blackstrategiesforchangeinamerica sterling tucker

Black Strategies for Change in America

Sterling TuckerSTOR

Journal ofNegro Education, Volume 40, Issue 3, Strategies for Educational Change(Summer, 1971), 297-311 .

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BLACK STRATEGIES FOR CHANGE IN AMERICA*

Executive Director, Washington Urban League

Educational change is high on thepriority list of Black America as well itshould be . I have yet to speak with ayouth who will not focus his criticismof the system on existing educationalstructures, educational strategies, educa-tional objectives or, most often, a com-bination of the three . Education stillbears little relevance to the lives anddreams of most Black Americans. Itsfailures can be counted in generationsof wasted young lives.

Yet, despite the tragic waste, the ed-ucational system grinds on in most citiesin seeming oblivion to the society whoseneeds it should be serving. Despite in-creased government support for programsand innovations designed to improve thequality of education in inner-city schools,very few inroads have actually been made.

Somehow, we - must become effectivecatalytic agents for educational experi-mentation and change. Somehow, wemust turn the system around. Somehow,we must make the system which isworking with our kids work for them.

As we push to achieve change inour educational programs and policies,we must keep in mind that educationalchange does not take place in a vacuum .It is therefore important that our strate-gies for change be devised with thesocial, political and economic realities

* Adapted from Sterling Tucker, ForBlacks Only: Black Strategies for Changein America (Grand Rapids : W.B . EerdmansPublishing Co., 1971) .

CHAPTER XIII

STERLING TUCKER

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which exist clearly in mind. Before weact, therefore, we must assess where wehave been, where we are, and where we,as Black Americans, want to be ; wemust understand the nature of blackviolence and the effects it has had on us,on white America and on our prospectsfor change ; we must consider the use ofseparatism as a technique and as a goal ;and, against this background, we mustdetermine the most efficacious and mostrealistic means of achieving change.

THE DEATH OF A MOVEMENT

The civil rights movement as such isdead. It is not just the singing andthe marching that is over . The vast,organized, common effort to change thesystem, to erase the inequities, has diedaway too. Though we still sometimesjoin hands and sing "We Shall Over-come," it is more like an act of remem-

surge and pressure of a mass movementbehind us.

What is there instead? Certainly thereis plenty of black action, more eventhan before. But it is not necessarilycivil rights and it is not a movement.

In the ghettos Blacks have startedday-care centers and cleanup projects, as-sociations for black businessmen and pro-grains for youth gangs, tutoring servicesand job counseling centers - a growing

brance. Thoughdoors of City

weHall

still knock atand Congress

thewith

programs for equal opportunities andequal results, there is no longer the

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range of laudable civic activity. Thatis just what much of it is : civic activity,not civil rights, not institutional change .Just as they do in the white community,civic services aim at improving the qual-ity of life within the existing system .

The civil rights movement proved thatthe law could be challenged and thatchange was possible . But the change,historic enough on paper, proceeded at asnail's pace in practical life. A fewbrave black students moved into a whitehigh school here, a few courageous blackvoters registered there, lunch countersdesegregated, bus terminals opened . Butat such a cost : it exhausted the spiritas much as it inspired . Progress wasslow . The inertia of the system beganto make itself felt, as did the deep rootsof white racism. Peaceful demonstrationswere met with fire hoses, cattle-prods,and police dogs . Local black citizensand civil rights workers were jailed, beat-en, tortured; some were murdered . Noone was safe from the awakened furyof the Southern white supremacist -not even four little girls in SundaySchool.

Slowly the faith that supported themovement began to erode . The faith innonviolence . The faith in the Ameri-can system. For a while it was a privatebitterness that one tried to swallow whilekeeping up the fight. But soon thefrustration began to express itself pub-licly, both in violent rhetoric and violentaction .

It became evident that racism was notjust a localized malignacy, residing inarchaic Southern law and custom, but apart of the American system itself. Itdid not just put us at the back of thebus ; it closed off neighborhoods to live

THE JOURNAL OF NEGRO EDUCATION

in, banks to borrow from, adequateschools for our children, jobs and train-ing and union membership. Blacks be-gan to wonder if integration was theanswer; they began to wonder if therewas not another path to follow, even ifit meant a separate system.

