George Clement Bond on Inequality

At least since the days of Plato and Aristotle, the existence of ‘inequality’ in human societies has engaged many eminent thinkers. The intellectuals writing on social inequality, however, have often been focusing on slightly different phenomena. Plato, for instance, primarily concentrated on wealth inequalities, contending ‘…there should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor, again, excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil…’. ¹ The Platonic tradition continues today in the contemporary writings of scholars like Joseph Stiglitz, Thomas Piketty, Matthew Rognlie, Vivekinan Ashok, Ebonya Washington and Ilyana Kusiemko. In addition, Oxfam, the Pew Research Center and the World Economic Forum are among the many institutions that are examining the practical implications of global wealth inequalities. ²

Aristotle, on the other hand, was mainly concerned with the ‘natural’ inequities among individuals and the implications of these inequities for social organization. Describing the extremities of the natural human continuum, he argued, for example, that a Slave is by nature someone who is only capable of being ruled and that a Hero is by nature someone who is only capable of ruling (Foss, 1991). The publication of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men in 1755 ushered the Aristotelian tradition into the modern era. While Rousseau and those of like mind champion social equality for human beings, others, through totalitarian and eugenicist documents such as Mein Kampf and The Bell Curve, use ‘natural’ inequalities as justifications for domination.

Contemporary social anthropologists, like George Clement Bond, draw upon both of these traditions, but usually place their emphasis on social stratification. Everywhere, individuals seem to be ranked into status categories that impact their access to their society’s rewards. In this context, ‘inequality’ describes discriminatory systems based on ‘race’, gender, ethnicity, religion or social class. Along with the writings of Foucault, Bourdieu, Marx, Weber and scores of others, Bond’s work falls into this category of thinking about inequality.

For some time now, my research has focused on what I am calling the Great American Contradiction. This contradiction is the fact of vigorous implementation of ‘racial’ inequality in the United States despite the all-men-are-created-equal promise of a social and political democracy. The progressive 18th century philosophies supporting civic democracy have unrelentingly confronted the ideologies of ‘racial’ domination for the last 250 years. The ever-present eruptions are usually small and comparatively harmless, unknown except to the participants. Bond refers to these daily racially tinged or gender tinged confrontations as ‘public displays of subordination’ (Bond, 2001: 236).

Not infrequently, however, the simmering inconsistency between the theory and practice of democracy in America erupts in a major public way. Perhaps the presence of a deep recurring contradiction in our national character should not be surprising, since the very document that immortalized ‘all men are created equal’ also enshrined the idea that some Americans could be regarded as three-fifths of a person. So, as I put pen to paper, the nation is struggling with events in Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island, New York. There may perhaps be uncertainty about many aspects of the police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, but in the public discourse one clearly hears the clash between the all-men-are-created-equal part of our national identity and the powerful, usually unacknowledged, ethos that reinforces ‘racial’ inequality. ³

My research premise has been that ‘thick’ ethnographic examination of any of the very public flare-ups stemming from the Great American Contradiction can reveal useful information about how inequality is imposed and sustained in the United States. Further, by extrapolation, since Americans are unlikely to be substantially different from other nationalities, in all probability, one can learn quite a bit from these specific incidents about the nature of social domination everywhere.

As my theme is social inequality and as social inequality was a major theme in the writings of George Clement Bond, in this paper, I show the depth and universal applicability of many of Bond’s ideas by applying them to my own ethnography.

