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Uneasy Alliances: Race and Party Competition in America. By Paul Frymer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. 214p. $16.95 paper.
The multiracial extravaganza staged at the 2000 Republican convention reminds us of the centrality of race in our national politics. In a work that effectively challenges cherished notions of how the political system functions, Paul Frymer argues that through most of U.S. history the major parties have lacked incentives to promote the interests of African Americans.
Central to Frymer's analysis is the concept of capture. A group is captive when it is so small and politically homogeneous that one party can afford to take it for granted and the other can afford to write it off. This is normally the case for black Americans, who were overwhelmingly Republican from the Civil War until the New Deal and then became almost monolithically Democratic in the 1960s. In three chapters that trace this history, Frymer argues that the modern party system was created in the 1830s precisely in order to remove slavery from the agenda; after that goal failed in the late 1840s and 1850s, African Americans entered their first period of party captivity. From 1865 to the 1930s, Republicans enjoyed their allegiance and perceived that there was little they had to do to keep it. The Democrats were the party of white supremacy, and Republicans, who...