THE ROLE OF MULTI-CULTURALISM IN ESTABLISHING
A NEW PERIOD OF SEPARATE BUT EQUAL SEGREGATION IN THE UNITED STATES : A
COMPARISON OF THE PERIODS AFTER
THE FIRST AND SECOND CIVIL WARS
There are two great
periods of substantial change in American civil rights history, the first
American civil war, 1861-1865, and the second civil war, 1954-1966, under
the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr. Referring to these two crucial
periods as civil wars encourages us to look for parallels between the post-Civil
War period and the post-King period. This comparison can help foretell the
future political path of the United States.
Racism is a much more serious factor than ever admitted by American sociologists.
A racial caste system is primarily an economic phenomenon. Prejudice and
racial ideologies of inferiority back up this economic phenomenon, but are
not really essential. For instance, many white people are not prejudiced
against blacks in the sense that they do not believe blacks are inferior
beings. But, out of economic concerns, these same people will often vote
for policies that maintain the racial system. As an economic system, racism
is hard to overcome because this would require a great deal of effort and
money to overcome it, and many whites do not want to pay this high price.
COMPARISON OF THE FIRST AND SECOND CIVIL WARS
The First American Civil War (1861-1865)
The United States fought the first Civil War over the future of slavery,
because the country was separating gradually into two different countries
with different economies, political systems, societies and cultures. The
situation became so impossible that force had to be used. The blacks benefited
a great deal from this use of force, because the war saw the end of slavery.
In effect, blacks benefited by using the North as a power to force change
on the South.
The Second American Civil War (1956-1966)
The United States fought the second Civil War over the future of the apartheid
system. The movement led by Martin Luther King, Jr. constituted a second
civil war. (See Johnson 1995 and Marable 1991.) The effort was primarily
the result of forcing the non-South areas to intervene in the South's political
system. As in the first Civil War, the South tried to live in the past. The
situation became so embarrassing and heart-wrenching that force has to be
employed. And as in the first Civil War, blacks benefited from this use of
force because it forced the South to change.
COMPARISON OF THE FIRST AND SECOND RECONSTRUCTION PERIODS
The First Reconstruction: The South Loses the War but Wins the
Peace
The first reconstruction is testimony to the underestimation of the forces
of racism in America. It also shows that the various factions in American
politics were primarily concerned about what would happen to whites and the
American system.
The naivete of the reformist forces is seen in the fact that they let the
Southern governments alone for several years before they stepped in to stop
the re-confederization of that region. When the North finally did step in,
they did too little/too late.
It was not until March 1867 that military rule replaced the civil administrations
that had been operating in the South for almost two years. An army of occupation
of 20,000 soldiers took control of the Southern governments. The North, however,
could not sustain this occupation, and by 1869 the southern states were taking
back control.
The event that sealed the fate of blacks came in the 1876 election. This
pitted Republican Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio against Democratic
Governor Samuel Tilden of New York. Tilden actually won a majority of the
popular vote, but a question arose over the electoral vote. Both the Republicans
and the Democrats claimed victory in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana.
The vote in Oregon was also in question. Congress set up a commission to
award the votes. The commission finally voted eight to seven to give the
twenty votes in question to Hayes.
The commission's decision outraged the Democrats, who felt the Republicans
had stolen the election. To placate them, the Republicans compromised. The
Democrats accepted the commission's decision, while President Hayes agreed
to remove the last of the federal soldiers from the South. This Compromise
of 1877 between northern Republicans and southern Democrats proved to be
even more long lasting than the Missouri Compromise of 1820. It endured from
1877 until the administration of Harry Truman, in other words, for seventy
years. And for seventy years it kept the racial issue, the country's most
divisive issue, out of the national arena.
The liberal forces were more interested in making investments in the post-war
economy that in pursuing black liberation in the South. They felt they had
gone far enough by establishing constitutional guarantees for the blacks,
and they no longer feared a renewal of the war. Therefore, they allowed white
southerners to regain control in order to achieve peace. The number of northern
troops in the South was never significant enough to control things -- it
was a token force (although Grant did suppress the Klan by 1871).
