There is an interesting report about events occurring at a protest rally held last night in St. Louis as part of the Ferguson inspired demonstrations. I think that it would be a mistake to take this one event as a revolutionary upheaval within black communities, but it does seem to reflect an emerging debate an provides a point of reflection on the long term stagnation in racial progress in America.
St Louis protests: Ferguson activists reject religious leaders’ platitudes Younger black generation rails at ineffectiveness of peaceful tactics as day of mass civil disobedience begins across city
Frustration and anger among young black Americans at an older generation’s apparent failure to adequately respond to the killing of Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson upended a key event at a weekend of mass protest on Sunday.
The showdown exposed a generational divide over how best to confront police racism, brutality and use of excessive force as organisers of the “weekend of resistance”, which has drawn activists from across the US, plan to stage mass civil disobedience across St Louis on Monday.
While older civil rights leaders hark back to the more peaceful methods of half a century ago, some younger people question their effectiveness today and are pressing for more confrontational tactics.
The fuse was lit when hundreds of people who came to hear the intellectual and activist Cornel West speak were subjected to speeches by a succession of preachers from the major religions offering essentially the same message about loving one’s fellow man and standing up against injustice. The meeting was billed as being “in the tradition of the civil rights movement” but the tone was in part governed by the venue for the meeting, St Louis University, a Catholic institution.
Some in the audience grew restless and then angered at the series of reverends, imams and rabbis until a small group of activists demanded to speak. They were supported by chants of “let them be heard” and “this is what democracy looks like”, a rallying cry at protests over Brown’s shooting.
Younger speakers took the stage and delivered remarks from much more revolutionary perspectives. When West, the featured speaker finally came on, he clearly sided with the younger generation.
“The older generation has been too well adjusted to injustice to listen to the younger generation. The older generation has been too obsessed with being successful rather than being faithful to a cause that was zeroing in on the plight of the poor and working people,” he said. “Thank God the awakening is setting in. And any time the awakening sets in it gets a little messy.”
The black civil rights movement of the 1950s and early 60s with Martin Luther King as the most visible leader was successful in dismantling the legal structure of the Jim Crow south. Their peaceful non-violent tactics helped to gain broad support from white people outside the south. This eventually resulted in the passage of federal civil rights legislation. However, when the movement began to try to address other issues of racial discrimination and imbalance such as educational, housing and employment inequity that occurred in most parts of the country the support of large numbers of whites began to fade. Forcing integration in Mississippi was one thing. Busing in Michigan and affirmative action in California were seen as somehow fundamentally different issues.
This shift in developments brought on a generational conflict between the more traditional black organizations such as the NAACP and Urban League lead by members of King's generation and younger more impatient leaders such as Julian Bond and Stokley Carmichael. There was a shit from We Shall Overcome to slogans of black power. There were small groups of radicals that adopted an agenda of active violence. The same sort of radical spin offs were also occurring in the white student movements as well. The movements of the 60s shook up the establishment and created some change and concessions. They did not produce a revolution.
By the mid 70s the nation was embarked on a long term trend toward more conservative political and economic policies. From the mid 60s to the mid 70s there was a narrowing of the income gap between whites and people of color. The gap then stalled and hasn't changed much since then. The question of whether black Americans as a group have had any general sort of improvement in their circumstances over the past 40 years, doesn't offer a simple and clear cut yes.
The situation in Ferguson has managed to encapsulate the frustrations of black America. It is a majority black municipality with a government and police force that is almost completely controlled by the white minority. This white establishment uses a range of tactics to repress and control the black majority, but it is not Mississippi in 1960. Blacks have the legal right to vote it. They haven't used it to take control of their city government. The black preachers who are preaching peace and non-violence could have organized voter registration and political campaigns within the parameters of that philosophy. They haven't done that.
We have seen that it is possible to get blacks to register and go to the polls in very substantial numbers when there has been a black presidential candidate on the ballot. It would seem that what is needed is a new generation of black political leaders on the local level. The younger people organizing the present protest movement could be the source of such leaders. Let us hope that turns out to be the case.