Races: The Long March

(8 of 9)

A decade after the Civil War, Congress passed a law to guarantee Negroes equal access to theaters, inns and transportation facilities. But in 1883 the Supreme Court struck down that law on the ground that the 14th Amendment, barring discrimination by states, contains no authority for federal legislation against discrimination in privately owned establishments. Now the Kennedy Administration plans to submit a similar law to the Congress. Not only are its constitutional underpinnings wobbly, but there is a very real question about where the right of civil equality begins to impinge upon the right of private property.

In the North, indeed, law cannot be expected to do much, if anything, to meet the Negroes' demands. Negroes already have full equality before the law—yet they are angrily restive about the injustices that have been inflicted upon them. And in their struggle against unofficial segregation, the Negroes have come to rely, with ever-increasing intensity and tempo, on direct action—boycotts, marches, sit-ins, pray-ins, picket lines.

But, in common with law, direct action has limitations as a weapon against discrimination. The soundest and most enduring reason why whites should want to get rid of race discrimination is not that Negroes are protesting against it, but that it violates justice and morality. There is a blurring contradiction between the Negroes' appeal to justice and their threats of certain violence to come—in Author Baldwin's words, "the fire next time."

Scars of the Past. If the combined working of law and direct action and morality could sweep away all race discrimination in the U.S., Negroes might still find the results somewhat disappointing. The condition of the Negro in the U.S. today results not only from present discrimination. That can be abolished. It results also from past discrimination, which can be eroded away only by the slow trickle of time. Past discrimination has left scars upon the Negroes. Their lower average levels of education and training, their higher rates of illegitimacy and violent crime* are facts of life as real as their desire for equality.

If race discrimination in employment suddenly vanished, deficiencies of education and skills among Negroes would still constitute an enormous barrier to equality with whites in jobs and incomes. Many employers in northern cities who would be willing to hire Negroes for positions of skill and responsibility never do so because no qualified Negroes present themselves.

Last week the National Urban League called for a special national effort "to overcome the damaging effects of generations of deprivation and denial, and to make it possible for the majority of American Negroes to reach the point at which they can compete on a basis of equality." A "compensatory effort" on the part of the whites, said the League, "may well be the only means of overcoming the heavy aftermath of past neglect." The organization's Director Whitney Young argues that what is needed is a massive domestic Marshall Plan to help ready Negroes for acceptance of their legal rights. U.S. whites, he insists, have had "special privileges" for centuries. Now Negroes should be given "special privileges" for a limited period of time (say, ten years) to help them catch up.