Why was there so little protest over this agreement between North and South?
One factor was that the nation felt exhausted over the war and the continuing
problems of Reconstruction. It wanted to get on with other things. The belief
in the laissez-faire system also provided a convenient excuse. Abolitionists
believed that market forces and the "American way" would work to improve
the condition of blacks. Of course, this was political naivete in the extreme.
And how much of it was sheer rationalization will probably never be known.
Perhaps the most important reason for the compromise with the South was the
sheer political power of the region. David Potter (1972) notes that the South
emerged from the war stronger than it was before the conflagration. Formerly,
the slaves had been counted at a three-fifths ratio for purposes of
representation. Now their electoral college representation counted as a full
five-fifths, yet virtually none of them could vote. Ironically, for causing
the Civil War, the nation rewarded the South with a bonus of twelve additional
seats in the House.
The federal government was the primary source of monies in the first
reconstruction. There was very little attempt to make sure that blacks were
integrated into the economy. Instead, the bureaucracy of federal systems
created enough opportunities for the more educated blacks that they became
somewhat contented and quite blind. One of the blind ones was the great Frederick
Douglass himself. Like most black men of his time, "Douglass himself was
terribly optimistic. He believed that if the blacks had the vote they could
elect sympathetic local and state officials, thereby leading to their own
advancement. The passage of the Fifteenth Amendment was seen by Douglass
and others as the capstone of the revolution. All shared the euphoric hope
that the former slaves were now in a safe position, ready to move ahead."
(McFeely 1991:271-273)
Douglass had called for a black vice-president. The white response had been
accusations that he wanted offices to be granted according to race, without
regard to merit. (McFeely 1991:317) In some respects, there is little that
is new under the sun. Here we find early charges of "reverse racism" brought
against blacks who supported a role for blacks in the federal government.
President Hayes consulted Douglass on the reliability of black petitioners.
Douglass took pride in being able to take English friends to the White House,
to introduce them to the president and sometimes even to the first lady.
Like an early version of today's Tony Brown, Douglass started to rely more
and more on his most famous lecture, "The Self-Made Man." "He refused to
see that something had changed for the worse and maintained that conditions
in the Southern states were steadily improving "(McFeely 1991:292-293 &
298-300).
Douglass was virtually oblivious to the concession to white supremacists
in the South made by President Rutherford B. Hayes that led to the pullout
of federal troops from the South. Indeed, Douglass became part of the growing,
self-conscious black establishment. President Hayes named Douglass marshal
of the District of Columbia. Douglass was not opposed to personal nepotism,
employing many of his relatives in government agencies over which he had
control.
"Douglass was used as part of Hayes's shrewdly constructed screen to conceal
the cessation of truly significant federal action on behalf of black people.
The stances on various issues that Douglass was to take between 1877 and
1881 were the least honorable and least helpful to his fellow former slaves
of any in his long life. They were, in fact, entirely consonant with the
betrayal of promises that ended Reconstruction." (McFeely 1991:289 &
291)
The Second Reconstruction
Compared to the first reconstruction, the second reconstruction was a more
ambitious effort to help blacks move upwards. But in its own way, it was
just as naive and blind as the first reconstruction in underestimating the
powers of resistance. The second reconstruction set up a considerable "civil
rights industry." While this industry has certainly helped blacks, it was
too weak to overcome the vast resistance of whites to the necessary changes
to accomplish real success. And just as in the first reconstruction, the
white liberals and blacks became somewhat contented and, therefore, very
blind. So blind in fact that the liberal forces failed to see the resurgence
of white resistance that led to the recent Republican ascendancy in
congress.
Just as in the first reconstruction, most of the progress made by blacks
has come because of the actions of government. This is absolutely necessary
and a good thing, but if the monies continue without substantial progress
in other areas, they become corruptive. Like Frederick Douglass, the black
middle class has become complacent and self-satisfied. Only the cold cruel
slap of worsening events will wake them out of their stupor. As in the first
reconstruction, the intellectual, educational, and social work communities
in America have been substantially corrupted by government money.
