The Civil Rights Movement of the Sixties added new words to the American vocabulary: equality, integration, Black Power, and White America.  More than words, however, the movement brought new ideas about how America should function, both as a government and as a society.  The civil rights leaders of the Sixties had widely varying opinions when it came to the role of whites, but they all agreed on one thing: lasting change would require willing acceptance by white people.  Today, viewing the apparent failure of the Civil Rights Movement, it is evident that our white predecessors did not make the necessary changes, and that the burden of understanding and solving this problem is now ours.
As any schoolboy can tell you, the face of the Civil Rights Movement was the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.  King drew national attention to himself and his cause after exposing the brutality of white southerners and played a key role in the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  However, King witnessed, along with many other blacks, a "white backlash" of intolerance after the passage of the Act.  His explanation for the backlash was, "As the nation passes from opposing extremist behavior to the deeper and more pervasive elements of equality, white America reaffirms its bonds to the status quo."  (King, 5)  King, like his contemporaries, realized that the new legislation was not an end to racism, nor was its prior absence a cause of it.  Though white people were (are) reluctant to admit it, racial inequality is, "a structural part of the economic system in the United States." (King, 7)
This point is elaborated on by another great civil rights scholar, James Boggs.  In Uprooting Racism and Racists, Boggs describes how "the systematic undevelopment of the black community is?the foundation for the systematic development of the white community."    Non-whites labor in factories producing goods, the profits from which are not sent back to their communities but into white ones.  For used buildings (Boggs names schools, churches, houses) the lower class pays more than is fair so that white   America can subsidize its building costs.  Boggs points to the ultimate tragedy of Vietnam where a "disproportionate number of black youth [are] fighting and dying to?[make] it possible for an increasing number of white youth to attend college." (Boggs, 156)  According to King, "There were twice as many Negroes as whites in combat in Vietnam at the beginning of 1967, and twice as many Negro soldiers died in action?in proportion to their numbers in the population." (King, 7).
Thus, Boggs and scholars like him argued that the subjugation of blacks at the hands of whites was inherent in America's capitalist system.  It was this realization that led Stokely Carmichael to write, "For racism to die, a totally different America must be born." (Charmichael, 264)  In Power and Racism, Carmichael writes of land reform, social programs, and genuine political reform that will ensure lasting equality.  As he so excellently puts it, "The society we seek to build among black people?is not a capitalist one." (270)
Carmichael was no capitalist, and neither were many who supported his cause.  The Sixties, a mind-expanding decade though it was, was not the most tolerant time period for non-capitalist economic systems in America.  The Sixties was the height of the Cold War, when Americans believed that communists were a legitimate threat to American welfare.  Luckily for us, the Cold War is over and we are free from the ignorance that once fueled McCarthyism.  For this reason, it is now possible (and necessary) that America re-examines its allegiance to capitalism, especially as we learn more of its devastating environmental, global, and human effects.  It is time for a reconstruction.
However, the reconstruction of society is no easy task, and that is where our predecessors failed.  By bringing the issues of reform to national attention the black civil rights leaders did all that they could have done.  The task of implementing their reforms falls on those who have the means to do so, i.e. white people.  But, since white people do not see an incentive for social reform (they are quite content already), they are unwilling to put forth any real effort to change the system (voting for Kerry isn't the same as fighting racism).  Thus the white people of today are responsible for bettering tomorrow's blacks, and the state of today's impoverished minorities is due to the apathy of the last generation's white population.
What's a white person with a good heart to do?  The civil rights leaders of the Sixties, different though their philosophies were, unanimously agreed: take the fight to white suburbs.  Malcolm X, no fan of Gandhian philosophy, urged concerned whites to, "go and teach non-violence to white people!" (Malcolm, 377)  Carmichael, too, agrees.  "Let them preach non-violence in the white community."  (Carmichael, 268)  Even King, patient though he was, complained that when it came to racism, "It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn." (King, 9)  The message of these writers seems clear: whites can best help by bringing the struggle to the white people in ways that black people cannot, even if this means fighting themselves.
Today blacks still live in a society that treats them as inferiors, and it is not because they were too lazy to fight for their rights in the Sixties, nor are they too apathetic today.  It is because white people were unwilling to make changes, to intentionally deprive themselves of some luxuries, to fight themselves, that the contemporary African-American finds himself in the social position he is in.  As one Sixties economist once calculated, "The poor can stop being poor if the rich are willing to become even richer at a slower rate." (Bookbinder in King, 6)  The rich, apparently, were unwilling to do so.
There is still much to be done to help the oppressed minorities of America (and the world).  This task is not easy, nor is it quick, but it is vitally necessary, for no group in history has ever endured oppression as long as modern African-Americans.  And, as history has shown, no group will peacefully endure oppression for long.
	Back to Essays                Back to Home