Challenging traditional approaches to race and politics, Joel Olson's The Abolition of White Democracy offers a theoretical account that is revolutionary, fresh and provocative. Though reliant on the contributions of fore-running theorists, Olson quickly distances himself from the typical modes of forward seeking integration. He argues instead for abandoning such aims, alternatively working towards a subversion of democracy as it is practiced in the U.S., which has been and continues to be consistent with the maintenance of race prejudice.

Olson begins his study with a thorough examination of the historical relationship between blacks and whites in the United States, locating his argument in a structural interpretation of blacks as "the other." He assumes that, contrary to traditional interpretation, democracy and racism are not antithetical, but rather originated together in America, generating a parasitic association. Democracy is predicated foremost on citizenship, and as Olson suggests, the idea of American citizenship could be meaningful only dichotomously. To create and nurture the new American citizen of the early-nineteenth century, it was necessary to create the non-citizen, a label readily imposed on new and previously freed Africans laboring in the booming agricultural sector. Initially, citizenship was offered only to wealthy white Americans. However, the likelihood of poor, disenfranchised whites and blacks uniting under mutual interests caused concern, and before long, citizenship was extended to all whites. Granting citizenship to all whites made race the main point of identification in American society. Whiteness therefore became a privilege, trumping other common social markers and pitting whites against everyone else in society. This antinomic relationship created the inevitable problem of whiteness, which Olson believes continues to haunt America to this day.

Olson isolates two major problems plaguing political theory's attempt to confront racial inequality. First, he believes too much emphasis has been placed on efforts towards inclusion, thereby prolonging the project of integration, which is inevitably limited. While he acknowledges the achievements of Reconstruction and the Civil Rights eras, Olson is concerned that African-Americans need more than just equal standing under the law. Participation, he argues, still exists within the white framework, as efforts towards traditional assimilation only strengthen the tyranny of the white majority. Blacks need both a greater incentive to participate in society and the forum necessary to make a meaningful contribution to it; these contributions, Olson insists, must be driven by the practical interests of the Black community. In this way, maintaining some semblance of exclusion is more empowering to the Black community, lest they fall between the cracks of privileged white citizenship.

Since Olson holds American democracy responsible for fostering racism from its inception, his prescriptions necessitate a post-democratic solution. This solution is the second dilemma he directs at political theory. Because democracy, and to a greater degree liberalism, ostensibly extend equal liberties to an entire society, minority groups desiring change are disposed to act within the democratic paradigm. But rather than perpetuating the false notion of equal citizenry in America, Olson suggests individuals transcend these general categories and unite instead under collective, shared interests.

In this way, Olson's project is best understood as adding to a lineage of thinkers concerned with minority alienation and social power dynamics; Foucaultian themes and a Marxist thread- reaching back to Du Bois- are present throughout his critique.

Too much scholarship is bound and dulled by the parameters of liberalism. Olson believes that more imaginative theories-those that can exist outside liberalism's traditional framework-are necessary for abolishing the stranglehold white supremacy continues to have on political and social life. Further, he thinks the growing reliance on multiculturalism to cure social ills is misguided and skirts the larger problem of whiteness as power. In other words, relocating issues of race and power to a realm of private concern by analyzing differences as ethnic and individual, absolves government of the responsibility of ensuring equal opportunity. For example, Olson highlights the disproportionate effects of education, housing, healthcare and environmental crises on minorities around the country, despite the inability of the American government to see them as such.

Throughout the book, Olson displays a keen understanding of the nuances that social change has brought about, though he remains unconvinced that many of its products will positively contribute to a more dynamic sense of freedom and solidarity. Though today blacks occupy a number of prominent posts in our socio-economic sphere, these individuals rarely identify with blacks of lower socio-economic status, many of whom remain marginalized beyond their white counterparts. In this way, white America's expanding intimacy and comfort with the Black individual only serves to further alienate the black masses.

Yet Olson is far from hopeless. He references promising historical examples whereby black radical tradition has successfully limited the white political imagination, challenging common practices and understandings about American democracy. These new political visions display the radical capabilities of democracy pushed to new extremes. A collective social movement, Olson maintains, has the power to transport us to another place. In this case, the place in mind is extra- or post-democratic, a "face-to-face" democracy that transcends race and other material difference, drawing its inspiration from the abolitionist tradition. This post-democratic system, once realized, will have the capacity to fulfill the promises of freedom that American democracy claimed to have accomplished nearly three hundred years ago. It would, Olson believes, extend the American Creed to all members of American society

For all his diagnostic strengths, Olsen's prescriptions are hamstrung by many of the social ills they strive to correct. Ultimately, he runs into the same difficulties as his predecessors in theorizing race and politics. The strengths of whiteness and privilege have persisted for so long because they serve as a safeguard, a buffer or "glass floor," of self-interest for the white citizen. It is hard to construct a viable motive for the white individual to risk his own privilege and autonomy for the benefit of the minority. Throughout American history, as Olson shows, solidarity has rested almost exclusively on one's race. It remains to be seen whether or not self-interest more than prejudice can be transcended.

 

Melissa Rothberg, The University of Chicago

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