American Pharaoh
Dear Ester,
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StumbleUponWhere else but in Slate do the authors of a book get to complain about their review before it's even finished? I'm happy to have Cohen and Taylor join our discussion, but I do wish their complaints were more interesting. First, on my conflict of interest: It's a curious standard that says it's fine for a reviewer to despise the subject of a book and to judge it accordingly but somehow corrupt for him to have a fully disclosed, tenuous personal connection (relative of an employee of a relative of the subject). Before my mother worked for Rich Daley, she worked for Harold Washington. They, too, were "closely aligned." I've chosen to write infrequently about Chicago politics over the years, partly to avoid having to answer this sort of mindless criticism. Sigh.
I didn't say the authors have no view about Daley, merely that they don't come out and state it. And they don't, at least not with anywhere near the directness of their e-mail message. For instance, the passage they cite from the introduction notes that "civil rights activists saw Daley as an oppressor and a taskmaster"--not that the authors do. Put that way, it's a statement of indisputable fact, not a judgment. Thanks for sticking up for me by agreeing that the story of Chicago's open-housing fight is "oft-told." In addition to the books you cite, it was recounted in detail in Nicholas Lemann's best seller The Promised Land and the PBS documentary Eyes on the Prize, second series. I think Cohen and Taylor did a fine job with this narrative, but they're not breaking new ground, which was my only point. As for the complaint that Slate hired two white reviewers -- you're white? We could make the same complaint about Little, Brown's signing up a pair of Caucasians to explain Daley's racial insensitivity. But that would be absurd.
I certainly don't dispute the centrality of race to Daley's story--I had intended to focus my final entry on that topic today before I got distracted. I fully agree with the authors that Daley's efforts to maintain racial separation in housing and education constitute his most damning legacy. In fact, I'd go farther and say that one segregationist act--Daley's raising of Robert Taylor Homes, a two mile-long avenue of tower blocks that added to existing housing projects to create the largest expanse of concentrated poverty in the country--was his single greatest misdeed. This may have been the same thing that was happening in other cities at the same time, but Chicago's version of it was more massive in scale (Second City complex again) and thus created a horrific paradigm of the underclass poverty. They should remove the name of Robert Taylor, who was a decent integrationist, and rename them the Mayor Daley Homes.
But there are some important caveats to the racial critique of Daley, which the authors leave out. The first is yours--that focusing on racial separation in Chicago in isolation doesn't tell you a lot. Which of the great integrated cities of the North would Cohen and Taylor would compare Chicago with? Boston? Philadelphia? Cleveland? American Apartheid by Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, a book the authors cite in their bibliography, includes data showing that Chicago was by a very significant factor the most segregated Northern city in 1930. By the time of Daley's death, in 1976, Chicago had approximately the same degree of residential segregation as every other big city. In other words, during Daley's rule every other American city changed to become segregated in the way Chicago already was. This slightly complicates the argument that Daley made Chicago the most segregated city of them all.
Insofar as it's possible to read the mind of an inscrutable dead man, I think Cohen and Taylor correctly describe Daley's attitude toward race. Daley wasn't a racist in the way George Wallace was. He neither hated black people nor wished to deny them legal rights. But Daley was an ethnic separatist. He lived his entire life in Bridgeport, a tightly knit Irish enclave where blacks, above all other outsiders, were unwelcome. Bridgeport was his social model; he saw Chicago as a patchwork quilt, not a melting pot. Exclusionary neighborhoods were also Daley's fixed political units. Under the machine's ethnically based spoils system, every group, blacks included, got its share. We may have moved beyond this view both of government and urban society, but at the time it had the support not just of most whites but also of most blacks, who continued to vote for Daley in election after election. William Dawson, the head of what Cohen and Taylor call the black sub-machine, explicitly opposed the integration of public housing. He wanted black votes concentrated in the wards he controlled.
You could go a step farther and say that racial separation was a malign policy with some beneficial consequences as well as the obvious harmful ones. While Chicago lost population during the Daley years, most of its middle-class ethnic neighborhoods remained intact. The city suffered a mitigated version of the white flight that destroyed the tax base and created a downward spiral in Detroit and elsewhere. A big part of the reason for this was that white Chicagoans knew that Daley had the power to forestall busing and racial integration in their neighborhoods. Chicago's white ethnics simply were not going to live alongside blacks in the 1950s and '60s. Daley deserves our scorn for not resisting this reality. But I doubt that it would have made much difference if he had.
It's been a pleasure clubbing with you, Ester. I look forward to your final comments.
