and so then he just put his hand on that there boy's shoulder, and he done said to him, "why, son, you go right on ahead and do what you was doing"
I hasten to add that this was a wholly non-paternalistic gestureHow the world looks through the eyes of an aging liberal of a certain high-establishment type. (Note also the historically obtuse contention that government had to act against white supremacy because it was illegal.)
posted by Chris Bray @ 1:22 PM
5 Comments:
Where in that segment did Moyers contend that "government had to act against white supremacy because it was illegal"?? Watch it again and you'll find that you've put words in his mouth. Moyers claims that Johnson wanted King to hold off on the marches to give him a chance to bring Congress around "by hook or by crook". In response, Moyers claims, "King said his people had already waited too long. He talked about the murders and lynchings, the churches set on fire, children brutalized, the law defied...." That's the only portion of the segment that might possibly be confused as a contention that white supremacy was illegal. But it was not the bigoted attitudes that were being called illegal by King (or Moyers, if you think he's putting words in King's mouth), but rather the murders, arsons, etc. being committed against blacks -- real crimes which most certainly were not legal under any Jim Crow system.
Frankly, I think you're constructing a strawman with respect to the power of the "state" to regulate bigotry. Nobody would argue that a government can force people to believe that all people deserve the same rights and opportunities, but a government -- by passing laws and enforcing strict penalties -- certainly can deter people from acting in ways that impinge upon the rights and opportunities of others.
What I'm arguing is that government, for a century after the Civil War, passed laws and enforced strict penalties to deter people from acting in ways that impinged upon the perceived rights and opportunities of others: The right to racially segregated facilities, the right of whites to retain and exercise racial supremacy, etcetera. "The law defied" -- the law is what the state chooses it to be. Bull Connor understood himself to be enforcing the law.
As for the "murders and lynchings, the churches set on fire, children brutalized," and so on, the lynchings were routinely validated by legal institutions ("by the hands of persons unknown") and led by local political elites, the churches were set on fire by Klansmen who had liaisons at the local police department, and the children being brutalized by police dogs and fire hoses, for example, were being brutalized by people in government uniforms.
The Trailways bus incident in Birmingham: The police found out from the governor's office that a group of Freedom Riders was coming into town on X bus at Y time, and passed that information on to the KKK with the information that, ahem, all our patrol officers in the area are gonna be real busy tha day, so if those riders were to be beaten in the bus station, why, there probably wouldn't be any police response at all for a whole fifteen minutes, cough cough.
Cops in uniform beating the shit out of black men and women = "the law defied"? It equals "the law in action."
And MLK's absurdly brilliant "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" -- curious that he was in the Birmingham jail, when it was the white supremacists who were defying the law -- is a magnificent rebuttal to Moyers et al, and to the contention that LBJ granted black freedom from on high.
Thanks for the pointer to the "Letter." I hadn't read it before. I get goosebumps every time I hear or read anything King spoke or wrote.
I think I understand your argument better now. But I'm still a little confused. Are you contending that laws are meaningless, or that they have no effect? Do you feel that the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an empty gesture and did not represent any change in the status of blacks in the U.S.? King himself spoke of the importance of just laws: "Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber." While writing a new law does not instantly and miraculously make all people follow that law and all officers enforce that law, having the law is still a crucial first step toward shaping a future in which that is the case.
I would agree that in acknowledging the role that laws -- and the people who write, pass and enforce them -- ultimately play in creating a just society, we must not forget that it has been necessary for the Kings of the world to make enormous sacrifices in order to precipitate the changes that have been made thus far. And it will take enormous sacrifices from many more people if we hope to continue on the path toward justice.
Dylan,
I just put up a new post that addresses your comment, I hope -- see the top of the blog...
-chris
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