I teach at Rutgers University, where a very public confrontation about the Great American Contradiction occurred in 1994. In that year, the Rutgers University president, Dr Francis Lawrence, shook the university and shocked the nation by proclaiming that African Americans did not score as well as European Americans on the SAT(Scholastic Achievement Test)) because of their ‘genetic hereditary background’. ¹ What he actually said in a rambling answer to a question from a faculty member was:

Assessment … Okay. The issue: outcome assessment versus input assessment. Once again … whenever you try to kind of generalize across the board you basically screw three quarters of the population. When you’re looking at assessment, you’ve got to look at the input. Do we assess in the same way at Rutgers University that we would in an open admissions county college? Do we assess … Just look at the SATs. The average SAT for African Americans is 750. Do we set standards in the future so that we don’t admit anybody with a national test? Or do we deal with a disadvantaged population that … doesn’t have … that genetic hereditary background to have a higher average? ⁴

This off-hand utterance seemed to say that there were innate, natural reasons for African Americans to have historically languished at the lower rungs of American society. Throughout the spring of 1995, the Great American Contradiction was thrust into full display. Massive demonstrations by Rutgers students demanding Dr Lawrence’s dismissal disrupted all three of the university campuses. The students, and their supporters, indicted the president and all of American society, insisting upon immediate and concrete steps to realize the all-men-are-created-equal part of our national ethos. Support for the student demands came from many quarters across the nation. Dr Lawrence’s defenders, on the other hand, claimed the statement was a slip of the tongue, not representative of the president, the university or of American society. The individuals and institutions concerned with the maintenance of social hierarchy lined up solidly behind the Rutgers chief executive.

Because the Great American Contradiction was once again being held up to national and international scrutiny, commentators like Rush Limbaugh, William Raspberry, George Will, Bob Herbert, Angela Davis and Jesse Jackson Jr. were among the many prominent individuals who took public positions on the events. Bryant Gumbel and Phil Donahue featured the Rutgers imbroglio on their popular television shows. Major newspapers such as The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Los Angeles Times not only covered the Rutgers affair as national news but also found space for editorial comment, supporting Dr Lawrence.

While these events were occurring, and for some time thereafter, I gathered ethnographic data about the episode. The analysis of those data, as well as the use of other sources, has led me to posit a partial toolkit for understanding basic elements in structures of social inequality. Focusing specifically on the behavior of socially dominant actors, conceptual and analytical instruments in the toolkit include:

George Bond’s main publications having to do with social inequality are: ‘Historical fragments and social constructions in northern Zambia: A personal journey’ (2000); ‘Ideology, dominance, and inequality: Gender and control in Muyombe’ (2001); and the ‘Introduction’ to Social Construction of the Past (Bond and Gilliam, 1994). Bond’s conceptualizations in these writings help support my attempts at theorizing social inequality. In this paper, I look specifically at their applicability to the concepts of ‘hoaxes’ and ‘clientage’.

Although his attention was on gender and social control, Bond’s ‘Ideology, dominance, and inequality’ documents many of the universals in other manifestations of social domination. The purpose of the paper, he says, is to ‘… Examine the manner in which ideologies of inequality… are constructed.…’ He continues, ‘My position is that the components of these ideologies are fabricated from the meanings and values [attached] to organic substances and essences.… the chapter is concerned with intersections of mechanisms of hegemonic and ideological subjugation with momentary expressions of human agency and resistance’ (2001: 229).

The critical role of systems of beliefs in domination is indisputable. But, to emphasize the exact nature of their function, I refer to most of these ideological beliefs as ‘hoaxes’. ‘Hoax’ more accurately captures the manipulative and deceptive purpose of most hegemonic beliefs. What I am calling hoaxes are, in Bond’s words, ‘deeply embedded in the local cultural terrain’. ‘… [T]he essential feature of organic ideologies is that they are “necessary to a given structure”’ (2000: 78). Drawing upon Paul Ricoeur, Bond reiterates the fact that ‘an ideology is something in which men live and think… We think from it rather than about it’ (2000: 78). ‘In its most simple and pragmatic form’, Bond concludes, ‘I take ideology to be a construction of ideas about the world … A system of ideas related to social inequality’ (2001: 232).