Blacks began to get off the integrationbandwagon . If any occasion in historycan be singled out as the turning point,it was the Meredith March in June1966 . Then the new spirit took holdand the crucial differences that were tosplit and ultimately fragment the move-ment became evident .The cry of black power sounded on

the march . It was not just a momen-tary fancy or the rhetoric of a fringegroup. It grew out of all the frustra-tion that had been building over thepast years, catalyzed now by the unfore-seen circumstances of the march itself.Black power at that point was not yet arejection of nonviolence, it was rather anew awareness of the self, of pride anddignity : I want to stand on my ownfeet to get my rights . I don't want toplead for them on my knees . I will bowdown no more. I will not wait for thesweet bye `n' bye, or look only to theLord for my comfort. I'm going todo something for myself and I'm notgoing to be afraid.

That was the mood, and it made me,for one, feel good .

For all Blacks, the psychological im-pact of black power was profound. Fortoo long, Black America had tried tobe imitation - white. To face and ac-cept one's Blackness, to take open pridein it at last, was deeply exhilarating . Toaffirm Black is beautiful was itself beau-tiful . The sudden access to self-respect

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was a kind of rebirth . It untied knots,straightened backs, and lifted faces . Weidentified with each other in a new way ;we were a brotherhood.The danger, of course, was that get-

ting one's self together could become anendless preoccupation, and black identi-ty a goal in itself. Many succumbed tothis danger.

The new pride and self-assertivenessshould have produced a surge forwardin the movement, but such momentumdid not develop. Militancy imparts asense of strength, cohesiveness, and cour-age . As with soldiers getting psychedup before an engagement, whipping uptheir nerve and determination until theyare ready to meet all odds, militancy isimportant. But it is not enough . Iftroops are to stay psyched up enough tocontinue the fight, they must have atleast a chance to win, they must haveweapons and a strategy.

Girded with new pride and defiance,you can march out to war ; but when theenemy starts shooting you down, youdiscover that you need more than fight-ing spirit. To feel that you are a man,that you have dignity, is not enough .You need tools, you need strategy, andyou need to be able to see the enemy.

The target became less visible as thefocus of the racial struggle moved to theNorth in the mid-1960s . The enemyin the North is in disguise and every-where . He is the grocer who gives youcredit, smiling in your face, and thenovercharges you . He is the banker whotakes your money, who even may hireblack tellers and make speeches aboutracial equality, but then refuses togive you a mortgage on your house orbusiness.

Bitterness blossomed in the secondhalf of the 1960s because the enemyseemed so hard to engage. It was notbecause our direction had shifted towardseparatism or black nationalism or revo-lution. The frustration that vented it-self in words of hate and in burningcity blocks was not -the rage of therevolutionary who would destroy the sys-tem. It was the rage of essentiallymoderate Black America that still wanteda way in, but which had not workedout the strategies to get there. Atten-tion, unfortunately, was diverted fromthat, not only by the heady search forblack identity, but by growing internalcriticism and divisiveness.

It is ironic that the cry of blackpower which united Black America ina sense of common destiny and commonidentity, as nothing had united it be-fore, also divided Black America andproduced cleavages deeper than had any-thing in its history. Basic differences re-lating to means and ends tore at the bodyof the movement. Real unity seemedillusory . The broad road along which amovement could march had ended, leav-ing only crisscrossing pathways as con-fusing as a network of jungle trails .

BLACK VIOLBNC8

As the civil rights movement died,something came alive . A new energywas evident . Awareness grew, sensitiveantennae picking up what was reallygoing on in the schools and on the jab,in City Hall and with the police . Webegan to perceive how the system gaveus new opportunities with one hand andsnatched then back with the other. Ourheightened sensitivity bred anger, deepand strong. The black man's historicsupply of tolerance and Job-like patience

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suddenly neared its limits. And wherethe supply ran out, anger was mademanifest.

But whatever violence surfaced wasnot a brand-new un-American phenome-non but rather a reflection of the whiteviolence so long in practice . Black vio-lence is the inevitable, largely individualresponse to white brutality. In virtuallyevery situation where Blacks have advo-cated the carrying of arms, it has beenfor the purposes of self-defense againstthe violence of white America's COPS .

Of all the difficulties assailing his life,it is the conduct of the police that mostimmediately and perhaps most deeplyprovokes the black man's rage . For itadds to his other degradations the corro-sion of fear. It strikes at the core ofhis sense of self. A black man need notbe roughed up or manhandled to feeldegraded by the police. There is no"brutality" in many police actions whichnevertheless are insulting and offensivelike ithe practice of "stop and frisk", or"aggressive preventive patrol". But evenin the absence of "brutality", you stillfeel threatened, degraded and humiliated,and within you a cold core of resent-ment grows along with the urge tostrike back.

When, in that context of humiliation,physical violence is employed, as it oftenis, you feel a double measure of fury.For it is like kicking a man when he isdown, and there is no rage like thatof the powerless when subjected to un-necessary and arbitrary force.

