In Different Boats

First, I’ll briefly belabor the obvious: If there is one thing that has kept all movements for social justice weak in the South, and elsewhere in this country, it is the division of race — and the basis of that division, which is racism. That is true among workers organizing on the job, and also among people organizing in their communities.

To belabor the obvious further, it is also clear that if working people in this country had not been divided by race, we would have a very different situation today. Working people would probably be running the country, and we would have different policies — not perfect ones, but policies that would address the needs of people instead of ones that favor the few who are rich.

Today, despite the recent upsurge of racism, I believe we are in a better position to break down the barriers of race in our organizing than ever before in the history of our nation. We are in this position because of the tremendous struggles waged by African Americans through the modem civil rights movement. Even though many of the specific gains of that movement have been eroded, some things have changed forever.

One thing that changed was the attitude of whites toward people of color. In some whites, the movement of African Americans for freedom generated great fear. People who can’t overcome that fear join violent racist groups, and they are growing all over the South and the country; part of our constant job, especially those of us who are white, is to combat them actively and visibly wherever they appear.

But in many whites, the civil rights movement generated a healthy respect for African-American leadership, militancy, and skill. That respect may be just an opening wedge; in itself it does not create a coalition. But it is an opening, and we who hope to organize a truly strong and united coalition movement must take advantage of that opening and find ways to build on it.

We are not yet doing this, in either our communities or our unions, on the scale that it must be done. We all know of unions that would have won an election if they had convinced enough white workers to join with their African-American brothers and sisters. We all know of communities where a tenant organization or some other movement would have won its battle, but didn’t, because those in control successfully kept black and white people divided.

 

Unions and Race

Let me make clear what I mean by racism. There are many definitions, but the one I’ve found most useful defines it as the assumption that everything in this society and the world should be run by whites, for the benefit of whites. If you think about that, you’ll see how many things in this society it explains.

In terms of labor and community organizing, for example, too many whites (even those of us who consider ourselves progressive) just assume that we should have the best jobs, the best housing, the best education. We take all this for granted, and never think of ourselves as racist.

It’s important, as we look at this issue, to remember that all through our history there have been important efforts to overcome the barriers of race. And these efforts have come especially from working people. It happened among some people during Reconstruction after the Civil War. It happened in the Populist movement. And it happened in the 1930s — right here in Birmingham, where black and white unemployed people marched together in the streets, and in places throughout the South where black and white workers risked their lives to organize unions together.

But ultimately every one of those beginnings failed. Terror and repression played a part. But there was something deeper. A man named W.J. Cash wrote a book in the 1940s, a very dismal book called The Mind of the South (and he meant the white South). One of his conclusions was that interracial working-class movements had always failed because when the chips were down and things got rough, whites fled back to what they thought was the security of their white skin, rather than maintain unity with their black brothers and sisters.

Our great challenge today is to break that historic pattern in the 1990s. Many of us who are not directly a part of the labor movement, but consider ourselves its ally, look to unions to provide leadership on this issue. We know that when unions have taken on racism in the South, they’ve won and become strong. I learned this very early; my very first experience in social justice movements was working with a large local of the Farm Equipment Workers in Louisville during the late 1940s. It was a time of massive attack against unions everywhere, but that local encouraged African-American leadership and refused to compromise with any racist discrimination in its plant; it had the highest wages in the South.

Down through the years, we’ve seen the beginnings of many other breakthroughs like this. J.P. Stevens workers became strong in the ’70s when they moved to overcome racism in the textile industry. Today, state employees in Mississippi, organized by the Communications Workers of America, are making the legislature listen to them and grant some of their demands because they refuse to be divided along racial lines and they deal with discrimination against African-American workers.

Conversely, history teaches us that when unions dodge this issue or give into racism, they fail. The classic example is Operation Dixie, when the CIO set out to organize the South after World War II. Think where we’d be today if they had really done it. But they fell flat on their face — partly because of terror (the terror that time of the Cold War), but mainly because they did not take on the issue of racism. Instead, they accommodated to what they thought were the unchangeable “mores” of the South, and they lost.

 

Two Myths

How do we make things different this time?