As in most dominance behavior, the Rutgers fiasco was rooted in several different hegemonic-oriented hoaxes. The most central hoax, of course, was the hoax of ‘race’, an ‘organic ideology’ in America if there ever was one. The ‘race’ hoax has been very effective for domination because, as Weber declared, the most efficient and complete forms of social closure are those that draw upon descent and lineage. But ‘race’ is nevertheless a hoax. Science says there are no ‘races’ in our species. ⁵ DNA testing is the latest technique to make that clear. Even though environment and geographic isolation have made clusters of some mutations more prevalent in some populations, no one can find a genetic marker, or set of markers, that distinguishes one ‘race’ from another. ⁶ In reporting on the remarkable feat of mapping the human genome, scientists went out of their way to state that the ‘concept of race has no genetic or scientific basis. …Race is a social concept, not a scientific one.’ ⁷

But ‘race’ is one of the hoaxes that masks the Great American Contradiction. Because of its crucial validating function, socially dominant behavior never challenges the ‘race’ hoax. Indeed, socially dominant behavior constantly seeks legitimation for the ‘race’ hoax. As is typically the case throughout American society, during the Rutgers debacle, this hoax was never brought into question, despite the fact that the contentious events were occurring at an institution with esteemed scientists and scholars and even though ‘race’ was the central idea in the president’s statement.

Defusing the crisis could have easily occurred by repudiating this central hoax. The president, as a scholar and as head of a major university, could have said, ‘There are no “races” among homo sapiens. Therefore, there cannot be intellectual differences based on “race”. I was clearly misunderstood.’ Instead, because it continues to be an essential anchor for institutions of social inequality, in this situation, as in others, the idea of ‘race’ had to be shielded. To forcefully proclaim the actual facts about ‘race’ would not only have robbed some Americans of their highly prized ascribed status but it probably appeared to risk the weakening of domination throughout the entire society. There would clearly be a problem for its highly visible tools such as education, political representation, ascribed pecking orders, employment and wealth distribution if the idea of ‘race’ were jettisoned. Bond’s notion of ‘ideologies of inequality’ could not have been more precisely documented.

Another prominent hoax in the Rutgers affair had to do with SAT scores. President Lawrence’s comment drew upon the SAT hoax. It was classic dominance behavior because it provided ‘… explanations for racial inequality that puts the blame on the motivation, preparation … of blacks themselves’ (Smith et al., 2001). The hoax is that the SAT is an impartial, accurate measure of students’ intellectual ability and a valid scale for determining likely success in post-secondary education.

Underscoring the impact of interlocking hoaxes in systems of domination and substantiating Bond’s emphasis on the role of ‘organic ideologies’, the SAT hoax is intimately intertwined with the ‘race’ hoax. The Rutgers president correctly reported the national average for African Americans’ SAT scores as about 750. Many Americans, of course, eagerly interpreted this as evidence that the society’s racial hierarchy was legitimate – that there was no bias, unfairness or unjustified inequality. In addition, they assumed that Dr Lawrence was also talking about the scores of African American students at Rutgers. In actual fact, though, in 1995 the admission guidelines at the Rutgers New Brunswick campuses provided for summary rejection of applicants with scores as low as 750. And the Rutgers’ admissions offices did not use lower criteria for admitting African American applicants as the Rutgers president’s remarks seemed to imply. (Swanson, 1995)

As with every segment of the population, African American students at Rutgers had a range of scores on the SAT. Some of them scored very well. In fact, in 1985, in a bid to compete with prestigious private universities for high-achieving students of color, Rutgers established the James Dickson Carr scholarship program, targeted at this talented group. ⁸ At the time of the president’s remark, there were over 300 African Americans in this program who had an average SAT score of 1180. This means that at least 9%–10% of the African American undergraduates at Rutgers when Dr Lawrence spoke actually outscored their typical European American classmates on the SAT.

