The Negroes, the Cops, the Jews
Rustin, Bayard
Let us recall the early days of our struggle when, in 1954, the Supreme Court made its historic decision. A great psychological ferment began to take place, which, as you know, was followed by...
...Whitney Young is grabbing money...
...But by keeping Negroes from the polls—out of his desperation and absence of hope that there can be movement in this society—he was in fact cooperating with the right-wing movie star and helping to elect him...
...they've given them skills to run office machines and once one is graduated, I try to put another one in his place...
...And they fear—if the husband were out of work for a few weeks, the whole economic structure they have built up would be laid waste...
...To the question, "Has there been progress...
...Once society was prepared to help the great masses of poor immigrants if only by purchasing their muscle power...
...But our economic order makes it possible for the worst to be brought out of people...
...And if every Jew told me to get out, I would still accept every invitation to go and speak about this...
...Ever since 1954 the great masses of Negroes in the North have found that not all the legislation that was being passed was helpful to them...
...In the old days, it was not merely that Jews were intelligent and had a family life...
...Now one can dislike this, but to rail against it is not the way to do away with it...
...Next, they say, "What's the matter with Phil Randolph...
...That the Jews and the Hungarians and the poor Irish and the Italians lifted themselves up by their bootstraps is sheer mythology...
...I say, least fundamental because dignity cannot spring from civil rights bills...
...Even if every Jew in the country told me he didn't need my help, that he hated me, I would have to go on helping just the same...
...The Budget suggests the examination and expansion of the whole area of public services and redefinition of our concept of "work...
...And to get into the larger establishments, you must already have managerial or sales skills...
...But in the new period, for a time, "frustration politics" was to be the order of the day...
...Their position in Chicago was, "Negroes, stay away from the polls...
...That is what we blacks have learned from the Hebrew prophets...
...And with this fear, you get the socialization and politicalization of prejudice...
...And the trade union movement was growing and developing...
...There we were fighting against a man whose slogan was, "Your home is your castle," by which he meant, "Your home is your castle which Negroes are about to storm...
...It is addressed not merely to the Negro community, but equally to Negro frustration and white fear...
...Today, the trade union movement is not growing at a comparable rate in this country...
...To many young people, Dr...
...Roy Wilkins is backward...
...III Once there was free land, and millions of poor got a start in this country because this society provided them with free land...
...it's not working...
...Let's look at anti-Semitism in Russia, which I've discussed in several cities in this country...
...Since 1954 Negro unemployment has doubled...
...So they are paying for two cars...
...I'll give you two illustrations...
...If I had turned to Stokely Carmichael and said to him, "What are you doing in alliance with these forces that represent the Birch Society and the conservative wing of the Republican party...
...The hell with Dr...
...The young Negroes are not jumping on Wallace...
...Somebody's always telling me about how his grandfather had a little shop, and he sold candy and cigars, and the kids lived with the mother in the back...
...Randolph is asking this country to provide a series of steps over which people can move out of poverty...
...In Western society a man's dignity springs, fundamentally, from his part in the production of goods and services...
...Now this young fellow came in and he said to me, "Mr...
...About two and a half years ago, I wrote an article in Commentary called "From Protest to Politics...
...1 called one of my friends at the ILGWU who almost always will try to find work for these boys...
...And that is precisely because they had faith that the Jews, who had known persecution, would continue to stand with them as they had from the beginning in this fight...
...The ghettos are larger, with more rats, more roaches, more despair...
...my answer is, "Yes, much progress...
...Live in fear...
...Let us, therefore, examine the benighted people who attack King, who threw urine on nuns and called them "whores for niggers" as they marched in Chicago...
...they discovered, rather, that as the legislation was piled up, their situation did not become fundamentally altered...
...Although this was a period of great travail, it involved the simplest kind of social action...
...Otherwise many of them will do nothing...
...The Freedom Budget will affect us all, because it calls for putting millions of people back to work, for cleaning up the rivers which are filthy, and cleaning the air which is filthy...
...Millions of new jobs would be created...
...They don't care about him...
...But after Birmingham we were thrust by the successes of the civil rights movement into an extremely difficult period...
...They did not know they were forming political alliances with the forces that wanted to destroy the man who has done more than any other American to enact social legislation...