RACIST CONSERVATIVE, LIBERAL AND NEW LEFT INTERPRETATIONS OF THE FIRST AND
SECOND RECONSTRUCTIONS
Three Racist Interpretations of the First Reconstruction
There are three racist versions of the first reconstruction: the conservative,
the liberal, and the New Left. The conservative version blamed the federal
government for the failure of the South to change. Early scholarly treatments
of the 1910s and 1920s, those in the William Dunning school, were very harsh
toward Republican Reconstruction policies. But scholarship of the 1940s and
1950s (see Foner 1988:xx-xxiii) showed that the Dunning theories were largely
based on the racist belief in "Negro incapacity." Less biased research has
shown that "Negro rule" in the South was a myth and that there was racism
in northern Republican policy makers as well as among white southerners.
The liberal version of the failure of the first reconstruction points to
the resistance of Southern whites. The liberal interpretation does not, however,
point out just how limited the liberal efforts were to change the South.
American liberalism, true to its underestimation of the role of race in American
society, underestimated the resistance to efforts to end racial inequality.
And then there is the New Left version of reconstruction. The New Left
revisionists (like Foner 1988) maintain that the liberals betrayed the blacks
because the blacks were not allowed to achieve economic parity. The obvious
question, however, is how could the liberals have betrayed the blacks when
the liberals never intended for blacks to achieve parity with whites? You
can't "sell-out" someone you never had any realistic intention of promoting.
In one sense, it does not matter which version of the reconstruction myth
is the most inaccurate, because, regardless of what the North did, white
southerners ultimately would retake the political power and deny the vote
to the former slaves. Since the North did not want to keep troops stationed
in the South for a long period, there was no question that ultimately the
blacks would be denied the vote. All the South had to do was wait.
Three Racist Versions of the Failure of the Second Reconstruction
The debate over the failure of the second reconstruction very much resembles
that over the first reconstruction. Conservatives follow the line that government
intervention was a disaster, as, in their view, are all large-scale attempts
at government intervention. They put the blame for the failure of reconstruction
on the government itself, absolving white resistance of any role.
The liberals blame the conservative forces for the failure of the second
reconstruction. This absolves them of any blame for themselves -- for
underestimating the forces of resistance and designing flawed policies.
The New Left version of the failure puts some of the blame on the conservatives,
but saves its wrath for the liberals, who the New Left has declared as naive
in thinking that integration was ever a realistic goal in capitalist America.
Of course, the New Left takes no responsibility for its considerable role
in encouraging white backlash by its immature and irresponsible behavior
and beliefs. Instead, they have given up on integration and now push a
multicultural version of life in America.
The bottom line is that all these debates are false ones, because they all
underplay the role of racism in American life. The debates about the two
reconstructions are typical of the debates between conservative, liberal,
and New Left racists in America. They are false debates because none of the
advocates ever see how serious racism really is in America.
THE MYTHS OF LINCOLN AND KING
The Myth of Abraham Lincoln
The people of the United States have stridently avoided considering the impact
of race on their society and government. Part of this refusal to consider
unpleasant facts is the mythification of Abraham Lincoln. The myth serves
the purpose of allowing Americans to avoid considering what kind of nation
kills more than 623,000 of its male population over an issue that is morally
indefensible, namely, the enslavement of human beings. The Lincoln myth allows
the focus to be placed on the sufferings of the president, instead of the
racism of the participants in the war.
The mythification of Lincoln involves imbuing the man with all the virtues
of white middle-class American culture. He represents upward mobility, rising
from a background of poverty to the highest office in the land. He is also
a "regular guy," one with a terrific sense of down-home humor, which makes
him one with the white middle class. Not only that, he is humble to the point
of self-deprecation. He takes on martyr qualities as writers picture him
persevering against the resistance of others not as committed to maintaining
the union. And yet he is never preachy and never politically radical in a
way that would make the middle class feel uncomfortable. The myth actually
turns Lincoln into a Christlike figure, dying for our sins, because it constantly
stresses the terrible personal sufferings of the nation's president during
his tenure (Hofstadter 1973).
