38
M ARTIN DUBERMAN
UAW or the United Federation of Teachers. Such a coalition, of
course, would necessitate Negro-white unity, a unity Black Power at
least temporarily rejects!
The answer that Black Power advocates give to the "coalition
argument" is of several pieces. The only kind of progressive coalition
which can exist in this country, they say, is the mild, liberal variety
which produced the civil rights legislation of recent years. And that
kind of legislation has proven itself grossly inadequate. Its chief
result has been to lull white liberals into believing that the major
battles have been won, whereas in fact there has been almost no
change, or change for the worse, in the daily lives of most blacks.
5
The evidence for this last assertion is persuasive. Despite the
Supreme Court decision of 1954, almost 85 per cent of school-age
Negroes in the South still sit in segregated classrooms. Unemployment
among Negroes has actually gone up in the past ten years. Title VI
of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, with its promising provision for the
withdrawal of federal funds in cases of discrimination, has been used
in limited fashion in regard to the schools but not at all in regard to
other forms of unequal treatment, such as segregated hospital facilities.
Under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, only about 40 federal registrars
have been sent into the South, though many areas have less than the
50 per cent registration figure which would legally warrant interven–
tion.
In
short, the legislation produced by the liberal coalition of the
early sixties has turned out to be little more than federally approved
tokenism, a continuation of paper promises and ancient inequities.
If
a
radical
coalition could be formed in this country, that is,
one willing to scrutinize in depth the failings of our system, to sug–
gest structural, not piecemeal, reforms, to see them executed with
sustained rather than occasional vigor, then Black Power advocates
might feel less need to separate themselves and to concentrate on
local, marginal successes. But no responsible observer believes that in
the foreseeable future a radical coalition on the Left can become the
effective political majority in the United States; we will be fortunate
4. On this point, see what to me are the persuasive arguments made by
Pat Watters, "The Negroes Enter Southern Politics,"
Dissent,
J uly-August,
1966, and Bayard Rustin, "Black Power and Coalition Politics,"
Com–
mentary,
September, 1966.
5. See, on this point, David Danzig, "In Defense of 'Black Power,'''
Com–
mentary,
September, 1966.
