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NAACP newsletters, Fort Madison Branch, Fort Madison, Iowa, 1967
Page 008
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-8- What white 'moderates' do not realize is that they themselves are ghettoized, not only racially but physically, in the places where they live and study and work and play and worship, and also in their minds and mentalities -- and hence, in their morality. White moderates (?) are still enamored with the possibility of a society in which there is equality but separation, not understanding that equality is inherently incompatible with the radical division of society by race in the basic spheres of life, and that it represents an inequality suffered on both sides of the racial barrier. Whites who fondly assume that 'Negroes' prefer to live with their own kind must face the fact that it will only be when Negro citizens have free access to reside and work and study and vote and live wherever they please that such a proposition can be seriously tested. What incites despair inside the black slums, is, manifestly the failure to remedy glaring ineuities in housing, education, and employment. Part of the secret of such despair is found in the profound psychological, emotional, and moral insularity of white people who complacently assume that such places as Harlem --- even if somewhat improved --- will continue to be ghettos. Indeed, the atrocities of white racists in the Deep South are probably easier to bear than the recalcitrance and ingenuity of white paternalism in the urban North. This accounts in part for the strong reaction within the Negro community to the celebrated Moynihan Report, which had been advanced as the basis for deliberations at the 1966 White House Conference on Civil Rights, and was properly controverted by Dr. Benjamin F. Payton, now Executive Director, Commission on Religion and Race, National Council of Churches. They Moynihan report...,argues that the legal barriers to the assimilation of the Negro citizens have been substantially removed but that the critical obstacle that remains to integration is the breakdown of the Negro family structure and the emasculation of the American Negro male. Such a position is not exactly untrue, but it is terribly incomplete and misleading unless placed alongside other important factors. The Moynihan Report uncritically assumes that the inherited white family institution and the patterns of assimilation appreciable to white immigrants are the criteria of social stability which should and can overcome the disintegration of Negro family life, without acknowledging inherent strengths in the Negro family. Though Moynihan himself is obviously no racist and is a strong advocate of an immediate policy of total employment, his report inadvertently furnishes subtle rationale for the continuance of white paternalism. It represents a half-truth because it fails to take note of the decadence of the American white family as it may casually relate to the plight of the American Negro family, or as an appropriate standard for a socially mature family structure as such. Of course, if a Moynihan-type report were written -- as it well could be -- on the parallel breakdown in the white family structure in America and its accompanying defeminization of the white female, it is unlikely that the White House would convene a national conference. But in any case, the racial ghettoization of society will only be more cruelly entrenched by any efforts to make Negro families into facsimile white families. What is needed to absolve despair is the determination that there be an end to ghettos: every ghetto blights every city and town in this land with a Negro population must be erased. Only by beginning with that commitment--and there are few signs that white citizens are even contemplating such a commitment--is there a serious possibility of conceiving and executing public policies which can, at once, free the prisoners of the black ghettos and emancipate white Americans from the ghetto of their own complacency. ...Perhaps dispersion is not an appropriate remedy, but it is an imaginable step and one that could be undertaken. In fact, it is the sort of policy that might well be considered if the moral commitment of this society became one of abolishing the ghettos instead of merely, at best, preserving and improving them. The important thing is that integration means the disruption and rejection of much that has been taken for granted for many generations in America -- a drastic reappraisal of values which has not yet been even theoretically contemplated. University of Iowa. Iowa Women's Archives
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-8- What white 'moderates' do not realize is that they themselves are ghettoized, not only racially but physically, in the places where they live and study and work and play and worship, and also in their minds and mentalities -- and hence, in their morality. White moderates (?) are still enamored with the possibility of a society in which there is equality but separation, not understanding that equality is inherently incompatible with the radical division of society by race in the basic spheres of life, and that it represents an inequality suffered on both sides of the racial barrier. Whites who fondly assume that 'Negroes' prefer to live with their own kind must face the fact that it will only be when Negro citizens have free access to reside and work and study and vote and live wherever they please that such a proposition can be seriously tested. What incites despair inside the black slums, is, manifestly the failure to remedy glaring ineuities in housing, education, and employment. Part of the secret of such despair is found in the profound psychological, emotional, and moral insularity of white people who complacently assume that such places as Harlem --- even if somewhat improved --- will continue to be ghettos. Indeed, the atrocities of white racists in the Deep South are probably easier to bear than the recalcitrance and ingenuity of white paternalism in the urban North. This accounts in part for the strong reaction within the Negro community to the celebrated Moynihan Report, which had been advanced as the basis for deliberations at the 1966 White House Conference on Civil Rights, and was properly controverted by Dr. Benjamin F. Payton, now Executive Director, Commission on Religion and Race, National Council of Churches. They Moynihan report...,argues that the legal barriers to the assimilation of the Negro citizens have been substantially removed but that the critical obstacle that remains to integration is the breakdown of the Negro family structure and the emasculation of the American Negro male. Such a position is not exactly untrue, but it is terribly incomplete and misleading unless placed alongside other important factors. The Moynihan Report uncritically assumes that the inherited white family institution and the patterns of assimilation appreciable to white immigrants are the criteria of social stability which should and can overcome the disintegration of Negro family life, without acknowledging inherent strengths in the Negro family. Though Moynihan himself is obviously no racist and is a strong advocate of an immediate policy of total employment, his report inadvertently furnishes subtle rationale for the continuance of white paternalism. It represents a half-truth because it fails to take note of the decadence of the American white family as it may casually relate to the plight of the American Negro family, or as an appropriate standard for a socially mature family structure as such. Of course, if a Moynihan-type report were written -- as it well could be -- on the parallel breakdown in the white family structure in America and its accompanying defeminization of the white female, it is unlikely that the White House would convene a national conference. But in any case, the racial ghettoization of society will only be more cruelly entrenched by any efforts to make Negro families into facsimile white families. What is needed to absolve despair is the determination that there be an end to ghettos: every ghetto blights every city and town in this land with a Negro population must be erased. Only by beginning with that commitment--and there are few signs that white citizens are even contemplating such a commitment--is there a serious possibility of conceiving and executing public policies which can, at once, free the prisoners of the black ghettos and emancipate white Americans from the ghetto of their own complacency. ...Perhaps dispersion is not an appropriate remedy, but it is an imaginable step and one that could be undertaken. In fact, it is the sort of policy that might well be considered if the moral commitment of this society became one of abolishing the ghettos instead of merely, at best, preserving and improving them. The important thing is that integration means the disruption and rejection of much that has been taken for granted for many generations in America -- a drastic reappraisal of values which has not yet been even theoretically contemplated. University of Iowa. Iowa Women's Archives
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