He speaks as if his every sentence deserves its own recognition.
Like the president giving his State of the Union Address.
"Rousseau speaks of the ethical interpretation of citizenship....
This entails acting with the good of the community in mind."
Accept there is no applause.
Just stares.
Waiting for the next bullet point in the notes.
His folded hands sit rested on his corpulent figure.
"Legally as citizens of the United States....
Then there is the notion...of due process...granted.....to the..........members of the state.......its citizens.
Smiling.
No Smirking.
This smirk I've seen before.
He believes that he has a superior intellectual capacity.
It is as if his smirk signifys his belief that exactly no sitting in the seats in front of him well ever reach their so called "potential."
"Telos is....
The latin root which means.....the good....or the end...."
But inside,
I am smirking too.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Lions for Lambs
BE ADVISED: Please bear with me as I struggle through this rant.....I recently watched a movie that absolutely made my skin crawl. The funny thing is that the film wasn't about aliens, ghosts, unsolved mysteries, murderers or any of the above but it was horrifying none the less. The movie was simply about America. More specifically it was about the war in Iraq, the timid state of the American media, and conciseness, a topic that I have attempted to analyze in previous blog entries. It seems as if my inability to completely wrap my head around the movie's subject matter is exactly the point that director Robert Redford is trying to make. Several scenes in the movie mention events and names involving the war and world politics in general. While I do consider myself a conscience individual, even I had trouble following the conversation between Meryl Streep, playing a witty news reporter, and Tom Cruise, playing an ambitious senator. The conversation covered the U.S.'s relationship with Saudi Arabia, the relationship between Iran and Iraqi insurgents, statistics on military casualties, etc. As I sat listening to the dialogue, learning new things and looking up references that I didn't understand, I wondered what would the average American citizen get out of this movie? What would the average person my age (20) get out of this movie? A person that is consumed less with world issues and more so with "I Love New York", Britney Spears, the latest rap beef, sportscenter, etc. It seems as if this mindless entertainment deprives us from observing the important issues in the world.The disconnected (for lack of a better word) state of Americans was one alarming issue that Redford points to. The issue that scared me the most was how Redford paints the American media to be a leashed and blinded dog, leashed by the government, and blinded because of the failure to present impartial opinions. The movie made me think, am I really hearing the real story? If i am not, if I've been fed propaganda by the government through the media, then perhaps my opinions, whom I once thought were my own, are no more unique than...than...Have you ever seen the Manchurian Candidate? Well that's the concept that I'm trying to fit into words here. This is wearing me out...I'll try again later.P.S. I hope all of you that read this can feel where I'm coming from. After rereading my own work, I'm not quite sure that I've articulated myself as clearly a I would like yet I I'm not quite sure on how to correct this problem. The reason I actually posted this entry is to get help from you. Perhaps your comment, question or inquisition can help me better understand my own thought and argument
Friday, January 4, 2008
Randy Moss vs.........
I've often engaged in debates in locker rooms, on buses, and just generally about who the best receiver in the NFL is. Ever since his 1998 rookie season in which he caught a rookie record 17 touchdowns, Randy Moss has been the player that I've defended for this title. His last years in Minnesota and the disgraceful two years in Oakland (In which he still combined for 102 catches, 1557 yards, and 11 touchdowns) caused for more heated debates on this topic. Most commonly someone defended Terrell Owens' brute strength and his dazzling ability to get yards after the catch, Torry Holt or Marvin Harrison's uncanny route running ability, or the ability for the 5' 9 Steve Smith to play like a 6'5 beast. An argument for any of the following men can be made compelling but the truth is no receiver causes as many defensive adjustments as Randy Moss.
The deep threat that Moss poses opens up other underneath receivers and the running game. Teams like the Indianapolis Colts and the Pittsburgh Steelers that like to bring a safety into the box (Bob Sanders, Troy Polamalu) have to change their philosophy to account for Moss. He could literally go deep on any play. Moss's record breaking touchdown catch highlighted this threat. After Tom Brady short armed a deep ball that would have set the passing touchdown and receiving touchdown records, Brady went right back to Moss on the very next play to make up for the miscue. With Randy, even if you know he's going deep you still cannot stop it. Even if he is covered or double covered he may still out jump the defenders for yet another highlight reel catch.
The redzone is where Moss shows his dominance. Like Shaq with the ball right under the basket, Big Papi up to bat in the ninth with a man on second, or Sidney Crosby approaching the goal on a fast break, a fade to Moss is a virtual guaranteed touchdown. It is in the redzone where cornerbacks are singled up with Moss with the defense loading up the box to stop the run. It is here where Moss's 6'4 lanky frame is just too much for even the best of the NFL's DBs. No receiver in the NFL's present or past, including the great Jerry Rice, could do the things that Moss can do. Now that he has the NFL's receiving touchdown record, I don't have to defend Moss as much as I used to. If you still question his greatness just think of what people say whenever a great catch is made over a defender. Anyone with football experience has heard the term. If a receiver makes a great catch over a defender, then that man just got "MOSSED!". Not "T.O.ed" not "Holted", not "Harrisoned", and not even "Riced". The correct term is "MOSSED" and too many NFL defenders know exactly why...