Moreover, roughly two-thirds of African Americans on the New Brunswick campuses were admitted as ‘regular’ students. During the academic year 1994–1995, there were approximately 2263 African Americans in this category. According to a university admissions officer, their estimated average SAT score was 950–970. ‘This is not as good as the average Rutgers University student but far better than the US average … which is made up of predominantly white students.’ ⁹ Indeed, in 1994, the median SAT score for European Americans nationwide was 938 (Atkins, 1995; Greenwald et al., 1996; Shipler, 1995). So, on the whole, with regard to the SAT, normal admission African American undergraduates at Rutgers were outscoring the majority of European Americans nationwide. This is the opposite of what the public heard in the president’s remarks. Here, too, because of its function in legitimating America’s racial hierarchy, in the dramatic comings and goings during the crisis in central New Jersey, those with hegemonic interests never challenged or clarified the SAT hoax as it pertained to Rutgers.

The other major hoax at Rutgers was about affirmative action. In the midst of a heated national debate, most Americans thought President Lawrence’s utterance meant that affirmative action was required in order for African American students to qualify for admission into Rutgers. His statement seemed to say that the university regularly employed ‘affirmative action’ in its admissions program. Indeed, many of those who supported the president argued that his desire to promote affirmative action attested to his lack of racial bias.

In contrast to popular perceptions, lowering of admission standards did not occur. As already mentioned, African Americans accepted as regular students by Rutgers did have SAT scores in the range that qualified them for admission without ‘affirmative action’. Moreover, SAT scores are not the sole basis for admissibility. In determining the likely success of each applicant, university admissions officers must, among other factors, assess whether under-funded school districts and/or poorer economic backgrounds have been constraints on applicants’ previous achievement. Although this practice is fair, appropriate, responsible and inoffensive ‘in theory’, when the practice is perceived as benefiting lower ranking citizens, people with strong dominance inclinations often attack it as ‘preferential admissions’, ‘policies of favoritism’, ‘reverse discrimination’ and ‘racial preferences’. ¹⁰ Even at the time of the incident, Rutgers’ admissions officers explained that they did not utilize different standards for people of color. ¹¹ That explanation was not heard amidst the clamor to sustain the hoaxes that support America’s racial pecking orders.

The introduction to Social Construction of the Past gives further insight into Bond’s views on inequality. Here, there is another clear relationship between his views and my ethnography. Bond’s thesis is that ‘social constructions of the past are crucial elements in the process of domination, subjugation, resistance and collusion. Representing the past… is an expression and a source of power’ (Bond and Gilliam, 1994). He stresses the ways in which the past is invented.

Moving towards a theory of socially dominant behavior in the context of the Great American Contradiction, one can, in Bond’s terminology, conceptualize the ‘race’, SAT and affirmative action hoaxes as ‘organic ideology’. But the Rutgers ethnography suggests an additional, and equally instructive, category of dominance ideology – namely, ad hoc hoaxes. Bond intimated as much in showing how the past is conveniently invented or reinvented. These could be conceptualized as ‘non-organic ideologies’, which Gramsci referred to as ‘arbitrary’ ideologies (Bond, 2000: 78).

To exonerate President Lawrence, a sterling administrative record with respect to ‘race’ was created for him. Administrators and members of the Board of Governors initiated the ad hoc hoax. In its resolution supporting Dr Lawrence, the University Senate argued ‘Our knowledge of him and his outstanding record of promoting opportunities for minorities at Rutgers University give us no reason to believe that he meant what was said, and much reason to believe that he does not …’ (Kalita, 1995). Board member Richard Levao, in dismissing the idea that an investigation was required, asserted, ‘… Lawrence’s record as a “champion of high minority enrollment and a lifetime of dedication” to minority advancement speaks for itself’ (Doby, 1995). Employing ‘the echo chamber’, the mainstream media enthusiastically established Lawrence’s ‘admirable record’ with regard to students of color. ¹²