Even aside from physical harassment,the police operate according to a doublestandard of law enforcement . Althoughthe ghetto needs police protection more


than white neighborhoods, it receivesless. The apparent indifference of policeto ghetto safety is particularly gallingin the area of organized crime . Soci-ety's contempt for the black communityis spelled out in the permissiveness withwhich it deals with the pimps and prosti-tutes, the numbers racket and the doperings, as long as they restrict their activi-ties to black turf.

Police misconduct and police inactiontake their toll . But in no way havethe police more clearly exemplified to theBlack the violence of the white worldthan when the toll is a human life . Nocircumstances can excuse the fatal shoot-ing of suspects in the ghetto. It is asif -the bark of the patrolman's gun werethe final, curt, authoritative statementof the white man's urge and the whiteman's intent .

While white violence was nothing newto the 1960s, awakening black defianceto it was . As the spirit of militancyspread, it was clear that Black Americawas no longer ready to accept beatingsand hosings by the police . No longerwould it tolerate the brutality it hadaccepted for so long .

Blacks could not win, of course. Bricksand molotov cocktails are not muchhelp against the armed might of thepolice and the national guard . But thefury was real and it sounded the demiseof nonviolence as a popular inspirationalmovement . Not because the Blacks haddecided on a new strategy, not becausethey had chosen to make war on Amer-ica, but because they had concluded thatthey could not fight white brutality by ly-ing down . They could not win equalityby singing and praying.


It was time for the black man toprotect himself.

Because of her blindness to police be-havior, white America could not under-stand the black call for self-defense. Stillless could she surmise that this call wasnot so much a declaration of intent asan expression of defiance . Instead, shesaw it as a signal for black violence andassumed that the violence was organized.

No black movement in the UnitedStates has gone violent . What violencehas occurred has been the violence ofindividual acts of frustration, not theviolence of collective policy. Its naturehas been spontaneous, not programmed.It is an impassioned cry of rage, not astrategy.

And yet, there is something operativehere that is deeply human and that inits effect on Black and white alike maybe part of our salvation. When the vio-lence of self-defense leads us beyondthe fear that has shackled us, there isundeniably a measure of health in it -the full-blooded pride of expressing ouranger, however impractical or impoliticit may be to do so. Given the chainsthat -the centuries have hung on ourminds and bodies, we need a degreeof defiance, a journey beyond fear, ifwe are to gain new self-respect. Ourcontempt for our oppressors is too greatfor us to grovel any more. What weclaim as our rights we claim not onbended knee, but standing tall in right-eous anger.

Yet, in the end I cannot condonethe violence of gunfire. I recognize thedesperate need for black self-respect.Knowing my own anger, I can fullyunderstand the impulse to lash back

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at white brutality with a fist in theface of a cop or with a sniper shot . Butthe price is simply too high - too highin white reprisal and repression.

There are alternate routes to libera-tion. Some wall find the way in localorganizations and the fight for commun-ity control ; some in the task of voterregistration.

Incidents of violent black responseto white racism may be as inevitable asthey are dangerous . But no programof offensive violence has yet been putforward by Blacks . For what couldnaked exasperation achieve in the faceof America's armed might? As a policyit would be suicidal .

Increasingly in the last few years wehave seen the power of federal andstate government at work dealing withdisorders and threats of disorders. Wehave seen the phalanxes of police movein; we have seen the national guard con-verge, the armored trucks and helicop-ters. More effective yet is the powerthan we do not see or hear . Moredeadly to revolution than white Ameri-ca's occasional display of muscle is herquiet, constant hand on the throat andpulse of the ghetto.

The ghetto is so policed - not onlyby the cops, but by all the other pub-lic institutions that function there -it is so bugged and tapped and trackedand reported on, that Blacks cannot turnaround without the whites knowing it.We like to think that the ghetto at leastis ours; but the white man knows itbetter than we do . He knows it, notwith any feel of identification or intima-cy, but clinically, with detachment . Andhere the Black is holed up, without

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room to maneuver, or to recruit, train,and equip his forces. For the whitesthe job of total counter-revolutionary re»pression is already half-done : the poten-tial guerillas are completely encircled .The rest is as easy as shooting fish ina barrel .

As long as this is the case, talk ofrevolution is futile, and the black radi-cals who indulge in it are simply play-ing games . They are escaping from bit-ter realities into a world of fantasy,feeding on the empty stuff of dreams.Blacks in America are hard-pressed, dis-couraged, and increasingly desperate ; butthey are not a horde of lemmings readyto head blindly to self-destruction.

Even though offensive black violenceis a myth, it has had an impact on themind of white America . It has contrib-uted to a climate of fear . One reactionis the cry for law and order .

