There seems to be an uptick in "HBD" spiels on sites of the usual suspects as the 2020 election
approaches including various "libertarian" and "Bell Curve" types claimants trying to dismiss the
civil rights movement. Recap of some points from another post below.
Malcolm Jim crow supporter? I don't think you understand what Malcolm was talking about in full context. Malcolm
in no way supported the vicious white Jim Crow regime. In fact many of his speeches
railed against it. His criticism was that given white opposition for even such trivial
things as eating next to black people in a restaurant, then integration was (a) a waste
of time, or (b) a sham of petty concessions that left real power untouched. Malcolm would
then tout ELijah MUhammed's alternative vision of a separate black state, which, ironically,
was massively more unrealistic. It met with skepticism from many blacks, who noted that
the Muslims talked militant up north, but seldom appeared down south. or even in many
northern venues to openly confront the very same Jim Crow thy riled against. THis criticism
was true, and pained Malcolm much, and towards the end he sought ways to appear relevant to the surge
of black civil rights/freedom struggle around the nation. So he was in no way "closer" to
white racists like Taylor. To the contrary he condemned such racists repeatedly, as well as
Elijah Muhammed for dallying with and meeting with such racists, like George Lincoln Rockwell
of the American Nazi Party. His shift was only partially successful. Less than a year after breaking from
the Muslims, he was iced by the very same separatist organization he had spend years helping to build.
Disappointed by some specifics You also say blacks are "disappointed" by integration. I have already addressed this at length
above. To the contrary no sane blacks except for a few fringe black libertarians like ELizabeth
Wrightand blinkered right wing types like George Schuyler in the 1950s-60s wanted any return to
Jim Crow's injustices. And even people like Wright try to frame their issue in terms of a specific
item, like black business loss etc, not any "return to Dixie." There has been disappointment
on SPECIFIC programs like busing, etc but overall most sane black people are glad to see Jim Crow gone.
People who make the "disappointed blacks" argument too often forget to mention that many of these
specific programs failed due to white opposition, sabotage, and sandbagging. In short whites
engineered the failure then come around talking about "black disappointment." Seriously? Only the
naive lap this up. And as already stated for many blacks the issue is not integration but HOW whites
went about doing it such as rapid firing of black teachers, coaches etc, (meaning mo white job slots)
and diversion of federal money to aid blacks into white hands. New "integrated" schools built for
example were mostly built with white labor. It took years of lawsuits and arm-twisting to even begin
to address such things after the major Civil Rights laws passed.
Integration not to blame for every negativeAnd many of the key losses are not due to "integration" per se, but to general economic changes. The rise
of big chain stores for example was wiping out small black businesses as far back as the 1920s. It only
got worse ion the post ww2 era, even as many businesses and factories, in another general trend, moved
out of central urban areas to the more lucrative suburbs- wiping out more small businesses. Integration
did cause SOME losses, but many wHite small businessmen saw their prospects shrink under these changes as
well. Blaming every decline on "integration" is really simplistic.
Civil Rights unecessary?As for Charles Murray let's get real. His so called "devastating" critique is more like a fizzled
squib that only keep burning in the right wing echo chambers. OUt in the real world his argument
is laughably weak. First "trend lines" of Jim Crow and prejudice co-existed quite nicely with rising
black incomes or education. White racism in employment, housing and education kept on. In 1950s north
for example black families trying to use their new income to purchase bettr housing were met with howling
white mobs and death threats. As late as the 1960s the federal government itself refused to give loans
in areas that they "redlined" off. Just the presence of one black family on a block could trigger the
"redline" loan denials. IN the meantime on into 1970s, white real estate people kept right on "steering' black
people into ghetto properties, even as white politicians kept building roads blasting through
"negro" areas to destroy them or to use them as barriers to wall the "culluds" off from "reserved"
white areas. Up into the 1970s white unions kept sandbagging black employment in the skilled trades.
Many more examples could be given but who says "trend lines" were necessarily positive
before the civil rights laws, or executive action?
It was civil rights that aided or helped shape the positive "trend lines"Another big hole in Murray's argument is that his so called "trend lines" of positivity for blacks came about
substantially, or in part, BECAUSE of civil rights agitation. IN WW2 time and time again whites went on strike,
sometimes violently to block blacks from getting better paying defense industry jobs even though there was
a war on. IN one war plant white women went on strike and shut production down because, gasp, a few
negroe women were hired and gasp, they would share the same toilets! Heavens! Da end of white civ!
Forget those German and Japanese hordes. There's negroes in the restroom listening to me poop Jolene!
(
SEe- Black Labor and the American Legal System: Race, Work, and the Law By Herbert Hill, 1985)
BS like this made A. Phillip Randolph threaten to lead a black March On Washington. Such a dangerous civil
rights demonstration threat forced embarrassed white officials to begin opening up more defense jobs, and begin
some anti-discrimination enforcement. After all how could they be boosting "democracy" against facism
when they could not even guarantee basic decency for negroes in their own back yard, or keep war factories open?
ANd so it went. In the 1940s it was civil rights agitation and lawsuits that created the positive
trendlines, forcing southern state regimes to finally pay black teachers same as whites. It was civil rights
agitation after black soldiers were attacked on buses that finally moved Truman to his landmark
desegregation of the armed forces. It was only after the civil rights act of 1964 that the "white only"
southern textile industry finally started hiring blacks above the menial jobs a boon for black employment.
