Humanistic Judaism April 1968
Rumors of violence have become the daily conversational fare of most Detroiters. Gloomy predictions of urban devastation share the limelight with cynical pleas of helplessness. While whites are advised by patriotic vigilantes to train themselves for self-defense, black militants warn their bewildered flock to expect phony incidents designed to justify police repression. A pall of mutual suspicion and hatred hovers over the city and poisons racial relations. Hostility is so respectable that suburban whites freely verbalize the bigotry they were too embarrassed to announce a year ago. Black anger, over three hundred years old, is daily revealed in grandiose threats of violence and destruction. Despite hosts of committees and countless Pleas for moderation, the present communication between black and white makes the Johnson – Ho Chi Minh dialogue appear chummy.
So-called white liberals appear the most bewildered. Trapped between white racism and black nationalism, they see their integration utopia sabotaged by social forces too powerful to resist. Negro militancy has declared them to be bigots-in-disguise whose patronizing view of Negro needs has harmed the black self-image as much. as admitted haters. Black Power advocates have accused them of seeking to support a social and economic structure which thrives on the colonial exploitation of black labor. White racists chide them for their illusions about Negro gratitude and remind them that, in the final moment of crisis, they will have no place to stand but on the white barricades. A polarized society allows only two classifications and simply being human isn’t one of them.
The frustration of the white liberal is re-enforced by the guilt he feels. Tucked away in the distant safety of his suburban refuge, he rationalizes his flight from the inner city with too much passion for comfort. After all, he has chosen white segregation (for whatever “respectable” reasons) despite his integrational propaganda. And the task of living with Negroes is left to lower-class whites, who are ironically condemned for their bigotry. At least, the parochial old Pole from Hamtramck remains in the city.
Nor does the Vietnam war ease the dilemma. Resolution after resolution is passed by the committees and agencies of the liberal establishment to insist on massive federal expenditures – but to no avail. The money for our urban battlefields is being squandered in a futile war where defeat is inevitable. The special rub of the war is not only the absence of funds for black housing and employment but also the political paranoia that humiliation in Vietnam will yield. Ego-crushed white nationalists will not be more generous to Negroes after losing their Asian battle; they will demand convenient domestic scapegoats.
A brutal realism is the first requirement for those who wish to improve white-black relations. It will do no good to parade the pious propaganda that Seeks to mold non-existent good Will and to utilize non-existent financial resources. it will honestly .assess what cannot be attained. as well as those goals which can be achieved. It will not lie to whites about their inner thoughts and feelings; nor will it deceive Negroes with bold illusions of power. Realism, most importantly, will easily distinguish between what whites are willing to do and what they ought to do. It will also distinguish between what black militants say Negroes want and what the masses of inarticulate lower-class blacks really want.
If one must clarify what is not presently achievable, he needs no crystal ball to predict that there will be no immediate end to racial violence. The causes of black anger are too profound to allow even the most generous federal subsidy to assuage it. Inner city rioting and destruction are inevitable for many years to come. The white community in America is not prepared to repent in a decade the collective sins of three centuries. Nor is it evident that Any action short of violence will provide the necessary catharsis for the bitter fury of an H. Rap Brown and a Leroi Jones-Defiance of the white man which starts out as a means to a more noble end, becomes by its consuming passion the very end itself.
It is, therefore, naive to assume that the white liberal can prevent the increased use of police and military power to control and repress. The white establishment desires immediate security more than it desires to alleviate Negro suffering. Violence terrifies the middle class. If they must choose between a curtailment of their individual freedom and the protection of their lives and property, the former will suffer. Black violence is a prelude to a kind of infant fascism, where the forces of law and order emerge as the saviors of society. To an army humiliated by the debacle of Vietnam, domestic guerilla warfare provides an ideal arena in which. to redeem their reputation. At least, the white natives are friendly.