Tin FAcn op LAw AND ORDER

"Law and order" - America's answerto her fears and her distress. This isher solution to the human dislocationsthat are cracking our society apart . Re-formers and social scientists may con-tinue to preach, but America cannot lis-ten because she feels threatened -threatened by the riots, by crime, byprotest and dissent.

Blacks should have no quarrel with"law and order" if we can take it on facevalue. If used in an effort to extendthe rule of law in education, in housing,in employment, this call could weld ustogether. If it meant all the rights pro-mised in the Constitution, ,then it couldrally us and help us all up the long,rough road to the American promise . Ifthe "disorder" it decries included the


violence our institutions visit upon theoppressed, then the slogan would not bea -travesty . But "law" now means thestatus quo. And "order" is its blinddefense.

The willingness to say "law and orderby any means" is the greatest danger fac-ing us. Across the nation citizens haveasked that the police be "unleashed" todeal with demonstrators and rioters asthey see fit. As police conduct in quel-ling disturbances would indicate, the pub-lic is increasingly saying, "First thingsfirst, we'll get around to justice andequality later." First things first, asif orderliness and decorum were morebasic ~to society than the faith andacceptance of its citizenry.

As we seek new strategies for BlackAmerica, we must face the fact thatlarge segments of the society are readyto employ "any means necessary" in thedefense of law and order. This musthave a bearing on the actions of thoseof us who are fighting for social change .New dangers, new risks arise. We needto know them . If America is stock-piling dynamite, we must watch wherewe play with matches . If she is layingminefields, we must chart the course ofour strategies carefully, measuring thechances of each path we plot.

We need to know that we arewatched. Dissent is now considered dan-gerous ; dissenters are trouble-makers .Protest leaders, whether they are or-ganizing a violent Weathermen's displayor a peaceful anti-war moratorium or arally for black solidarity, are watchedand reported on . The FBI is apparentlynot considered adequate to handle thistask . The CIA and Army intelligenceunits are employed, although their use


for domestic surveillance is illegal . Onewonders whether America is more endan-gered by protesters and "revolutionaries"than by this panicked misuse of her in-stitutions .

DANGERS AND USES 011 SEPARATISM

In this land chilled by distrust,cracked by violence, polarizing betweenfear and rage, we cannot afford to wagewar as if it were a game or a shoutingmatch, fighting it without clear strategiesand clear goals. We are in danger ofwaking up tomorrow and finding thatwe have been outwitted - the shoutingover, our weapons gone, and a wallaround us.

Blacks must understand the perils oflaw-and-order-by-any-means. Those dan-gers are so real that as we begin tosense them, we cease our yelling andranting . We see that we must stopplaying games . We perceive that ourConstitutional rights are threatened, thatsome of our privacy and protection arelost, that the ground we have beenwalking on is no longer quite as solid asbefore . We see that now we must pro-ceed with dead-earnest, calculating calm.

We must watch out for the pitfallsof futile rhetoric and inflammatory ges-ture. We must also guard against thelures of black separatism, for that too isa one-way street. Separatist tactics canbe useful, but when separatism becomesan end in itself, it becomes an end toour hopes and demands for true free-dom and equality . While we need tosense our separateness in order to survivethe humiliations and degradations visitedupon us, separatism can only be a waystation.

just as integration is not a goal in

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itself, neither is separatism : both cancome packaged in poverty and powerless-ness . Forgetting that, we get sidetrackedon issues that will not alter the statusquo, expending our energies on sym-bolic struggles that will not bring jobsor skills, housing or schools or votes,but wall only enhance our own senseof distinctiveness . As long as we preoc-cupy ourselves with assertions of ouruniqueness, the ghettos that wall us inwill stand . In such a way can thecurrent fashionable focus on black iden-tity serve white racism .

Donning a dashiki and growing abush is fine if it energizes the wearerfor real action ; but "Black-is-beautiful"is dangerous if it amounts only to wrap-ping oneself up in one's own glory andmagnificence.

No perspective on black separatism iscomplete unless we acknowledge thatsome of its attraction for Blacks springfrom the urge to give up, to turn ourbacks on white America and the gallingstruggle we must daily face . While thestrength of separatism springs from thefact that it answers this need for es-cape, therein also lies its weakness . Forescape is not a strategy for change. Thereis such a thing as tactical retreat, forpurposes of consolidation or planning orshifting of attack . But retreat for pur-poses of comfort or self-adulation cannotserve . We will not emerge stronger -just more self-adulatory. And as weemerge expecting ~to find the enemygone or waiting politely, we will findthat he is closer upon us and that theground we had gained has been lost.

