INITIATION FOR WHITEY: NOTES ON POVERTY AND RIOT

...If the issue is reduced to whetherthere should be a guaranteed income or not, of course -there should be...

...And often they were even less representative of the people in the neighborhoods...

...That is all...

...It is very, very important because I believe that people who can define are masters...

...But in the meantime it is a terrible thing to see whites and blacks locked into oratorical abstractions which only reinforce hatred and guilt and violence...

...yet apparently this job will get little more than peanuts allocated to it as long as our President is escalating the war in Vietnam...

...It is only reasonable that many a young Negro will prefer this conception of himself to that of the disadvantaged student, fighting a lonely struggle to educate himself and keep his bearings in the face of discrimination and poverty...

...But once one does indulge in thought, monistic historical and political assumptions won't go very far toward describing or explaining the rather complex set of circumstances which surround American poverty and our various attempts to cope with it...

...Note that Mr...

...If such an overall effort were under way, it would be matched by individual efforts to •participate in it...

...The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things...

...Here is an excerpt from a speech to the students of Morgan State College, as transcribed in The Movement, June 1967: "Now then we come to the question of definitions...

...And finally, how could political or social ideals be anything more to such a youth than expressions of class or race or personal drives for power...

...But for me, the answer was that Masonry, actually, is only thirty-three degrees of the religion of Islam, which is the full projection, forever denied to Masons, although they know it exists...

...We need more channels, more representation, a larger, fairer dole— and nationally planned work programs involving both middle-class and poor people engaged together in meaningful reconstruction of their own country...

...For in many cases, seen in terms of a might-makes-right perspective, the poverty workers have been fawning—allowing themselves to be conned and worse (sometimes much worse...

...Slum-dwellers may not run their affairs in accordance with the standard models, but they are capable of running their own affairs...

...It is frightening to see a cycle in operation —a cycle of poverty and rhetoric, violence and backlash...

...8 degrees, then, the maximum of degrees in anything...

...I am told that the Irish riots of the 19th century were bloodier than anything we've yet seen from the Negroes...

...It is not enough to turn the slums over to the slum-dwellers: that is too much like what they already have, whether you call it "participation" or penury...

...But surviving on a welfare check or an income subsidy is not the same as having a future...

...If this is gospel truth, then speculation is mere distraction...

...In retaliation, guardsmen in Newark smashed blackowned stores, and troops and police shot up Negro dwelling-places...

...And righteous free-lance violence is hardly an exclusive property of Negroes, as an evening with your TV set will confirm...

...For those who have fallen by the wayside, it provides "social services...

...On one hand America recognizes that certain elements among the poor cannot be absorbed into the world of steady, responsible work...

...Presumably he learned this from "the underground press, the speeches of Malcolm, the works of Fanon, the songs of the Rolling Stones and Aretha Franklin," which he cites as "the important literature now...

...But when it comes to knowledge, what he mainly wants is a ready-made line, a set of hardnosed aphorisms—so that he will have a quick answer in any threatening situation...

...More important than either the dole or subsidized autonomous projects is the need for a full-scale national economic program, without which local projects are doomed to dry up from lack of umbilical connections...

...they would at best be no more than the mainstays of an isolated community in an inferior economic position...

...Where do we go from here...

...but he cannot legitimately tell a young Negro that his allegiance to the catchwords of Black Power does not make him feel better on the inside...

...For that reason they are prey to the most self-destructive temptations...

...Basically they insist on the dole in recognition of the fact that the poor are not fully employable...

...At any rate, the vast majority of those killed were Negroes, and in most cases few people were killed until the order was given for official triggers to be pulled...

...American society has a tremendous job to do in terms of creating genuine economic and educational opportunities...

...Some years from now, their argument goes, the racial conflict will have resolved itself, and the usual variety of opinions and loyalties will flourish among a more relaxed Negro population...

...We can and should eliminate the abuses, the condescension, the costly and degrading checkups...

...If he relies on ideology—well, certainly the Jews, Irish, and Italians protected themselves with cynical philosophies about AmerINITIATION FOR WHITEY 275 ican opportunity (and their own superiority) —and certainly they developed -their share of hustlers and hoods...

