The Quotable Black Scholar: Adolph L. Reed, Jr. on Race, Republicanism, and Rep. Tim Scott

University of Pennsylvania Political Science Professor Adolph L. Reed, Jr.

(Source: UIC Institue for the Humanities)

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I suspect that appointments like Mr. Scott’s are directed less at blacks — whom they know they aren’t going to win in any significant numbers — than at whites who are inclined to vote Republican but don’t want to have to think of themselves, or be thought of by others, as racist.

–Adolph L. Reed, Jr., “The Puzzle of Black Republicans,” The New York Times, December 18, 2012

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Biographical Notes: Adolph L. Reed, Jr. is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from Atlanta University. He is the author and editor of several books, including: Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene (New Press, 2000); Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era (University of Minnesota Press, 1999); Without Justice for All: The New Liberalism and our Retreat from Racial Equality (editor, Westview Press, 1999); W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line (Oxford University Press, 1997); The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon: The Crisis of Purpose in Afro-American Politics (Yale University Press, 1986); and Race, Politics and Culture: Critical Essays on the Radicalism of the 1960s (editor, Greenwood Press, 1986). W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought was awarded the National Conference of Black Political Scientists’ 1998 Outstanding Book Award. The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon and Race, Politics and Culture were each nominated for the APSA’s Ralph J. Bunche Award. His essays and articles have appeared in The Nation, The New York Times, Radical America, and numerous scholarly journals.