Stalled Movement
At some point in the last thirty to forty years the progress of the Civil Rights Movement has been dramatically stalled. The lost of affirmative action, continued police brutality (Amadu Diallo, Shawn Bell), and the unequal distribution of wealth and power in America serve as evidence for this claim. Because of this, the movement is almost never discussed in a present tense. Instead it is celebrated and admired (as it should be) but not carried on. The ideal of the movement was to affirm the humanity of African Americans within the United States. It seems clear that is goal that this goal is still in limbo.
It is not my intent to suggest that progress of the Civil Rights Movement has been completely halted. Remnants of movement progress are clearly visible in today’s society. The progressive number of African American college graduates is complemented by the continued rise of African Americans ascending into the middle and even upper classes (Gates and West, vii-xvii). I justify my claims of a stalled movement with the knowledge that African Americans make up less than 12% of the country’s population, yet take more than 50% of the country’s prison population. It is evident that movement progress has slowed when in 1995 the infant mortality rate of African Americans was 15.1 per 1000 births, while the infant mortality rate of Whites was just 6.3 per 1000 births. Furthermore, the number one cause of death for African American males between the ages of 18 and 31 is violence related death (Marable 4). The problem is not that these statistics exist, but that they have not gotten better over the years.
Isaac Newton notes that an object in motion will remain in motion until it is acted upon by an outside source. Newton’s first law of physics can be used to address the claims of this essay. The ‘object in motion’ is representative of Civil Rights Movement, and the removal of the ‘outside source’ is the key to the revival of the movement. The problem is that this outside source is as invisible as gravity, but just as powerful. In many cases authors, social commentators, and critics claim that they have found this outside source. Most commonly it is labeled structural racism, immorality in the Black community, and even the laziness of minorities. I have concluded that none of these issues can be the source stalling the present day Civil Rights Movement because they were all present during the core of the movement.
Perhaps this outside force is a “we’ve made it” feeling that plagues the American psyche. Between 1940 and 1975 the consciousness of African Americans reached a peak, consciousness being ‘to know that you are oppressed’. Not only did African Americans have this consciousness but many did something about it. Instead of participating in athletics, social clubs or cliques many African American youth participated in groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). These courageous youth chose jail cells over school dances and football games. They took action in order to change their communities. This type of consciousness and dedication is for the most part absent in the African American youth of today. Instead of understanding what is going on around the world, we are only concerned with what is happening the largely irrelevant hip-hop community. Discussions of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King’s philosophies have been replaced with conversations of who has beef with 50 cent and the latest Lil’ Wayne track. African American youth are not the only guilty party. For many African Americans once the status of middleclass is reached they too become infected with the ‘we’ve made it’ feeling (Dyson xi-xiv, 1-15). There is no middle ground in the Black community where the middleclass is too rich to struggle and the underclass is too poor to. Whites are not without this ‘we’ve made it’ feeling. This is ever so clear in Michigan where affirmative action has been recently voted down, conveying that the original concerns for which it was enacted in the first place are no longer issues. Claims by many Whites that affirmative action policies are oppression of the majority by the minority only reiterate this claim. There are many guilty parties in this problem which suggest that the solution cannot be in any one of them singularly.
The mention of hip-hop culture in the previous paragraph brings the question of leadership to the forefront. I’ve mentioned that the public dialogue has replaced civil rights concerns with rap beef discussions. Perhaps this is because leaders such as Dr. King, Malcolm X, and Thurgood Marshall have not been replaced at all.
There has not been a time in the history of Black people in this country when the quantity of politicians and intellectuals was so great, yet the quality of both groups has been so low.
-West 35
Dr. Cornel West’s chapter The Crisis of Black Leadership sums up the issue of leadership in the Black community better than I could ever articulate. Arguably, the most influential people in the Black community today are the least qualified to be so. Even the intellectuals and orators such as Michael Eric Dyson, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Henry Louis Gates are guilty of commercializing the plight of Blacks. This is evident in the number of books that they’ve written in comparison to the number of books Dr. King, Malcolm X, and other activist wrote. The activists of the Civil Rights Movement were too busy doing. The Black intellectuals of today are too busy writing. It seems that the since the core of the movement passed we where left only with social commentators and no social changers. When Dr. King and Malcolm X died, the torch was not passed to anyone that was concerned solely with the continued progress of the Civil Rights Movement.