...But hustling as an outlook or as a mode of activity finally cannot comprehend the various problems which have to do with learning, training, saving, postponing—and other attitudes necessary to achieve full economic participation in an increasingly technological society, whether one is "middle-class" or not...

...Anyone but the most rigid determinist would have to acknowledge positive possibilities in the ferment created by the beginnings—and the idea—of a war on poverty...

...Riots or market manipulations...

...and the disgraceful Ninetieth Congress passes legislation which only punishes the cities and prolongs the horror in Vietnam...

...For us, American resources have been tragically misspent, aims deflected and purposes misguided...

...Precisely that life is a hustle—that might not only makes right but is identical with it...

...O HI ne problem for the boy growing up in the ghetto is that models are lacking to show how one might successfully enter the world of trade and technology in which most American males are employed...

...he may deride the intellectual inadequacy of the new black ideology...

...And the investigatory, punitive system of welfare only hampers them...

...Perhaps they had reasons for aiming to miss...

...V The militant—the creator of and the believer in black rhetoric—is deeply dependent on the very world he is scorning and threatening...

...I mean the swingers on Wall Street and the WASPs who head up our huge corporations...

...Surely of all the segregated groups that have fought against social stigmata, the Negroes— brought to this country against their will and subject to slavery, lynch law and emasculation— have the toughest fight on their hands...

...It is one of my favorite quotes...

...Malcolm, for instance, with his razor wit, had at any point in his life—whether as zoot-suit hipster, Black Muslim, or pan African nationalist a complete set of consistent answers which turned complexity into a captivating simplicity...

...Carroll, identifies with Humpty Dumpty...

...when he gets no response, he feels himself nothing...

...And he is very American in the way he goes about creating his position...

...We still insist that there is a fight worth fighting on the battleground of American politics— in the interests of not only the Negroes but all the people...

...What happens these days to the large majority of boys who aspire to be "streetwise"— who in fact must be, simply to survive —but who can't make it big as hustlers and who lack some lucky talent that would enable them to rise in the world unassisted...

...Fair enough...

...Naturally they resent the white establishment, whose official members they see as licensed hustlers—licensed, in some cases, to treat Negroes brutally...

...We cannot hope for a magic resolution of our double attitude toward poverty, since poor people are in fact burdens as well as honorable victims...

...Real participation would involve openings beyond the ghetto into areas of massive economic opportunity and retraining...

...For the time being, however, the argument has been vacated by a cycle of paranoia, wherein the lies, chauvinism, sweeping historical analogies, self-righteousness, and violence of American policy-makers are reflected in perfect miniature by the demagogues of American racism, off their rockers black and white alike and ready to give no quarter until their pain and rage are satisfied...

...One thing the poverty program has proved is that simply turning over funds and programs to the poor does not in itself enable them to transform the circumstances that keep them poor...

...but starting with a white man, you never could produce a black man—because the white chromosome is recessive...

...But what do you teach a kid when you pay him a government salary to threaten the government or to spread mindless propaganda...

...He said 'Yes.' "I said, 'Well, why is it that Masons go only to thirty-three degrees?' "He had no satisfactory answer...

...The young Negro who is successful in "straight" employment is apt to move away—and become identified with the larger world, which is seen from the ghetto as a white world...

...if you started with a black man, a white man could be produced...

...It's better than nodding out on junk...

...Nepotism flourished, minority factions usurped whole organizations, and an inordinate amount of money was siphoned into plans, studies, staff and equipment...

...The gains of the poverty program, like the gains of the civil rights movement, have led mainly to bitterness and a sense of promises betrayed...

...I am mindful that the American ideal of making one's self has been for some a vicious myth...

...In some cases, they waited in ambush to shoot up cars which failed to stop at unmanned roadblocks...

...If I'm so great, he thinks, then I will take what you have...

...There is much truth in these strictures...

...I am afraid that many of them—at least the ones who project onto the Negro their longing for a noble savage—must share with Congress and other officials, and with society at large, a responsibility for the riots...

...He picks them up—as Malcolm X did—by paying attention all day long to power plays...

