Invisible Enemy: The African American Freedom Struggle after 1965

255 Pages·2010·1.874 MB·English

by  Greta de Jong(auth.)

★ ★
INVISIBLE ENEMY
Invisible Enemy: The African American Freedom Struggle after 1965 Greta de Jong
© 2010 Greta de Jong. ISBN: 978-1-405-16717-8
america ’ s recent past
This new and exciting series charts the most recent historical developments
that have shaped America and the world. While the study of history gener-
ally concentrates on the distant past, where there are established works and
perspectives shaped by several generations of historians, this series tackles
new questions and issues. Each book in the series provides a concise and
engaging overview of specifi c events and historical trends of the late twen-
tieth century and beyond. Authors present sustained historical arguments
about particular problems in recent American history, to give students an
immediate historical grasp of current events and to stimulate general readers
interested in contemporary topics and issues.
1 America’ s Failing Empire
Warren I. Cohen
2 Invisible Enemy
Greta de Jong
INVISIBLE ENEMY
The African American Freedom Struggle
after 1965
Greta de Jong
A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication
This edition fi rst published 2010
© Greta de Jong 2010
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
De Jong, Greta.
Invisible enemy : the African American freedom struggle after 1965 / Greta de Jong.
p. cm. – (America’s recent past)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4051-6717-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4051-6718-5 (papback :
alk. paper) 1. African Americans–Civil rights–History–20th century. 2. Race
discrimination–United States–History–20th century. 3. Civil rights movements–United
States–History–20th century. 4. United States–Race relations–History–20th century.
5. Racism–United States–History–20th century. I. Title.
E185.615.D436 2010
323.1196′0730–dc22
20090520
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Set in 10/12.5 pt Sabon by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited
Printed in Malaysia
01 2010
Contents
Acknowledgments vi
Introduction 1
1 The Never Ending Story: American Racism from Slavery to
the Civil Rights Movement 7
2 From the Freedom Movement to Free Markets: Racializing
the War on Poverty and Colorblinding Jim Crow 30
3 A System without Signs: The Invisible Racism of the
Post-Civil Rights Era 53
4 Fighting Jim Crow’s Shadow: Struggles for Racial Equality
after 1965 76
5 To See or Not to See: Debates over Affi rmative Action 100
6 Is This America? Electoral Politics after the Voting Rights Act 124
7 Fir$t Cla$$ Citizen$hip: Struggles for Economic Justice 147
8 All Around the World: The Freedom Struggle in a
Global Context 169
Notes 194
Index 230
Acknowledgments
I am very grateful to Ron Edsforth and Peter Coveney for inviting me to
write this book for the America ’ s Recent Past series. The series provides an
opportunity for contributing scholars to combine a synthesis of the existing
literature with their own analyses and insights, and to present their fi ndings
to a larger audience than is usual for most academic studies. It has been
both a challenge and a joy to work on this project, and I can only hope
that the fi nished product meets expectations.
Although this study includes some material from my own research on
the black freedom movement in the post- civil rights era, it draws signifi -
cantly from the works of other scholars and refl ects the cumulative efforts
of historians, sociologists, political scientists, and activists seeking to make
sense of developments since the 1960s. Special thanks to Derek Musgrove
for offering clarifi cation and sharing insights regarding the experiences of
black elected offi cials as he works to bring his forthcoming book on this
topic to publication, and to those who kindly granted permission to use
photographs or quotations: Julian Bond, Mazie Butler Ferguson, Nick
Cobbing, the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, M s . magazine,
the Nation , the New York Times , and United Press International. The
scholarly expertise, talent, and passion on offer in the fi eld of African
American studies are truly astounding. I encourage readers who wish to
deepen their understanding of the issues discussed in this book to follow
up with some of the works cited in the notes to each chapter.