I think the key is to challenge and jettison two related myths. The first is the myth of “reverse discrimination” — the idea that white people are now discriminated against in this country. That Big Lie is the most dangerous idea abroad in our land today, because it carries the seeds of a truly fascist movement. It’s what got David Duke his votes in Louisiana; in North Carolina, it kept Harvey Gantt out of the U.S. Senate; and if we don’t combat it, it will defeat any union drive you launch if white workers are in the workplace.

So far the progressive movement in our nation has not mounted an effective counter-offensive to this myth, and it is capturing the minds of many, many white people, including many working people. How do we combat it? I do not claim to have any magic answers. But I think we must all put our heads and our experiences together and come up with some.

First, of course, we can point to the facts. There is just no way that whites in the United States are discriminated against. Every study of the factors that measure the quality of life proves how far behind whites people of color are. You don’t have to be good at remembering figures to recall what these studies show, because they all follow a pattern. People of color always have only half as much of the good things of life as whites — things like jobs, housing, health care, education; and they have twice as much (or more) of the bad things — things like unemployment, infant mortality, prison cells.

For example: According to The State of Black America, 1991, published by the National Urban League, 30 percent of African Americans live in poverty, whereas only 10 percent of whites do. Forty-three percent of African-American children are poor, compared with 14 percent of white. Median income for African-American families is 56 percent of whites — down from a high of 61 percent in 1970. In 1972, African-American unemployment was twice that of whites; in 1990 it was almost three times as high.

In wealth ownership, the mean net worth of African-American families is 23 percent of that of whites. The gap between black and white infant mortality has been growing in recent years; life expectancy for African Americans fell to age 69.2 in 1988, while whites could expect to live 75.6 years.

African Americans seeking loans to buy homes are rejected at twice the rate of whites; 3.5 percent of black renters are able to buy their own homes, compared with 16.9 percent of whites. Black college enrollment declined in the 1980s, while one-fourth of black males were either in prison or on probation or parole.

 

Beating the System

These are a sampling of the facts. Part of our job is to make sure white people know them. But the problem is that if you are scared, you don’t necessarily want to be confused by the facts. And there are lots of scared white people in this country today — especially young whites. They are afraid for the future, and they have good reason to be. Economists have often noted that today’s white youth are the first generation of whites in the history of this country who cannot realistically look forward to a better future than their parents had. That makes them look for scapegoats — and scapegoating drives people to fascist movements.

It seems to me that people who buy the reverse discrimination myth assume that if things are going to be rough, at least they should get the best. In effect, they are counting on their white skin to enable them to beat the system. This is immoral of course. But today it is also impractical, because most of them will not beat the system. It’s a little like buying a lottery ticket instead of food for the kids, thinking you’ll hit the jackpot.

We’ve got to find a way to tell people effectively that it is possible to beat the system, but only if we stick together — by working in a way that is fair to everyone. We have a great chance to talk to people about this right now, because the myth of reverse discrimination is at the heart of the debate over the 1991 Civil Rights Bill. We need to stop being on the defensive about that bill — talking about how it’s not about quotas. Let’s talk about what it is, and that’s fairness.

That’s what affirmative action really means: fairness.

Unions can give leadership on this question, because unions at their best have built their strength on fairness. If a union contract is fair to everyone, people stay united and strong. If all the people left out of the American Dream unite around a program of fairness to all, we’ll win, and we’ll all beat the system.

But to do that, we have to confront the other big myth — the idea that we can ignore race in our organizing.

There used to be a saying, “Black and white, unite and fight.” That’s a good slogan, but it’s not that simple. Black and white cannot unite until whites deal with racism.

There’s a catchy phrase speakers like to use; I’ve heard it many times in recent years: “We may have come over on different ships, but we’re all in the same boat now.” People always applaud, sometimes both African Americans and whites applaud. But this saying is not a very good slogan either. In the first place, it insults some of our brothers and sisters who didn’t “come over on ships” at all, Native Americans. But beyond that, white and black people are just not in the same boat in this country, as the statistics I’ve mentioned prove.

In all of our movements, let’s face the facts: People of color in this country are being devastated, and a whole generation of young African Americans is being lost. Let’s all of us take on the job of changing that situation. Then we can build both labor and community movements that are based on fairness. And movements based on fairness will be strong — and we will all win, for ourselves and for our children and grandchildren.