This essay would be incomplete if it did not address the unequal distribution of wealth and power through an analysis of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The defining accomplishment of the Civil Rights Movement was the Brown decision that illegalized segregation. This decision is celebrated as ending segregation but in reality it did anything but. It should be noted that the Brown decision only ended de jure segregation, and that de facto segregation still exists extensively in America. Only now instead of Black and White schools there are urban and suburban schools that follow the segregated pattern of pre-1954. Just as the quality of pre-1954 schools was based on color, the quality of post-1954 schools is based on geography. Many urban school districts simply cannot afford to provide the type of education offered in suburban schools, and most urban parents cannot afford to send their children to schools offering better education. This problem is significant to the progress of African Americans because it creates a reoccurring generational cycle. One generation sends their children to unsatisfactory urban schools, because the education isn’t great those children do not go to college. Since these youth do not have college degrees they cannot get well paying jobs which leaves them stuck in the ghetto, and when this generation has children the cycle will be repeat itself once again. The failure to equalize public schools leads to the question, what do we ask for? Education was supposed to be the key to wealth and power, but some how these elements still evade an overwhelming number of minorities in America.
I started this paper with the less than original claim that the Civil Rights Movement has been stalled. I wanted to discover what this outside source was. After my research I am still puzzled on why this is, for the examples that I have offered are merely branches of a tree that I cannot find the roots of. It seems that I may have committed the same sins authors of Black plight have in limiting the scope of the issue. Still, I do not see that I have worked in vein. I have made some progress. I realized that the flaw in this essay was to seek out a single solution to the plight of African-Americans. Through Grace Lee Boggs, Cornel West, Assata Shukur and others I have learned that the solution to this problem is highly complex and does not simply lie somewhere in the Black community. As West and Lee have asserted, Black is no longer a color, meaning that the issues facing the African-American community can not be addressed in solitarily. The plight of African-Americans is interconnected with the plight of oppressed peoples around the world. This means that any group that has been labeled ‘other’ by society must be recognized and affirmed (Marable 1-15/ Benhabib 1-30). This includes minorities, women, gays and lesbians, abused children in Africa, as well as oppressed monks in Myanmar. Oppression is a weed that must be pulled up from the root. Like Dr. King said, “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
It is not my intent to suggest that progress of the Civil Rights Movement has been completely halted. Remnants of movement progress are clearly visible in today’s society. The progressive number of African American college graduates is complemented by the continued rise of African Americans ascending into the middle and even upper classes (Gates and West, vii-xvii). I justify my claims of a stalled movement with the knowledge that African Americans make up less than 12% of the country’s population, yet take more than 50% of the country’s prison population. It is evident that movement progress has slowed when in 1995 the infant mortality rate of African Americans was 15.1 per 1000 births, while the infant mortality rate of Whites was just 6.3 per 1000 births. Furthermore, the number one cause of death for African American males between the ages of 18 and 31 is violence related death (Marable 4). The problem is not that these statistics exist, but that they have not gotten better over the years.
Isaac Newton notes that an object in motion will remain in motion until it is acted upon by an outside source. Newton’s first law of physics can be used to address the claims of this essay. The ‘object in motion’ is representative of Civil Rights Movement, and the removal of the ‘outside source’ is the key to the revival of the movement. The problem is that this outside source is as invisible as gravity, but just as powerful. In many cases authors, social commentators, and critics claim that they have found this outside source. Most commonly it is labeled structural racism, immorality in the Black community, and even the laziness of minorities. I have concluded that none of these issues can be the source stalling the present day Civil Rights Movement because they were all present during the core of the movement.
Perhaps this outside force is a “we’ve made it” feeling that plagues the American psyche. Between 1940 and 1975 the consciousness of African Americans reached a peak, consciousness being ‘to know that you are oppressed’. Not only did African Americans have this consciousness but many did something about it. Instead of participating in athletics, social clubs or cliques many African American youth participated in groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). These courageous youth chose jail cells over school dances and football games. They took action in order to change their communities. This type of consciousness and dedication is for the most part absent in the African American youth of today. Instead of understanding what is going on around the world, we are only concerned with what is happening the largely irrelevant hip-hop community. Discussions of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King’s philosophies have been replaced with conversations of who has beef with 50 cent and the latest Lil’ Wayne track. African American youth are not the only guilty party. For many African Americans once the status of middleclass is reached they too become infected with the ‘we’ve made it’ feeling (Dyson xi-xiv, 1-15). There is no middle ground in the Black community where the middleclass is too rich to struggle and the underclass is too poor to. Whites are not without this ‘we’ve made it’ feeling. This is ever so clear in Michigan where affirmative action has been recently voted down, conveying that the original concerns for which it was enacted in the first place are no longer issues. Claims by many Whites that affirmative action policies are oppression of the majority by the minority only reiterate this claim. There are many guilty parties in this problem which suggest that the solution cannot be in any one of them singularly.
The mention of hip-hop culture in the previous paragraph brings the question of leadership to the forefront. I’ve mentioned that the public dialogue has replaced civil rights concerns with rap beef discussions. Perhaps this is because leaders such as Dr. King, Malcolm X, and Thurgood Marshall have not been replaced at all.
There has not been a time in the history of Black people in this country when the quantity of politicians and intellectuals was so great, yet the quality of both groups has been so low.
