The Still Possible Dream
MARGOLIS, RICHARD J.
States of the Union THE STILL POSSIBLE DREAM BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS The tenth anniversary of the "I-have-a-dream" March on Washington drifted by last month, and to judge from the retrospective...
...to perfect...
...States of the Union THE STILL POSSIBLE DREAM BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS The tenth anniversary of the "I-have-a-dream" March on Washington drifted by last month, and to judge from the retrospective commentary, the main accomplishment of the March was to separate blacks from whites...
...And why is "busing" a nasty word...
...But for reasons I think none of us entirely understands-a failure of nerve, perhaps, in the face of all that joy-we let it slip away...
...That disease doubtless still rages (as does its opposite number, caucasianphobia), but it is no longer cited in dictionaries...
...Are we now to write off these deeds as no longer relevant, while we chase such chimeras as ethnic realism and black capitalism...
...Or maybe it was just a dream...
...If we can assess our values by our verbs, then why is "integrate" in our dictionaries but not on our minds...
...to round out...
...I just don't feel like entertaining whites in my home...
...Patricia Roberts Harris, a distinguished black lawyer, struck the characteristic note in a roundtable discussion taped by the Times...
...The editor was very sympathetic...
...Unfortunately, his shop wasn't set up for it-just not enough upper-case "N"s to go around...
...Even the capitalization of "Negro" -a word no longer in fashion-Is a victory not to be scorned...
...Who can blame Mrs...
...At present, according to the latest census figures, our Northern schools and towns are more hopelessly segregated than ever...
...We who once despaired of persuading editors to concede even a capital "N" to our sense of morality, or of persuading Congress to admit that lynching was a crime, now suffer from contradictory illusions: The first is that America has come a long way...
...When the violence came-In more than 100 black ghettoes-many suburbanites bought shotguns and bolted their doors...
...We would agree in advance that black, brown, red, yellow and white are beautiful...
...You know," she explained, "like when the bride has to promise to love, honor and obey...
...To someone like myself who came of age in Minnesota during that deluded time-Someone, that is, who was christened by FDR, baptized by Joe McCarthy and bar mitzvahed by the early Humphrey-the torpor of the '70s is as baffling as the zeal of the '60s was exhilarating...
...Once in a while it even had kind words for Hubert Humphrey, that brash young Turk who had rammed a civil rights plank into the Democratic platform, causing Strom Thurmond and his friends to walk out...
...For instance, my 1928 Webster's International defines "integrate" in ways that echo both Esalen and Tocqueville: "To form into one whole...
...a surprising number of white liberals in Northern cities acquired a sudden enthusiasm for ecology...
...One reason we are all not saved is that while Martin Luther King Jr...
...For a moment there, on August 28, 1963, that America seemed within reach...
...Still, I remain uneasy...
...She may have meant approximately what Buckminster Fuller meant when he observed that "God is a verb, not a noun...
...But a nation that wants it two ways-both to mingle and to part-readily permits its judges and lawgivers to enact statutes it does not intend to obey...
...To make that change, he regretted to tell them, would be much too costly...
...desegregate...
...In any case, when Americans nowadays use the verb "to integrate," they usually mean psyches, not races...
...A woman acquaintance told me recently that you can spot a nation's values by the verbs it uses...
...When the Webster people compiled their 1928 edition it was possible to suffer from "negrophobia," defined as "Dread of, or strong aversion to, the negro...
...At present we are parting when we ought to be mingling...
...Something there is that loves a wall...
...The complexion of the seven roundtable participants seemed to confirm Mrs...
...Atkins for no longer dancing with whites...
...On paper, it seems to me, the fight has been won...
...Up until that time there had been an assumption that blacks and whites together would decide what the theory, what the approach of the civil rights movement would be...
...he really would...
...King's black and white dream, and I am loathe to surrender it...
...We have proceeded from confrontations in Washington to encounter groups at Esalen, a leap that may not be as far as it looks...
...The courts have rendered their verdicts, Congress has spoken, and desegregation is the law of the land...
...I believed Dr...
...to complete...
...They have a right to mock the paltry consequences of a crusade that once promised so much, and to complain, with Jeremiah, that "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved...
...In 1948 a delegation of black leaders, calling on the editor of the Minneapolis Star, respectfully requested that the newspaper print the first letter of "Negro" in upper case...
...The shadow is self-perpetuating, for by separating the white child from the black child we hand on to both our own phobias of race...
...to make entire...
...That quaint old battle had its share of setbacks and humiliations...
...The children will grow up not wishing to dance with each other...
...We went to dances with whites, but we don't anymore...
...The America I have in mind would be a nation of minglers, and no one race would call the shots...
...American Heritage capitalizes "Negro" and lists "Black" as a synonym...
...Such small lexicographic triumphs are not commonly celebrated in the New York Times...
...He would like to do that, he said...
...And behind Stokely's shout was that clenched fist, a not very subtle reminder that some blacks were ready to discard nonviolent tactics...
...Yet we would do well to recall how much suffering and how many acts of individual courage were required to wedge those words, with their socially useful meanings, into our dictionaries...
...the second is that nothing has changed...
...The Star, of course, was a liberal newspaper...
...Atkins might be willing to waltz with me, and where it is thought sensible for a roundtable discussion on black-white relations to include blacks and whites...
...It wasn't too long ago that the best among us were willing to get their heads bloodied, indeed, to risk their lives, in order to integrate a lunch counter or a bus depot...
...The March on Washington, she said, "was the end of effective white input...
...On the other hand, in my 1969 American Heritage dictionary, "integrate" acquires a new meaning, though not the first one offered: "To open to people of all races or ethnic groups without restriction...
...dreamed in black and white?he was that rare presence, a sincere integrationist-younger leaders in the movement dreamed in basic black...
...What is there to dance about...
...It is easy to understand the blacks' disenchantment with the movement in general and with white liberals in particular...
...Myself, I'm an awful dancer (a common white foible, I'm told), but I would like to live in an America where Mrs...
...In fact, "white input" did not actually cease until nearly three years after the March, when Stokely Carmichael shouted "Black Power" on a Mississippi highway-a chant that thrilled many blacks even as it chilled many whites...
...Ten years ago we entertained whites a lot in our home," Hannah Atkins, a black Oklahoma state representative, told a New York Times reporter...
...Moreover, and perhaps more com-pellingly, I agree with Tocqueville's analysis of our dilemma: "As soon as it is admitted that the whites and the emancipated blacks are placed upon the same territory in the situation of two foreign communities," he pointed out, "it will readily be understood that there are but two chances for the future: The Negroes and whites must either wholly mingle or wholly part...
...Harris' view of history: All were black...
...As an in-tegrationist, I hold precisely that view of the matter...
...Segregation, which has been banished by Congress and the Supreme Court, nevertheless looms as a fixed shadow on our social landscape and on our collective imagination...
Vol. 56 • October 1973 • No. 19
