Law's Promise, Law's Expression: Visions of Power in the Politics of Race, Gender, and Religion.

• Author: Delgado, Richard

It is said that if you really want to know about the habits of foxes, you ought to ask a chicken. By the same token, if one is interested in learning about conservatives and the conservative agenda, one should read what the liberals are writing. No one is better at keeping tabs on the far right than a liberal, for whom the activities and agendas of the other side of the political spectrum are fundamentally important. Members of groups that are on the far left -- like critical race theory and critical legal studies -- are apt not to pay quite as close attention. For them, the differences between the moderate left and the moderate, or even immoderate, right are not that significant.(1) When the right rises up and smites one of the left's own,(2) this group reacts with surprise and consternation, evidence that they have not been watching what is going on.

Kenneth Karst,(3) a respected liberal scholar, has been watching, and what he sees and writes makes sobering reading. Everyone, even -- perhaps especially -- my friends on the critical and postmodernist left, should read his work. His new book, Law's Promise, Law's Expression: Visions of Power in the Politics of Race, Gender, and Religion, examines in chilling detail what he calls the "social issues" agenda of the new right (p. ix-x), especially in its symbolic or expressive dimension. Written before the recent election swept Republican majorities in to both houses of Congress with what many considered mandates to enforce family values, cut welfare, get tough on crime, and roll back affirmative action, Karst's book is practically prescient on the country's recent rightwing surge.(4) Among the matters he discusses are the right's drive to control women's reproductive faculties by opposing abortion and workplace reforms aimed at helping working mothers (pp. 31-56). He examines how the counterrevolution has been rolling back blacks' 1960s civil rights gains and depicting the African-American poor as oversexed opportunists and leeches (pp. 67-111). He shows how conservatives have rallied against gays in the military (pp. 27, 124-37) and women in combat jobs (pp. 112, 116-24).

Karst also traces the rise of the religious right and the gains they have made in such areas as prayer in schools (pp. 28, 147-48, 154, 158), moments of silence (p. 208), official celebrations of Christmas (pp. 148, 150, 154-56, 159-60), and opposition to gay marriages, gay rights ordinances, and the abolition of sodomy laws (pp. 14, 20, 58-61, 64-65, 182-87). He discusses the right's revival of Cold War sentiment and their campaign against recognizing the harm of sexual harassment in the workplace (pp. 42, 110, 122) and racist speech on campus and elsewhere (pp. 96-103). He describes further elements in the counterrevolution: the campaign in favor of neighborhood schools and against busing (pp. 27, 69, 90-94), the resistance to diversified student bodies and curricula at universities (pp. 103-06), and the role of TV evangelists in aiding the election efforts of fundamentalist political candidates and those who support "family values" (pp. 16, 21-22, 159). He shows how right-wing groups demonize the poor (pp. 69, 137-46), bash Hollywood (p. 139), and attack publishers and radio stations guilty of "indecency" (pp. 44, 89, 100). He discusses the role of right-wing lobbyists (pp. 25-26, 44), telephone trees, and letter-writing campaigns (pp. 22-23). He depicts the rise of skinheads and other Aryan supremacist groups (pp. 34-35, 47, 98), and he describes the new right's efforts to equate poverty and immorality (pp. 137-46), to require respect toward the American flag and other symbols of authority (pp. 160-70), and to oppose what they consider the glamorization of premarital and extramarital sex (pp. 137-39). Finally, Karst teaches us about tough-on-crime measures and politicians who pander to white suburbanites' fear of black criminality (pp. 68, 74, 85).

The combined effect of all this description, rendered in generally good, clean prose, is sobering, to say the least.(5) Karst has done his readers an incalculable service by bringing to the fore the full panoply of fronts on which right-wing think tanks, congregations, and citizen groups have been waging cultural wars. Even my leftist friends can learn from this book. Many of us have been so caught up in fretting over liberalism's faults -- its short attention span, its lack of staying power, and so on -- that we may not have noticed what the right has been doing. If we are discontent with liberalism, Karst might say, we have not seen anything yet. As a timely, well-organized treatment of the activities of one-half of the political spectrum, then, the book rates a solid "A." It is on the level of interpretation -- of understanding how we should see what is happening, and of identifying an appropriate response -- that the book falters. In setting out my reservations about Karst's book in these two respects -- interpretation and remedy -- I do not wish to be misunderstood. I have been a critic of some of Karst's previous work.(6) This book, however, is a spectacular, sound, engaging, and alarming work. The following observations are meant not so much as criticisms but as comments that Karst and others concerned over the right-wing counterrevolution may wish to address in future writing.

NEEDED: A BETTER THEORY OF INTERPRETATION AND REMEDY

As important as Law's Promise is in sounding a warning and analyzing the growth of the New Right, there are nevertheless issues that it does not treat fully. These include the question of cultural causation of the trends Karst details; the connection between symbolic and real-world entrenchment; and the issue of remedy -- why can't progressives simply talk back to the conservatives, marshaling their own symbolism to combat the powerful messages and programs of their counterparts on the right?

1. Causation: Why Is the Right-Wing Surge Taking Place Now?

   Karst, a committed liberal whose previous work champions the rights of gays, minorities, and women,(7) is obviously concerned about the implications of his own studies. The pattern of right-wing advance worries him because of its potential to render America even more unequal than it is now.(8) But his tools for representing and countering what is taking place are not as sharp as they might be. Many of his interpretive devices are sexual and Freudian. Thus, for example, Karst portrays the backlash against women and gays in terms of the sexual insecurities of worried men anxious to preserve the gender line (pp. 31-66). He describes the development of an ideology of manhood and the way in which society has come to equate masculinity with power (pp. 33-34). He presents the backlash against minorities in somewhat similar terms: blacks represent passion, a type of animalistic sexual freedom that likewise worries repressed whites (pp. 5-6, 72-74, 86-87). Hence, whites adopt a host of repressive measures aimed at keeping blacks "in their place."

   There is nothing wrong with trying to understand human phenomena in terms of psychological mechanisms like sexuality and fear of loss of control. But these explanations can account for at most only a part of what we are seeing today. Active, self-assured women have long threatened certain types of men.(9) By the same token, society has associated minorities of color with sexuality for centuries in hundreds of scripts, stories, narratives, and myths.(10) Finally, homosexuality has long inspired fear and disgust in many men.(11) The associations Karst identifies greatly antedate the current rise of...