"We Shall Overcome" The Black Man's Burden: The White Liberal
Turner, Charles B. Jr.
No one has been more aware and less surprised by the white liberal's retreat than the Negro intelligentsia engaged in the civil rights struggle. They have been watching with increasing...
...Given the fact of life 1619-1963, could anyone reasonably expect them to be otherwise...
...That is not what I meant at all" is being met with telltale coolness...
...if further disillusionment were possible, these articles should have done much to squeeze it out...
...They have been watching with increasing skepticism the liberal's distress with the fact of integration, a distress chronicled in John Fischer's Harper's editorial (July 1962) "What the Negro Needs Most: A FirstClass Citizen Council," Murray Friedman's Atlantic piece (January 1963) "The White Liberal's Retreat," and most recently Norman Podhoreti s Commentary article (February 1963) "My Negro Problem—And Ours...
...I told you, man, they're all the same...
...Also, such reservations in the past have always been offered up as good reasons (as opposed to real reasons) for continued segregation...
...Enough...
...And so the Negro intelligentsia is distressed at what appears to be the need to convince liberals all over again...
...The liberal plea: "Wait a moment," accompanied by a low chorus of groans, "That is not it at all...
...and that is the world they want a solution for...
...The effect of the white liberal's vacillation has not been to cause the Negro intelligentsia to agree to a pause, but rather to call into question the goodwill, intention, and ability of all white Americans to do as they say...
...Norman Podhoretz's adventures must necessarily seem rather prosaic to a Negro who has also been chased up and down streets by a long line of little Quentins...
...Liberals use to rise to just this sort of bait...
...Liberals and Negroes make contact at only a few crucial points—civil rights — and miss on many others...
...And in refraining from a denunciation of luke-warm liberal sup...
...Most Negroes have simply declined to join the dialogue, let alone be sidetracked or moved by these arguments...
...You really don't need any more equal rights until everyone of you learns to act white," and which reads like a page from a segragationist notebook is a, case in point...
...These arguments don't carry much weight because the very Negroes they are addressed to already send their children to the same schools, live in the same neighborhoods, and have the same dangerous streets that liberals fear integration will bring...
...Regardless of what is publicly admitted, these groups touch deep, responsive nerves...
...The Time Is Now...
...I know everyone has his limits, but this...
...As it is, the Negro intelligentsia have been bearing the burden of both worlds: living up to the middle-class expectations, which involves eschewing most of the usual Negro escapes, while nevertheless remaining subject to the discrimination and stigma accorded Negroes...
...And so the liberals are restive...
...Do you mean I have to wait until Negro crime statistics agree with population percentages before I can buy a house like everyone else...
...While it seems certain to grow deeper and wider in the days to come, a complete break seems unlikely, though not entirely out of the question...
...The marriage required idyllic conditions in order to take place at all: namely, a time when integration involved more theory than practice, and a time when Negroes couldn't afford to ask questions, let alone make demands of their friends...
...Indeed some of the liberal tenets and watchwords have always been regarded as naive, square, things to be shrugged off with a smile...
...Miscegenation: could anything be easier than waiting and breeding, or impose less moral commitment...
...A Very Real World Now the Negro intelligentsia have been around, especially around the ghetto, and while the liberal's complaints may embarrass, they do not carry much weight...
...Fischer should note that the Black Muslims come close to filling his prescription, and are in the absence of any further integration turning out some genuinely first-class citizens—that is people who have forsaken crime, narcotics, drink, idleness, and lowlife in favor of thrift, sobriety, hardwork, and education...
...They expected to achieve equality for all Americans without pain or strain, and then emerge as innocent as they began...
...These doubts are real and persistent, and although there have been few public outbursts, there has been much backstage grumbling from Negroes who work in civil rights groups with liberals...
...Everbody Has fo Pay The liberal's anguish stems from one of those tenacious liberal illusions: that, contrary evidence notwithstanding, they could achieve integration at no cost or inconvenience to themselves (always having been better prepared for integration in the South than next door up North...
...For if America is ever discovered, liberals remain the best bet for surviving the voyage once the sting of integration passes...
...Podhoretz has pointed out, there is a good deal that is sick about this subject...
...This break has been growing almost in proportion to successes in integration and direct-action movements...
...There will be recriminations, struggles over tactics and leadership as well as cooperation, for both liberals and Negroes are in too deep, have too few alternatives, and too much community property to split up now...
...Well, baby, nobody said it was easy...
...These articles have been greeted by the Negro intelligentsia with a rather icy contempt, annoyance and indifference, and finally even a dash of relief...
...White liberals will indeed have wandered down a strange side street if they come to relying on miscegenation as the solution to their Negro problem...
...Liberals are showing signs of being just like everyone else when it's their neighborhood that is integrated...
...Mr...
...Hey, how about making this integration a bit easier on us...
...after all this intelligentsia has been afforded fewer romantic notions about integration and the kind of outlook a heel on the back of the neck is likely to leave one's fellow man with...
...There is a growing conviction that white Americans really can't and won't practice what they preach...
...with fewer illusions he has been able to tolerate paying a higher cost...
...But instead they have been going through a labyrinth of uneasiness and evasion...
...The discovery that white liberals are balking at a point so far short of letting their sisters marry Negroes has been sobering for some Negroes and proof of the need for intransigence for others...
...Questions that once even the most intrepid civil righters use to entertain if not stumble over...
...Of course some Afro-American groups, the Black Muslims, and Adam Clayton Powell (who is his own group always) have been quick to repudiate the liberals and make capital out of their retreat...