It was civil rights arm-twisting that forced JIm Crow southern hospitals to admit black people- a boom
for black health care. It was "unneeded" civil rights that pried open the spigots of federal money that gave
millions of blacks a chance to get some jobs and money beyond the most menial. As regards the discriminating white
unions, they so pissed off conservative President Richard Nixon that to show his civil rights bona-fides, he had
his Dept of Labor implement his famous "Philadelphia Plan" requiring that the white unions admit black workers for projects
using federal money. Etc etc etc. In short, while civil rights cannot take credit for all the positive trend lines, it
was a key part in making those trend lines effective for, or encouraging them on for blacks.
Ironically, towards the end of his life Mr. Conservative hisself, William F Buckley, who had for 30
years scornfully dismissed or downplayed civil rights, finally had to admit that the movement was
necessary (Time Mag interview 2004 circa). So much for Murray's "devastatingly" bogus critique.
World War II created a boom economy that hired many blacks, so the trend line was positive going forward. How can you say civil rights had anything to do with that? You also conveniently don't mention that the south began to upgrade black schools with more buildings and funding after World War II, which was part of a positive trend line, that didn't need Martin Luther King.You don;t seem to be able to grasp the facts. Up above it is said that of course
WW2's expansion helped boost the economy -which of course helped many blacks. Who
doesn't know this? What you seem unable to grasp is that even some of these gains
are due in part to relentless civil rights pressure on white ruling regimes, from
threatened street marches by A Philip Randolph to relentless court cases filed
and appealed year after year, as every credible history book shows.
As for WW2 a significant slice of white people put blockading black employment AHEAD
of defeating Nazi Germany or the Japanese, and ahead of so-called "free markets."
When black folk got jobs due to "free market" hiring, whites moved to shut it down.
When war production was urgently needed whites moved to shut this down too. Why, when
production was urgently needed at the front to defeat the evil Axis enemies of democracy?
Why? Because black folk were finally getting a tiny piece of the action. QUOTE:
"On May 24, 1943, Alabama Dry Dock employed nearly 7,000 black workers,
none of them in skilled occupations. Suddenly, in compliance with a six-month-
old direc-tive from the President's Committee on Fair Employment Practice (FEPc),
the once-recalcitrant company upgraded 12 blacks to welding jobs. The next
morning, after the twelve men had gone home, the yard erupted. Responding to
cries to "get every one of them Niggers off this island," enraged whites
assaulted their black co-workers with pipes, clubs, and other weapons from
their workaday world. Some blacks sus-tained serious injuries in the melee,
and virtually all of them experienced hours of terror, which ended only when
United States Army troops from nearby Brookley Field arrived on Pinto Island
to restore order."--FROM: Nelson, Bruce. 1993. Organized Labor and the Struggle for Black Equality
in Mobile during World War II. The Journal of American History volume 80, issue 3
-
And- even President Harry S. Truman got pissed at the racist "trend lines" on the railroads: 
--
and
^War production? Forget war production! There's negroes getting a job here!
"Many [strikes] were based on racism as whites objected to African Americans
getting new jobs in defense plants. Perhaps the most shameful occurred in Baltimore,
where black employees rose from 2 percent to 29 percent at a Western Electric plant
in the first two years of the war.. 'twenty-two white women walked off their after
one black woman was transferred into their formally all white department.' Their
objection focused on integrated toilet facilities which previously had been
segregated by race. When the War Labor Board ruled in favor of integration, 'about
70 percent of the company's workers' struck- a percentage that included almost all
white workers both men and women.. Army troops took over the company for the first
three months of 1944 -until the company gave into the white workers and re-segregated
restrooms." -- Doris Weatherford 2009, American women during World War 2: An Encyclopedia. pg 436
So while WW2 is the prime booster of the economy for all Americans, it took relentless
civil rights lobbying and court pressure to get blacks even a small slice of that expanding pie.
The expanding trendline was due in part to that pressure.
You also conveniently don't mention that the south began to upgrade black schools with more buildings and funding after World War II, which was part of a positive trend line, that didn't need Martin Luther King.What's there to mention? Every informed Af-Am knows that knows that the South scrambled
after WW2 to make some upgrades. But you yourself skip why that was. It wasn't out of the
goodness of southern white hearts. To the contrary, they scrambled because a built up wave
of relentless civil rights pressure descended on them, backed by the outspokenness of
hundreds of thousands of black veterans who had embraced the WW2 "DOuble V" campaign.
ONe of the most significant hammers of that pressure was the landmark "Brown vs Board
of Education" decision. They upgraded some schools in hopes of heading off the final application
of Brown, so they could claim faithful implementation of separate but "equal" facilities,
which they had failed to do for 60 years after Plessy. This is why so many black high
schools were built or finally upgraded in the 1950s, so that they could avoid or
ride out the civil rights tsunami. But by the end of the 1950s it was too late for the
old fraudulent "separate by equal" games.
So Charles Murray or extensions of various of his arguments fails again. The "trend lines"
were heavily influenced by the very same "unneeded" civil rights pressure he tries to poo poo.
And most of this was happening BEFORE ML King showed up on the radar and became prominent.