All the best,
Jacob
This week, a discussion of American Pharaoh: Richard J. Daley: His Battle for Chicago and the Nation, by Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor (click here to buy the book). Jacob Weisberg is Slate's chief political correspondent. Ester Fuchs is director of the Center for Urban Research and Policy at Columbia University and teaches at Barnard College. She is the author of Mayors and Money: Fiscal Policy in New York and Chicago (click here to buy it). 
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Response from the authors:
We are the authors of American Pharaoh. We've been reading "The Book Club", and we have to say: the book Jacob Weisberg describes bears little relation to the one that we wrote.
The authors "never really tell us," Weisberg asserts, what they think of Daley. Jeez. The book is entitled "American Pharaoh," and we state plainly in the introduction why we call Daley that. We say that he did a tremendous amount to build Chicago up into the successful city it is today (Pharaoh as builder). And we say that he did it at the expense of blacks, by building racial segregation into the very concrete of the city (Pharaoh as oppressor). That seems like a pretty clear take on Daley. And, ultimately, a deeply critical one.
Race is at the center of our book--and it pains us that the two (white) writers in this exchange fail to see its centrality. We make a very serious accusation against Daley: that he was one of the greatest racial segregators in U.S. history. And, again in the introduction, we lay a very disturbing legacy at Daley's feet. We write:
The blacks we know who have read our book have had no trouble seeing the utter importance of race to the Daley story, or of appreciating what American Pharaoh adds to the debate. William Julius Wilson--Professor of Afro-American Studies at Harvard, and perhaps the nation's foremost scholar of race and class in Chicago--saw just what we were up to. He called the book "a tour de force" and said that he had never read a more compelling biography than our "brilliant" one of Daley.
Weisberg dismisses the book's important discussion of racial segregation in Chicago as "oft-told." But that's nonsense. Far too few Americans know this story. That white mobs of more than 5,000 turned out regularly on the South Side of Chicago to stop a few blacks from moving into their neighborhoods? That the U.S. Secretary of Education impounded millions of dollars in school aid to Chicago because Daley was segregating the public schools as intentionally as Gov. Wallace or Gov. Faubus? That Daley used his clout to get the money freed up--and forced President Johnson to fire the poor Secretary of Education? And that Martin Luther King brought the civil rights movement north to Chicago in 1966 and was utterly defeated by a devious Daley? Weisberg may know a lot of this because he's written a book that touches on it. But we can assure you that most intelligent, educated people we've talked to in the years we've worked on this book know little of this important chapter in America's racial history. And keep your eyes and ears open next Martin Luther King Day: the talk is all of Montgomery, Alabama and Albany, Georgia. The "oft-told" story of Chicago is rarely told.
It's unfortunate for your readers that this Book Club is a discussion between two people who both seem to take a dim view of our book. It would not have been hard to find greater diversity of opinion, since the overall reaction to American Pharaoh has been gratifyingly positive. (The four trade journals--Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, Library Journal, and Booklist--all praised it highly in starred reviews. The Wall Street Journal picked it as an Editor's Choice last week. And David Broder, reviewing it in the Chicago Tribune, called it "splendid.") It would also have been nice, in a book about race in Chicago, to have had at least one black person in on the discussion.
And a final point. Weisberg admits from the outset of this discussion that he comes to it with some biases. He mentions a few that really aren't (ancient history about his views about Daley and his family's). And he buries down below one that really is: his mother is now serving in the current Mayor Daley's cabinet. Weisberg seems to subscribe to the fashionable but wrong view that if you disclose a conflict it isn't a conflict. In fact, that his mother is closely aligned with Richard M. Daley--and draws a paycheck from him--is the sort of thing that might well affect his take on our book. American Pharaoh is very tough on Mrs Weisberg's boss's father--and on her boss himself. (We recount, for example, how Daley, Jr benefited from questionable court appointments handed out by machine judges.) Does Slate have any rules at all about conflict of interest? And was there really no-one without a parent working in Chicago City Hall available to participate in this discussion?
Weisberg promises us some "thoughts about the ways in which Daley was good for Chicago" in his next missive. Fine. Chicago is nearly half racial minorities these days. We sure hope Weisberg will endeavor to include blacks--and especially the tens of thousands of poor blacks living in Daley era high-rise projects--in the Chicago that Daley was "good for."
--Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor
(To reply, click here.)
To the authors of the book:
When Richard Daley ascended to Mayor's Office in the middle 50's he was faced with a horrendous situation of spreading urban blight, a non existent black middle class (this wasn't Baltimore), and increasing black poverty and social pathology that threatened to drive every white family out of the Chicago with the exception of those living along the Gold Coast. And it continued to get worse. He had to take actions that would at least temporarily stabilize the growing turmoil. I wonder what Cohen and Taylor would have done 40 years ago without the benefit of 20-20 hindsight they enjoy today. So here's the central question. Would these ever so enlightened writers have toughed it out at 34th and Indiana or 63rd and Woodlawn? Maybe they tell us in the book.
