I’ve been thinking. Last night there was a “true crime” show my father was watching (understand I’m not even out of college yet) and it dealt with the strength of the Klan in the Civil Rights era, and the murders they committed.
Now understand that I in no way understand this era. I can’t imagine haing someone enough to go out and kill them. There are circumstances under which I would murder someone, period. But not because I hate someone personally, and certainly not because they happen to have a certain physical trait. It doesn’t make sense, at least not now.
So I was wondering, from people who lived during the Civil Rights era (60’s-70’s)…
Did the now more-or-less equal state of affairs in America come about from directly from the demonstrations and sympathy given to those brave souls who dared to challenge the worst elements of the then-social order? Or, as is my own et theory, did those same demonstrations force the paleskins (like me!) to recoognize that black folks deserved respect and equal honor in the nation?
“Did the now more-or-less equal state of affairs in America…”
First, check your assumptions.
As to the effectiveness of demonstrations, YES, the demonstrations were crucial in building and maintaining public awareness. Public awareness is essential to any social change.
You are mroe than free to say blacks are still discriminated against. However, in contrast to the state-level racism of the past 150 years, what we have today is nothing. Moreover, its become such that even the most powerful political leaders can be brought to their knees (Trent Lott) by a single vague statement that might be taken as supporting racism. I do not deny that individuals can and do practice discimination. Even, sometimes, whole corporations and such.
However, these things are nowadays considered an unholy crime, worthy of public embarrassment and large lawsuits. I know blacks in America don’t have a standard of living as high as us paleskins. Yet today, Colin powell is a national hero and Secretary of State. I cannot imagine that happening 50 years ago. America has come a huge way in a short time, but the rest of the way is going to have to come about differently. Economic equality, not social equality, is the new need.
True enbougj. They tend to feed each other, much like economic and social inequality.
I suppose I’m not being very clear here: I’m thinking that blacks in America need to show they have economic muscle as well as political. Part of this will result of the fracturing of “black America”, because as people get more money, they will begin to see their interests as more divorced from skin tone and more related to class.
Yet I think this is a neccessary step to increase the amount of respect blacks get in the country.
Theory here: Ultimately, it is respect which forced segregation to end. Sympathy was fine, but blacks had been getting sympathy for 3 centuries. Now, however, they showed that they were worthy of respect in a way people could not ignore. They were certainly worthy before, but in the 60’s, they stood up and said they weren’t going to take it anymore. People were going to pay attention, dammit! Other people couldn’t diss them publicly and get away with it.
Speaking as a Caucasian who was a part of it back in the late 1950’s, I’d say there was some of both. However, I think a more important psychological factor than either was our own self image as liberals. Allowing blatant injustice to exist interfered with our thinking well of ourselves.
The genteel racism of American Suburbia was comfortable fiction. One could hold views on race that in the current day would get you scorn and derision. But it was all so very theoretical. Segregation was an accomplished fact. There were no black people in my elementary schools. I had only theoretical opinions on race.
Then the evening news showed us policemen setting their dogs on people we could see were doing nothing violent. They were people who wanted to vote. They were unarmed, and peaceful. And the official representatives of our government were attacking them with clubs, and dogs. That isn’t theoretical. It was very ugly. And it was done directly in defense of racism. Racism stopped being genteel. Either you looked at your opinions, or you got yourself a club and a dog. It’s hard to see yourself as the good guy, when you arming yourself to kill innocent people.
Then the KKK began publicly murdering people. They had been murdering people for generations, but they started doing it under the bright lights of international scrutiny. And locally the powers that be were in the pockets of rich racists; they could not act. Their silence condemned them in the world’s eyes. And the federal government was forced to act. A lot of people were stunned later to find out that the laws that were passed to get those iggerant southern bigots would be applied to the north as well.
Racism didn’t go away. But the unspoken assumption that race was an acceptable criterion of judgment by law over our citizens was destroyed. Social judgment reluctantly followed.
Considering that the horrors of segregation and lynching were only four decades ag (a mere blink on the human time scale) I’d say we’ve come a long way, but there’s still much further to go.
I think that one of the greatest problems in racial relations today is the resentment that some whites feel toward black success. If a black man is promoted, some whites will grouse that it was because of his race and Affirmative Action-style office politics, and not because he deserved it.
Lynchings were even more public in earlier times than in the Civil Rights Era. Postcards were made, showing the dangling corpse, surrounded by huge, grinning crowds. The local newspapers sometimes announced lynchings ahead of time. The NAACP struggled not to make people * aware, * but to make people * care. * A few days ago, there was a thread entitled “Anti-Lynching Legislation.” I posted a link to a picture of an NAACP flyer that pictured the hanging body of Rubin Stacy, surrounded by smiling children. The text read, “Do not look at this Negro. Instead look at the seven WHITE children witnessing this greusome spectacle.” Anti-lynching legislation was so unpopular that they had to stress not that a black man had been killed unjustly, but that the white children could be traumatized by seeing a man die in order to gain support.
I don’t know if I necessarily agree. I think what finally forced the end to segregation was political pressure from the North. The South was stubbornly determined to preserve their “way of life,” and bitterly resented any Northern interrference. It was as if the Civil War’s rallying cry of “State’s Rights” had suddenly taken on new life. Some Southerners may have rallied behind Jim Crow, not because they fervently believed in it, but because they were angry at the North trying to force anti-segregationist policies on them. Eventually, of course, they had to cave.
Blacks had proved their worth long before the Civil Rights Era with their brave and dedicated service in World War I and World War II. I think author Steven Ambrose summed up the situation they faced in wartime service the best: “We fought the world’s biggest racist with a segregated army.” But no matter what blacks did, some whites were determined to “keep them in their place.”
I think December is pretty much right on. However, I do think that the civil rights movement owes a great deal of its success by pointing out the simple fact that the U.S.A was and is based on the idea of the worth of the individual and equality. It was hard for liberals and conservatives to deny the wrongness of racism. As a man in my twenties at the time, I observed all sorts of people who struggled with their conscience over this matter.
I consider the civil rights movement to be one of the greatest expressions of the fundamental concepts of the United States. What a pity that it was necessary.
This is not to say that everything today is as it should be, but I do remember the days before the Civil Rights Era. A horrible
amount of suffering can be laid at the feet of racism…not only for those who are discriminated against. It diminished us all.