...Perhaps the most uncomfortable aspect of HARYOU was its hiring of black nationalist youths in sinecures designed to keep them from touching off riots...

...The ghetto itself must be destroyed...

...On being told they must go through a specific training process over a period of years, they throw up their hands...

...He is shrewd about the use of force, at least within his own precincts...

...To speak realistically, people on dole will not have "dignity," no matter what...

...Carmichael, unlike Mr...

...But for that reason also they of all people can least afford any kind of self-deception...

...Maybe so...

...The power who remains "on the street" (or parked in his Cadillac) and thus available for identification, is the hustler...

...If he goes into the Armed Services, a Negro boy may get his desired initiation...

...Stokely Carmichael has been to Cuba, singing loon-songs of world-wide guerrilla warfare...

...He wants to punish America...

...Yet poverty programs turned over entirely to "local" groups were often at least as corrupt as .programs run through the standard political bureaucracies...

...So that if something can't be picked up in a quick formula, it will likely be banished from consciousness...

...Which is simply that the hustler knows all the answers...

...Anyone in contact with the inhabitants of urban slums cannot fail to be impressed with a kind of realistic wisdom which, while not propelling its possessors up the ladder of American success, manages to provide sustenance, pleasure, and in some cases a version of affluence...

...And we do...

...If people are afraid of you, you exist, you know who you are...

...From the chapter "Saved," in The Autobiography of Malcolm X No doubt poor people are not the only ones susceptible to the all-or-nothing concept of learning...

...All of which presents problems, to put it mildly...

...If there were organized Negro assassins at work, it's hard to believe they could have aimed so badly...

...And since no one disputes that there was but one Original Man, the conclusion is clear...

...Furthermore, job-holders must be trained to see and use that connection, probably while they are on the job...

...One is the idea of "Black Power"—which at its best involves developing the ghettos (now partially gutted) as economic and political "power bases," at its worst reinforces the existing stalemate of separation and racial mistrust and drives away the liberal forces who are needed to speed the dissolution of that stalemate...

...Whether or not such generalizations are justified, the hysteria which prompts them finds ready symbols in the bombing escalation of Hanoi and toward the Chinese border, in the photos of "Vietnam-type" tanks rumbling through the streets of Newark, in news broadcasts announcing that Viet Cong re flushed out of tunnels with "antiriot" gas...

...A white man may argue that Negro violence is not politically efficient...

...These boys don't want training—they want in right away...

...From the chapter "Satan," in The Autobiography of Malcolm X Like Malcolm, Stokely Carmichael lays great stress on "the power to define...

...The philosophy of hustling must be undermined and destroyed by any poverty program worthy of being taken seriously...

...It comes from Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll...

...How many degrees in that?' He said three hundred and sixty...

...Their action examined apart from rhetoric said very simply and explicitly, "we will not endure these circumstances...

...But Richard Hughes, the liberal governor of New Jersey, is warning that we must draw a line to separate us from "the jungle...

...There are sad stories among poverty workers of Negro youths who approach, say, psychologists, and announce, I've seen what you do, man: why can't I take your place...

...Reporters have confirmed that in both Newark and Detroit, the cops and guardsmen shot at each other and at the sparks of their own bullets striking houses...

...In some cities —though no one likes to admit it—the hustling view of life has caused Negro youngsters to turn down decent jobs in favor of a more free-wheeling style of livelihood...

...What of the white civil rights and poverty workers—the idealistic students, the increasingly radical social workers, the impassioned ministers—who in past years have gone into the ghettos to unite themselves with America's most urgent cause...

...Among these circumstances is the deepgrained philosophy of the hustle, which sees society and personal relations as a series of power games...

...An interaction goes on 274 JEREMY LARNER between demagogue and potential rioter not unlike the traditional interaction between Negro preacher and potential lamb of Jesus...

...And for most people, it's not necessary—not when there is so much work to do in this country...

...1 Yes, we have failed to make our American representative system truly representative— we have left a segment of our population powerless and impoverished...

...HARYOU in New York is one of the many Community Action Projects which suffered from a too-loose distribution of funds, resulting not only in shortages but in cases where a few hustlers wereaccused of taking up to 100 percent kickbacks from the kids they hired...