The truth is that Lincoln was the consummate politician who was the master
of the appropriate political compromise. He was very ambitious and used his
self-deprecating political humor to his political advantage. His main problem
was his ineffectiveness. The list of areas in which Lincoln had trouble managing
is seemingly endless, including his children (who ran wild in the White House
even during important conferences); wife (who in eight months spent a four-year
spending allotment for the First Lady and who publicly berated the president);
cabinet (which thought Lincoln weak and incompetent); army (failing to appoint
an effective military leadership); and secret service (dismissing the head
of the presidential bodyguard on the day of his assassination).
Part of the myth is that Lincoln was politically progressive, but was held
back by mean-spirited politicians, especially the radical Republicans. Lincoln
did face a very different Congress from that faced by his predecessors (Boinville
1982:116-119). The defection of the South meant that the Republicans almost
totally dominated that body. But Lincoln was actually the conservative in
this drama.
The radicals would have supported
him, if he had more liberal policies; however, the president followed a
conservative course, which put him at odds with Congress.
The assassination of Abraham Lincoln shortly after the end of the war was
a terrible national tragedy. But would his policies have made any real
difference? There probably would have been less bitterness, but the great
compromiser could not have changed the end result. White southerners could
not be denied. In fact, to perpetuate the myth that everything would have
been much better between the two regions if Lincoln had lived is to ignore
the power distribution in the South and perpetuate the Southern version of
Reconstruction.
The Myth of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a great man, just as was Lincoln. There are,
however, a number of myths about the man some which have just been recently
revealed (Branch). One of them is that the civil rights revolution started
with King himself. The truth is that King fell into the job. He was chosen
because he had just recently arrived in Montgomery to replace the controversial
Rev. Vernon Johns as pastor to the Dexter Avenue Baptist church. King wanted
change, after all he had been introduced to the teachings of Vernon Johns
through Johns' disciple, Ralph Abernathy, but he had not been active at all
in civil rights activities.
That the civil rights movement was not planned is evident from the history
of the movement. Starting with the 1954 bus boycott in Montgomery, events
started happening with seeming lightning speed. King had all he could do
just to prevent events running away from him. He was always flying by the
seat of his pants and having to ask constantly "what next" to keep the movement
alive.
In January 1966 King moved into a tenement apartment on Chicago's west side
and announced plans to further integration in the North. His campaign soon
foundered, however, as rioting by working-class whites brought King one of
his most humiliating defeats.
At the time of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, he was no longer
seen as an effective leader. David Lewis (1978:355) writes that the year
1967 became one of "an open hunting season on Martin King and the nonviolent
movement." He came to be seen increasingly as irrelevant and that conviction
has only grown stronger over time in the New Left/multicultural community.
The left always likes to point out how naive King was. But comparing his
insight into American reality to the New Left and its fellow travelers, he
was the very model of realism. He was smart enough to know that the radicalism
of the young people in the New Left and the black power slogans of the Black
Panthers and other black nationalist groups were ultimately self-defeating
and would only give rise to repression and backlash. And, frankly, it was
his very naivete that enabled him to appeal to both black and white and made
it possible for him to be so successful.
SEPARATISTS DEFEAT THE MODERATES: DELANY OVER DOUGLASS AND MALCOLM X OVER
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
Martin R. Delany wins out over Frederick Douglass
Martin Robison Delany was born 1812 (died 1885), Charleston, Virginia, now
West Virginia. This doctor of medicine who settled in Pittsburgh became the
historical prototype of the "Afro-American Nationalist" (Ullman 1971:13).
Delany was the spokesman for the black nationalist phase of Douglass' day.
For a time he was Douglass' co-editor of the abolitionist newspaper The North
Star in 1847. The two men fell out over Delany's acceptance of emigration
for blacks as worthy of consideration. By 1854 Douglass came to be seen as
the black spokesman primarily to the whites. The black abolitionists were
now working with Delany (Ullman 1971:150-151).
