introduced in the Florida Legislature. A Special Master appointed by the Speaker of the House ruled that the State had a “moral obligation” to compensate survivors for the loss of property, violation of their constitutional rights, and mental anguish. On May 4, 1994, Governor Lawton Chiles signed a $2.1 million compensation bill that gave nine survivors $150,000 each and established a state university scholarship fund for Rosewood families and their descendants.

*     *     *

Assuming that many if not most Americans may be more sensitive to violence to individuals than by violence to a more anonymous collective, I have listed below a small sample of individuals who were murdered by Southern white racists/bigots.

Harry T. and Henrietta Moore: founders of the Brevard County chapter of the NAACP and civil rights pioneers. Harry was President of Florida's NAACP and was the statewide leader in opposing lynching—at that time Florida had one of the highest rates of black lynching in the U.S. On December 25, 1951, the night of the Moores’ 25th wedding anniversary, a bomb placed under the bedroom in their house exploded, killing both. Harry Moore was the first NAACP official murdered in the civil rights struggle and is justly revered as a martyr. No one was arrested or prosecuted for the murders.

George Lee: civil rights activist, minister, businessman, vice president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, and head of the Belzoni, Mississippi, branch of the NAACP was heavily involved in black voter registration drives. He was shot to death in northwestern Mississippi on May 7, 1955, by an unidentified white assailant. No charges were brought in the murder.

Lamar Smith: civil rights activist, farmer, and WWI veteran was shot to death at 10:00 AM on August 13, 1955, by a white man on the crowded courthouse lawn in Brookhaven, Mississippi, after urging blacks to vote. Although the killer was known to dozens of witnesses, no one was arrested or tried for the crime.

Emmett Till: a 14 year-old Black American from Chicago who was vacationing with relatives in Mississippi, was savagely beaten, mutilated almost beyond recognition, and shot to death by two white men on August 28, 1955, after reportedly flirting with a white woman at a local grocery store in Money, Mississippi. The two men were tried but found not guilty by an all-white jury. Till’s almost unimaginably brutal murder and the subsequent acquittal of the two white men charged with his death by an all-white jury attracted widespread media attention and outrage in the U.S. and throughout the world. The killing occurred in a context of increasing black challenges in the South after World War II to white supremacy. As one of Till’s killers, John William (J.W.) Milam, reflected later:

"I like niggers—in their place—I know how to work ‘em. But I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice. As long as I live and can do anything about it, niggers are gonna stay in their place. Niggers ain’t gonna vote where I live. If they did, they’d control the government."[7]

Herbert Lee: civil rights activist shot and killed on September 25, 1961, in Liberty, Mississippi, by E.H. Hurst, a white member of the Mississippi State Legislature for participating in the voter registration campaign. Hurst was never changed with the murder as all the witnesses were coerced into testifying Lee had threatened Hurst. After one black witness, Louis Allen, told the FBI that he had been forced to lie to the coroner’s jury, he was murdered. No one was charged or prosecuted for his death.

Medgar Evers: a black U.S. military veteran of WWII and civil rights activist involved in working to desegregate the University of Mississippi was assassinated on June 12, 1963, in Jackson, Mississippi. Evidence, including fingerprints on the murder weapon, pointed to Byron De La Beckwith, a founding member of the White Citizens' Council. Although De La Beckwith was tried twice, both all-white juries were deadlocked, in part due to his being supported by numerous politically prominent Mississippians, including then-Governor Ross Barnett. De La Beckwith was finally convicted of murder in a third trial on February 5, 1994, and died in prison.

Addie Mae Collins (age 14), Denise McNair (age 11), Carole Robertson (age 14), and Cynthia Wesley (age 14): Bombing victims who died on Sunday, September 15, 1963, at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, when four members of the Ku Klux Klan planted dynamite beneath the front steps of the church. Although by 1965 the FBI had information concerning the identity of the bombers, no state or federal charges were brought until 1977, when Alabama Attorney General William Baxley reopened the investigation. Klan leader Robert E. Chambliss was convicted of murder despite the FBI’s refusal to release evidence necessary for the prosecution. Two other former Klan members, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry, were also brought to trial by A.G. Baxley. Blanton was convicted in 2001 and Cherry in 2002. Herman Frank Cash, the fourth bombing suspect, died before he could be tried.