To imagine that one can achieve a dramatic reduction in white racism in the near future is Also illusory. When normal relationship of even the,”libeal” Jewish suburban housewife to the Negro community is the dependence on ‘Negro domestics, the image of’the black man as a social inferior is built into the very fabric of bourgeois society. After all the brotherhood oratory is blown away, Jewish liberals cannot live without their “shvartsee”. The only economic niche that Negroes possess is the performance of menial tasks that no one else is willing to do. Gratuitous moral advice about how “one must start at the bottom” is strictly irrelevant. I know of no local Jewish household that would allow its most incompetent child to become a maid. Being a Bolshevik sounds more respectable.
The near permanence of the black ghetto is a corollary of white racism. While light-skinned, Caucasian featured middle-class Negroes will derive the full benefit of open housing laws and slip, in discreet numbers, into the suburban sanctuary, the lower-class urban black will continue to endure the prison of his tribal reservation. In a social-climbing white society where status is fluid, the average Negro, whose color defines his class, is much too threatening to be more than a fleeting neighbor. Segregated living is an expression of the overwhelming desire of the white community. The residential behavior patterns of both bigots and liberals are indistinguishable.
As for the militant pleas to establish a black nation in some territorial parts of the United States, no proposal is more desirable – and none is less feasible. “Black Zionism” would be the best answer to the enormous self-hate of the American Negro. A truly independent state, in which all authority figures would be black and in which the continual provocations of white racism would be absent, is an ideal dream. Why should the Negro have to endure the agony of the perpetual defendant in a society which puts him on trial twenty-four hours a day and rewards his greatest efforts with the dubious honor of white tolerance? It is too devastating an experience to deserve such cheap rewards.
But reality intrudes. Black Americans are, by every valid social criterion, a distinct nationality – and an unfortunate one. Unlike French Canadians who possess a vast territorial base, enjoy the prestige of an ancient culture, and constitute over one-third of the population of Canada, the American Negro is a dispersed race, culturally severed from its African roots, and comprising but a tenth of the state’s citizens. ,It operates from no power base of self-confidence, prestige, economic indispensability, or numbers. Its urban Bantustans can be cordoned off and controlled by a vigilant government, while affluent white society can ultimately dispense with its services in an automated age. The facts are painful but clear. White America has no compelling material reason to surrender to extremist black demands. If the Negro cannot accept the role of a tolerated petitioner, if his ego balks at the smugness of the white establishment, then he has two choices – suicide by street violence, or emigration. A prosperous America, in which the vast majority of the white population is economically content, will not be easily, intimidated (even if justice demands that it ought to be).
It is for this reason that the African culture movement is doomed to failure. Black militant proposals to secede from the Anglosaxon milieu and to create an alternative culture for Afro-Americans are socially bizarre. It may be true that bourgeois values are perverse, soul-destroying, and unceratingly competitive – but they are the functioning values for economic advancement in modern America. It may be both charming and therapeutic to thrust earrings into male ear lobes, drape oneself in a Nigerian djallaba and mumble Swahili in ‘a Yoruba voodoo temple, while reciting the glorious history of the Mali empire – and also conducive to maintaining the lowest possible economic status with the greatest amount of effort. For no ethnic group in America has escaped the pressures of assimilation to the Anglosaxon culture game. To attempt to do so would be to abdicate any opportunity for social advancement. (Muttering Yiddish curses while adorned by a Polish CA tan is hardly the best entry to American corporate life on any level.) Identifying with African achievement may be as ego- strengthening as Jewish identification with Israeli might. But a vital Kikongo culture in America is no more viable then a vital Hebrew one. Self-esteem is derived from real power – not from a thespian withdrawal to a cultural hippieland.
The independence of the white middle-class and its power to demand conformity of all ethnic groups precludes vast federal expenditures to transform the ghetto landscape. The Kerner Commission Report notwithstanding, white Americans, conscious of their wealth and numbers, Will prefer to purchase their security more cheaply through police power. Why Should they spend billions when millions will do? Even a timely end to the Vietnam war will not radically alter the picture. Tax relief seems the more likely alternative. Open housing laws cost nothing, while rebuilding Detroit requires A Massive governmental commitment that a Congress’ attuned to public opinion will resist.
