to the interests of nonwhites, and therefore not susceptible to change through orderly political processes; "revolt is the only way out of the colonial situation, and the colonized realizes it sooner or later. His condition is absolute and calls for an absolute solution; a break and not a compromise."72 The rejection of compromise meant a corresponding rejection of the native middle class, which was seen as parasitical, timid, and generally antagonistic to the struggle of the native masses for liberation.73 The motive force of the anti-colonial revolution, for these writers, lay in the lumpen-proletariat of the cities. Through revolutionary violence, Fanon wrote, "these workless lessthan-men are rehabilitated in their own eyes and in the eyes of history."74 THE IMPACT OF RIOTS Although it is difficult to assess accurately the various influences on contemporary black militancy, the Northern urban riots are surely important. Whereas anti-colonialism provided, directly or indirectly, a model of cultural identity and a sense of international influence, riots both dramatized the failure of the American polity to fulfill the expectations of the civil rights movement, and demonstrated the gap between black leaders and the prevailing sentiments of their constituencies.75 The urban riots, then, have had important consequences for black leaders as well as for governmental action. Newer and younger faces and organizations have emerged in recent years to represent the interests of the urban lower classes, and the older representatives of the civil rights movement have been required to redefine their political programs to accommodate these new forms of militancy. A recent statement by Sterling Tucker, Director of Field Services of the National Urban League, indicates that established black leaders are well aware of the new militancy: I was standing with some young, angry men not far from some blazing buildings. They were talking to me about their feelings. They talked out of anger, but they talked with respect. "Mr. Tucker," one of them said, "you're a big and important man in this town. You're always in the newspaper and we know that you're fighting hard to bring about some changes in the conditions the brother faces. But who listens, Mr. Tucker, who listens? Why, with one match I can bring about more change tonight than with all the talking you can ever do." Now I know that isn't true and you know that isn't true. It just isn't that simple. But the fact that we know that doesn't really count for much. The brother on the street believes what he says, and there are some who are not afraid to die, believing what they say.76 The "Riff-Raff" Theory Until recently, riots were regarded as the work of either outsiders or criminals. The "riff-raff" theory, as it is known, has three assumptions-that a small minority of the black population engages in riot activity, that this minority is composed of the unattached, uprooted, and unskilled, and that the overwhelming majority of the black population deplores riots.77 This theory helps to dramatize the criminal character of riots, to undermine their political implications, and to uphold the argument that social change is only possible through lawful and peaceful means. For if riots can be partly explained as the work of a few agitators or hoodlums, it is then much easier to engage wide support in repudiating violent methods of social protest. Official investigations generally publicize the fact that normal, ordinary, and law-abiding persons do not instigate riots. According to the FBI, riots are typically instigated by a "demagogue or professional agitator" or by "impulsive individuals who are the first in the mob to take violent action or to keep it going when it wanes."78 Thus, "hoodlums" were responsible for the 1943 riot in Detroit, "marauding bands" of criminals in Watts, "a small fraction of the city's black population" in Chicago in 1968, and "selfappointed leaders, opportunists, and other types of activists" in Pittsburgh.79 The recent Chicago Commission noted that the riot was an "excuse for lawlessness, destruction and violence" on the part of some "leaders and followers." They also suggested that "irresponsible advocates are encouraging the black youth of this city to join in a wholesale rejection of our national traditions, our public institutions, our common goals and way of life. Advocates of black racism encourage political rebellion in the place of political participation, violence in the stead of non-violence, and conflict rather than cooperation."80 Implicit in the “riff-raff”" theory is the idea that riots are unilaterally violent, that public officials and agencies merely respond in defense against the violence of "irresponsible advocates," and that the riots have little wider meaning in the black community. The "riff-raff" theory has been challenged by various studies. As long ago as 1935, the Harlem Commission reported that "among all classes, there was a feeling that the outburst of the populace was justified and that it represented a protest against discrimination and aggravations resulting from unemployment."81 More recently, a study of participants in the Watts riot suggests that 46% of the adult population in the curfew zone were either actively or passively supporting the riot. The riot had a "broad base" of support and was characterized by "widespread community involvement."82 Although participants in the Watts riot were predominantly male and youthful, support for rioting was as great