...These efforts are not mutually exclusive...

...It seems obvious that the Negroes will be hurt most, even as in every riot they make up -a large majority of the dead and wounded...

...Which costs America more—riots or oil depletions...

...Yet when the poverty program began it drew thousands of previously disenfranchised poor people who saw in its pitifully inadequate funding an opportunity to create institutions of social equity, and who insisted they were all the more American to do so...

...It therefore gives them the dole—but under extremely degrading circumstances...

...But at the same time they maintain that poverty funds must be turned over exclusively to the poor...

...They have fire-bombed white stores, loan offices and adjacent housing...

...I have already mentioned the hustler's credo of might equals right, but there is another aspect of his makeup worth underscoring in terms of its educational implications...

...Frequently connected with the Black Power slogan is the idea of revolutionary violence— for some a religion, others a therapy—which seems in this moment of rioting and backlash an inevitable but hopeless development...

...Yet for all its saving graces, its toughness, flexibility and hard-boiled humor, the culture of poverty is self-defeating and self-perpetuating...

...With every escalation a portion of faith is torn away from this country...

...The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "who is to be master...

...Riots or drug mark-ups...

...But for poor boys such a misconception is fatal, because it means that training and education are seen as initiation —as into a club, or .a secret society—rather than as an open process...

...On the other hand America perpetuates the myth that it is an open society in which all can find honorable work...

...There are some respects in which it is not enough merely to pay the poor...

...Still, the ghettos remained, Vietnam drew off funds, and local party hacks acted swiftly to eviscerate programs...

...He wants America to pay attention...

...Some radicals unwittingly contradict them1 Andrew Kopkind echoes this attitude in The New York Review of Books (August 24, 1967), where he states that "Morality, like politics, starts at the barrel of a gun...

...But channels for doing just that have always been open, and remain some of our most valuable social possessions...

...The worker looking above him would see opportunity and not merely a closed corporation...

...Since he has the pay-off already, why should he bother with any form of education or self discipline...

...He's not abandoning America—he can't...

...8...

...We will talk about that for a while...

...Hustling will be •given up only when it is the least useful defense—which is to say, only when jobs with futures are provided, jobs which involve a meaningful connection with the larger society...

...The ballyhooed War on Poverty was sabotaged, -according to the burgeoning number of Left ideologists, by an essentially racist country conducting an imperialist war in Asia and bent on holding down exploited dark-skinned masses everywhere...

...I asked him was three hundred and sixty INITIATION FOR WHITEY 273 The trouble is that street knowledge can't risk unsureness, can't risk leaving questions open...

...Somehow programs have to involve linkages with the mainstream of society—for the benefit of all concerned...

...It seems clear that regardless of Black Power rhetoric-"burn this town," "shoot honkies," etc.—the main motives of those who joined in were economic...

...Far from aloof, he's deeply hurt at having been snubbed and used and moved away from...

...What makes them think that people who are not fully employable are fully capable of administering poverty funds...

...Even before the rioting, the poverty program had raised serious issues in relation to the welfare state and the problem of democratic participation...

...Let mq propose the virtues of a double-minded attitude—for purposes of action as well as analysis...

...First he has an "image"—a militant image, a black image, a unique image without which one does not have access to the media...

...The black man in the ghetto stabs at his own heart, which is also the heart of our cities, and as the ghettos burn, one hears loud crackings all around, as if the whole crazy country were on fire...

...But if he stays on the street, the young Negro is likely to collide with another type--exemplified by Carmichael and LeRoi Jones, among others—the successful middle-class Negro who can't bear the torment of perceiving himself a part of "white" society while masses of his people are left behind...

...The culture of the ghetto must be absorbed and utilized— which is not the same as being destroyed...

...Granted, there is truth enough to such a view—especially when one is looking up from the bottom...

...There are others on the Left, myself included, who still see America as less than monolithic, who insist that there are forces available in this country to change both foreign and domestic policy...

...When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, "I mean just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less...

...Political emotion bounces from far Right to far Left, with no room anywhere for the constructive analysis so desperately needed if American democracy is to survive in any viable condition...