To show that there is nothing new under the sun in race relations, including
afrocentricity, note the following items about Delany. Delany caused quite
a controversy when he demanded that the Republican party share patronage
of public office with the blacks on a "pro-rata" basis. (Ullman 1971:414)
And in 1879 Delany published Principia of Ethnology: The Origin of Races
with an Archeological Compendium of Ethiopian and Egyptian Civilization (Ullman
1971:510-511). This pseudo-scientific tract was his last gesture of defiance
to the white world. It was a pseudo-scientific tract on behalf of the Negro
in general and Africa in particular. Like the Afrocentrists of today, he
connected American and African blacks to the unquestioned wonders of the
Ethiopian and Egyptian civilizations. "He believed that the lost civilizations
of Africa were man's highest achievements, not even yet duplicated by any
modern society (Ullman 1971:512)."
Malcolm X Defeats Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. had lost much of his influence in the black community
by 1967. The ideas of Malcolm X began to replace those of King as early as
1964 when the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (S.N.C.C.) first
asked Malcolm X to speak to its field workers. Malcolm X wanted economic,
political, and social independence for blacks -- not racial integration.
And he wanted it by any means necessary. Malcolm X and his disciples rejected
racial integration as the main goal for African Americans. They believed
that American society was too corrupt, racist, and imperialist for black
people to become integrated into it, even if such integration became possible
(Morris 1993:51).
Malcolm X was a key founder of the black power movement, which was taken
up by such black leaders as Stokely Carmichael. A number of black civil rights
leaders, including Joseph Lowery, Benjamin Hooks, and Jesse Jackson, adopted
Malcolm's third world outlook (Friedman 1995:229-231 and 327 & 330).
As with Delany, separatism won out over integration in the black and white
liberal communities.
COMPARISON OF THE FIRST AND SECOND POPULIST MOVEMENTS
The First American Populism
Liberal supporters of populism saw in this movement a possible political
alliance between the poor blacks of the South and the poor whites. This was
indeed an optimistic approach because traditionally blacks had aligned themselves
with upper class whites for protection against lower class whites (Woodward:51).
For blacks, populism was a movement in which the blacks would align with
the poor and working class whites to get a bigger slice of the pie. They,
however, like all American liberals, seriously underestimated the racism
of the lower and working class whites.
Shapiro (1969:27& 29) notes that the white Populists' interest in the
Negro vote was mainly a result of political expediency. And in that vein
the Populists defended the Negro's right to the franchise and also his right
to hold office, to serve on juries, to receive a fair hearing in the courts
and to receive protection against lynchers. The Populists proclaimed that
economic interest, not race, was the central issue in the South. In 1892
the populist leader Tom Watson asked what was wrong with telling Negro farmers
that they stood in the same boat as the white farmers. Watson explained to
the poor blacks and whites that "You are kept apart that you may be separately
fleeced of your earnings. You are made to hate each other because upon that
hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves
you." But the Populists only granted concessions to Negroes to get their
votes and never intended to grant anything like near equality to blacks.
Shapiro (1969:34-35) demolishes the pretension that Tom Watson was a truly
non-racist white pioneer.
Populism frightened the more powerful conservative elements in the South
(Shapiro 1969:30). "Alarmed by the success that the Populists were enjoying
with their appeal to the Negro voter, the conservatives themselves raised
the cry of 'Negro domination' and white supremacy, and enlisted the Negrophobe
elements (Woodward 77-79)."
Populism did not work because of the inherent opposition between lower class
whites and blacks. All whites under racism were deemed superior to blacks.
Not only did they feel this emotionally, but this idea was enforced by the
entirety of Southern society.
The Second American Populism: Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition
Marshall Frady (1996:381 & 383) writes of Jesse Jackson's populism as
Gospel Populism. He had a populist "dream of an alliance of all society's
discounted and discarded, black and white, from the cities and the farmland."
Similar to the first populism, Jackson tried to link blacks and white working
people in the country.