Today they can live in an integrated neighborhood, in large part because of the Daley policies.
--Epicuria
(To reply, click here.)
To the authors of the book:
What interests me is the extent to which Chicago seems to have done better than other cities. For one, they had a way of assembling a long-lasting governing coalition. Mega-projects were one result; fiscal discipline another. Were those amongst the reason for Chicago's better survival in the face of change? I would like to know if the dynasty has lasted because Chicago was doing fairly well for other reasons (retail & transportation base vs manufacturing, or whatever), making the Daleys an anachronism surviving because the forces of change were much weaker. Or if the dynasty itself helped Chicago cope with change and hence gave benefit as well as the clear harms. On the practical level of considering what lessons to draw for other times & places, did the Daleys in short do much good? Or did they survive only because Chicago in some other way was advantaged?
On the moral level, I never heard of anyone defending a "machine" as a good thing in itself. I would be surprised if anyone did. The racial discrimination is certainly a sufficient charge to tar the machine morally, but it is not necessary: there are many other charges available. The 1968 police riots are nearly enough by themselves. So I don't see the use in morally debunking that which has so little moral stature to begin with. But it would be interesting to learn if any of the machine's basic strategies had useful results, and if so, which ones and why. If you care to write a book about that, I may buy it.
--John Wernecken
(To reply, click here.)
Further Response from The Fray:
Though Daley played a factor in his city's survival, Chicago avoided decline because it was far more economically diverse than other "rust belt" cities. Unlike Detroit, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Cleveland, Chicago grew on the strength of transportation (Great Lakes portage and the railroad) and commerce (retail, wholesale, and finance) rather than heavy manufacturing alone. Certainly, the city produced many goods--meat, steel, and harvesters are the best known. And it was the populations that worked in these industries that suffered most during the downturn of the seventies. This is why the South Side is so downcast today; the good times left when the steel mills closed.
--Andrew W. Cohen
(To reply, click here.)
I was born and raised in Mayor Daley's neighborhood of Bridgeport in Chicago during most of Richard J. Daley's term in office. It is my opinion that if an analyst does not investigate and understand the inner workings of the forces within that environment, the tenor of the times and the will of the vast majority of people in the city, there is no room to critique how and why certain decisions had been made and why certain actions had been taken.
The seventies radicals clamored for government 'by the people'. Upon reflection, one might notice that the working class world that Mayor Daley represented was the vast majority of 'the people' as first or second generation immigrants with little or no formal education. He represented a city run by the blue collar working man and woman in the ethnic (nationality as well as race) neighborhoods and not the minority of 'elites' on the north shore or intellectuals in Hyde Park who assailed his pragmatic meat and potatoes philosophy. He was in office because the vast majority of the city's population wanted him there--for one reason or another. And like it or not, the city worked and still does.
The Mayor did the best he could within the context of the circumstances. I did not understand that until I grew up. Perhaps the Mayor's critics would do well to do the same--grow up that is.
--Helen Marie Guditis
(To reply, click here.)
I recommend future Daley biographers focus on his background as an accountant and what impact having an Accountant-Mayor has on a city. So many of the political moves made by Mayor Daley are rooted in a mastery of budgeting and decision-making based on budgeting. When viewed with this in mind, his mystery and manipulation often become logical and sensible budgeting decisions. What other mayor had such a firm grasp on this vital political function?
Political biographers have painted a portrait of Daley using their skills and knowledge as political historians and journalists. But Daley's story is more than a story about a politician. It is also the story about how power is attained when one fully understands big city budgeting and uses it to advantage. Chicago's success has a lot to do with smart budgeting. The political turf battles often occurred when Daley spun the costs of maintaining big city government off to the surrounding governments in Cook County and Illinois, while keeping the decision-making within the city. Smart. Very Smart. Unlike New York, Chicago no longer has the costs of prisons, hospitals, transportation systems or housing, yet the city has the final word on all these expensive public budget-busters. This is only one example where Daley's accounting expertise and position as Chicago's mayor created a new political landscape.
--Al
(To reply, click here.)
Now that we've seen a smattering of commentary from apologists for the corrupt and racist Daley regime I guess we can stop being mystified at people in other countries who don't get rid of their corrupt and autocratic governments, disregarding the high ideals of people in the U.S. I guess we can expect new reassessments of Mussolini, the Shah of Iran, and Robert Moses in the same vein.
--Jack McCullough
(To reply, click here.)