Vol. 71, No. 4 (November 2005): 951-952
Book Review
The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggle Against Urban Inequality. By Rhonda Y. Williams. Transgressing Boundaries: Studies in Black Politics and Black Communities. (New York and other cities: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. xiv, 306. $29.95, ISBN 0-19-515890-3.)
The firestorm of controversy surrounding the release of the Moynihan report thirty years ago – a critique of African Americans for the failures of their own communities – continues to weigh heavily over the scholarship on urban public policy. Since that time, historians, anthropologists, and sociologists have attempted to illuminate the various ways in which African Americans have not only been affected by urban public policy but have been agents of such changes. Scholars, including historian Arnold Hirsh, in his Chicago study Making the Second Ghetto (Cambridge University Press, 1983), and anthropologist Steven Gregory, in his New York study Black Corona (Princeton University Press, 1999), have gone a distance in deconstructing public policy, showing how poor and working-class African Americans have negotiated the shifting terrain of welfare policy.
Rhonda Y. Williams builds on this scholarship by providing an intimate account of the leadership role of black women in public housing policy. In The Politics of Public Housing, Williams advances the increasingly new way of looking at the role of black women in American society. Through the lives and struggles of several black women in Baltimore, she demonstrates how African American women shaped public housing over the span of forty years. The editor of an innovative book on historical pedagogy, Teaching the American Civil Rights Movement, Williams accepts – to a degree – the failure of public policy. She correctly insists, however, that the failure has been defined in discriminatory ways, fueling the widespread view of black women as powerless victims. Instead she emphasizes their politicization and leadership in securing their community’s rights in the midst of often harrowing conditions.
In Williams’ analysis black women are the agents of positive change in public housing. The most original part of the book is her use of interviews in shedding light on the subjects of her study. Her creative use of oral history and straight-forward writing style enhance her central thesis. Unfortunately, while broadening the scope of what may be considered “political,” by including the daily acts of resistance by women, with few exceptions, she leaves out traditional party politics from her study. In the process, she never defines precisely what she means by “politics,” despite the compelling title of her book. One of the most striking examples of this omission, is the almost complete absence of the institutional role of the Democratic Party in perpetuating the poverty industry. Moreover, she draws a sharp distinction between black and white Democratic officials, and presupposes that race – as opposed to partisanship – is the overriding consideration in the enactment of policy (pp. 233-234).
William’s description and analysis of black women and public housing policy adds a new dimension to the growing body of scholarship on this topic and she should be applauded for her efforts. It is perhaps appropriate that during the post Reagan and Clinton eras, where the failures of both major parties – at the federal and local level – is being increasingly discussed, that a study such as Williams’ demonstrates the centrality of poor and working-class black women in shaping their own lives.
Omar H. Ali