...Stokely Carmichael knows the advantage he enjoys, knows he doesn't have to offer a social, economic or political program to get applause...
...In Birmingham, even Dr...
...People were killed...
...It is all there for you to see in the Freedom Budget: full employment, a $2.00 minimum wage, redefinition of work, guaranteed income for those who cannot or should not work, and a new kind of public work—in the building of things that are needed for us all...
...What the Freedom Budget does is to try to establish a new series of steps for our time...
...You will remember the irony of opening up the libraries, at first without chairs, so that everybody had to stand, and then, finally bringing in the chairs...
...If they really meant business," they say, "conditions wouldn't be this way...
...No head start was needed for him, no special training, no talk of upgrading...
...Three days ago, a Negro boy with no talent whatever came to see me for a job...
...Indeed, we believe that if this nation seriously undertakes to meet our vast unmet social needs, we will find that there is plenty of work to be done...
...And these are not really radical young Negroes...
...Is the answer, then, that Jews should desert the movement...
...If they meant business, we wouldn't be in this condition...
...They could merely call attention to the fact that something is wrong...
...Now this is about the way it goes—and I want to be very graphic here, because if we don't understand this, we understand nothing about what is happening...
...These conditions get worse and worse and they do nothing about it...
...In this situation we have a compounding factor to Negro frustration, and that is white economic fear...
...I told him, "I don't know...
...We do not see the abolition of work on the immediate horizon...
...these institutions, and they were opened up...
...These people are buying homes in Cicero that cost $25,000 but are only one-third paid for...
...Man's work must relate him to the production of goods and services, and therefore we need a redefinition of the concept of work, to make full employment possible...
...They control the unions...
...I would rather shoot pool in the poolroom and sell numbers on the street before ever again I'll take a nigger job...
...Then what is the difference...
...The young Negro says, "Obviously, as Stokely Carmichael says, if I have been beaten fifteen times, if I have been jailed twenty-eight times, if my buddies were murdered in Mississippi, if I have paid fines of over $8,000, if I have bail on me of over $10,000, and we have made all these sacrifices, but the situation in housing, schools, and jobs gets worse and worse, then there is something wrong with our tactics...
...Men could be put to work, without great skills, doing these things...
...He's old now...
...All of God's children would be charming people if we could contain them within a social order that would make it possible for the best to be brought out of them...
...We will not get rid of prejudice by being nice or by merely passing legislation—but by re-organizing the social and economic order so that we reduce to an irreducible minimum both black frustration and white fear...
...but you are just going to have to go to work...
...But today the failure rate of small businesses is astronomical...
...Meaningless...
...It will never do that for the poor today...
...but finally it is the economic and social nature of our institutions which determines how much dignity people have, how much money they can control, and whether or not they share equitably in the national wealth...
...Let us recall the early days of our struggle when, in 1954, the Supreme Court made its historic decision...
...Libraries were closed...
...They went into California wearing "Boycott, Baby, Boycott" buttons all over the state, with hundreds of young Negroes dissuading people from getting to the polls...
...They own the banks...
...People were brutally mistreated and beaten...
...Then, a few years later, he moved upstairs, and then he could have the shop downstairs and the two rooms for the family upstairs...
...I maintain that an East European Jew who came here in 1900 was not half so prepared to make it in this society as the average uneducated, illiterate Negro out of Mississippi...
...this is the day of great Jewish power"—my answer would be simply, "You go straight to hell...
...And so Negroes end up with the eloquent frustration called Black Power...
...And then come the white liberals...
...There is a need for new schools, new homes...
...We call for a guaranteed annual income as a supplement to full employment, not as a substitute for it...
...Don't vote for either...
...The hell with them too...
...In Maryland, the same thing happened...
...He need only give vent to the despairing anger of the ghetto, and "triumph" over those of us who see no value in anger except as it inspires mobilization for change...
...And if I didn't get invited, I would speak to people in buses and trains...
...Now I know that what this society, in 1966, is prepared to give has risen...
...And then he attacks these people precisely in the order in which he depended upon them, in which he had faith in them...
...Once this society provided for the poor, no matter how bestially it treated them, because it was prepared and eager to buy their muscle power...
...But it should be more profitable to analyze what I call white economic fear...