Jackson ran for the presidency in 1984 and again in 1988. No other blackman
had ever gotten as far as Jesse Jackson did in the 1988 Democratic party
primaries for the presidential nomination. He actually had one-third of the
number of delegates necessary for the nomination. Like the first populism,
Jesse Jackson's populism was doomed to failure no matter how much some parts
of the liberal community may have wanted it to succeed. (Jackson's star took
a definite dive when he made insulting remarks about New York City being
"Hymietown" and then flirted with the Reverend Farrakhan of the Black Muslims.)
THE TERRIBLE RESULTS OF POPULISM: COMPARISON OF THE SEPARATE BUT EQUAL (JIM
CROW) AND THE PLURAL BUT EQUAL SYSTEMS (MULTI-CULTURALISM) OF SEGREGATION
The Jim Crow System: Separate but Equal Segregation
The Jim Crow system of segregation in the South was the punishment doled
out to the blacks for seeking to ally themselves with lower class and working
class whites against the upper class whites. The South passed law after law
restricting the free movement and activities of blacks, thereby creating
a terrible system of apartheid. In 1896 the Supreme Court's Plessy v. Ferguson
decision sanctioned the "separate but equal" doctrine that Booker T. Washington
had already endorsed in his "separate as the fingers" reference. The Plessy
decision involved only transportation, but the courts soon extended the formula
to schools and public accommodations.
The great spokesman for acceptance of the Jim Crow system was Booker T.
Washington, president of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, at
Tuskegee, Alabama. He dominated the racial sphere from 1895 to his death
in 1915. Even though Washington secretly supported several actions to promote
integration, the vast majority of Washington's work was always done within
the system of "separate but equal." He simply tried to expand the notion
of equal, pleading and appealing to the whites for more equal treatment,
trading better treatment for black cooperation with the whites.
Few sociologists know this, but Robert E. Park, the father of racial and
ethnic sociology, and his fellow sociologists cooperated with Booker T.
Washington. Park was even Washington's private secretary for a time.
The Multicultural
System: Plural but Equal Segregation
At the election polls, the reaction of whites to Jesse Jackson's flirting
with populism came in the form of a terrible counter reaction. This counter
reaction, however, is much more serious in the sense that it not only threatens
the progress made following the second civil war but also threatens to weaken
the welfare state for all, both black and white. The equal in the plural
but equal system is on the verge of being canceled in the United States.
Many of the individual states in America are not waiting for federal action
but are ridding themselves of the affirmative action programs built up so
painstakingly by the liberals over the decades. President Clinton sounded
the death knell for any true equality between the multicultural groups when
he signed the welfare reform bill. This marked a significant change in American
politics, as the government has now chosen not to assure a safety net under
those who are the most unfortunate in American society.
The second period of segregation does not have a single major spokesperson
to play the role of a Booker T. Washington. But though the power may be more
diffused, multilculturalist supporters are collectively playing the role
of Booker T. And sociologists, who are primarily multiculturalists, actively
support this system, as Rober Park supported Booker T. Washington.
TERRIBLE RESULTS OF THE SEGREGATIONIST PERIODS: THE WEAKENING OF THE LEFT
Terrible Results of the Apartheid System
Egerton (1995) has shown that liberals in the South, both black and white,
never challenged the basic overall system of white dominance in that region.
And this, more than anything else, illustrates how liberalism works within
a racist system. Egerton recounts conference after conference, of blacks,
of whites, of blacks and whites, dealing with the race problem. Male and
female liberals built considerable reputations and careers speaking on race,
but never fundamentally challenged racism.
There was, however, one dissenting voice that Egerton did not discuss. And
that was the Rev. Vernon Johns out of Darlington Heights, Virginia. This
oversight is forgivable, however, because as perhaps the one Southerner who
consistently refused to cooperate with the jim crow system, Vernon Johns
was largely ignored not only by whites, but also by blacks. The reaction
of intellectuals to Vernon Johns illustrates the inability of any age's
contemporary thinkers to see beyond their own self-interests.
Terrible Results of Multiculturalist Separatism
Multiculturalism has split the forces of the left into at least four mutually
hostile groups: neo-conservatives, old liberals, new multicultural liberals,
and multicultural Marxists. Multicultural liberalism has now abandoned the
traditional political spectrum based on economics for one based on race/ethnicity
issues. It has also led to an abandonment of liberalism by a majority of
whites. Now, not even the Democratic party will call itself the party of
liberalism. This does not, however, seem to bother the multi-cultural theorists.