Conversations about race with family, friends, colleagues, and students
helped me to sharpen my thinking on many topics and fi nd ways to express
my ideas clearly to a broad audience. In particular I would like to thank
all members of the de Jong clan; my BFF Greg Locke; graduate students
Sue Davis, Whitney Foehl, Geralda Miller, Carla Trounson, Jen Valenzuela,
and Chris Zamboni; and my wonderful fellow faculty members (past and
present) in the history department at the University of Nevada: Alicia
acknowledgments vii
Barber, Scott Casper, Linda Curcio- Nagy, Richard Davies, Dennis Dworkin,
Jerome Edwards, Neal Ferguson, Francis Hartigan, Martha Hildreth, Bruce
Moran, Michelle Moran, Andrew Nolan, Elizabeth Raymond, William
Rowley, Hugh Shapiro, Kevin Stevens, Charles Tshimanga - Kashama, and
Barbara Walker. Thanks also to Jennifer Baryol, departmental administra-
tor extraordinaire, and to the John and Marie Noble Endowment for
Historical Research. The history department is extremely fortunate to have
both of these sources of support for the scholarly and instructional endeav-
ors of its faculty.
Four anonymous readers reviewed a draft of this book before publication
and offered encouragement along with many thoughtful criticisms and sug-
gestions for improvement. Their comments helped me to clarify my argu-
ments, resolve some organizational problems, and eliminate errors, and I
am extremely grateful for the careful attention each reader gave to the
manuscript. I take full responsibility for any problems or mistakes that
remain.
Finally I would like to thank the staff at Wiley - Blackwell who were
involved in the production of this book: Galen Smith, whose gentle remind-
ers kept me on track for completing the manuscript; Mervyn Thomas for
his careful copyediting; and Scott Graham at Cyandesign for the cover
design.
Introduction
“ I don ’ t see race, ” declared political satirist Stephen Colbert during a
segment on his television show in 2006. “ People tell me I ’ m white and I
believe them, because I belong to an all- white country club.” 1 Colbert’ s fake
colorblindness highlighted both the reality of racism in the United States
and some key reasons for its persistence after the passage of civil rights
legislation in the 1960s. Although the new laws were an essential step
toward ensuring racial equality, they were an insuffi cient remedy for dis-
parities in economic opportunity and political power that were constructed
over a period of centuries and could not be eradicated merely by treating
everyone equally from now on. Most African Americans lacked the means
to join exclusive country clubs even if white administrators could be per-
suaded to admit them. Participants in the black freedom movement knew
that real justice required redistributive policies to address the historical
legacies of slavery and Jim Crow. Most other Americans rejected this idea,
however, and instead opted for racially neutral approaches that effectively
froze existing inequalities in place. In the early twenty - fi rst century African
Americans lagged behind white citizens in virtually every measure of social
and economic wellbeing. This was not a consequence of obvious forms of
discrimination but of mechanisms that continued to allocate wealth and
power in racially biased ways after legalized segregation and disfranchise-
ment were abolished. The inequities created by past oppression took on a
self - perpetuating life of their own, allowing white Americans to benefi t from
a racist system even as they professed not to “ see race.”
The invisible nature of racism in the post- civil rights era posed signifi -
cant challenges for those who continued the struggle for equality after
1965. Open expressions of hatred and the lethal violence of earlier decades
largely disappeared, replaced by rhetoric that emphasized individual liberty
and the sanctity of free markets to defend policies that had racially dispa-
rate effects. Most frustrating was the erasure of history and refusal to
Invisible Enemy: The African American Freedom Struggle after 1965 Greta de Jong
© 2010 Greta de Jong. ISBN: 978-1-405-16717-8
2 introduction
acknowledge the cumulative effects of racist oppression that characterized
these arguments. Civil rights leader Julian Bond likened the belief that the
nation could move “ beyond race ” by ignoring everything that had hap-
pened before the 1960s to this scenario: “ It is the fourth quarter of a
football game between the white team and the black team. The white team
is ahead 145 to 3. The white team owns the ball, the fi eld, the goalposts,
the uniforms and the referees. They have been cheating since the game
began. … Suddenly the white quarterback, who feels badly about things
that happened before he entered the game, says, ‘ Can ’ t we just play fair?’ ” 2
Playing fair in that context might be a good beginning, but until something
was done to even the score, the white team ’ s success rested on unearned
advantages that tilted the game in its favor.