...Their surprise at what integration means (indeed everyone seems to harbor confused expectations about the word) is almost as if they had not conceived that the Negroes they proposed to champion were just people, that as a group they were culturally disadvantaged, insecure and hostile...
...No one has been more aware and less surprised by the white liberal's retreat than the Negro intelligentsia engaged in the civil rights struggle...
...At last the liberals are in the position to be found out, and so far they seem little (not enough) better than the others, when it comes to living by the morals they profess...
...I didn't know it was like this...
...The Black Muslim formula doesn't require integration or amelioration, just hate—which may be the only formula for turning second-class citizens into first-class citizens without changing the conditions which led to their becoming second-class citizens in the first place...
...One would expect, from the way they have been carrying on, that they'd look out the front window and rejoice: "Oh boy, Negroes...
...So the liberal arguments don't sound particularly compelling or reason enough to let them off the hook...
...If the territory ahead is difficult for liberals, the Negro intelligentsia has resolved not to let them fall by the wayside...
...Collecting the Debt At best, the arguments raised by Mr...
...By force the Negro has been educated to the difference between the American proposition and the real world...
...But now, with the stumbling translation of the moral principle into a reality, they are discovering that it's going to cost and that they're going to have to pay too...
...Recent events have eroded much of this ground away...
...There is more than a suspicion, since Negro Ph.D.s, chemists, teachers, etc., have very nearly the same difficulty as any other Negro in getting a house, that when you get down to the nitty-gritty, it's really, "I just don't like 'em around me, not here in the neighborhood, next to me...
...That is why we've been so patient...
...Fischer...
...That these arguments have so little sway with the Negro intelligentsia is not because they are basically weak or incorrect as criticism, but rather to differences in expectations and experiences, and finally the hard fact that it isn't the liberals' rights that are being held for ransom...
...Fischer and others seem like another excuse to get out of paying debts accumulated over the last three hundred or so years...
...Instead of turning on that rich vocabulary, they have been content glumly to pass over the questions raised in the recent liberal articles...
...So far, it has been taking on the characteristics of a lover's quarrel...
...Just what I've been waiting for...
...port they have been attempting to carry these reluctant Americans on their backs as so much black man's burden...
...Do you mean I have to wait until everyone has a natural tan before I can get treated like an American...
...And this has necessitated a painful change in their level of awareness...
...The really significant thing has been the Negro intelligentsia's reaction to the signs of the retreat of the liberals...
...The intention is to deposit them on the banks of the civilization promised in 1776...
...Instead their reply has been a sanguine, "But baby, nobody ever said integration was easy street for you...
...Negroes are considerably more conservative on all issues save civil rights for Negroes...
...So the liberals' plea seems hypocritical and dishonest when their moral injunctions are recalled...
...It is curious to speculate why Mr...
...And the Negro intelligentsia has been led to expect that the liberals meant what they said, and therefore intend to hold them accountable for those words no matter what crime statistics, IQ tests, welfare reports, or The Origin of the Races reveal...
...Indeed, it is just Negroes of this level that have demonstrated as much desire as their white counterparts to escape such environments...
...John Fischer's rather remarkable (considering the source) proposal, which may be translated, "Ouch...
...It is at this juncture that the Negro intelligentsia's dwindling capacity for disillusionment is taxed...
...As Mr...
...Podhoretz must have been in a mood...
...and the other issues liberals occupy themselves with rarely command much attention from Negroes...
...Podhoretz suggests that the road to the Cafe au Lait Democracy is via Negro men and white women rather than white men and Negro women, which heretofore has been the more frequent recipe for gene mixing...
...Now here, after all these years, I find out they ain't really with me, huh...
...And some Negroes may even be reluctant to marry the white liberal's sisters just to let their brothers off the hook...
...When all the liberal doubts are weighed they still seem trivial by comparison to the American proposition: all men are created equal...
...I'm sorry...
...And as in most matches founded on conviction as well as dependence, the more likely resolution is disenchantment rather than divorce...
...Few testy voices have bothered to blister Mr...
...If you are approximately middle-class Negro status, it's no easier or any more enjoyable to have your children exposed to slum standards, broken homes, disease, poor teachers, poorer schools, crime, etc., just because the people involved happen to be Negroes too...
...For perhaps the first time many liberals are having to deal with these questions in the flesh and blood...
...Both have been propositioned by the myth of America...
...Few, if any, Negroes are willing to take seriously this proposal as a solution to their Negro problem, especially in today's world...
...But I thought you said we were both in this thing together...
...That such arguments are being raised by liberals at this late date is largely a measure of how much contact they have been having with the real American world...
...The Negro intelligentsia that is still committed to the American proposition has had to continue without ma jor outbursts regardless of their skepticism...
...Marrying for love still sounds like a good idea...
...Behind this lies the realization that the liberals need to be helped go through with integration because if they fail in this we shall have proved conclusively that white Americans are incapable of living by their ideals, and that, for Negroes, America is never to be realized and indeed all roads oo lead to Muhammad's doorstep...
...The honeymoon between white liberals and the Negroes is over...
...Also there is that supply of irritations, attributable mostly to differing sensibilities, that have always left each a little bit mistrustful of the other...
...Heretofore the liberal has been conscious of the Negroes primarily as a moral problem, but integration has forced a new and sometimes startling perception of Negroes as people—with vices as well as virtues that are all too human to be the exclusive preserve of any one ethnic group...
...The dominant response has been a curious mixture of irritation and indifference...
Vol. 10 • July 1963 • No. 3
