The Fallacy of Tokenism
LOMAX, LOUIS E.
NEW GAMBIT IN THE SOUTH The Fallacy of Tokenism By Louis E. Lomax We have just experienced a new kind of September. Schools opened in the South without howling white mobs in the streets,...
...The Negro's patience has worn thin: Tokenism is little short of an insult in an era when men are being asked to die for freedom...
...But the ultimate evidence of the South's continuing basic insincerity in regard to school integration is compiled in the report of the President's Civil Rights Commission: • Of the 2,839 Southern school districts that practiced segregation before the 1954 decision, only 733 had taken some step toward integration as of May 1959...
...They took the most invidious sections of other cities' pupil-placement programs and put them into practice here...
...Thus tokenism, or any other "ism" that makes peace with the assumption that we are somehow different or inferior, will not be accepted...
...In the two years 1959-61, only 44 additional school districts began desegregation...
...Schools opened in the South without howling white mobs in the streets, with a new, "moderate" mood evident...
...Segregation is but a catch phrase to articulate the white population's frenzied efforts to make itself and us believe that we are inferior...
...This could, and would, be worse than war...
...If not, next September will see a new approach to integrating our classrooms...
...This is understandable...
...Prudent Southern conservatives have succeeded in getting the mobs out of the streets and away from the schools by arguing that such behavior is ruinous to business and invites direct Federal intervention...
...I had the feeling that many Negroes are beginning to wonder if white people would be capable of true democracy even if they wanted to institute it...
...To quote James Baldwin, "Who needs it...
...It was inevitable that the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) would strike down segregated waiting rooms and other terminal facilities...
...I came home with an almost eerie feeling of wide Negro agreement that the white power structure does not intend to do the right thing as far as civil rights is concerned...
...If we are really to have a new kind of September, American industry, labor and government must join forces in a determined effort to integrate the nation...
...As a Negro born in the South, as one with deep personal and family ties in that troubled sector of our Republic, I find this regrettable...
...The easiest thing would be for the country to slip into a compromise on the race question...
...they were not willing to wait for legislation and changes of Southern hearts...
...Once the violence and ugliness came, I expected the South to regain its senses and institute a broad and comprehensive change...
...And it is the foundation of this nation that is at stake...
...The American race problem is the white man's noose...
...If an effort toward integration results in a compromise that begs the question of our equality and dignity as individuals, it has obviously failed to achieve what we had in mind...
...Already, though the daily press slicks it over, our basic international crisis is our awkwardness with nonwhite peoples: Latin America, Africa and Asia—on the whole, that is —are neutral against us...
...Not long ago in these pages ("The Unpredictable Negro," June 5), I wrote that the Negro's advance is directly proportional to his ability to embarrass the Government in time of international crisis...
...The South's new battle line, this autumn, is "tokenism," not total defiance...
...The proposal is praiseworthy, to be sure, but the prospects for its enactment are not bright...
...The reasons for their neutrality, and for the Negro's disenchantment, are essentially the same...
...We can file the lawsuits and stage the sit-ins, but the white man alone can take the rope from around his, and our, neck...
...Had an orderly integration of schools in Atlanta, Dallas and New Orleans taken place the year after the 1954 Supreme Court decision, there would have been cause for great rejoicing...
...As a result of this doubt, Negroes are tempted to abstain in spirit from the life of the nation...
...it would be the collapse from within that would, indeed, bury us...
...If Kennedy is to get this bit of legislation through the Congress, he will have to exert more power on Capitol Hill than he has demonstrated thus far, and show less willingness to horse trade on the issue of civil rights...
...The Freedom Riders have proven me right...
...There is in the American Negro attitude a growing withdrawal...
...UNLESS SWIFT and major advances are made in the area of race relations," said the Reverend Doctor Gardner Taylor on a recent television program, "Negro leadership will pass from the hands of responsible veterans to those whose preachments threaten the very foundation of our nation...