What then is achievable? What can the much maligned white liberal, who has some Vague attachment to an integrated humanistic society, hope to accomplish in this crisis?
The first and essential step is honesty. What often prevents an effective dialogue between the sympathetic* white and the sensitive black is the immense self righteousness of the former, who imagines that prejudice and exploitation are the sins of his neighbor. Without the willingness to admit our participation in a social structure which derives considerable social and economic benefits from Negro inferiority, white. assistance is nothing more than a cruel sham, confusing the pleasures of patronage with personal acceptance. We are often, by our overt behavior, as much white racists as the bigots we so passionately condemn. Without the humility of self-insight our efforts to help will only be pretentious.
Honesty must be followed by realistic compassion. To encourage black militants to indulge their raucous demands because we feel their claims are just is to be more sentimental than useful. The job of the concerned white is to prevent his guilt from interfering with his sound judgment. Wild demands for black autonomy and Africanization are illusions of power divorced from what is real. Those who make them in the long run harm their people and divert their energies from what is achievable. The white humanist supports a black leadership which knows that middle-class America is in no economic temper to support a socialist revolution. The price of any kind of Negro power in America is bourgeois conformity. It may be cruel and patronizing to tell deprived ghetto Negroes to talk and dress like white Anglosaxons. It may even be boorish to ask them to imitate all those stuffy do-gooders who come from their suburban luxury “to help the poor.” But what other alternatives exist? A self-pitying futile nationalism breeds only bitterness.
In fact, the concerned white is dubious of how accurately the black nationalist leadership articulates the goals and desires of the Negro masses. While a Malcolm X certainly verbalized the unexpressed anger of the American Negro, the Mao-Tse-Tung ambitions of a Stokeley Carmichael have less to do with the dreams of the unemployed Negro male rioter than the consumer economy advertising on NBC television. The bewildered and alienated jobless black with no trust in the future may be easily to violence. But his rage does not arise from the fact that he is a self-conscious dedicated proletarian revolutionary; it emerges from his failure to become the self-esteeming middle-class consumer the mass media idolize.
The keys to black advancement are the very corporate “villains” who create this frustrating vision. The American economy is controlled by giant corporations which have the economic power to provide the job training, employment, and housing for countless thousands of destitute blacks. It is in the economic interest of these institutions to preserve domestic harmony and to increase Negro purchasing power. In the absence of adequate federal support, their involvement is indispensable. In fact, it is sometimes easier for a profit oriented upper-class corporate leadership to act benevolently toward the Negro poor than a Congress attuned to the public opinion and irrational fears of middle-class whites. (Even A. T. & T. is less exclusive than most of the craft unions.) The president of General Motors may appear less romantic than Che Guevara and less bombastic than the Reverend Cleage. But he has a bit more to do with the realities of black power. He also has the good sense not to propose that the angry blacks seize economic control of their tribal reservations and end up, like the ‘successful’ Navajo Indians, by owning their own poverty.
White liberals; are often unable to utilize the real power resources of their own environment. Trapped by their silly propaganda, they denounce a corporate leadership they have never bothered to approach, and turn to a bigoted democratic electorate for concessions which will never be given. Perhaps the procedure ought to be reversed.
It is, of course, necessary to point out that, regardless of what economic opportunities are provided, large numbers of the inner city poor are beyond job training and permanent employment. They are either too hostile, too frightened, or too self-hating to be productively redeemable. They can only be sustained by a guaranteed minimum annual income (although it is highly doubtful that white voters are Presently willing to endorse it).
It is also important to indicate that there are countless articulate well-educated, and economically productive Negroes who find a white racist American society emotionally intolerable. Their grievance is not correctible. Like the sensitive Jews who found the subtle and overt anti-semitism of European countries psychically unbearable and immigrated to Israel, the only solution to the dilemma of the “proud” Negro is departure to an African environment where anger will not inhibit his creative talents. If such a suggestion seems both cruel and un-American, it is because we are deceived by a juvenile political propaganda that has nothing to do with the real America.
A white humanist who is both empirical And compassionate does not feed cliches to his audience. He recommends what is possible.