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M I C H A EL H A RRIN 6
TON
racial prejudice which suffuses the society. In recent years, even
though unions have been among the most important financial sup–
porters of the Movement, there have been more and more tensions
and hostilities between Negro militants and union members.
The most recent projections of the Bureau of Labor Statistics
indicate that by 1980, assuming that unemployment
is
not
reduced
and without taking into account the rise in productivity (that
is,
according to the most conservative assumptions), this country
will
require 101 million jobs (compared to 77 million now).
If
we continue
our present policies, there is no sign that we will provide these jobs.
And if black and white workers are split,
if
they compete for the
scarce jobs at the bottom, there
is
little reason to believe that we
will
take the necessary steps to face up to our radical responsibilities.
There
will
not be any significant change because the people needed
to effect it will be fighting among themselves rather than to transfonn
the system.
Yet these same facts provide the basis for an alliance between the
civil rights and union movements. Obviously, both Negro and white
workers have a desperate interest in creating new jobs and abolishing
unemployment. Even many of white labor's backlashers preferred
to
join a coalition with Negroes for Johnson rather than to give the
presidency to Goldwater. Also, there are leaders in both groups who
have already recognized that what
is
needed is a massive generation
of jobs through planned, Federal investments in decent, integrated ·
neighborhoods and schools.
This is
more easily said than done. For that matter, it
is
simple
enough to make a convincing argument that this unity is impossible.
Unfortunately, the same demonstration would
also
show that any
real social change is impossible.
If
there be no alliance of white and
black workers--or worse, if they should be at one another's throats-–
there
is
no political majority for what needs to be done. Some of the
Leftists of the sixties who
dismiss
this kind of analysis as nostalgia
for the thirties have an unradical optimism. It
is
no small thing
to
move a modern society by even an inch, to challenge the enormous
concentration of private, bureaucratized power.
And the political center for these alliances, the fulcrum of change,
is the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Saying this does not imply
an acceptance of LBJ's consensus politics. Far from it. His proposition
