In the mid-1960s, SNCC, one of the most important civil rights groups of its era, began to split at the seams. Since its inception, the group had committed itself to the eradication of white supremacy strictly through the twin pillars of nonviolence and integration. SNCC members, like their fellow activists throughout the South, endured threats, beatings, bombings, and shootings, all of which they greeted with Bible verses and song. The tactic ultimately succeeded by cutting through centuries of hate and accessing a basic sense of human decency.
But nonviolence exacted a price and, in 1966, its success was not assured. That was the year Stokely Carmichael assumed leadership of the organization. Carmichael had spent much of the early 60s subjecting his body to beatings, tear-gassings, and water-hoses. Committed to integration and nonviolence, he had driven down dark and lonely Southern roads accompanied only by the knowledge that people of his ilk were being vanished there with some unsettling regularity. When Carmichael came to power he, and much of SNCC's membership, had changed their politics. They expelled whites from the group and rejected nonviolence. Eventually there was a quasi-merger with the Black Panther Party and a full-throated embrace of revolutionary violence.
Among the SNCC members to reject that path, were Shirley and Charles Sherrod.Mr. Coates may be right in the point he intends to make, which is that Andrew Breitbart treated Shirely Sherrod worse than she deserved. This history, however, passes by another point of greater personal concern to me.
One of those "expelled whites" was a high-school teacher of mine, one of the best teachers I ever had. At the time that the "Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee" became just the 'Student Committee,' he was cast out in spite of having served faithfully those ideals of "a basic sense of human decency" that eventually won out.
It's been a long time since I was in high school, but at the time -- as now, as always -- racial tensions remained somewhat high. This teacher went so far as to offer a course on race and racism, from the perspective you would expect from a former member of SNCC. It was a year-long course, but after a few weeks he was removed from instructing it by the demands of the black students, who were upset at the idea of a white man teaching on the subject of racism. Political correctness, which was at the time a newly named phenomenon, repeated SNCC's injustice, lashing out at a good-hearted man who was only ever on their side. These were teenagers who had inherited the success of the Civil Rights movement as a free gift, paid for by men like the one they scorned on account of his skin.
If we are going to speak of this history, we ought to remember that as well.
11 comments:
They don't want to remember that history. It's the reason video with Sherrod got such a reaction in the first place.
This subject is one that bugs me a lot. My kids (6 and 9 years old) literally don't understand the stuff that comes up in school around MLK day and recently, my son had a reading assignment about race, and it was completely unintelligible to him on the level of relating to the issue. I've taken to explaining to them that MLK was a good man who led a movement against bullies- that they understand, but racial prejudice is an alien concept to them. At the school they attend, I think a majority of students are mixed race, or white/latino mix. At some level, it’s actually difficult to even catagorize them neatly, which is probably a contributor to the fact that they don’t really ‘get it’ when it comes to race issues. I went to that same school some 35 years ago and there was some racial name-calling but by and large things weren't bad then- at least I don't remember it being a particularly big issue- friends didn't clique by race, for instance. My parents, who couldn't have gotten married in some other states in 1960 (Mom is Chinese and Dad white), never talked to us about our ethnic background as anything that should be defining or problematic, they didn’t teach us to act like victims of being who we were- it was simply a fact- nothing more. So, given the progress that I see in the children at that school, and how simple it can be to not judge by the color of one’s skin, in conjunction with the way that my parents raised me, and in turn, I'm raising my kids- it really irritates me when people want to play the race card, or get all PC about racial issues. Frankly, it's un-American to be concerned with these things anymore. Are there people who are racist? Sure. Do they define our society anymore? No. That's it. The only ones who continue to make it an issue are the people who are supposed to be desiring to eliminate the issue, but they just can’t let go. It’s time, people- just let go.
I miss Breitbart already.
When I was a kid, I was aware of prejudice against blacks, though from a distance. My parents felt some, as I realized later, but considered it impolite to discuss. We had black housekeepers. One was such a model of citizenship that they could have made a feel-good TV show about her. The other was a strange, voodooish woman who abruptly left our employ when she murdered her boyfriend. I don't recall ever absorbing any lessons about any role race might have played in their circumstances or characters. And yet I know my parents would have flipped if I'd brought home a black boyfriend. Not likely, since I can think of approximately one black person in my entire educational history from kindergarten through law school.
