192
IRVING HOWE
That such problems, inherently difficult enough, should come
to the forefront simultaneously with the upsurge of the American
Negroes is something of a tragedy. For automation threatens most
severely the jobs that have been traditionally open to Negroes; it
intensifies difficulties which, under the best of circumstances, would
have been severe enough. (The recently fashionable "leftist" counter–
position of "revolution" against "integration" as strategies for the
Negro movement fails to take into account the context in which the
movement must act: it fails to recognize that to achieve integration,
even in the presumably limited terms proposed by Martin Luther
King, would indeed
be
a revolution, probably greater in consequence
and impact than that effected by the rise of industrial unionism in
the thirties.) Bayard Rustin, the most perceptive of the Negro lead–
ers, has remarked upon
this
problem:
The civil rights movement, because of its limited success, is now
confronted with the problem that major Negro demands can–
not be met within the context of the civil rights struggle. The
frustration in the Negro community is not merely the result
of difficulties in the struggle, but also of the fact that these
demands are made in a context where
the N egro alone
is in
motion. So that the major problem before us is how to relieve
the Negro of this isolation.
If
there were a democratic left in
this country, the Negro movement would be in it along with
labor, liberals, and intellectuals and people from the churches.
But now the Negroes have to deal not only with discrimination
but also the problems of the whole society. While many Negroes
would not so analyze it, they know in a visceral way that this
is true. They know there is really no way to get jobs for Ne–
groes
unle~s
something else happens. And they also know, and
I know, that the labor movement, affected by automation, is
itself unable to provide jobs for the people already enroIled in
the unions; that the only way labor can handle this problem
is if it allies with the Negro in a bigger struggle in which it
can then afford to be an ally because its problems are being
simultaneously met. . . . Such an alliance should be program–
matic-political: that is, around questions like total employ–
ment, limited planning, work training within planning and a
public-works program.
(Continued on Page 312)