James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner: civil rights activists killed on June 21, 1964, near Philadelphia, Mississippi, by Klansmen. Seven men, including Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price, were convicted in federal court of conspiracy to deprive the three victims of their civil rights. In 2005, Edgar Ray Killen, a former recruiter and organizer for the Neshoba County and Lauderdale County KKK, was tried and convicted in state court of three counts of manslaughter for the deaths of the three civil activists for planning and directing their murders and was sentenced to 60 years in prison, 20 years for each count to be served consecutively.

Viola Liuzzo: civil rights activist was shot and killed near Montgomery, Alabama, on March 25, 1965, by members of the Ku Klux Klan; less than two weeks later, a charred cross was planted on the front lawn of her Detroit residence. One of the men in the Klansmen's car was a paid FBI informant who provided evidence against the three Klansmen who killed Liuzzo. After the first state trial ended in a mistrial, an all-white jury took less than two hours to acquit one of the Klansmen. All three were later convicted on federal civil rights charges.

Jimmie Lee Jackson: civil rights activist was beaten by white Alabama State Troopers and shot by Trooper James Fowler on February 18, 1965, while participating in a peaceful voting rights march in Marion, Alabama. Although Jackson was unarmed, his killer was not charged with his murder until May 10, 2007. In a bargain with state prosecutors, Fowler pled guilty to manslaughter and served five months.

James Reeb: civil rights activist and Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston died as a result of being brutally beaten on the head with a club by white racists in Selma, Alabama, on March 11, 1965. He had answered MLK Jr.’s call to clergy around the country to join a second effort to march from Selma to Montgomery. The three white men indicted for Reeb’s murder were acquitted by an all-white jury.

Vernon Dahmer: civil rights activist and president of the Forrest County, Mississippi, chapter of the NAACP died on January 11, 1966, of severe burns and smoke inhalation after his Hattiesburg home was firebombed by a mob of white racists opposed to his efforts to register black voters. Thirteen men with KKK ties were tried. Four were convicted in part because Billie Roy Pitts (the bodyguard of KKK Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers) entered a guilty plea and turned state's evidence. However three of the four convicted were pardoned by Governor John Bell Williams within four years. In 1998, based on new evidence, the state tried Bowers for Dahmer’s murder and assault on his family. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 2006.

Martin Luther King Jr.: national civil rights leader was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was assisting city sanitation workers who were on strike. James Earle Ray was convicted of the murder and died in prison.

Cynthia Marie Graham Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lee Lance, Depayne Middleton-Doctor, Clementa C. Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Daniel Simmons, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, and Myra Thompson: murdered on June 17, 2015, at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, by white racist Dylann Roof, who was arrested and charged with 33 federal crimes and nine counts of murder by the state.

*     *     *

Although Black Americans are the principal focus of this essay, Hispanics and Asian-Americans have also faced numerous challenges to their Constitutional rights, including literacy and language tests, poll taxes, discriminatory immigration and naturalization laws, and intimidation and violence. Despite many Americans being unaware of the details, U.S. law prevented any person who was non-white from becoming a citizen. As was mentioned above, the Naturalization Law of 1790 determined that only white men of good standing could become U.S. citizens, meaning all others were barred, including Native Americans. That law stood until it was repealed, at least in part, on December 17, 1943, when Chinese were no longer barred from U.S. citizenship, a concession made only to keep the Chinese Army fighting against the Japanese in WWII. The well-known federal case of In re Ah Yup 1 F. Cas. 223 (C.C.D. Cal. 1878) (No. 104) found that Chinese were non-white and thus were ineligible for naturalization. Anti-Chinese sentiment was so high that in 1882 Congress enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act, which sharply restricted Chinese immigration to the United States, classified Chinese immigrants as permanent aliens, and excluded them from U.S. citizenship. Adding insult to injury, in 1922 Congress enacted the Cable Act, which stipulated: “any woman citizen who marries an alien ineligible to citizenship shall cease to be a citizen of the United States.” [8]

Concluding Thoughts

The famous German sociologist, Max Weber, proposed an intriguing analogy to a country’s beginning that revolved around a game played with dice that were honest at the onset. But, over time, each major historical event structured future socio-political development/evolution by becoming institutionalized, loading the dice as it were, establishing a directional bias that became stronger and more pronounced as time passed. To put it another way, according to Weber, historical events establish societal values and pre-dispositions that influence future events, thus shaping the direction of socio-political change.

But, as an alternate scenario, what if that game started with loaded instead of honest dice, biasing a country’s socio-political system in a pre-determined direction from the get-go? What if the initial playing field had not been level and the resulting game had not been unbiased at any point? In that variation on Weber’s analogy, events that predisposed a country to favor whites over non-whites would set in motion a support process that increased the future likelihood of favoring whites.