Withdrawal from engagement has be-come so plausible an attitude that voices

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can call seriously for boycotting the bal-lot box or dodging the census . In ac-tuality this amounts to nothing more thanorganizing yourself out of society. Suchstrategies are doomed, for American so-ciety is not going to seek us out . Ithas been forgetting us all along, hidingus behind the railroad tracks, letting usrot in the neglected core of its cities.It will be happy to continue to forgetus, if we let it, and it would like statis-tics to show that there is no problem.It is in our interest and for our survivalthat we must keep the problem visible,blatant, spread across the record books.

We also have a lot of work to doin the ghetto . Since Black America livesto so large an extent in a separate world,we must deal with that world and striveto re-create it on its own terms . In sodoing, we will not only recognize defacto separatism but use it as an agentof change. We will address our strate-gies to it, whether in upgrading thequality of black schools or in buildingpolitical power through block voting, oreconomic power through black businessand black labor union. We will use theseparateness white America has forcedupon us as a tactical tool to forge pres-sure groups and the unity and disci-pline that is necessary to make themeffective. Always, however, we must doso pragmatically, out of interim necessityrather than ideology . We must neverlet such efforts dupe us into believingthat we can build a separate society orsettle for less than a full and free sharingin American life.

The crisis facing us in education isa case in point . Here conflict rages overthe legal ambiguities of desegregation ;it could immobilize us if we let it.


Here also we can see how limited is oureffectiveness if the only battles we fightare on the integration front. We cheatour children and our future if all our ef-forts are focused on mixing . For no mat-ter what we manage to achieve in housingand education in the next twenty years,there will still be neighborhoods that arepredominantly black, and there will stillbe schools that are predominantly black.If we concentrate only on the politicsof racial balance, we will neglect thoseschools, and a generation will be lost.

Most black children today are cruellymistreated by the public school system .They are cooped in derelict buildingsand crowded classrooms with overworkedstaff and inadequate, obsolete equipment .No longer victimized by law, by a dualschool system, they are victimized nowby geography, by the poverty of theirneighborhoods. These are the goldendoors to equal education that the Su-preme Court opened to them in 1954 .If this is "integration", it is not working .

In a setting that seems purposefullydesigned to discourage the child, it re-quires of him almost superhuman deter-mination to acquire the tools of learn-ing. To the few who can muster suchdetermination, school can be a doorwayof sorts to the future, but to many itis an introduction to defeat and aliena-tion, an initiation into self-contempt .This, of course, is mirrored in their per-formance, where, as shown in manydistrict-wide reading tests, the ghettoschools score clearly lower .

Busing the children to more advan-taged white schools is only a partial rem-edy. It is good because mixing in itselfis good, because Americans cannot ac-quire a full and true education in iso-


lated pockets, be these pockets blackor white . But the use of the schoolbus cannot be the whole solution to ourproblems of de facto segregation . In thefirst place, the segregation it attacks hasfar deeper causes, more tenacious roots,than the busing of schoolchildren hasthe power to affect. Shifting bodies toother classrooms can give the appearanceof desegregation, but it does not coun-terbalance the deeply imbedded social andeconomic patterns that isolate the blacksin terms of where they can live andwhere they can work. We must makesure that white America does not mis-take this appearance of desegregationfor the realities of integration, nor thatshe uses busing as a salve to her con-science and an opportunity to neglectthe millions of children still caught inthe brutal hopelessnes of slum schools.

The second reason why busing is notthe full solution to de facto segregationrelates to the disadvantages black chil-dren carry with them to school. Victimsof the disruptive forces of ghetto life,deprived of pre-school training, and han-dicapped by inadequate elementaryschooling, they enter the interracial sit-uation at an appalling disadvantage. Theyare expected to compete, but society hasalready placed invisible shackles on theirbodies and minds . As long as blackchildren come burdened with cultural,psychological, and educational disadvan-tages, we will not attain truly integratedschooling . We will have moved bodies,but only obtained, often as not, twoschools under one roof.

We must address ourselves to thechallenge of providing quality educationin the ghetto schools, not as a gestureof defeat, not as an admission that in-

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tegration has failed, but rather in recog-nition that it can best be realized whenthe predominantly black schools are morecomparable in quality.