...Without a single penny being spent, without an act of Congress, it was possible to create sufficient dislocation around these institutions, and a few Negroes demonstrating could both destroy the old institutions and create new ones overnight...
...he would have said, "I am not in alliance with them...
...Unemployment among Negro young women and teen-age girls is several times what it is among whites...
...This period of direct action was simple also because attention was focused basically on the desegregation of public accommodations—swimming pools, restaurants, hotels, buses, libraries...
...They are saving money to send two children to college, but the burden is great, and therefore the wife goes to work...
...That is the basic social and psychological problem we face...
...So were swimming pools...
...For this we need an economic program...
...If we had a graph comparing and measuring the Negroes' aspirations in 1936 and 1966, you would discover that in 1936 Negroes wanted this much and the society was prepared to give them that much...
...More and more, these youngsters will not do that kind of work...
...They say, "The Jews have power...
...If enough people sat at counters and went back and were arrested again and again, then, finally, restaurants—long before the Civil Rights Bill was passed—would have to begin to integrate...
...Now when everybody's deserted the ghetto except the Jewish merchants and the police—even if the police behaved like angels and if the Jewish merchants behaved like angels—they would automatically be turned on, for the very simple reason that you can always turn on those who are near you and with whom you do business and about whom you care...
...If enough people rode and rode in the buses, finally the bus companies would capitulate...
...Now if somebody wanted to give me a million dollars to set up classes for these boys, I wouldn't do it, because it would be wasting their money...
...but that's what they did...
...And the educational system has increasingly failed to prepare poor Negroes, Puerto Ricans, and other minority people to make a living in a society where automation and cybernation affect most grievously the poor, the unskilled, and the uneducated—breeding disillusionment and hopelessness...
...Rustin, what kind of work is this you're getting me...
...They will help...
...Who is right...
...He looked at me and he said, "No...
...The Freedom Budget wants to make very clear, we are not taking the position which some people have taken...
...You cannot demonstrate yourself into a new school system, full employment, or the destruction of slums...
...Where demonstrations had destroyed and created new institutions, demonstrations now could only do one thing...
...It therefore could act as an umbrella against extreme capitalism and government, protecting the rights of the workers and uplifting them economically...
...and this goes on and on until he owns Macy's...
...One is a Jew because he stands for social righteousness, is opposed to injustice wherever it is, first of all in himself...
...And these things would not merely benefit the poor but would benefit all of us...
...But part of the revolt of the Negro masses has been the rejection of jobs which this society has for 250 years said are jobs for Negroes only—cleaning toilets, waiting on table, pushing carts through the garment district...
...You don't have any skills, and if you stay there for three or four months, maybe I can get you something later where there's some possibility of being upgraded...
...A great psychological ferment began to take place, which, as you know, was followed by a period of intense direct action...
...Unemployment among Negro youth is now three times as high as that of white youth...
...I will not take a nigger job...
...This society is buying less and less muscle power, and people must have a high degree of skill to find work...
...It is not enough to put up posters telling people to be nice...
...yet it answers a need...
...The trade unions today cannot afford economically to organize many of the people who need most to be organized...
...God knows, they had to work long, hard hours in sweatshops, and under terrible conditions...
...It was simple for a very good reason: the whole nation was stirred up about the least fundamental, though the highly important, issue of dignity...
...Now you may say to me, "That's a terrible situation...
...Society just bought his muscle power...
...Another step is no longer available...
...It's wrong...
...King is no longer the Moses...
...I meant to point out that the movement was now faced with totally different problems, problems we had never been faced with before...
...Because of their despair over not playing a role in real politics, they end up making an unconscious alliance with some of the worst elements in the country, those which helped elect Ronald Reagan governor of California...
...Who are these people...
...Small family retail stores are being squeezed out by the big chain stores, by big business...
...But since the dawn of American history this society has provided steps along which the poor could move, if they wanted to move...
...The Freedom Budget attempts to do for the poor today what this society did in the past for the poor who came from Europe to America...
...So it was possible to destroy the old institutions and public accommodations and to build up new ones simultaneously...
...Nobody can be right, because the objective situation is so bad...
...People will not be nice in situations that encourage being unnice...
...So they turn on the Jews...
...We need power...
...And now they turn on him, because the objective situation gets worse...
