“A New Crusade for Racial Justice”

Since Southern Exposure began 25 years ago, we have lived through a counter-revolution in this country. The magazine began, I think, in that glow of hope carried over from the upsurges of the ’60s. The anti-war movement, new labor organizing, the women’s movement, struggles of lesbians and gays and the disabled were gaining strength. Surely, many people thought, we could achieve our goal of a truly democratic South very soon.

Actually, by 1973, the massive counter-attack on the African-American liberation movement that had started all these movements was well advanced. The movement’s cutting edge, SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), had already been destroyed; other organizations were being defanged. Black organizers were being framed and jailed across the South. And powerful voices were already telling whites the lie that what African Americans had gained had taken something away from them, and that they were victims of “reverse discrimination.”

All this created an atmosphere that put Ronald Reagan in office in the ’80s; the retreat from racial justice was written into law and court decisions; budget cuts devastated programs that helped all working and poor people; and unions were attacked. It was the end of the Second Reconstruction.

So drastically have our sights been lowered that we are like frogs that have been boiled slowly. Now when funds are voted for a few additional Headstart programs, it looks like a great victory. And we need them. But what about revamping our entire education system? What about totally rebuilding our cities? What about the guaranteed annual wage we once talked about?

The good news is that no people’s movement is ever really destroyed, and seeds planted in the ’60s have grown like sprouts of new life in many Southern communities. The movements I’ve been most a part of are those that challenged resurgent racism, supported worker rights, built the two Jesse Jackson campaigns and now are organizing against environmental racism and class bias. But there are many others, and Southern Exposure has played a key role by reporting them when the mass media told us there was “no Southern movement” anymore.

I think, however, that these many localized movements will not come together in a cohesive force until there is a new crusade for racial justice. We who are white must be a part of this. We must understand that although past struggles created a black middle class, the majority of African Americans live in poverty or on the edge of it. People of color are being blamed for their own problems, and our fastest growing industry is building more prisons to put them in. Now that we understand the South is not just black and white, but multi-ethnic, this becomes even more critical. We must take visible stands that break the wall of white resistance even to admitting that a problem still exists. That means more than the “dialogue” now so popular. It means acting every day on specific situations, policies and practices in the communities where we live.