Across the country black parents arerousing themselves to the daily disasterthat is the "education" afforded theirchildren in neighborhood schools . Theyare exasperated not only by the deplor-able and dangerous physical conditions- the shattered windows and brokendesks, the littered halls and crowdedclassrooms --but also by the tenor of theteaching. They no longer wish to ac-cept for black children the crumbs ofa white-oriented education . Organizingthemselves into vocal groups, these par-ents are confronting school boards andteacher unions . They are not only call-ing attention to the intolerable condi-tions that prevail in the schools, butthey are demanding a voice in their im-provement. Since their children are rele-gated to black schools, then let thembe truly their schools and let them bemade better . This awakened involvementis a sign of health . The thrust forcommunity control is not devoid of con-flict, nor of rhetoric, ambiguities, or realproblems . But it is essentially healthybecause it is realistic, because it recog-nizes that if the black child of theinner-city is to be saved today, he mustbe saved where he is today. As longas our long-range goals remain equallyrealistic, as long as we stay committed toan ultimately integrated society, thensuch an immediate focus is fruitful andtactical separatism serves us.

The call for community control ishealthy insofar as it stimulates the in-volvement of individuals and groups inthe community . Its rhetoric can be ben-

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eficial, fanning our determination to iden-tify with community problems and toassume a responsible role. But we mustalways take care that we do not let itbecome a wall between us and the out-side world, cutting us off from the re-sources we need .

We will not advance by doing thesame thing to the white man that hedid to us. Excluding him is deprivingourselves because he still holds the trumpcards. Nor is that the kind of societywe want to build . We want rather tobuild a solid society on the only firmfoundation available to us - that ofultimate equality and integration.

ALLIANCES FOR CHANGE

Since the movement has been re-paced by an array of little movements,pragmatic and ad hoc actions centeringaround specific needs, we can count onno permanent alliance . Indeed, it is adiversion of our energies to try .to forgeone.

Tactical ad hoc alliances, geared tothe specific issue at hand, must beformed . In each situation, we mustsort out the forces and find that groupor that person who can help us . Tem-porary alliances do not need to lastforever nor do they need to includeagreement on anything beyond the im-mediate issue . We can forego the lux-ury of ideological unity and address our-selves only to that particular point whereour interests happen to meet .

On each issue the alliances we formwill vary. The support we recruit aswe campaign for more tax dollars forghetto schools will be different fromthat which we enlist in a fight for arapid transit route. The point is to


mobilize all resources possible, regardlessof their political and biological colora-tion, and regardless of their motive. Themore specific the issue, the stronger isthe thrust we often can make. By nar-rowing the focus, we can intensify theimpact .

Co-optation is generally a legitimateconcern, but not when the coalitionsformed are short-term . No such threatlooms if our ultimate allegiances are ourown and our efforts are clearly focusedon the immediate problem .

So far, except for the poor, whom theSouthern Christian Leadership Confer-ence sought to include with us in abroad front, and, in some isolated cases,the students, we have not attempted tomake common cause with other groupsamong the "powerless" . But we needto become aware of the possibilities thatare emerging - that can swell our num-bers in a system where weight andnumbers count.

Keeping the door open to a wide vari-ety of possibilities for united action willnot be easy . It will not be any lovefeast. But we do not need to love peoplein order to work with them. We canuse their numbers in building pressurefor change, in our confrontations withCity Hall, with police departments,school boards, landlords, as we strive forequality in urban life .

If our goal is unswerving, we shouldbe able -to use any instrument, regard-less of its color . The instrument as suchhas no color, if the goal is ours.

There are problems involved, however,in working with white folk . There isdistrust borne of our knowledge that inthe last analysis whites are and always


will be the establishment. Even whenthey are working at our side, even whentheir political stance veers all the wayto the most radical revolutionary, theybelong, when the chips are down, tothat establishment that has oppressed ourgenerations. We know we cannot counton them all the way . For all their goodintentions and their moral conscience,they are nurtured by a system that isracist . Though willing in varying de-grees to change, they can go only sofar . Their attitude toward change can-not be the same as ours, for we do notstand on -the same ground.

We may resent this, but we do notneed to let ourselves be stalemated bythis resentment . Whereas the sepa-ratist says that because the white manis ultimately part of the establishmentwe cannot and should not work withhim, I say we can. We can, but wemust be realistic about it. We muststart with him where he is, using hispower to attack issues on which ourinterests overlap and not expecting himto go all the way, to identify truly withus . Effective collaboration with someonedoes not depend on the degree of ourapproval. If he does not have "soul",that is his loss not ours. If he is hungup on certain material needs or emo-tional biases, that is his problem, notours . We do not have to love thewhite man and we do not have to hatehim. He who hates is as dependenton the object of his feelings as he wholoves . It is in the maturity of emo-tional detachment that we can best usehim and take what he has to offer ;only when that detachment exists cantrue liberation and equality come.