...Then they turn on the trade-union movement...
...Our society today aids and abets the frustration of a Stokely Carmichael and his followers...
...The minute the wife goes to work, they find themselves not economically better off but worse, because now she must buy a car...
...I maintain that many Jews got from the lower East Side to West End Avenue precisely because the Hatters were being formed and the Amalgamated and the ILGWU, and that the union movement offered the immigrants tremendous protection and possibility of growth...
...If I was told, "Get out of my way, roll over...
...Now they are trying to leapfrog out...
...People can be put to work tearing down slums and building new homes...
...I am not going to get out of the movement which I am dedicated to, the movement against injustice, just because right now you are behaving in a frustrated manner...
...This Negro, after all, knows something of American culture, and the language of the land is his own...
...And direct action was possible without a single penny being spent by the federal government...
...That is a political job, requiring allies, priorities, and an educational job among the masses of the American people...
...Today the situation is different for the great masses of Negroes and poor whites...
...They've got power...
...Today Mr...
...The teacher's union has taken in about eight or ten boys...
...But this progress has absolutely no meaning for people who in their day-to-day lives are still overwhelmed by enormous problems, who find unemployment doubling and tripling, find the ghettos growing, the educational system not able to meet the needs of their children...
...In 1936 the distance between what Negroes wanted and what society was giving was very non-revolutionary—because there was a very short distance between aspirations and conditions...
...But that progress is meaningless to those who are trapped in the ghettos, simply because their aspirations have risen higher, up to the ceiling, making the gulf between real conditions and aspirations so vast as to be extremely radical, extremely dangerous...
...The difference is, the minute that East European Jew got off Ellis Island, this society was ready to buy his muscle power...
...King himself did not quite know what he was doing when he called for an across-the-board settlement in housing, schools, jobs, police behavior, etc...
...I told the boy about this...
...But now most of those steps no longer exist and are not accessible to the American Negro...
...This hopelessness has led to a series of unfortunate conditions, all of which can be labeled "frustration politics...
...The Freedom Budget is aware of both these phenomena...
...It was a time of many sacrifices...
...Yesterday, they were Poles, Hungarians, and Italians who were in ghettos themselves...
...He is the man who promised, with whom they stood when they were treated brutally...
...In the United States any strategy and tactic that is not addressed both to Negroes and whites in their most desperate as well as in their most creative areas is a useless strategy, for we Negroes are only one tenth of the population...
...I detest them...
...What can you expect, when the general attitude is to say, "The hell with all the white people...
...These economic steps will alleviate both white fear and Negro frustration...
...The frustration of the Negro community is almost impossible to describe...
...I1 But let's remember that all whites except the police and the Jews have deserted the Negro ghetto...
...No doubt...
...Millions of dollars are still tied up in fines and bail, some of which we will get back one day...
...Basically, to judge by their behavior, they belong to the most conservative elements in this country...
...But they have a relationship with the police and the Jewish merchants...
...And the Jews and the police, for the next few years, are going to take all the pressure, all the emotional confusion that many ghetto people feel about whites...
...Senators Douglas and Percy both stink...
...There was a bombing in Birmingham...
...We have to find young Negroes, who are in the throes of discovering who they are, work that is well paid, and work that has a future...
...And there has been great progress over the last thirty years...
...King and his nonviolence...
...Girls had their hair chopped off and burning cigarettes put into their breasts and down their backs...
...Instead of sending the unemployed slum dweller a check every month, why not give him a job rebuilding his neighborhood...
...They will make this nation a more beautiful place to live in, with justice in our streets...
...It would be very simple to describe them as bigots and let it go at that...
...Sooner or later the people— even white people in the South—became disgusted with not having • This article is the text of a speech, slightly abbreviated, delivered at a forum of the Jewish Labor Committee in New York City...
...More people are being driven off the farms in the South by machinery, piling into Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant...
...The corner grocer cannot compete, in the quality or prices of his goods, with A & P. He ends up, ironically, exploiting the people in his own neighborhood...
...They have the power, we do not...
...Isaiah and Jeremiah made it very clear long ago that one is not a Jew because he declines to mix milk and meat in the same pot, or because he's circumcised, or because he follows the law of the Torah...
Vol. 14 • March 1967 • No. 2