Weber’s loaded dice can easily be identified across American history: the Constitution recognized black slavery as legal and blacks as inferior; the Naturalization Law of 1790 allowed only white men to become citizens; the infamous 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision ruled blacks were not fully human; the 1871 Blyew v. United States decision found that in nearly all Southern and Border States whites could kill, rob, or cheat Black Americans as long as the only witnesses were black since by state law blacks could not testify against whites; the 1875 United States v. Cruikshank decision left Black Americans throughout Southern and Border States without the protection of federal law; the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Law prevented people of Chinese nationality from immigrating to the U.S. solely because of their racial heritage; the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision found racial separation was legal; Native Americans were not allowed to become American citizens until the mid-20th Century; 127,000 U.S. citizens were imprisoned during World War II and their property was confiscated without judicial process because of their Japanese ancestry; and today we cannot ignore the Affirmative Action programs that are increasingly under attack across the U.S. Connecting those dots should not be difficult.

The very real problem we face today is that conservatives cannot see or cannot allow themselves to see historical reality: that America’s national identity was rigged as ethnocentric from the outset, favoring whites and handicapping people of color, whether enslaved or free blacks, Native Americans, Hispanics, and Asians. From our earliest beginnings as a country, whites were virtuous and superior and non-whites were despicable and inferior and thus not deserving of the same rights and freedoms, no matter what awe-inspiring words were enshrined in the Constitution. What conservatives shield themselves from is that good intentions are meaningless when immoral, unethical, and inequitable acts by whites against people of color are the societal and governmental norm.

Achieving freedom and equality requires, at minimum, a legal system that is fair to all. Although people need a level playing field for success to be attainable, structured inequity translates into success largely for the favored in-group and failure for devalued out-groups. If the source of that inequity is government law/policy that is enforced at all levels from local to national, then transitioning to an unbiased future will be extraordinarily difficult.

To trumpet American Exceptionalism today in the face of our history of ethnocentrism is an act of arrogance that ignores or justifies more than three centuries of white oppression of non-whites and creates the beautiful myth that all people in the U.S. enjoyed freedom and equality as a natural right throughout our history. We owe not our country unconditional love or approval. Rather we owe ourselves the courage to be honest in the face of hard reality. We’re not a perfect country; after all, has such ever existed? But the claims conservatives make that America is, in essence, better than every other country in the world flies in the face of our history. It’s that refusal of conservatives to acknowledge the warts and flaws and self-serving immoral behavior that inevitably characterizes all countries that puts the lie to American Exceptionalism.

Starting from colonial settlement onward we became an “Exceptional country” through a process designed to enrich and empower whites at the expense of all others. We became an “Exceptional country” because a coalition of Southern white plantation owners and Northern white merchants were able to exploit the unpaid labor of savagely oppressed and enslaved blacks that transitioned after the Civil War into the savage oppression of Black Americans through Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, and violent socio-political restraints. We became an “Exceptional country” through a century of legal, illegal, and extra-legal acts by whites from all political parties and at all levels of government aimed at oppressing non-whites.

Simply because conservatives want to believe the best of the U.S. does not mean that was what transpired in the real world. Wishing it were so does not create historical reality.

For a century after 250 years of the almost unimaginable evil of slavery, federal, state, and local governments turned what was essentially a blind eye to a highly organized and efficient system of legally-based repression, intimidation, and savagery in Southern and Border States that focused physical and psychological violence against Black Americans with the specific intent of depriving them of Constitutional rights in order to maintain and strengthen white supremacy. It was not until passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Voting Rights Act of 1965 that American citizens who were first granted suffrage after the Civil War by the 15th Amendment were finally able to vote after 100 years of violent subjugation by state and local governments and white supremacists. That century of systematic, nationwide de jure and de facto hostility and repression has never been officially acknowledged by the U.S. government. Nor has the government apologized for more than two centuries of enslaving blacks. Nor has an apology or any type of broad-based support, not to mention financial/economic reparations, ever been offered to Black Americans by the federal or state governments.[9]

People who trumpet American Exceptionalism cannot allow themselves to see that this country was founded on ethnocentrism and has continued throughout history to operate on that precept because that’s the way the Weberian dice had been loaded. Which makes the U.S. like all too many other countries that were organized around and operated through in-group favoritism and out-group hostility.[10]  Because to acknowledge that historical reality would negate their sense of superiority over other countries and pop their American Exceptionalism balloon. Although it is impossible for conservatives to admit, at our innermost core what makes Americans exceptional is our almost limitless addiction to hypocrisy and denial.

