Lasch—The New Chieftains

Christopher Lasch
The Agony of the American Left
(1969)

[27] The United States of the mid-twentieth century might be better described as an empire than as a community. The state deals with domestic minorities through their official representatives, in much the same way that it deals with client states abroad. These representatives,
[28]
native chieftains, enjoy various pleasures and privileges; they themselves, as a result, are sufficiently integrated into the imperial order to perceive their function to be not so much to present the view of their constituents as to mediate between them and the state—by no means the same thing. Their interests lie in resolving and preventing conflicts rather than in carrying them to a successful conclusion. Their constituents, in turn, sustain these leaders in office not because their leadership is particulatly effective in satisfying the material needs of the people they are supposed to represent (although in some cases undeniable improvements have taken place) but because identification with these spokesmen, who have risen from the ranks of a minority to prominence and prestige, provides vicarious and symbolic satisfactions;

...and nowadays this is not just the result of a certain state of affairs but has in fact become its own justification, via the social psychology of identification with role models who look like you...

and because, in any case, the hierarchical and undemocratic structure of the organizations in question effectively prevents changes in leadership. ...

Even if the system of interest-group politics functioned as it is supposed to function, even if the official minority spokesmen really represented the interests of their constituents, those interests have come to be so narrowly defined, as we have seen, that they imply very little criticism of the status quo. No matter how one looks at the matter, the conclusion is inescapable that constituted leaders of social, cultural, and ethnic minorities have ceased to function as critics of American society.