
          One Less Voice for Discrimination
          By Kennedy, StetsonStetson Kennedy
          Vol. 11, No. 4, 1989, p. 16
          
          Any time a racist organization or hate sheet goes out of business
is a time for rejoicing. The recent obituary in The
Spotlight announcing the demise of The Citizen,
standardbearer of the White Citizens Councils which flourished at
mid-century, makes very good reading indeed.
          The appearance of these Councils on the local and state levels in
many parts of the country was part and parcel of the last-ditch effort
to perpetuate apartheid in America.
          The agreed-upon division of labor was for the Councils to wage
terror by day, and the Klan by night. To rope and faggot were added
firing, foreclosure, eviction and denial of credit.
          There was nothing new about this conjoining of economic lynching
with the more conspicuous forms. The same "double whammy" was employed
during the holocaust which overthrew Reconstruction, restored white
rule and institutionalized apartheid. Again, at the turn of the
century when blacks thought they saw hope in Populism, demagogues like
Tom Watson prescribed the same medicine.
          The White Citizens Councils of more recent memory were wont to
refer to themselves as "respectable elements" but they were terrorists
nonetheless. Denial of livelihood has always been tantamount to denial
of life itself.
          We would do well to ask ourselves why it is that The
Citizen, after thirty-four years, decided to give up the
ghost.
          Hopefully, the cause for which it labored, an apartheid America, is
a lost one, no less than that of the Confederacy. Except for the black
ghetto, Jim Crow has been dumped upon the ash heap of history. And
yet, I submit, where once we had segregated racism, we now have
desegregated racism. If in this modified environment the Klan can find
plenty to do, why is there not enough to fill the sheets of The
Citizen? 
          Part of the answer, in my opinion, is that its editors have
concluded that with plainclothes counterparts in the executive branch,
and black-robed counterparts on the federal bench, they can afford to
relax and go back to "discrimination as usual," i.e., on a more
covert, individual basis.
          What has happened is that recent administrations have been doing
the job of the Citizens Councils for them. Capitalizing on the
so-called "white backlash" against busing, "reverse discrimination"
which they helped conjure up, these administrations picked up the ball
in the ongoing game of keeping blacks, women, and others in a
disadvantaged status. The lynching, in one form or another, still goes
on by day and by night . . .
          To put it into another metaphor, in the great American crap game
blacks, women and other minorities have always been up against loaded
dice. School busing and affirmative action have been the only means in
sight for evening the odds. In one of the great turnarounds in human
history, a nation which had virtually prescribed discrimination
proscribed it.
          But the odds are a very long way from being even yet, and if we let
anyone take us bade to the loaded dice, we will all be in for a hard
twenty-first century.
          Some cynic among the philosophes once said, "The forms of
exploitation change from time to time."
          Woody Guthrie was also well aware of the versatility of exploiters
when he sang:
          
            As through this world I've rambled,
            I've met lots of funny men;
            some will rob you with a sixgun,
            some with a fountain pen.
          
          But Woody was an activist, not a philosopher, and he wasn't buying
any.
          
            With this issue, Stetson Kennedy joins Southern
Changes as a contributing editor. His four books, which at
mid-century raised the standard of total equality and called for an
end to Jim Crow--Palmetto Country (1942);
Southern Exposure (1946); The Klan
Unmasked (1954);and Jim Crow Guide (1955)--are
all being brought back into print by the University Presses of Florida
(15 N.W. Fifteenth St., Gainesville, FL 32603). Palmetto
Country has already appeared, and the others, as well as a new
work on Reconstruction, After Appomattox, are scheduled
for 1990.
          
        