-West 35
Dr. Cornel West’s chapter The Crisis of Black Leadership sums up the issue of leadership in the Black community better than I could ever articulate. Arguably, the most influential people in the Black community today are the least qualified to be so. Even the intellectuals and orators such as Michael Eric Dyson, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Henry Louis Gates are guilty of commercializing the plight of Blacks. This is evident in the number of books that they’ve written in comparison to the number of books Dr. King, Malcolm X, and other activist wrote. The activists of the Civil Rights Movement were too busy doing. The Black intellectuals of today are too busy writing. It seems that the since the core of the movement passed we where left only with social commentators and no social changers. When Dr. King and Malcolm X died, the torch was not passed to anyone that was concerned solely with the continued progress of the Civil Rights Movement.
This essay would be incomplete if it did not address the unequal distribution of wealth and power through an analysis of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The defining accomplishment of the Civil Rights Movement was the Brown decision that illegalized segregation. This decision is celebrated as ending segregation but in reality it did anything but. It should be noted that the Brown decision only ended de jure segregation, and that de facto segregation still exists extensively in America. Only now instead of Black and White schools there are urban and suburban schools that follow the segregated pattern of pre-1954. Just as the quality of pre-1954 schools was based on color, the quality of post-1954 schools is based on geography. Many urban school districts simply cannot afford to provide the type of education offered in suburban schools, and most urban parents cannot afford to send their children to schools offering better education. This problem is significant to the progress of African Americans because it creates a reoccurring generational cycle. One generation sends their children to unsatisfactory urban schools, because the education isn’t great those children do not go to college. Since these youth do not have college degrees they cannot get well paying jobs which leaves them stuck in the ghetto, and when this generation has children the cycle will be repeat itself once again. The failure to equalize public schools leads to the question, what do we ask for? Education was supposed to be the key to wealth and power, but some how these elements still evade an overwhelming number of minorities in America.
I started this paper with the less than original claim that the Civil Rights Movement has been stalled. I wanted to discover what this outside source was. After my research I am still puzzled on why this is, for the examples that I have offered are merely branches of a tree that I cannot find the roots of. It seems that I may have committed the same sins authors of Black plight have in limiting the scope of the issue. Still, I do not see that I have worked in vein. I have made some progress. I realized that the flaw in this essay was to seek out a single solution to the plight of African-Americans. Through Grace Lee Boggs, Cornel West, Assata Shukur and others I have learned that the solution to this problem is highly complex and does not simply lie somewhere in the Black community. As West and Lee have asserted, Black is no longer a color, meaning that the issues facing the African-American community can not be addressed in solitarily. The plight of African-Americans is interconnected with the plight of oppressed peoples around the world. This means that any group that has been labeled ‘other’ by society must be recognized and affirmed (Marable 1-15/ Benhabib 1-30). This includes minorities, women, gays and lesbians, abused children in Africa, as well as oppressed monks in Myanmar. Oppression is a weed that must be pulled up from the root. Like Dr. King said, “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Back In The Day
The narrative of the Civil Rights movement as it is written in today’s elementary, middle, and high school text books paints a mythical picture of a monolithic movement. This narrative implies a sort of cohesiveness in the strategy of the movement by only highlighting the works of Dr. Martin Luther King or the courage of Rosa Parks. The reality is that the Civil Rights Movement had a host of contrasting ideologies, many personas, and crucial events that are neglected in ‘Civil Rights’ chapter of our American history textbooks. One of the contrasts often forgotten in the Civil Rights narrative is the generational differences of the Black community, during the movement. The plurality of the Civil Rights Movement can begin to be examined with a study of the contrasting positions between older and younger African-Americans.
All generations have distinctions that separate them from other generations, distinctions that create the ‘generational gap’. Technology, historical events, prominent public figures and other pastimes all work together to create this gap between generations. Just as I have heard stories from my father about the Vietnam conflict, the greatness of Walter Payton, and the time his father brought a record player home, my son will hear stories from me about September 11th, the majestic of Michael Jordan, and when ipods first hit the market. The ‘back-in-the-day’ stories of parents and children living during the Civil Rights Movement involved more paramount contrasts. Anne Moody’s mother never thought of her daughter attending school with white children, nor would Mose Wright, Emmett Till’s grandfather, ever think an interracial relationship possible in society were a boy is killed just for whistling at a white woman. No period in American history has witnessed a greater generational gap then that of the Black community during the Civil Rights Movement. As these racial norms, traditions, and taboos began to change with the evolution of the movement, the Black community’s generational gap became more apparent.
Anne Moody’s autobiography, Coming of Age in Mississippi, presents a perfect opportunity to begin examining the older/younger generational contrast. Moody’s relationship with her mother illustrates the differences between the aspirations, strategies, and visions of the two generations. The frustration that Moody expresses for her mother is quite possibly the root of the difference between what I will label as the pre-movement and movement generations. Moody’s resentment grows out of her desire to blaze her own trail, one that did not involve the agricultural life of her parents. In describing her dislike for farming, Moody expresses this desire clearly.
So whenever Mama started one of her long lectures on the pleasures of farming, I would drown her out with my thoughts of Mrs. Claiborne and all the traveling she had done and the people she had met. Mrs. Claiborne had told me how smart I was and how much I could do if I just had the chance. I knew if I got involved in farming, I’d be just like Mama and the rest of them, and that I would never get that chance.