To all conservative politicians and their followers who beat the drum of American Exceptionalism and discount or ignore our shameful history of racial hostility and oppression, I offer the words of Joseph N. Welch, chief counsel for the U.S. Army, as he addressed Senator Joseph McCarthy during a 1954 Senate investigation:

"Have you no sense of decency . . .? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"[11]


END NOTES

[1] Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/10/07/text-of-mitt-romneys-speech-on-foreign-policy-at-the-citadel/?mod=google_news_blog

[2] Source: https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/598577980298829824?lang=en

[3] https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/339276/exceptional-debate.

[4] Steven F. Lawson, 1999. Black ballots: Voting rights in the South, 1944-1969. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

[5] Steven F. Lawson. Ibid, p. 14-15 and http://www.nps.gov/nhl/learn/themes/CivilRights_VotingRights.pdf. See also Michael Perman. 2001. Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888-1908. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

[6] Source: Chris Danielson. 2013. The color of politics: Racism in the American political arena today. New York: Praeger Publishing. See also: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/flood-vardaman/

[7] Quoted in http://www.nps.gov/nhl/learn/themes/CivilRights_VotingRights.pdf Also see: William Bradford Huie. 2001. “The shocking story of approved killing in Mississippi,” in Racial violence on trial: A handbook with cases, laws, and documents, p. 245. Christopher Waldrep, ed. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO; and Stephen J. Whitfield. 1991. A death in the delta: The story of Emmett Till. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

[8] Charles J. McClain. 1996. In search of equality: The Chinese struggle against discrimination in nineteenth-century America. Oakland, California: University of California Press. Also see: http://www.nps.gov/nhl/learn/themes/CivilRights_VotingRights.pdf; McClain, Charles J. 1995. Tortuous path, elusive goal: The Asian quest for American citizenship. Asian American Law Journal. 2:33-60. Available online: http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1020&context=aalj

[9] See Ta-Nehisi Coates: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

[10] See: Axelrod, Robert, and Ross A. Hammond. 2003. “The evolution of ethnocentric behavior.” Revised version of a paper prepared for delivery at Midwest Political Science Convention, April 3-6, 2003, Chicago, Illinois. Available online: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~axe/research/AxHamm_Ethno.pdf

[11] For the original quote, see: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6444/

Confederate Battle Flag and Southern Heritage

All those who believe that the heritage of the Confederacy and that of the South is purely about a cherished and all but sacred way of life and nothing more should be encouraged to read the famous Cornerstone Address given on March 21, 1861, in Savannah, Georgia, by Alexander H. Stephens, who served as Vice President of the Confederate States of America from February 18, 1861, to May 11, 1865.

An excerpt from that speech is provided below.

"The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the 'rock upon which the old Union would split.' He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away... Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it—when the 'storm came and the wind blew, it fell.'

"Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man (emphasis added); that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

Near the end of his Cornerstone Address, Alexander Stephens boldly summarized Southern Heritage for all to see: “With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system.” For the full address see: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/cornerstone-speech/

Southern Americans proud of their heritage also should never forget that on January 9, 1861, the State of Mississippi issued its Declaration of Secession from the Union, stating: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world.” Source: http://http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp

In short, the Confederacy, the way of life of the South so innocently and eagerly promoted as Southern Heritage and the sacrifice of soldiers, as well as the post-Civil War Jim Crow world was founded on one thing only: white supremacy and white domination over black slaves who with their descendants would remain slaves in perpetuity. All the other characterizations are smokescreens, wistful myths, or scurrilous lies.

Watching Southern whites demonstrating their passionate belief in revisionist history on national TV/cable news shows leads you to the conclusion that a great many if not the overwhelming majority give every appearance of being poorly educated, inarticulate, ignorant, and proud of it. Their words/actions leaves little doubt as to their intentions: We might not be smart but we vote; so don’t fuck with us.

As an aside of sorts, could it be that the South is inhabited only by whites who are ferociously proud of their heritage? Or could it be that millions of Black Americans also live in that region who do not identify with the white supremacy, oppression, and slavery represented by the Confederate flag? As an on-point example, South Carolina is home to 1.35 million Black Americans, which is about 28 percent of the State population. Take a guess as to what they think of the Confederate flag and of the whites who rant and rave about their proud Southern heritage.