Concerning the Cant of "White Racism"
Moyer, Charles R.
NOTEBOOK I WOULD LIKE to enter an immodest protest against all the talk about "white racism" that we have been hearing since the Report of the President's Commission on Civil Disorders. Since...
...He is even willing to help bring this about...
...Some armchair liberals, it is true, will get a titillating shudder from discovering racial stereotypes in their thinking, but that is strictly a parlor amusement...
...For he knows no system that continues to push 20 per cent of the citizenry into poverty and despair can really have a future...
...The truth is that if we could wave a magic wand and completely banish racism from the country tomorrow, we would still have a disaster on our hands...
...They're just fine with him, and he's even willing to help foot the bill...
...He's in favor of those Head Start projects, job training programs, and college scholarships...
...The white man isn't sure what all those black people are doing, and what he really wishes is that they would do one of two things: either shape up or ship out...
...Insofar as the average white American thinks that the blacks are "different," he is not always necessarily behaving reprehensibly: he is only agreeing with those black militants who are putting African masks on the wall and trying on leopard-skin jackets...
...The latter alternative seems rather hazy to him, so what he really prefers is the first...
...He realizes that the Negroes have had a rough time of it in this country, and he is willing to help...
...That experience may be narrow but it is nonetheless real, and unless I am to deny its NOTEBOOK reality I cannot but believe that there is only a small minority of "white racists" in this country...
...But when he thinks about large numbers of Negroes, then the possibility of that cultural difference begins to haunt him, and his apprehension begins to mount...
...The fact that he can no longer hire cheap black kitchen help doesn't bother him a bit...
...Isn't it yes, it would be right there, filled mostly with displaced people from the rural areas...
...What the average white man needs to know, and what all the racist talk is hiding from him, is that about one-fifth of the American people never came out of the Depression...
...It also ignores the crucial issues...
...He doesn't know that these are futile rescue operations in a continuing economic disaster...
...But as long as we continue to say that the fundamental cause of those ghettos is racism, he is going to plead not guilty—and to do nothing...
...But he NOTEBOOK would like to see some results, and—this is the important point—he doesn't feel guilty, not a bit...
...Paul) and have spent most of my adult life as a college teacher...
...This cultural difference certainly exists, but it seems to me to have a lot more to do with poverty than with "Negritude," and it can easily be misinterpreted and exaggerated...
...They have been locked in there because technological improvements have made large numbers of people unnecessary to the functioning of the nation's economy...
...He would be only too happy to see them living here, there, and everywhere, and behaving like Roy Wilkins or Whitney Young, for that would, he thinks, cater to his desire to stay in control of the situation...
...He knows he's not a racist, and all that racist talk, although it may arouse his resentment, will not move him an inch...
...That politeness does not spring from benevolence: it springs from apprehension and fear...
...He never was a slave owner and he doesn't want to be one...
...he must come to see that something on the order of the Freedom Budget is a necessity...
...The most publicized portions of the Kerner Report have done the cause of racial equality a disservice because they have taken our attention off the real issues...
...The average white man—and I'm going to continue to pretend that I know just as much about that mythical figure as anyone else—is quite willing to accept Negroes as individuals to be judged on their own merits as long as he meets them face-to-face, one at a time...
...NOTEBOOK I WOULD LIKE to enter an immodest protest against all the talk about "white racism" that we have been hearing since the Report of the President's Commission on Civil Disorders...
...Whitey thinks it has something to do with living for the present rather than making sacrifices for tomorrow...
...The average white man and the black militant are in this, as in other matters, brothers under the skin, and I can't see that they aren't trying to say largely the same thing...
...Not many black people seem to be interested in "Negritude," and it has little influence on the white man's face-to-face encounters with in dividual Negroes...
...The thirties have never ended for them...
...If we could get the analyses, interpretations, and recommendations away from race and back to economics and politics, then I think we might have a context in which the white man might be brought to see what must be done...
...To continually speak as if "white racism" were the issue is to give them an importance far out of proportion to their numbers, intelligence, and influence...
...The white man knows that the great majority of people in the ghetto are black, but he has never asked himself whether or not that ghetto would be right there, crammed with people sweltering in the heat, even if Negro slaves had never been brought to this country...
...If we keep talking up white racism, we will undoubtedly help to heighten it...
...The average American that I meet and talk to—and I don't mean college professors—is not a racist, has never called anyone boy or nigger, and tends in fact to be somewhat more polite to Negroes than to most white people...
...What he does think is that we've got a pretty good thing going here in these United States of America and that those Negroes seem to be on the point of spoiling the party...
...Since I have no statistics and can speak only out of my experience, it might be well to keep my background in mind, for it may be that this is a kind of regional report...
...The people I meet are not racists, but many of them do think that black people may be somehow "different," and they are a little afraid of them...
...It may well be that people do not easily yield up their inmost thoughts in conversation, and there certainly are Southern sheriffs, Northern cops, and suburban mothers (I use the word in both senses) who are racists...
...He doesn't know that this is impossible...
...If they would only stand up, straighten up, paint that fence, grab those jobs, and keep those kids off the streets, they would be as welcome as, say, the Japanese, whose success has been so extraordinary...
...But if imputations of racism won't move him, what will...
...If the Negroes want to fix up the ghetto, O.K...
...I don't know, of course, but I think that he might be moved by the knowledge that what is going on in this country is not a racial but a class conflict...
...THE AVERAGE WHITE MAN must be moved if we are not all to end in a holocaust...
...But even here I am not sure that his attitude is genuinely racist...
...And what is the answer to that question...
...I have lived most of my life in the large cities of the Midwest (Flint, Chicago, and Minneapolis-St...
...but I am convinced that they are a relatively small and powerless group...
...Such people do exist, it seems, but I have never talked to a person who said that he thought black people are genetically or biologically inferior to white people...
...Neither Whitey nor the black militant is able to define this difference very clearly...
...The militant thinks it has something to do with a verbal rather than a written culture, or with an inclination toward intuitive rather than discursive thinking...
...What has happened is that a racial facade covers an economic disaster...
...The racial prejudices of white men helped to select the people who were railroaded into the ghetto, but both Whitey and the black militant have mistaken one of the means of imprisonment for its real cause...
...And we will also miss our chance for understanding and dealing with the real causes of the revolution of our time...
...If they would prefer to leave the ghetto and scatter out into the community, that might be O.K...
...It exists largely as a possibility or an idea, and as such it has enough reality to make the white man jumpy when he thinks about large numbers of Negroes...
...He doesn't even think about it...
...but they have not been locked into the Depression because of racist individuals or even racist institutions...
Vol. 16 • January 1969 • No. 1