-Moody 90
It is natural for any growing youth to want to leave the home of their parents and spread their wings in society. In the case of Moody, and many youth of the movement generation, spreading your wings not only meant leaving the home but also establishing a new, better standard of living. For Moody, the life of agriculture that her mother’s family shared was not acceptable, nor was the racism that accompanied it.
“I’d be just like Mama and the rest of them…” It is interesting to examine what this statement entails. To be like the “rest of them” meant to be confined to limits of southern Black life. Toosweet’s (Anne’s Mother) life is representative of many of the lives of the pre-movement generation. This generation was confined by the racism that plagued America, which created asinine social norms. The most absurd and noticeable social norm was Jim Crow. Every single facet of life was limited by the walls of this plague. Job opportunities for women were limited to domestic duties. For men, if there was work available, was limited to the fields. Black men could be lynched for looking at a white woman, while many wealthy white men had sexual relationships with their Black hired help. Black people stepped off the sidewalk when whites were on the path. Financial stability was made impossible due to sharecropping, and other racist economic practices. It is imperative to note that these atrocities were considered norms. For many of the pre-movement generation, a good life was accomplished by working within the limits of these restrictive norms and staying away from conflicts with whites.
Coming of Age in Mississippi is unique because its setting is within the peak of the Civil Rights Movement, between the 1940’s and 1960’s. This period highlighted the reality of Black life by showing the opposite sides of the spectrum, from poor rural African Americans to middleclass urban African Americans. American society did not accept Blacks as full citizens, but northern life was more optimistic than southern life. Many southern youth, like Moody, decided that they were not to going accept southern social norms. The Civil Rights Movement provided the opportunity to not be like the “rest of them”. Moody’s generation eradicated many of the social limitations that the pre-movement generation suffered from. This time period saw African Americans migrate north in unprecedented numbers. These individuals became first generation college graduates and first time members of the middleclass. It was this generation that took the more radical stance toward achieving social equality (Gates and West, vii-xvii). It should be noted that one could be born between 1940 and 1960 but still suffer from the pre-movement ideology. Anne was born into the pre-movement philosophy but with the help of teachers and her own strong will, she became exposed to more desirable ideals. Similarly one could be born within the pre-movement generation and still have a radical movement stance towards social equality. Fredrick Douglas and W.E.B DuBois are examples.
It is not my intent to imply that the pre-movement generation was comfortable with American racism. It was a combination of racial conditioning and violent white resistance that made radical change so scary for many African-Americans of both the pre-movement and movement generations. Traditions like Jim Crow became part of the subconscious of many African-Americans, but having just a few citizenship rights was better than having none at all. This subconscious created an inferiority complex in many African Americans and caused many of them to be cautious with the struggle for social equality. For it seemed that the agitation of the movement could result in the loss of the little progress that the Black community had gained since the abolition of slavery. The pre-movement generation had to be fearful of the Civil Rights Movement because of the threat it posed to their minimal comfort.
Racial conditioning and white resistance would explain why Toosweet frowned on her daughter’s participation in the movement. She had a family to take care of in one the most racist communities in the country and her options were more limited compared to her daughter’s. Whites made it known that participation in the movement would have its consequences. The sheriff of Anne’s hometown was one of those people.
She said the sheriff had been by, telling her I was messing around with that NAACP group. She said he told her if I didn’t stop it, I could not come back there anymore. He said that they didn’t need any of those NAACP people messing around in Centreville.
-Moody 285
Many students of the Civil Rights Movement, including myself, have been quick to condemn Blacks, like Anne’s Mother, that were not fully supportive of the movement. It should be noted that for many African-Americans the decision to support the movement was a life or death decision and it would be hypocritical to criticize anyone that chose not to fully support the radical movement in order to survive.
Fear was the cause of the struggles of Freedom Summer of 1964 but the racial conditioning that created an inferior subconscious in the pre-movement generation also played a role. Freedom Summer was an attempt, by civil rights groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), to get African-Americans to register vote in the most racist part of the country. This one summer is relevant because it brought pre-movement and movement generations face to face with one another. It should be noted that this project was an attempt, and the success or failure of it is debatable. The project was hindered because not everyone cooperated and not everyone was pleased with these northern groups disturbing the ‘southern way of life.’ Many whites were angry with the project because of racial ignorance, but even some African-Americans had a problem with these young northerners bringing unwanted attention to the Black community. Because of the former sentiment the Freedom Summer project had to be run by young students. They had no ties to the community, therefore the family survival issue as it affected Anne’s mother, would not be an issue to these young people. In referencing the southern Black community, Robert Moses, the director of SNCC’s presence in Mississippi, describes the main issue of the Freedom Summer project.
The Negro churches could not in general be counted on; the Negro business leaders could also not in general be counted on…and, in general, anybody who had a specific economic tie-in with the white community could not be counted on when the pressure got hot. Therefore, our feeling was that the only way to run this campaign was to begin to build a group of young people who would not be responsible economically to any sector of the white community and who would be able to act as free agents.
