Hard Hearts and Empty Heads
Hausknecht, Murray
When the state has to exercise its monopoly on the intruments of physical violence it is symptomatic of either a breakdown or a weakening of authority. This applies to Little Rock as well as...
...III From the perspective of the Administration, Little Rock is a lesson in the virtues of obedience and the sins of disobedience...
...From beginning to end, then, Eisenhower has insisted that the Supreme Court's decision must be obeyed because it represented the voice of duly constituted authority...
...In a democratic society law exercises authority over men when it is accepted as an expression of that ful interaction between antagonisticgroups ("tolerance") ; 4) an urban culture which leads toward the same end...
...One cannot, therefore, talk of Prohibition in the same breath with desegregation, for what is true of New York is true of the South with the emphasis reversed...
...Discipline—obedience to duly constituted authority—was in danger...
...2) the consequently greater relative strengthof the norm of equality...
...The one person who can always capture an audience is the President of the United States...
...This means that the opponents of segregation must capitalize on the "American dilemma," that is, in some way they must support and appeal to the Southerner's commitment to democratic values...
...His answers were never to the point...
...Little Rock, of course, is not a Hungarian Revolution, and one of the ways the two differ is that the use of force at Little Rock obscures rather than clarifies the basic issues...
...The success of Kasper arid Faubus in reenforcing "their side" highlights the immoral inertia of the Administration...
...On theother hand, the Negro will enjoy full equality in all areas of life when thesentiment of racial prejudice decreasessignificantly...
...It is this continual emphasis on the necessity of preserving "respect for the law" which has twisted the entire civil rights situation out of perspective...
...Eisenhower then justified sending the troops to Little Rock on the ground that unless laws are enforced "anarchy" will result...
...Hence, the arrival of the troops to ensure "respect for the law...
...Little Rock is an example not of the sins of disobedience but of how far we still have to go to ensure the minimum conditions for any worthwhile life...
...Equality may not be highly valued in the South, but it does exist as a value...
...After the Supreme Court decision ordering desegregation President Eisenhower was asked whether he personally approved it...
...If some of the mores are violated by these laws, the same laws are legitimated by other mores...
...Trite as it may sound, that issue is simply maintaining and extending democracy and equality...
...When respect for the law and the necessity of social order is made the sole ground for obedience, then the strongest claim power has to legitimacy in a democratic society is lost...
...his set response was that as President he was obliged to enforce the decision...
...The latter is offered as "proof" of the proposition that when laws and mores conflict the laws will be disobeyed...
...Apart from this fatal defect in social insight there was also a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Supreme Court's decision was all about...
...Therefore, runs the implicit argument, given the mores of the South immediate desegration is impossible...
...Power is legitimated only when there is a demonstrable relationship between what it requires and what men believe ought to be...
...Any Administration which is so strongly dedicated to the preservation of the status quo is not likely to support forces making for social change...
...But at no time did the Administration define the Court's decision as demanding obedience because it was an expression of democratic values...
...And this is precisely the element which has been absent in the rhetoric from Washington...
...This applies to Little Rock as well as Budapest...
...And this, after all, is the long range significance of the desegregation decision...
...It was not aimed at changing the "hearts of men" but changing their behavior...
...Instead, Eisenhower demanded obedience because the decision was the voice of authority...
...Given this fundamental lack of understanding, Eisenhower had no alternative to taking his position on "duty" and the necessity of preserving social order...
...This argument, among other weaknesses, ignores the fact that prejudice pervades the entire culture...
...But where the problem of prejudice merely annoyed or confused him, the action of Governor Faubus was something he could understand and abhor to the very depths of his being...
...However, this kind of perspective distracts attention from the real issue at Little Rock...
...The aim of the Court was not the elimination of prejudice...
...The clue to 6 his real opinion is indicated by his repeated statements that "laws cannot soften the hearts of men," e.g., Prohibition...
...3) industrialism, which necessitates the acceptance of peace 7 out over the issue of prejudice, the outcome, as in Clinton, Tennessee, depends upon which of them is most heavily reenforced...
...Prohibition failed because it restricted the freedom of the individual—his sense of independence —without supplying a reasonable ra tionale, based on other strongly held values, for this loss of freedom...
...II Symptomatic of the obscurity that is general are the Administration's platitudes about the "hearts of men" and the misinterpretation of the failure of Prohibition...
...society's fundamental values...
...Yet New York's laws against discrimination in employment are enforced with little difficulty...
...its purpose was to make certain kinds of behavior which violate the norm of equality illegal...
...It is now apparent that we should have expected nothing else from this Administration...
...For it is no accident that Eisenhower bestirred himself only after the outbreak of violence at Little Rock...
...Clearly, any President, unless he were ready to accept a dissolution of the union, would have had to do something at that point...
...It is not often that one can specify with so much confidence what a situation demands, and it makes the "failure of leadership" so much more obvious...
...It creates the conditions for, though it by no means insures, change in the social structure...
...Any competent military officer could see that "the men were getting out of hand...
...Desegregation does not depend solely on a prior change in basic attitudes...
...it can at least partly occur without such a change if social forces are present which make it difficult for prejudice to be overtly expressed.* When a struggle breaks • In the case of Louisville, for example, these other forces are: 1) the lesser intensity of prejudice in a border state...
...8...
...The explanation is, of course, aside from the lesser amount of prejudice in the North, that there also exists a commitment to the democratic value of equality...
...But what does respect for the law depend on...
...and last, but not least, 5) good old, ordinarily economic self-interest...
...At this point the limitations of a schoolboy view of society and a bureaucratic military career become apparent...
Vol. 5 • January 1958 • No. 1