BLACKS AND BROADER ISSUES

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If we are serious about survival, there-fore, we must cease appraising issuesin terms of black and white. We haveno monopoly on suffering ; victims ofinjustice come in all colors . Our prob-lems as Blacks cannot be resolved ina vacuum. They cannot be resolvedunless we attack the root disease itself- human injustice - wherever we findit, be it in the peace movement, in theecology fight, in efforts to control crime,or in any other area.

I have come to believe that Dr. Kingwas right: the issue of war and theissue of race are not separate, nor canthey, in the broad picture, be dealt withseparately . We cannot solve the issueof race without dealing with the issueof justice. We cannot talk about de-fending human rights in Mississippi andremain silent about those we extinguishin Vietnam . We cannot fight for man'sfreedom in Georgia or Harlem or Wattsand tacitly condone its destruction inAsia.

The issues of race and war are insep-arable not merely because we suffer do-mestically from the diversion of na-tional resources, but because they aremanifestations of the same disease -America's belief that might makes rightand that humanity is expendable.

It is encouraging that increasing num-bers of Blacks today are beginning torecognize their own stake in the peaceissue and their own imperative to act.I see no reason to stand idly by. Forthe peace we must win in Southeast Asiawill also be the black man's peace . Ourown survival demands that we makecommon cause with those who fight for

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this peace . It demands that we fightthe common madness that will victimizeus all.The environment issue has yet to en-

list Blacks . To us this movement hashad the smell of a con job. It has asuspiciously white, middle-class aura ; itcomes across as a plaything of the privi-leged . It does not move us - exceptto cynicism .

Yet it is up to us to stretch theminds of those on the ecology band-wagon. It is up to us to point outthat urban environment is more than aquestion of soot, smoke and smog; thatit is also a galloping physical deteriora-tion in housing, streets, services . Thatit is also the way people feel about thesedecaying neighborhoods, the climate ofhopelessness and alienation . We mustinsist that programs include both a visi-ble attack on the physical environmentand a campaign against apathy and des-pair.

If America wants to talk environment,let's talk environment. Let's hold someteach-ins of our own . Instead of boy-cotting meetings and rallies, let's get upand tell America what environment is .Her attention is awakened - let us nowdirect it toward our own needs . Letus with emphatic insistence bring intothe dialogue on environment the plightof our brothers . Let us not allow thebleeding hearts to go off on their middle-class white protests, their academic exer-cises, without making them see the filthof our rotting ghettos and the climateof futility existing there .

We Blacks have also been silent onthe subject of crime, so silent that onewould think that only white society wasaffected. Yet we know how dark a


shadow crime casts over our lives . Eachof us lives in this shadow; each is avictim . The victims are not those whocry loudest for law and order; they arenot the ones buying the police dogs andthe burglar alarms in their suburbanfortresses . The main victims are, farand away, the poor and the black .

Blacks must speak out for our silencetends to foster the assumption that crimeis only a function of poverty and injust-ice. And we must act to assure ourown safety and survival . As long as ourgrievous economic and social needs gounmet, our actions will not enable usto stamp out crime. However, we canlessen its toll by pressing for penal re-form, by joining with those who are call-ing for gun registration, by mobilizingallies in a crack-dawn on the organizedcrime that pushes drugs on our youth.

"Not a black man's issue," you say?"Let whitey do the work"? No, weBlacks are suffering too much from crimegone unchecked. This is our problemas much as the white man's, for if heis more to blame, it is we who suffermost.

GETTING IT TOGETHER

We need to put much more actionon our agendas . So little has happenedsince the call for black power first rangout . For much of Black America lifeseems suspended . The anger that re-sounded in the call for black power nowfeeds a sense of no-power. This feelingof impotence is evident everywhere . Drugaddiction rises as our youth barter theirhealth and their futures for a briefsense of well-being . The incidence ofarson in the ghetto has risen dramatically.Tools for change are being ripped away


as funds to organize and implement ur-ban programs are being cut. Buildingsare being constructed, factories erected,jobs provided - but only in the suburbs .

But it is not the end of the road. Weare stronger than we think . In our num-bers are potentials for leverage we canuse . In our growing experience arereservoirs of strength we can tap. Inboth are genuine prospects for power,power to use the system and effect change .

Out of the impatience of the localcommunity, and out of its internal con-flicts as well, indigenous leadership isdeveloping. Its determination is fed bythe realization that the white man isnot going to do the job that must bedone. The effectiveness of this newleadership is enhanced by a capacity tonegotiate as it learns that nonnegotiabledemands lead to non-realizable gains.Where once noble principle and rhetoricstood in the way of practical change,the arts of collective bargaining are be-ing practiced.

