[For a previous article on Bayard Rustin, please see Patrick Finn’s overview of Rustin’s life in the Buffalo Meeting Newsletter of March 26, 2020.]
“The Unfinished Revolution in the South: What About Here?” is the title of a dinner lecture Bayard Rustin gave in Buffalo in 1961. We didn’t move to Buffalo until 1973, and I hadn’t even thought about being a Quaker until 1971, and it was many years after that that I learned about the Black, Gay, Quaker, Labor Organizer, Nonviolent Civil Rights Activist named Bayard Rustin. So, no, I didn’t hear his Buffalo lecture, and I know of no one who did, but from what I’ve read about Bayard Rustin I would guess that he covered much the same ground then as he did in the two quotes below.
Bayard Rustin’s “House Divided” quote: “We are indeed a house divided. But the division between race and race, class and class, will not be dissolved by massive infusions of brotherly sentiment. The division is not the result of bad sentiment, and therefore will not be healed by rhetoric. Rather the division and the bad sentiments are both reflections of vast and growing inequalities in our socioeconomic system--inequalities of wealth, of status, of education, of access to political power. Talk of brotherhood and ‘tolerance’ (are we merely to ‘tolerate’ one another?) might once have had a cooling effect, but increasingly it grates on the nerves. It evokes contempt not because the values of brotherhood are wrong--they are more important than ever--but because it just does not correspond to the reality we see around us. And such talk does nothing to eliminate the inequalities that breed resentment and deep discontent.” (Down the Line: The collected writings of Bayard Rustin, C. Van Woodward Introduction, 1971.)
Bayard also wrote that believing white people can be convinced to do the right thing means black people “must be convinced, even if unconsciously, that at the core of the white man's heart lies a buried affection for Negroes—a proposition one may be permitted to doubt. But in any case, hearts are not relevant to the issue; neither racial affinities nor racial hostilities are rooted there. It is institutions-- social, political, and economic institutions--which are the ultimate molders of collective sentiments. Let these institutions be reconstructed*** today, and let the ineluctable gradualism of history govern the formation of a new psychology [of brotherly love].” (1964, reprinted in Black Fire: African American Quakers on Spirituality and Human Rights, 2011.)
These quotes have helped me distinguish between an individualist approach to ending racial injustice and inequality, and a collectivist approach. Given the recent surge in publications and media workshop sites about how to redress these inequities, it may be helpful to consider Rustin’s challenge to today’s popular individual-focused antiracist approach, and his support for the more collectivist -focused reconstructionist approach that his followers continue to advocate.
Antiracist spokespersons, such as DiAngelo (2018) and Kendi (2019), call on individual White Americans to accept and acknowledge to themselves and others that they (consciously or not) hold deeply embedded feelings of superiority. White superiority, according to its believers, accurately explains why there are such deep inequalities in our racially divided socioeconomic system. Individual White Americans who renounce white superiority can become antiracists who will stand up to the violence, prejudice and discrimination that unfairly denies Black Americans equal recognition of their humanity.
According to antiracists, when individual “bad sentiment” has been replaced with “brotherly/ sisterly sentiment,” Black Americans will be equally as able as White Americans to access the resources necessary to develop their potential. Finally actualizing the long promised equality of opportunity to join the competition for those few high places on the social and economic hierarchy, however, does not change the structure of inequality that the hierarchy symbolizes.
Rustin’s collectivist admirers focus instead on demanding reconstruction of the governmental policies and institutions that create ‘bad sentiment’ between the races, and sustain the inequitable socioeconomic structure. They see that inequality between the races is embedded in the vast inequality between the social classes. The fight for civil and political rights will not be won, they argue, without government policies that guarantee everyone has the economic right (not just the opportunity) “to a job; housing; medical care; food, clothing and leisure; social security, and education,” (See FDR’s 1944 call for a Second Economic Bill of Rights).
Economic policies, such as full employment and a fair and just tax system, are examples of policies that fight racism as well as the economic inequality and poverty suffered by millions of both Black and White Americans. The right to a job, for instance, requires the government to create jobs if the private sector cannot provide enough jobs to establish full employment. A full employment policy guarantees a job to everyone who wants a job. Government established jobs programs can put a significant strain on the federal budget, so an increase in taxes on the wealthy will likely be necessary. The socioeconomic distance between those in the elite class and those in the poor and working-class would, therefore, be reduced.
While there are more White Americans, numerically, in the bottom economic class, there are many more poor and under-resourced Black Americans, in proportion to their numbers in the general population. Rev. Barber of the Poor Peoples Campaign provides evidence for this statement with these statistics:
One hundred and forty million people in this country are poor and have little or low-wealth. Sixty-six million of them are poor Whites. Twenty-six million are poor Blacks--which means 61% of all African Americans live in poverty.
While numerically more White Americans will benefit from reducing the deep socioeconomic chasm between the social classes, Black Americans will benefit substantially as well because poor Black Americans are such a substantial portion of the Black American population. Fighting racism by fighting poverty, however, will challenge many long-held opinions and prejudices of both White and Black Americans.
Will White Americans, for instance, automatically translate policies that help “poor” people into, “another program for them”, or will they see that while 26,000,000 poor Black Americans can benefit from government policies aimed to provide greater economic equity, so will 66,000,000 fellow White Americans who are also at the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy? And, will Black Americans hold onto the antiracist position that it is necessary to first solve the problems particular to Black Americans, e.g. racism and discrimination, before economic class differences can be addressed? Or will they conclude that the long-standing antiracist priority of convincing individual White Americans to do the right thing before demanding changes in the economic structure, has not produced the hoped-for results, as Rev. Barber’s statistics indicate.
Can we as Quakers stand with Bayard, share his long-term thinking, and his confidence that reconstructing the socioeconomic system can reduce the economic inequities between the classes, and also lead to an end of racism? Such an outcome can only result from an enormous struggle to provide a more equitable distribution of society’s resources that lessens economic insecurity and competition for survival within the Black and White poor and working-class. Can we then let the ineluctable gradualism of history lessen bad sentiment and open new ways for brotherly/ sisterly sentiment to grow?
I’m for standing with Bayard.
**Social Reconstruction has been the term commonly used since the New Deal era to describe the social-democratic program for reconstructing the economic structure of the U.S., from one dominated by the corporate elite to one that meets the needs of the working class.
Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, 2018.
Ibram Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist, 2019.