Changing Political Fortunes: Race, Class, and “Black Power” in the Rise and Fall of a Black Urban Regime in Oakland

Abstract

This paper analyzes the connection between black political protest and mobilization, and the rise and fall of a black urban regime. The case of Oakland is instructive because by the mid-1960s the ideology of “black power” was important in mobilizing two significant elements of the historically disparaged black community: (1) supporters of the Black Panthers and, (2) neighborhood organizations concentrated in West Oakland. Additionally, Oakland like the city of Atlanta also developed a substantial black middle class that was able to mobilize along the lines of its own “racialized” class interests. Collectively, these factors were important elements in molding class-stratified “black power” and coalitional activism into the institutional politics of a black urban regime in Oakland. Ultimately, reversal factors would undermine the black urban regime in Oakland. These included changes in the race and class composition of the local population: black out-migration, the “new immigration,” increasing (predominantly white) gentrification, and the continued lack of opportunity for poor and working-class blacks, who served as the unrequited base of the black urban regime. These factors would change the fortunes of black political life in Oakland during the turbulent neoliberal era.

Citation

Brown, E.S. (2017), "Changing Political Fortunes: Race, Class, and “Black Power” in the Rise and Fall of a Black Urban Regime in Oakland", On the Cross Road of Polity, Political Elites and Mobilization (Research in Political Sociology, Vol. 24), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 215-256. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0895-993520160000024008