...Now, as violence raises the ante and there is no sign of slackening pressure abroad, there has emerged among radicals and liberals an apocalyptic yet personally exculpating world view in which the United States stands revealed as having been all along the representative of total reaction —history's antithesis, as it were, which in the throes of self-annihilation will liberate humanity...

...To INITIATION FOR WHITEY 271 cite only the most glaringly destructive feature, it may force a husband to leave or pretend to leave his family so that his wife may collect Aid to Dependent Children...

...1(V Interesting that so far the rioters have attacked mainly police (with bottles and bricks and words, seldom bullets) and property...

...Elected officials" are anathema to certain middleclass poverty leaders, because they inevitably "serve the interests of the middle class...

...In their roles as true believers, as masculine upholders of honor and right, unafraid to take violent action, even to die, in behalf of their beliefs, the Black Power cultists are more classically Western than the white flower ideologists out to transform human nature with drugs, youth, love, colored lights, pop music and polysexuality...

...They also insist that the poor themselves, should be the main administrators of poverty funds—an idea which influenced the OEO's original concept of Community Action Projects...

...272 JEREMY LARNER selves in calling for welfare reform...

...The •activist critics of the poverty program often try to resolve this situation by urging that poor people are just as capable and selfsufficient as anyone, and that all they need to set them on a level of social and economic equality is a regular dole—as a matter of right, not charity...

...After a speech of Malcolm's, his followers repeated his answers by rote—as they still do in the junior nationalist "five-percenter" groups, where youngsters are given a catechism to memorize, full of anthropological and historical absurdities...

...It's even possible to understand why some historians see the riots and the talk of guerrilla warfare as symptoms of the inevitable disruption that occurs whenever a new class or group forces its way into the mainstream of American society...

...I want to read a quote...

...That is all...

...7tJ( H .L rlost radical and liberal commentators are quick to condemn what they correctly describe as America's "two-faced" attitude toward poverty...

...He offers this identity to drifting youth—an identity of innate bravery and superiority and dedication and solidarity...

...Some inhabitants of the ghetto felt they were entitled to loot white-owned stores, and that the police and troopers were agents of hostile forces...

...For at least one summer this end was achieved...

...He wants not to be caught short verbally, for he knows a sharp retort is another form of power.2 2 "John,' I said, 'how many degrees in a circle?' "He said, `Three hundred and sixty.' "I drew a square...

...The young militant has no respect for those who come to his neighborhood to tell him how great he is...

...For urban Negroes, the pull-back of the poverty program may have been that final straw which broke down their habitual patience and resignation...

...Supposedly they were shooting at snipers, but one has to wonder about the existence of snipers who hit so few targets...

...If Whitey won't give them an initiation, then they'll initiate Whitey...

...Perhaps the most productive stance would be an open acknowledgment of ambiguity—so that we may simultaneously proceed with an improved welfare system and an economic program which could free every individual capable of being freed...

...He solves his identity problem much as does the hustler—by -adopting a set of absolute answers, in this instance those of the apocalyptic black revolutionary...

...In an ,atmosphere of frustration, anger and expanded freedom, desperate alternatives are quickly put forward...

...You owe us more than you can ever give us...

...But work is even better...

...And this too confirms the desperate identity of superiority...

...276 JEREMY LARNER...

...Everywhere poverty funds were available, new elements who had never been active in politics came forth to struggle with tradi270 tional power groups and in many cases to make space for themselves in the political structures of their communities...

...For certain foundation-financed theorists, "community support" is a negative term, because it involves "condescending liberals...

...He would have an incentive to become skillful...

...People who are now battling the welfare inspectors increment by increment could be staffing hospitals, rebuilding cities, providing services, perhaps creating whole new communities...

...As far as looting is concerned, the Negroes are small-time compared to American businessmen—and I don't mean the little shopkeepers either...

...The young militant shares and feeds the American appetite for image...

...Already this gives him a role to play—destructive, threatening, but nonetheless part of the scene...

...Understand that .. . the first need of a free people is to define their own terms...

...Even in cases where they are, the most successful local programs plus a steady dole would not by themselves break up American poverty...