-Carson 176
Moses labels the groups that he cannot count on. He names churches, business leaders, and generally anyone that had an economic tie with the white community. These characteristics describe pre-movement generation African-Americans such as Toosweet. These older Blacks could not be counted on in the radical movement because there financial survival largely depended on whites. Finances for movement generation African Americans did not depend so much on whites.
It can be argued that there were two (and possibly more) branches of the Civil Rights Movement. A conservative branch, which included pre-movement African-Americans, that advocated self-reliance and slower racial progress and a radical branch, which included youth of the movement generation, and pushed for immediate and tangible racial progress. Without a doubt the father of the latter branch was Booker T. Washington. Portions of Washington’s ‘accommodationist’ theory seem to be interlaced within the pre-movement ideology. Washington believed in slow racial progress. More specifically he encouraged sacrificing political and civic equality in exchange for economic and educational stability. For many of the pre-movement generation this strategy was not as imposing as the radical Civil Rights movement. In a 1985 speech Washington announced his beliefs to the country. He encouraged Blacks to befriend the southern white man, learn how to prosper by farming land, and not to agitate societal change.
No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top.
-Washington, Atlanta Compromise Address
Many have said the ‘accommodationist’ ideology to be degrading to the humanity of African-Americans. The truth of this claim is debatable and must be argued by scholars, but surely Washington believed that his strategy would advance the interest of African-Americans. His ideas were not radical, but they were centered on the betterment of Black life, therefore contributing to the movement.
It was mentioned in the introduction that the largest generational gap American history has ever witnessed was that of the Black community during the Civil Rights Movement. For many of the pre-movement generation America was still largely two societies, one being Black, one being white. The latter bound by the ignorance of the former. The movement generation was the first to see the possibilities of a merger of the two societies. Landmark decisions like Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the installment of affirmative action provided the movement generation with opportunities that the pre-movement generation could only wish for. The content of this paper would lead one to assume that the movement ideology blossomed out of no where. To assume this would be to commit another ignorant sin. As I have noted, the reason the movement generation was able to take such a radical stance is because they had the tools to do so. The Civil Rights Movement marked the moment when African Americans felt empowered, educated, and were organized enough to stand up to the United States government. The only circumstance in which this struggle could have taken place any earlier would be if President Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation before 1863. Pre-movement African-Americans are not usually remembered in the Civil Rights narrative, but it must be acknowledged that the movement could not have existed without them.
It is ironic that I am writing an essay that attempts to shed the monolithic Civil Rights Movement myth. It should be recognized that while I have briefly observed the generational gap of the Black community during the movement, even I have committed the sin of limiting the scope. I have tailored this essay to show how age difference created a divide in the black community but in most cases age was by no means the only dividing factor. Class, gender, religion, and what area of the country you were born in also played a role in ones ideology. While one would be correct to assert that in general followers of Malcolm X where younger and followers of Martin Luther King tended to be middle-aged, it would also be correct to contend that Malcolm X’s popularity was highest with men in poor urban areas and Dr. King’s popularity was highest in southern middle-classed communities. The Civil Rights narrative limits the plurality of the movement. Many, and likely most, African-Americans found inspiration in both Dr. King and Malcolm X. In labeling the ‘pre-movement’ and ‘movement’ generations I have created distinctions for the general purposes of this essay. It is not to imply that these two generations shared nothing in common, or to impose that there was total disagreement between the two. Broadening the spectrum of the public dialogue regarding the movement is my only intent. Furthermore, we should acknowledge that while the Civil Rights Movement had many platforms, some of which conflicted with one another, togetherness still existed in striving for the goal of racial equality. Today’s Black community could learn from this example.
Works Cited
Carson, Clayborne. “Mississippi: 1961-1962” The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader. New York, Penguin Group, 1998
Gates, Henry L. Cornel West. The Future of the Race. New York; Alfred K. Knopf, Inc, 1996
Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi. New York; Bantum Dell, 2004
Washington, Booker T. “Atlanta Compromise Speech” 1985. Accessed Through Oxford African American Studies Center (/www.oxfordaasc.com) 12/7/07.
All generations have distinctions that separate them from other generations, distinctions that create the ‘generational gap’. Technology, historical events, prominent public figures and other pastimes all work together to create this gap between generations. Just as I have heard stories from my father about the Vietnam conflict, the greatness of Walter Payton, and the time his father brought a record player home, my son will hear stories from me about September 11th, the majestic of Michael Jordan, and when ipods first hit the market. The ‘back-in-the-day’ stories of parents and children living during the Civil Rights Movement involved more paramount contrasts. Anne Moody’s mother never thought of her daughter attending school with white children, nor would Mose Wright, Emmett Till’s grandfather, ever think an interracial relationship possible in society were a boy is killed just for whistling at a white woman. No period in American history has witnessed a greater generational gap then that of the Black community during the Civil Rights Movement. As these racial norms, traditions, and taboos began to change with the evolution of the movement, the Black community’s generational gap became more apparent.