As in the cultures Bond studied, ‘… historical narratives contain[ed] hegemonic and ideological components that are critical to relating authority to legitimacy…’ (Bond, 2000: 77). Lawrence had articulated a dominance template that went far beyond admission to Rutgers University – the very template, in fact, which millions of other Americans used to conceal the Great American Contradiction. Hence, because he was implicitly affirming the legitimacy of racial domination in our society, in the minds of large numbers of Americans, in a phenomenon akin to Adam Hochschild’s ‘heroic victimization’, Lawrence was symbolically transformed into a hero in the Rutgers events. Hochschild wrote about domination in King Leopold II’s Congo, Stalin’s Soviet Union and apartheid South Africa. He related how these vastly different instances of tyranny were similar in that the oppressors – the brutal Belgian colonialists, the ruthless Stalinists and the racist settlers – were glorified, constructed mythologically as virtuous and just heroes. This was, he contends, a means of controlling the way in which people understood and rationalized those horrible acts – a means of controlling their memory.

In the Rutgers fracas, Lawrence was likewise publicly presented as both hero and victim in the events his actions had precipitated. He was portrayed as having ‘a long record of favoritism toward blacks’. He was said to have ‘impeccable’ credentials and an ‘exemplary academic record for minorities’ … he ‘built his administrative reputation largely as a champion of minority enrollment’ … he had ‘a lifetime of opening the doors of higher education to minorities’ … he was ‘a noted practitioner of civil rights’ … ‘he made Rutgers No. 1 in black enrollment among state universities’ … ‘…on this subject, he is unimpeachable’ … he is a ‘champion of equality’ and ‘a dedicated activist in the cause of affirmative action.’ ¹³

But, the ‘record’ was in actuality egregiously falsified. It was an ad hoc hoax. In Bond’s terms, it was non-organic ideology in support of racial domination. The Rutgers President had almost no positive record with respect to students of color. Tulane University, where he spent his entire graduate, professorial and administrative career before Rutgers, was a conservative institution founded with a bequest specifying that the property be used exclusively for the education of European American males (Braun, 1995). When Lawrence enrolled as a graduate student in 1959, Tulane was a ‘lily-white’ institution. And while he ‘…certainly didn’t cruise the Louisiana bayous in a pickup truck and white sheets, [neither] did he march on Gibson Hall demanding an end to its whites-only policy when he was a graduate student and a faculty member at a segregated Tulane’ (Braun, 1995). The first five African American undergraduates were admitted to Tulane in 1963. ¹⁴ It was only in 1984, 15 years after Lawrence joined the administration, that the first African American professor was hired to teach undergraduate men and women, and, in 1994, the time of the Rutgers crisis, only 12 of the 500 professors teaching undergraduates at Tulane were Americans of African descent (Braun, 1995).

Although Lawrence eventually had responsibility for many day-to-day activities at Tulane, the impetus for progressive change in the institution seems to come from Eamon Kelly, who was President of Tulane from 1981 to 1998. After leaving the Ford Foundation, Kelly set out to create a ‘Harvard of the South’. In his October 1981 inaugural address, ‘Tulane’s new president understood that a sea change was underway in the world of private higher education … [his] speech stressed the themes of diversity and pluralism in describing the unique contribution of private universities to higher learning in the United States’ (Mohr and Gordon, 2001: 439–440). Kelly was Tulane’s president throughout Lawrence’s entire tenure as a senior administrator and it was not Lawrence’s but Kelly’s vision that imagined progressive changes. ¹⁵

Robert Braun, the journalist who wrote the original story about Dr Lawrence’s ill-fated remark, went to Tulane to research Lawrence’s role there. He concluded that the Rutgers president had been a very ‘quiet champion’ of African American students – a posture he continued at Rutgers. Braun’s interviews and research into Tulane’s records found no documents to support the view that Lawrence was a champion of ‘minority’ rights. Quite the contrary, Braun felt that the archives were ‘notable for what Lawrence did not say about minority and related issues’, given the fact that Tulane was experiencing racial incidents. He reported, ‘There are statements, pro and con, about volatile racial issues – but none issued by Lawrence, the chief academic officer’ (Braun, 1995). Moreover, Dr Lawrence apparently did not see himself as a champion of ‘minorities’. On the resume he submitted for the Rutgers presidency, affirmative action was sixth on his list of accomplishments at Tulane, behind strategic planning, computing, support for faculty research, institutional research and fund-raising (Braun, 1995).