...Similar sentiments are heard from civil rights leaders in other cities where peaceful tokenism marked the start of the new school year...
...it is how we say we are equal...
...This is a complex and vaporous thing...
...But there can be no relaxation —indeed, the Negro masses and student leaders will not allow it— until the Negro has been completely absorbed into the American body politic...
...It will take more than token integration to change the trend...
...I hope the President will get school desegregation legislation through Congress...
...Personally, I find this frightening...
...There was no way the Administration could prosecute its case in Berlin in the name of freedom for the West German people while faced with the continuing newspaper headlines from Jackson, Mississippi...
...Louis E. Lomax, a freelancer, is author of The Reluctant African and the forthcoming The Negro Revolt...
...Commission members, including those from the South, were unanimous in their criticism of this situation and in suggesting that Federal action be taken...
...America is dealing with an impatient, unpredictable Negro...
...the number of pupils involved was "minimal...
...I knew the South would hesitate before integrating, but I did not expect it to become so violent and ugly...
...Thus the last two years have actually seen a drop in the pace of school desegregation...
...This underscores the real threat of the new "moderation" being preached in the South...
...And, like most comedy, Gregory's jibe came close to the truth...
...The result was that the younger Kennedy himself asked for the ICC ruling to eliminate segregation in terminal facilities...
...Despite Attorney General Robert Kennedy's plea that they slow down while the President was engaged in international conferences, the Freedom Riders kept up their efforts...
...Change must be accepted because it is right and because the country's survival depends upon it...
...Instead, however, the South has made its finest gesture at a moment and in a manner which suggest that local school districts cannot be left to their own inertia on the matter of integration...
...Dick Gregory, the Negro comic, remarked the other day that it would be nothing short of panic if, as of nine o'clock on a given morning, every Negro looked every white man he met straight in the face and then roared with laughter...
...They proposed that Congress enact legislation requiring every school district to begin desegregation by the close of 1963...
...Indeed, that would not be funny to see...
...For us, token integration is further proof that winning the law suit is not winning the case...
...Being a Negro in America is a hard and continuing burden, a cross one bears in addition to the woes of normal life...
...Negroes, that is to say the Negro power elite, will be particularly tempted to sit down and rest awhile...
...Once token integration is established in every state there will be a great temptation to sit back and relax...
...Until this happens, all else is a tinkling symbol...
...When we sued to enter public schools as equal citizens, our real objective was to destroy the notion of Negro inferiority: That, and only that, is always the Negro objective...
...The gambit is to willingly accept a little rather than be forced to accept a lot...
...Law can go only so far...
...The new kind of September, with its deceptive moderation, is in fact old hat...
...Implicit in this argument is the warning that if white violence continues the result will be more integration of schools than the courts had at first ordered...
...For two months I criss-crossed the country as producer of the TV documentary, Walk in My Shoes...
...Six years ago, this would have been proof of the South's ability to behave correctly in the face of an admittedly difficult mandate...
...This is a monstrous thing," Reverend Samuel Williams, President of the Atlanta chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said to me on the eve of school opening...
...I doubt that the Communist menace is anything like the danger this nation will face if 20 million of its citizens completely loose faith in its essential and basic integrity...
...This, alas, has not occurred...
...This, of course, is precisely the Black Muslim argument and it has rubbed off on many Negroes who have no affiliation with, or particular love for that movement...
...then the basic goodness of the people must take over...
...The advance, and it is a notable one, came because Americans, Negro and white, were willing to make personal sacrifices...
...Rather, Negroes will do one of two things: either hammer away until we are absorbed into the American fabric, or spiritually withdraw from this nation and let come what may...
...Integration is our reply...
...As Saint Paul admonished that the Christian has to be in the world but not of it, the Negro is finding an inward urge to feel better than—and therefore withdraw from—general American morality...
Vol. 44 • November 1961 • No. 37