Anne Moody’s autobiography, Coming of Age in Mississippi, presents a perfect opportunity to begin examining the older/younger generational contrast. Moody’s relationship with her mother illustrates the differences between the aspirations, strategies, and visions of the two generations. The frustration that Moody expresses for her mother is quite possibly the root of the difference between what I will label as the pre-movement and movement generations. Moody’s resentment grows out of her desire to blaze her own trail, one that did not involve the agricultural life of her parents. In describing her dislike for farming, Moody expresses this desire clearly.
So whenever Mama started one of her long lectures on the pleasures of farming, I would drown her out with my thoughts of Mrs. Claiborne and all the traveling she had done and the people she had met. Mrs. Claiborne had told me how smart I was and how much I could do if I just had the chance. I knew if I got involved in farming, I’d be just like Mama and the rest of them, and that I would never get that chance.
-Moody 90
It is natural for any growing youth to want to leave the home of their parents and spread their wings in society. In the case of Moody, and many youth of the movement generation, spreading your wings not only meant leaving the home but also establishing a new, better standard of living. For Moody, the life of agriculture that her mother’s family shared was not acceptable, nor was the racism that accompanied it.
“I’d be just like Mama and the rest of them…” It is interesting to examine what this statement entails. To be like the “rest of them” meant to be confined to limits of southern Black life. Toosweet’s (Anne’s Mother) life is representative of many of the lives of the pre-movement generation. This generation was confined by the racism that plagued America, which created asinine social norms. The most absurd and noticeable social norm was Jim Crow. Every single facet of life was limited by the walls of this plague. Job opportunities for women were limited to domestic duties. For men, if there was work available, was limited to the fields. Black men could be lynched for looking at a white woman, while many wealthy white men had sexual relationships with their Black hired help. Black people stepped off the sidewalk when whites were on the path. Financial stability was made impossible due to sharecropping, and other racist economic practices. It is imperative to note that these atrocities were considered norms. For many of the pre-movement generation, a good life was accomplished by working within the limits of these restrictive norms and staying away from conflicts with whites.
Coming of Age in Mississippi is unique because its setting is within the peak of the Civil Rights Movement, between the 1940’s and 1960’s. This period highlighted the reality of Black life by showing the opposite sides of the spectrum, from poor rural African Americans to middleclass urban African Americans. American society did not accept Blacks as full citizens, but northern life was more optimistic than southern life. Many southern youth, like Moody, decided that they were not to going accept southern social norms. The Civil Rights Movement provided the opportunity to not be like the “rest of them”. Moody’s generation eradicated many of the social limitations that the pre-movement generation suffered from. This time period saw African Americans migrate north in unprecedented numbers. These individuals became first generation college graduates and first time members of the middleclass. It was this generation that took the more radical stance toward achieving social equality (Gates and West, vii-xvii). It should be noted that one could be born between 1940 and 1960 but still suffer from the pre-movement ideology. Anne was born into the pre-movement philosophy but with the help of teachers and her own strong will, she became exposed to more desirable ideals. Similarly one could be born within the pre-movement generation and still have a radical movement stance towards social equality. Fredrick Douglas and W.E.B DuBois are examples.
It is not my intent to imply that the pre-movement generation was comfortable with American racism. It was a combination of racial conditioning and violent white resistance that made radical change so scary for many African-Americans of both the pre-movement and movement generations. Traditions like Jim Crow became part of the subconscious of many African-Americans, but having just a few citizenship rights was better than having none at all. This subconscious created an inferiority complex in many African Americans and caused many of them to be cautious with the struggle for social equality. For it seemed that the agitation of the movement could result in the loss of the little progress that the Black community had gained since the abolition of slavery. The pre-movement generation had to be fearful of the Civil Rights Movement because of the threat it posed to their minimal comfort.
Racial conditioning and white resistance would explain why Toosweet frowned on her daughter’s participation in the movement. She had a family to take care of in one the most racist communities in the country and her options were more limited compared to her daughter’s. Whites made it known that participation in the movement would have its consequences. The sheriff of Anne’s hometown was one of those people.
She said the sheriff had been by, telling her I was messing around with that NAACP group. She said he told her if I didn’t stop it, I could not come back there anymore. He said that they didn’t need any of those NAACP people messing around in Centreville.
-Moody 285
Many students of the Civil Rights Movement, including myself, have been quick to condemn Blacks, like Anne’s Mother, that were not fully supportive of the movement. It should be noted that for many African-Americans the decision to support the movement was a life or death decision and it would be hypocritical to criticize anyone that chose not to fully support the radical movement in order to survive.