At some point I became aware of the Holocaust and learned about prejudice against Jews, but that one was completely alien to me, living as I did in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood. I was nearly grown before I discovered that there also was prejudice against Asians. The light-bulb finally came on: all ethnic groups occasionally get nuts about any or all other ethnic groups. I was still pretty sheltered from the idea that the craziness is reciprocated.
On visits to my cousins in South Carolina, I first saw things like segregated waiting rooms, but they were on their way out already by then (the 60s). They struck my sisters and me as extremely weird, so I guess it was unfamiliar to us.
I was raised in an atmosphere of intense racism, in a county in north Georgia which had expelled its entire black population in 1912. There were thus no blacks around, but still very strong racist feeling among my contemporaries. That always struck me as odd, since few of them had ever even met any blacks from whom to have learned these strong racist feelings; and so my father, who was from Tennessee, pointed out to me that this was not something they really understood, but something they had absorbed from their parents.
I can remember as a kid, though, the KKK standing around the courthouse square, handing out their literature to everyone who drove through. They wore the robes but no hoods, being so certain of the acceptance of the community.
So I've seen it at its worst, and I've seen it like it was when I was older (around the time of the high-school incident I mentioned); and I've seen it as it is today. It's amazing to me how much it has changed in my lifetime, and without a real fight: the tide turned with MLK, and we're just watching the slow recession play out.
Whether that continues, of course, remains to be seen. It's possible that economic pressures, and cuts to social programs aimed at the poor arising from our massive debt, could reverse some of the comity and re-inflame some of the old divisions. Still, the story of racism in my life has been a shocking, dramatic collapse. What we have left are tensions and bruises, rather than an open wound.
By the way, I should be clear -- when I say that I was raised in an atmosphere of intense racism -- that I mean the community at large. My family was a bastion of anti-racism. They weren't immune to the racial divisions that had been so hot and caused so much pain, but both my parents and my grandparents had been steadfastly intent on making things better and treating people decently. They weren't SNCC-style activists -- they believed in evolutionary progress rather than confrontation -- but they were on the side of decent treatment for all people.
For some the failure to be radical would be condemnation enough, given the radical nature of the evil to be confronted. Perhaps so; but I believe there is something to be said for their approach. It may take longer, but it kills fewer people. As a fighting man myself, I tend to side with radicalism, but I have to recognize the humane and decent impulse that informed my parents and grandparents.
My parents grew up in the South (Georgia/TN/FL and Texas) during the 1950s-1970s. Both grew up with the idea that racism had more to do with education and economics than anything innate to being black, brown, or pink. My father's family helped the children of some of their "help" through college, and Mom's dad helped a black co-worker get access to one of the best lawyers in Houston when the gentleman needed legal help with an adoption. As with Grim's family, they weren't in SNCC or marching with Dr. King, but they sure did their bit to help their neighbor.
LittleRed1
Grim and LR1's comments give an important clue. Coates' quote "cutting through centuries of hate" gives the impression there was uniform racism up until the moment of MLK. I know he doesn't mean that. Coates is a well-meaning person who often gets things wrong. King and the other protestors tipped the balance. They brought courage to the right moment in history. Without a critical mass of people against racism already in place, all of their actions would have been fruitless. There has to be a moral foundation to shame people against. I am reminded of Ho Chi Minh's line "If Minister Gandhi had lived in a French Colony, he would long since have gone to meet his creator."
Thank you for the Ho Chi Minh quote. It dovetails nicely with something I've been working on.
"And yet I know my parents would have flipped if I'd brought home a black boyfriend."
To be fair to your parents, it could be that it wouldn't be because he was black per se, but because they would worry about what kind of experiences the mixed marriage would bring you. My grandparents nearly disowned my mother over her desire to marry a white devil, but in the end they conceded, and my father and they had a wonderful relationship.
It's amazing to read these various accounts and to be cognizant of the massive change that has occurred over the past few decades.
Yes, certainly part of what would have bothered my parents would have been the difficulties we'd have faced in an interracial marriage. But that wouldn't have been the whole problem, not by a long shot. They'd have been viscerally opposed. It simply wasn't done. They easily found the resources to tolerate other choices I made that were likely to be met with intense social opposition, but this one wouldn't have flown.
And to tell the truth, I've never seriously considered as a mate any man that was very different from me ethnically. It wasn't a conscious choice, but it was a fundamental one. Even in the absence of the peculiar insistence on making another race into a subhuman enemy, there's often a strong impulse to marry within one's tribe.
There is a wonderful book by Bruce Watson chronicling the SNCC movement. It is entitled Freedom Summer. I recommend it highly.
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