Civil Rights 'Beyond Protest'
MCCORD, WILLIAM
Civil Rights 'Beyond Protest' FREEDOM-WHEN? By James Farmer Random House. 197 pp. $4.95. BLACK MAN'S BURDEN By John Oliver Kittens Trident 176 pp. $3.95. Reviewed by WILLIAM M....
...First, he sees value in continuing protests and demonstrations to expose, say, the discriminatory practices of real estate dealers...
...He approves of self-defense units such as the Deacons, formed in Louisiana, since "the concept of equal justice and equal protection has broken down in these places and the law is a mask for white oppression...
...We must put our boats to sea...
...It is a civilization, he believes, oriented to gadgets and materialism, while in Africa, new societies designed to fulfill the needs of man are being created...
...He contends that white and black can live together, without either claiming mastership...
...Unfortunately, he neglects to specify the type of violence he condones...
...While one can sympathize with the bitterness which produced this book, one cannot respect it as an intellectual contribution to resolving the Negro dilemma...
...Farmer and Killens, who have both suffered the indignities of being Negro in America, provide starkly contrasting answers...
...Things are not so clear as they once seemed, but the complexity is splendid...
...Farmer believes that community development - remedial education, health services, rehabilitation of displaced adults-should become a basic interest of Negro activists...
...He tells of CORE'S transformation into a mass movement and of the reverse racism which prevented a white from assuming that organization's leadership...
...Killens, for example, never explains why the wave of the future will overwhelm Western man...
...A Watts riot...
...And, indeed, he will now personally devote his energies to these endeavors rather than to the leadership of CORE...
...True, Killens' moving description of the "black man's burden" merely restates in less eloquent terms than Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Claude Brown what those writers have already told their white oppressors...
...Reviewed by WILLIAM M. McCORD Fox Professor of Sociology, Rice University...
...author, "The Springtime of Freedom" James Farmer, the former leader of CORE, and John Oliver Killens, a novelist of distinction, raise three questions of fundamental importance to the civil rights movement: Should those who desire "freedom now" alter their tactics, most drastically by a turn to violence...
...Farmer suggests three approaches to handling these problems...
...Farmer recognizes that, "We have settled down for a long haul...
...In only slightly veiled terms, Killens advocates violence: "If you [the white] practice violence against me, I mean to give it back to you in kind...
...In the future, he believes, the urban ghetto will become the focus of activity since, by 1975, Negroes may well dominate such cities as Chicago, Detroit and Newark...
...Should the American Negro find his identity by rejecting the West and embracing the world's non-white civilizations...
...Farmer, too, defends certain types of violence (as did Gandhi, his inspirator), but only in well defined circumstances...
...He addresses his book to a "You" who alternates between being an American white and a generalized representative of Western society, then talks of the emasculation of Negro manhood in America, the ambiguous situation of the Negro writer, and the presumption of American leaders in assuming direction of the "Free World" while still allowing Mississippi and Harlem to exist...
...James Farmer, on the other hand, has been in the front lines of the racial conflict for decades and his book reflects the wisdom which experience can sometimes breed...
...We black folk cannot wait another moment...
...Maybe this will help whip some sense into your head...
...What, ultimately, should be the relation between white and black men...
...On his second visit to Africa, while admiring much that he found, Farmer also observed "the flaws, the frailties, the power plays, the cruelty, the evil, and the goodness and kindness.' He found that his "sense of kinship could well survive this deflation.' For Farmer, the Negro's salvation does not lie in renouncing Western civilization but rather in fulfilling its ideals and infusing it with Negro contributions...
...The black commander beckons...
...Black and brown men will survive to write the West's obituary," he predicts...
...He has no suggestions for national policy except an exhortation that Negro children should become acquainted with their ancestors' role in America and with the presumably great civilizations of ancient Mali and Ghana-and even here he admits that this would require inventing myths as a way of restoring Negro dignity...
...They should be listened to with care, for the fate of 20 million Americans rests to some degree on their response to these issues...
...Let us hope that the Parkers, Yortys, Browns, and Johnsons of this era will demonstrate the same wisdom and compassion as James Farmer...
...But the recurrence of Watts (as well as the historic pattern of most revolutions) forces one to fear that Farmer is playing Danton to Killens' Robespierre...
...Git on board, little chillun, Git on board...
...He predicts that the ghetto vote will soon gain sufficient strength so that Negroes will no longer have to beseech the power structure for change but will actually assume a large measure of power themselves...
...He writes honestly about the conflicts within the civil rights movement, the inside story of the Harlem riots, and his own brush with lynching in Plaquemine, Louisiana...
...The white minority in the world has only one choice: to humanize itself through an alliance with the colored majority...
...To achieve this goal, he argues for a re-orientation of the civil rights movement...
...Fair housing and an end to defacto segregation will become even more the central concerns of groups like CORE...
...Although philosophically more of an idealist than Killens (Farmer was a conscientious objector in World War II and has generally advocated non-violence), he is, at heart, a pragmatist...
...The tide is with us...
...Yet, he recognizes that an indiscriminate war of revenge of black against white would be a futile, if purgative, battle...
...He maintains that "outside Africa, the old world of the West is dying...
...In the end-despite the protestations of both Farmer and Killens that Negroes should govern their own destiny-the actions of the white powers that be will determine which view will overcome...
...Instead of expostulation à la Killens, Farmer offers both a strategy and a tactic for effecting a change in American society...
...Such ambiguity is an irresponsible invitation to a massacre...
...In addition to hating American whites, Killens has little but contempt for Western civilization in general...
...His prescription for violence delineates neither the means nor the goals...
...Self-defense in Philadelphia, Mississippi...
...perhaps that is freedom too.' Farmer's realism, his sense of limitations, his unabated idealism is in refreshing contrast to Killens' unreasoned militancy...
...Like Killens, Farmer wishes to affirm the Negro's African heritage, but not through "the thick mist of race...
...Or an apocalyptic confrontation...
...All this is hardly original, yet it does express an ebony mood (which Farmer labels the ideology of the new Jacobins) that we must consider now and, increasingly, in the future...
...Beyond protest," however, Farmer envisages the increasingly active participation of civil rights leaders in politics, particularly on the local urban level...
...he simply proclaims it...
Vol. 49 • April 1966 • No. 9