Fear was the cause of the struggles of Freedom Summer of 1964 but the racial conditioning that created an inferior subconscious in the pre-movement generation also played a role. Freedom Summer was an attempt, by civil rights groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), to get African-Americans to register vote in the most racist part of the country. This one summer is relevant because it brought pre-movement and movement generations face to face with one another. It should be noted that this project was an attempt, and the success or failure of it is debatable. The project was hindered because not everyone cooperated and not everyone was pleased with these northern groups disturbing the ‘southern way of life.’ Many whites were angry with the project because of racial ignorance, but even some African-Americans had a problem with these young northerners bringing unwanted attention to the Black community. Because of the former sentiment the Freedom Summer project had to be run by young students. They had no ties to the community, therefore the family survival issue as it affected Anne’s mother, would not be an issue to these young people. In referencing the southern Black community, Robert Moses, the director of SNCC’s presence in Mississippi, describes the main issue of the Freedom Summer project.
The Negro churches could not in general be counted on; the Negro business leaders could also not in general be counted on…and, in general, anybody who had a specific economic tie-in with the white community could not be counted on when the pressure got hot. Therefore, our feeling was that the only way to run this campaign was to begin to build a group of young people who would not be responsible economically to any sector of the white community and who would be able to act as free agents.
-Carson 176
Moses labels the groups that he cannot count on. He names churches, business leaders, and generally anyone that had an economic tie with the white community. These characteristics describe pre-movement generation African-Americans such as Toosweet. These older Blacks could not be counted on in the radical movement because there financial survival largely depended on whites. Finances for movement generation African Americans did not depend so much on whites.
It can be argued that there were two (and possibly more) branches of the Civil Rights Movement. A conservative branch, which included pre-movement African-Americans, that advocated self-reliance and slower racial progress and a radical branch, which included youth of the movement generation, and pushed for immediate and tangible racial progress. Without a doubt the father of the latter branch was Booker T. Washington. Portions of Washington’s ‘accommodationist’ theory seem to be interlaced within the pre-movement ideology. Washington believed in slow racial progress. More specifically he encouraged sacrificing political and civic equality in exchange for economic and educational stability. For many of the pre-movement generation this strategy was not as imposing as the radical Civil Rights movement. In a 1985 speech Washington announced his beliefs to the country. He encouraged Blacks to befriend the southern white man, learn how to prosper by farming land, and not to agitate societal change.
No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top.
-Washington, Atlanta Compromise Address
Many have said the ‘accommodationist’ ideology to be degrading to the humanity of African-Americans. The truth of this claim is debatable and must be argued by scholars, but surely Washington believed that his strategy would advance the interest of African-Americans. His ideas were not radical, but they were centered on the betterment of Black life, therefore contributing to the movement.
It was mentioned in the introduction that the largest generational gap American history has ever witnessed was that of the Black community during the Civil Rights Movement. For many of the pre-movement generation America was still largely two societies, one being Black, one being white. The latter bound by the ignorance of the former. The movement generation was the first to see the possibilities of a merger of the two societies. Landmark decisions like Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the installment of affirmative action provided the movement generation with opportunities that the pre-movement generation could only wish for. The content of this paper would lead one to assume that the movement ideology blossomed out of no where. To assume this would be to commit another ignorant sin. As I have noted, the reason the movement generation was able to take such a radical stance is because they had the tools to do so. The Civil Rights Movement marked the moment when African Americans felt empowered, educated, and were organized enough to stand up to the United States government. The only circumstance in which this struggle could have taken place any earlier would be if President Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation before 1863. Pre-movement African-Americans are not usually remembered in the Civil Rights narrative, but it must be acknowledged that the movement could not have existed without them.
It is ironic that I am writing an essay that attempts to shed the monolithic Civil Rights Movement myth. It should be recognized that while I have briefly observed the generational gap of the Black community during the movement, even I have committed the sin of limiting the scope. I have tailored this essay to show how age difference created a divide in the black community but in most cases age was by no means the only dividing factor. Class, gender, religion, and what area of the country you were born in also played a role in ones ideology. While one would be correct to assert that in general followers of Malcolm X where younger and followers of Martin Luther King tended to be middle-aged, it would also be correct to contend that Malcolm X’s popularity was highest with men in poor urban areas and Dr. King’s popularity was highest in southern middle-classed communities. The Civil Rights narrative limits the plurality of the movement. Many, and likely most, African-Americans found inspiration in both Dr. King and Malcolm X. In labeling the ‘pre-movement’ and ‘movement’ generations I have created distinctions for the general purposes of this essay. It is not to imply that these two generations shared nothing in common, or to impose that there was total disagreement between the two. Broadening the spectrum of the public dialogue regarding the movement is my only intent. Furthermore, we should acknowledge that while the Civil Rights Movement had many platforms, some of which conflicted with one another, togetherness still existed in striving for the goal of racial equality. Today’s Black community could learn from this example.
Works Cited
Carson, Clayborne. “Mississippi: 1961-1962” The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader. New York, Penguin Group, 1998
Gates, Henry L. Cornel West. The Future of the Race. New York; Alfred K. Knopf, Inc, 1996
Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi. New York; Bantum Dell, 2004
Washington, Booker T. “Atlanta Compromise Speech” 1985. Accessed Through Oxford African American Studies Center (/www.oxfordaasc.com) 12/7/07.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