In support of the hoaxes about Lawrence’s record, the most quoted specifics were that ‘Lawrence, while vice president of Tulane University, helped increase its minority population from one percent to 10 percent. At Rutgers, he instituted new minority scholarships, established training centers and promoted black administrators’. ¹⁶ These figures were quoted in The New York Times articles on 6 February, 10 February and 13 February, and then widely re-quoted in editorials and commentaries around the country – including The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The Times-Picayune of New Orleans and in African American Carl Rowan’s syndicated column (Carvajal, 1995a, 1995b; Hernandez, 1995; Rowan, 1995). This understanding of his record at Tulane therefore became part of the widely accepted lore about the Rutgers incident. But, on 14 February, in the obscure ‘corrections’ column of The New York Times – and not reproduced or acknowledged in any other newspapers – a notation indicated that ‘a recalculation shows that black enrollment grew under Mr. Lawrence from five percent to 8.6 percent’. ¹⁷

Like the realities of ‘race’ and Rutgers’ African Americans’ SAT scores, the revised information had no impact on the public conversation. It was not disseminated, because like the other dominance hoaxes, belief in Dr Lawrence’s sterling record was essential to reinforcing the ‘racial’ hierarchy. Confirming Bond’s assertions that representations of the past are both an expression and source of power, the relevant hoaxes were vigorously propagated. As he claimed, a historical narrative was fabricated for hegemonic and ideological purposes and was circulated because it conferred authority and legitimacy on a symbol of the racial status quo. The New York Times did not rewrite its editorial or publish an article calling attention to the new figures. Indeed, an 11 March 1995 article in The New York Times, written after the corrected figures had been reported, repeated the original 1% to 10% misinformation (Eberhardt, 1995). Control over information – an important tool of the socially dominant – was so effective that even some of Lawrence’s critics were persuaded that he had an outstanding record with regard to ‘minorities’. William Raspberry chided a student activist for contending, ‘I know he’s helped minorities in the past … But this negates everything he’s done’ (Raspberry, 1995).

These explorations of hoaxes in the Rutgers University episode support George Bond’s perceptive insights about the nature of social inequality. But, in addition to socially dominant behavior, collusion and collaboration, acquiescence on the part of the subjugated was also of great theoretical interest to Bond. He highlighted the crucial role of collusion in the social constructions of the past. At the beginning of his discussion of gender domination in Muyombe, he writes, ‘This brings me to a conundrum that has concerned me for some time: namely, why is it that subjugated peoples accept the structures that subjugate them and only rarely engage in fundamental acts of revolution?’ (Bond, 2001). This theme reoccurs in ‘Historical fragments and social constructions in northern Zambia: A personal journey’ and it initiates a discussion of patron–client relationships in systems of domination.

Because they are so deeply embedded the common culture, the organic ideologies that support hegemony are always internalized by many of the suppressed. As Bond recognized, the victims’ own beliefs and worldviews cause some acquiescence to the system that subjugates them. But his questioning probe prompts us to explore additional factors. One such factor is patron–client affiliations.

The socially dominant regularly coopt some subordinated individuals as a tactic for further inducing compliance by the oppressed population. ¹⁸ In the minds of the subordinated, having some of their members openly promote dominance ideology confers some legitimacy on that way of thinking. A common stratagem to subtly accomplish this goal is creating ‘clients’. Patron–client relationships are of course not specific to hegemonic structures. They are commonplace in most social relations. But their function in systems of inequality offers partial explanation of the phenomenon Bond detected.

Typically, patron–client relationships are associations between individuals of differing power and differing socioeconomic status. In essence, the patron exploits the client’s state of material need. He dispenses valued resources in exchange for ideological and political support. The client ‘buys’ access to material rewards, paying with allegiance to the patron, the patron’s agenda and even the patron’s worldview.