The new breed of leader is ready toconcentrate his efforts . He is willing tobe a big fish in a little pond . "TheNegro Leader" of the community, theceremonial spokesman, is replaced by aproliferation of local grassroots leaders fo-cused on separate causes and supportedby genuine followerships . Where beforethere would not have been a chancefor a neighborhood-level organization toget much attention or exert much influ-ence, such organizations can now affectCity Hall . Something is at work thatcould be called democracy, and it isforcing relevance, responsiveness, and agreater measure of integrity on higher-level black leadership .

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Here is our strength - in an emerg-ing leadership that is of the people .Schooled in the grassroots problems ofthe community, it is receptive and re-sponsive to people's needs . It is authen-tic . No longer puppets of the establish-ment or creations of the white media,these men and women enter the politi-cal arena with the wind at their back.

With our numbers and our emergingleadership we can still avail ourselvesof the political machinery of the system .We can put our hands to the leversof power if we can attain a measure ofunity among ourselves and employ flexi-bility in our political strategies .

The political avenue to social changeis not an easy one for Blacks . But ifit is access to power we want, we haveno viable alternative . The voting boothis still there, elections are still held onschedule, and the ballot is still private .We must organize ourselves to use them,and we are showing that we can.

Through the political system we canmove massively into the mainstream ofAmerica - not just to be part of themainstream, for much of it is pollutedand often flows in the wrong direction,but to clean it up and make it answerour needs . Movement into that main-stream is, the fastest, most efficient way,the only acceptable and workable way,of changing its course.

To use with effectiveness the politicalmachinery available to us we must makea cool appraisal of our strength . Weneed to study the relative power ofour numbers so that we do not courtdefeat and frustrate ourselves with un-realistic expectations, so that we candevise appropriate political strategies .

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Coloring all of our political actionis the fact that we are a minority . Ourdistribution, however, is lopsided - overhalf of us are concentrated in the inner-cities. Recent evidence shows a start-ling increase in Blacks moving to theinner-suburbs . Blacks are crossing elec-toral boundaries and weakening their po-litical clout in the cities . Therefore, ifwe are to control the cities, coalitions withsections of the white majority withinthem are essential . Black unity incampaign organizations and in votingis also needed, but black unity alonewill not win elections, nor can a candi-date run on his blackness alone . Hisappeal must be broader, involving issuesof key importance to the white majority .

We must learn how to woo whitevotes, how to allay white fears and makecommon cause for better, more repre-sentative government. This is trickybecause, while we need black solidarityand black discipline behind our candi-dates, the spectacle of "block voting"is scary to whites. Although it is firmlywithin the democratic tradition, it seemssuspect to many, especially when the"block" in question is black .

This fear must be dealt with andminimized. While we must act as ablock, we must do so as a matter ofcourse without undue publicity andspeechifying about it. Our public state-ments should underplay, where possible,appeals to our black brothers on thebasis of color or our own credentials assoul brothers, and focus rather on largerissues of broader appeal. Our brothersknow we are black . Militant black pow-er rhetoric is expendable . Our strate-gies must be tailored to reduce thepsychological threats that whites feel in


the face of a black campaign . It is es-sential that we seek out and stress issueswhich are important to whites .

The biggest challenge that faces usin the political arena is building bondswith white ethnics who share the samecities and congressional districts . Theyare numerous ; many are poor . If we areever to escape the poverty that grindsus dawn, we must ally with whites whoare victimized too . No matter if theysuffer less than we because their skinis not black. They still are oppressed,and together we must make commoncause against the tax laws that pamperthe rich and impoverish the poor anda common front in our fight for a guar-anteed annual income.

The white ethnics today are display-ing a new militancy which to date hasbeen largely directed against us . Butcalling "racist" will not help . We mustbreak through the barriers of distrustand begin to communicate. It will notbe easy, given the daily frictions thatfeed the hostility between us . But it isa political imperative, and our determin-ation to make common cause will befed by the knowledge that there is moreto unite us than there is to divide us.The causes of white ethnic unrest arenot racial but economic . Realizing thiswe can seek to enlist this new whitemilitancy to help bring about a redirec-tion of priorities. Its pressure, added toour own and raised to a national scale,could turn the nation around.

Our struggle involves more than justtaking aim at the white man. It in-volves focusing on ourselves and on theuse of our own resources, taking advan-tage of the dynamics of our new self


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and of its energy, using our angers con- together to talk or to protest ; it is doingstructively, and getting ourselves togeth- with and for ourselves what only weer. Our struggle is more than getting can do .

blackstrategiesforchangeinamerica sterling tucker

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