The rejection of liberalism just increases their dissatisfaction with the
American political system and the American people as a whole. The situation
has gotten so bad that there is considerable talk of race war in the United
States (Rowan 1996; Delgado 1996).
What is really happening in America is a type of civil war between liberals
and conservatives. Conservatives dominate the nation's non-intellectual
institutions, but liberals are powerful enough in the more intellectual
institutions to be able to have enough power to sabotage the goals of the
conservatives. The result is that none of the nations' institutions run well.
Many of them are paralyzed as a result of the conflicting and incompatible
goals and means of the warring conservative and liberal factions. For instance,
multiculturalism has not been able to take over the nation's schools, at
least below the college level, and yet the liberals have so interfered with
the schools to oppose conservative policies that about the only thing that
reigns in the nation's average schools is a considerable degree of chaos.
The conservatives have responded to liberal policies by leading a tax revolt.
As a result, all our institutions have been weakened financially and the
chances for real change for the nation's minorities have greatly decreased.
Indeed, American government has been so weakened by both sides that it is
virtually inept at performing a competent governing role.
THE REVOLT AGAINST THE SEPARATE BUT
EQUAL SYSTEM AND A POSSIBLE FUTURE REVOLT AGAINST PLURAL BUT EQUAL SYSTEM
OF SEGREGATION
The Revolt Against the Separate but Equal System and the Tuskegee
Machnine
In the years following the Atlanta Address, Booker T. Washington threw much
of his abundant energy into developing what came to be known as the Tuskegee
Machine. This machine was an intricate, nationwide web of institutions in
the black and liberal communities that were conducted, dominated, or strongly
influenced by Washington (Harlan 1972:254).
According to W.E.B. Du Bois (1940:50) "Tuskegee became a vast information
bureau and center of advice. . . .After a time almost no Negro institution
could collect funds without the recommendation or acquiescence of Mr. Washington.
Few political appointments were made anywhere in the United States without
his consent. Even the careers of rising young colored men were very often
determined by his advice and certainly his opposition was fatal." Du Bois
wrote: "above all, I resented the Tuskegee Machine" (Du Bois 1940:55).
It was Du Bois himself that led the assault on the Tuskegee Machine; an assault
that resulted in the founding of the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P.)
The Future Revolt Against the Plural but Equal System: The Politically Correct
Machine
Multiculturalism is the dominant paradigm among the new liberals of today.
One big problem with multiculturalism is that it is not a theory. It is a
bureaucratic guide to dividing scarce public resources among various highly
separate race/ethnic groups. It is not a radical idea, but another form of
racial separatism. It is a comfortable series of guidelines for existing
within the present level of racism. The United States government has sanctioned
much of multi-culturalism, just as it had sanctioned Booker T. Washington.
The government knows that multi-culturalism is not really a threat so the
government can appear to be progressive while at the same time pushing real
progress against racism to the back burner.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The similarity of the two periods illustrates the ineffectiveness of the
American left, including liberalism and Marxism. And the reason for this
ineffectiveness is that the American left, like the conservatives, work within
a racist framework. Sociology has no effective political theory precisely
because it does not see race as integral to the American political system
and overall culture. And because liberalism in general and sociology in
particular underestimates the role of race it always does too little/too
late as far as its beliefs and actions on racial matters. Since the American
left has no theories that really address American racism, and therefore do
not address American society, they have no realistic way to change the United
States.
What we need is a new group of liberals (this time non-racist ones) that
will break with the current "plural but equal" multiculturalists, as W.E.B.
Du Bois did, and a spokesperson like the Rev. Vernon Johns to push the idea
of a new civil rights movement. That's what we need, but the left in American
currently refuses to see the need for such changes. The so-called leftists
are too busy pretending they are radicals and enjoying the money and positions
doled out by the federal government to the various "multi-cultures".
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