It is ironic that in 1941 when Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Churchill through the Atlantic Charter were pronouncing to the world the message of freedom, equality and self-determination, the US military was assisting the allied powers against the Axis, maintaining the separateness of white and black regiments.
Gunnar Myrdal in An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944) questioned the very fairness of US racial policy which was based on the assumption of ‘separate but equal’. Quoting Myrdal’s statement, the Supreme Court in its 1954 ruling pronounced segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional as separation implied ‘enforced inferiority’. Myrdal subsequently clarified that it was “not a study of the Negroes but of the American society from the viewpoint of the most disadvantaged group”. He highlighted the wide gap between the constitutional proclamations and to its absence in practice. In the southern states in particular, Myrdal observed it was the glaring failures of the courts and the police to enforce constitutional provisions.
Quoting James Weldon Johnson “The main difficulty does not lie so much in the actual condition of the blacks as it does in the mental attitudes of the whites”, Myrdal held the whites responsible for the gulf that existed between them and the Afro-Americans through segregation in public facilities, disenfranchisement, inequality before the law and discrimination in all that relates to earning a living. He was critical of a policy of the Roosevelt Administration that inadvertently caused unemployment for thousands of Afro-Americans, namely restriction on cotton production to raise the profit of farm owners and stipulation of a minimum wage, which stalled employment for unskilled workers, many of whom were Afro-Americans.
In the 1950s, the movement for racial equality under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr., with non-violent methods enhanced the status of Afro-Americans considerably especially in the Southern states. King’s nonviolent mass struggle was critiqued by Malcom X’s theory of separatism and black nationalism which however could not provide a credible alternative. Moreover, Malcom X’s support base also remained restricted. In the post-civil rights movement period, the Johnson Administration’s Great Society and Affirmative Action programmes saw a fundamental shift in the US as it created the necessary conditions for the rise and consolidation of substantive middle class among Afro-Americans. King had wanted the furtherance of the civil rights movement by granting Afro-Americans preferential treatment not because of the abuses of the past but because “the back wheels of a car can never be the front wheels of a car while they are travelling at the same rate of speed”.
Daniel P. Moynihan felt the need to do more to help Afro-Americans attain anything resembling socio-economic equality with whites. In April 1964, in a memo to the Secretary of Labour, Willard Wirtz, he wrote, “The Negroes are asking for unequal treatment. More seriously, it may be that without unequal treatment, there is no way for them to achieve anything like equal status in the long run”.
In his report (1965), he outlined the challenges to the well-being of Afro-American families, namely acute and concentrated poverty in low income black neighbourhoods of unemployed and underemployed residents, crime, inequality in housing, employment, education, healthcare, and the criminal justice system, high rate of nonmarital births and children raised by single woman-headed households and social welfare policies that undermined the role of AfroAmerican men. On 2 July 1964, the Civil Rights Act outlawed discrimination based on race, colour, national origin, religion or sex.
Literacy tests for voters in some Southern states were done away with. As a result, there was a 67 per cent rise in Afro-American voter registration rates between 1964 and 1967. There were 1469 Afro-American elected officials in 1970. This number saw an increase to 10,500 in 2011. Following Michael Harrington’s startling revelation of a ‘culture of poverty’ within the US in The Other America: Poverty in the United States (1963), Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act on 20 August 1964. It emphasised equity with none having to live in poverty and all having sufficient money incomes, public services and civil rights to enable their participation with dignity as full citizens. Within a decade poverty levels declined from 20 to 12 per cent but among the poor the majority are Afro-Americans. In the 1990s, Jesse Jackson exhorted the Afro-Americans to take up more challenging openings with all its risks, or rewards or losses and not depend on public aid. He contended that if they could excel in sports and entertainment, they should excel in math as well and this was only possible if they spend more time with home-work and not watch television.
A popular stereotype about the community was also their talent and flair for sports and entertainment. The Economist dated 1 June 2020 observes that between 1970 and 2000 there were improvements which however began to worsen since then. Poverty levels rose, according to the 2012 census to 15.9 per cent. In 2018, the average household income among the AfroAmericans was $ 41,400 compared to $ 70,600 for whites. The wealth gap was even starker: the median net worth of AfricanAmericans was $ 17,600 as compared to $171,000 among whites. This gap at one level has eased recently due to increase in federal spending to combat coronavirus, but there is a fear of job losses of low and unskilled ones which are mostly held by AfroAmericans. Another study reveals 35 per cent of young Afro-American men as unemployed, twice the share of whites.
More Afro-Americans than the rest have died of coronavirus. Many suffer from chronic heart diseases, diabetes and the like. Not many have health insurance. As incarceration rates are also higher among them, many have given up looking for jobs because as former felons, they do not hope to find one. Incarceration rates of AfroAmericans, according to the Bureau of Justice, is six times higher than that of whites since 2016 while it was seven times higher in 2006. Afro-Americans and Hispanics other than whites get longer sentences for the same crimes according to a research conducted by the Universities of Michigan and British Columbia. Joblessness, poverty, and unequal and prejudicial judicial pronouncements are the driving forces behind the current protests over Mr Floyd with a demand for systemic change.
To combat the pervasive and persistent violence, systemic racialism and police brutality faced by the community an international human right movement called ‘Black Lives Matter’ was established in 2013. Its aim is to eradicate white supremacy by building local and collective power through diversity, globalism, empathy, restorative justice and inter-generationality as its guiding principles. Malcolm X brought to the attention of Afro-American leaders as to “how pervasive and hopelessly white racism has become” and to the severe discrimination suffered by their community. Myrdal’s hope that the race problem could be solved quickly within a reasonable period of time proved to be premature. The Afro-Americans are unequal in law, income, wealth, jobs, health and incarceration.
They lack representation in white collar jobs, top ranking prestigious and key decision-making positions despite a sizable middle class of 61.2 per cent. President Trump threatened to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act seeing the protest as a law and order issue and labelling the protestors as anarchists thereby underlining the harsh fact that well-developed democracies are only partially reformed. The continuation of repressive features is at variance with the essential libertarian ideals of the US Constitution and the US Republic, namely equal protection under the law, equality of opportunity and equal freedoms. Moreover, America is more violent than any other rich country and with citizens heavily armed, policing is hard. About 50 police officers are murdered while on duty every year.
Harrington hoped for a new Dickens to emerge to raise the nation’s consciousness to the grossly unequal situation faced by the Afro-Americans. Their inequalities and indignities represent, according to George W. Bush, ‘tragic failures’. Nixon’s remark that the US did not need a President for its internal affairs is not correct as it is direly imperative to bring about a much desired transformation to make American society inclusive, fair, equal and just.
(The writers are respectively retired Professor in Political Science, University of Delhi, and Associate Professor in Political Science, Jesus and Mary College, New Delhi)