Clientage partially informs Bond’s conundrum. Firstly, it explains how self-interest motivates some subordinated actors to openly and actively endorse the structures that subjugate them and their fellow oppressed. Throughout the Rutgers crisis, in his role as patron, the president demanded the unconditional loyalty to which his clients were obligated. Especially, the clients ‘of color’ – administrators, board members and faculty – were pushed to the front lines of his defense. For instance, on the same day that The Star Ledger article made the president’s statement public, the Rutgers News Service issued a ‘Media advisory’ directing inquiries to the seven or eight most senior administrators with African and Latino roots – and only to those ‘people of color’. Even though they had not been made aware of his faux pas, on the whole, Dr Lawrence’s brown clients dutifully supported him. As the Rutgers CEO had become a national symbol of racial ideology, these clients’ actions were effectively buttressing the structures that subordinated them.

Because they were aware of their obligations and because they anticipated future rewards, Dr Lawrence’s darker clients’ spoke on his behalf. Their behavior did not necessarily represent their considered assessment of the controversy. Self-interest was their primary incentive. As one of them put it:

Exploiting the situation wasn’t an issue initially … but, people began to think about it, because of the tremendous amount of emotional, physical energy and time we were devoting to this issue. In fact, that was probably one of the most stressful and demanding times in my life, I think. I can remember in fact going home and saying, ‘and I didn’t even say anything and I feel exhausted. And I am under constant pressure.’ I don’t think that I or those I’ve worked with the most were looking to say, ‘Hey, I do this, you’re going to do x, y, z.’ However, as it wore on, I think there were some expectations that ‘you reward good soldiers,’ and we were in a battle, and at some point you reward good soldiers. I don’t think that was the motivation for most of us to continue doing what we were doing. I think there were some who clearly took that perspective and decided, ‘I will personally or professionally reap some benefits from this.’ I think there were a couple who did. … [A]nd, as things wore on, I frankly had expectations that there would be some things that would be different. … And I said, ‘There needs to be a person of color in the inner circle.’ My expectation was – and I was raising my hand to volunteer – that someone would have been brought into the inner circle, and my view was … that that person would be brought in to deal with all issues, not to deal with certain kinds of issues. There have been a number of meetings of Black administrators and we have all said for a long time, ‘This needs to happen.’ We feel we have things to contribute to the governance of this university by virtue of who we are and the positions we hold, not because we are people of color. … I hoped that I was an optimist … The kind of reward I had hoped for was not forthcoming … I don’t think I was looking for personal gain … as an administrator, my reward would have been to have some of the needs of my unit more fully addressed. I think they have been to some degree. Not to the degree I would like. Whether what I have managed to get is partial payment for that support is hard to judge. ¹⁹

Endorsements from brown and black people were important for legitimating the accepted ‘racial’ ideology in the Rutgers case. As this case illustrates, clients from subordinated populations everywhere will often be willing to support oppressive structures because of their indebtedness to socially dominant patrons. ²⁰ ‘Clientage’ thus is an important element in all systems of inequality and the ramifications of clientage partially explain why the subjugated seldom engage in fundamental acts of revolution.

George Clement Bond was notable for the quality of his traditional anthropological fieldwork, his commitment to teaching and, like other distinguished scholars past and present, for the breadth of his intellectual interests. These interests encompassed the African diaspora, migration, ritual and belief, political organization, social theory and HIV/AIDS. However, perhaps because of his background and experiences as an African American, Bond, like scores of immenent thinkers who preceded him, was especially interested in the dynamics of social inequality. He says, my ‘… concern has always been with inequality and with the relation of different peoples to concepts and practices of inequality’. ²¹ My exploration of one specific ‘racial’ incident substantiates his sensitive, perceptive thinking on this subject and documents his contribution to the study of this ubiquitous social phenomenon.