Bond ’ s analogy highlighted the systemic nature of racism and its roots
in political economy rather than individual prejudice. The power to make
laws and set policy (referee the game) is the power to distribute resources
(fi x the score). In North America from the seventeenth through the twen-
tieth centuries that power rested largely with wealthy white men who used
it to advance their own interests. Chapter 1 of this book outlines how a
racist social order emerged simultaneously with American capitalism and
the connections between the two. Colonial elites sought to secure a stable
supply of cheap labor and alleviate social tensions by passing laws that
differentiated between European and African settlers, ultimately reducing
African Americans to the status of human chattel. Racial slavery established
enduring connections between class and race and formed the basis for white
Americans’ belief in their own superiority. Broad segments of the white
population had a stake in this social structure, making it remarkably resis-
tant to challenges. The racial order withstood the Enlightenment revolution
that created a new nation based on the principles of liberty and equality,
the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, the social reforms initiated
during the New Deal and World War II eras, and the civil rights movement
of the 1960s. In each period racism changed its form but never disappeared.
Instead, new patterns of inequality emerged that perpetuated assumptions
of black inferiority.
Civil rights activists understood that racism was deeply ingrained in the
economic and political institutions of the United States. In 1967 Stokely
Carmichael and Charles Hamilton distinguished between the racist beliefs
expressed in white supremacists’ resistance to the freedom movement and
the broader social forces that restricted black people ’ s lives. “ When white
terrorists bomb a black church and kill fi ve black children, that is an act
of individual racism, widely deplored by most segments of the society, ”
they wrote. “ But when in that same city – Birmingham, Alabama – fi ve
hundred black babies die each year because of the lack of proper food,
shelter and medical facilities … that is a function of institutional racism.”
introduction 3
Institutional racism resulted from laws and practices that purposely restricted
African Americans’ access to education, housing, employment, and political
power in the slavery and Jim Crow eras. All white Americans profi ted from
the system regardless of their particular feelings or actions toward black
people. White citizens therefore shared a collective responsibility not just
to cease discriminating against African Americans on an individual basis
but to actively dismantle the structures that fostered inequality.3
Most white people declined to accept this responsibility. As outlined in
Chapter 2 , efforts to enhance black people’ s economic opportunities through
the war on poverty encountered strong opposition from Americans who
argued that these initiatives were unnecessary. Business leaders seeking to
halt the trend toward government intervention in the economy, segregation-
ists attempting to maintain white dominance, and upwardly mobile subur-
banites who viewed material success as the product of individual effort
together crafted a narrative that cast antipoverty initiatives as an unjustifi ed
burden on taxpayers that interfered with the natural operation of the free
enterprise system. Business- friendly politicians manipulated the latent
racism that lay behind these views to construct a powerful electoral majority
favoring limited government and economic deregulation after the 1960s.
Over the next four decades Republican and Democratic administrations
alike promoted a free market agenda that perpetuated the racial disparities
created by past discrimination and generated new hardships for many black
people.
The political shifts of the late twentieth century occurred simultaneously
with global economic transformations that increasingly threatened the jobs
and living standards of American workers. Failure to address systemic
racism left African Americans concentrated in geographical and occupa-
tional areas that were disproportionately affected by these shifts. Chapter
3 examines the hidden Jim Crow system that remained in place after the
1960s and the complex ways in which multiple forms of discrimination
interacted to limit black opportunities in the post - civil rights era. Most
black families remained confi ned to inner - city neighborhoods or rural poor
communities characterized by high unemployment, deteriorating housing,
underfunded schools, and proximity to environmental hazards such as pol-
luting industries and waste dumps. The federal government’ s waning
support for programs to retrain workers or create jobs consigned millions
of unemployed people to an impoverished existence on the margins of the
postindustrial economy. Policy makers then tried to control the labor that
capitalism no longer needed through draconian crime policies that turned
black communities into war zones and channeled large numbers of African
Americans into prison. Although the underlying mechanics of the post -
1960s racial order were largely unseen, their consequences were not.
Persistent connections between race, poverty, and crime reinforced racist