from the better-educated, economically advantaged, and long-time residents as it was from the uneducated, poor, and recent migrants.83 The Kerner Report provided further evidence to contradict the "riffraff" theory but its significance was lost in the mass of facts and figures. The most convincing attack on this theory came from Fogelson's and Hill's study of participation in the 1967 riots which was published at the end of the Kerner Commission's supplemental studies. The authors found that (1) a substantial minority, ranging from 10 to 20 percent, participated in the riots, (2) one-half to three-quarters of the arrestees were employed in semiskilled or skilled occupations, three-fourths were employed, and three-tenths to six-tenths were born outside the South, and (3) individuals between the ages of 15 and 34 and especially those between the ages of 15 and 24 are most likely to participate in riots. 84 Riots are generally viewed by blacks as a useful and legitimate form of protest. Survey data from Watts, Newark, and Detroit suggest that there is an increasing support, or at least sympathy, for riots in black communities. Over half the people interviewed in Loss Angeles responded that the riot was a purposeful event which had a positive effect on their lives. 85 Thirty-eight percent of the population in the curfew area said that the riot would help the Negro cause. "While the majority expressed disapproval of the violence and destruction," writes Nathan Cohen in the Loss Angeles Riot study, "it was often coupled with an expression of empathy with those who participated, or sense of pride that the Negro has brought worldwide attention to his problem."86 That riots are seen by many as a legitimate and instrumental method of protest has drastic implications for the "riff-raff" theory. "Is it conceivable," ask Fogelson and Hill, "that... several hundred riots could have erupted in nearly every Negro ghetto in the United States over the past five years against the opposition of 98 or 99 percent of the black community? And is it conceivable that militant young Negroes would have ignored the customary restraints on rioting in the United States, including the commitment to orderly social change, unless they enjoyed the tacit support of at least a sizeable minority of the black community."87 Studies of riot participation suggest that "rioters" represent a cross-section of the lower-class community. The young people who participate are not known to be psychologically impaired or especially suffering from problems of masculine identity. Juveniles arrested in the 1967 Detroit riot were found by a psychological team to be less emotionally disturbed and less delinquent than typical juvenile arrestees.88 Furthermore, the recent riots have served to mobilize the younger segments of the black community and to educate them to the realities of their caste position in American society: Today it is the young men who are fighting the battles, and, for now, if THE DIRECTION OF CONTEMPORARY MILITANCY By the mid-1960's, many militant black leaders had become convinced that the aims and methods of the civil rights movement were no longer viable. The failures of the federal government and of white liberals to meet black expectations, the fact of the urban revolts, and the increasing American involvement overseas all served to catalyze a fundamental transformation in black perceptions of American society. The anti-colonial perspective, rather unique when expressed by Malcolm X in 1964, now provided many blacks with a structured world-view. For the Black Panther Party, for example, it provided the "basic definition": We start with the basic definition: that black people in America are a colonized people in every sense of the term and that white America is an organized Imperialist force holding black people in colonial bondage, 90 Many articulate black spokesmen saw the final hope of black Americans in identification with the revolutionary struggles of the Third World. Even political moderates began pointing to the discrepancy between the massive commitment of American resources abroad and the lack of a decisive commitment to end racism at home. Martin Luther King wondered why "we were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8,000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem."91 He also questioned the official condemnation of the ghetto poor for their "resort to violence": As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems.... But they asked-and rightly so-what about Vietnam? ... Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today-my own government.92 By the mid-1960's, then, criticism of fundamental American policies at home and abroad was widespread among intellectuals in the black community. The dominant themes in contemporary black protest reflect this basic mood. Three major themes stand out: self-defense and the rejection of nonviolence; cultural autonomy and the rejection of white values; and political autonomy and community control. These trends do not exhaust the content of contemporary militancy, and they are held in varying combinations and in varying degree by different groups and individuals. All of them, however, share a common characteristic: they are attempts to gain for blacks a measure of safety, power and dignity in a society which has denied them all three. Self-defense Traditionally, Americans have viewed self-defense as a basic right. The picture of the armed American defending his home, his family, his possessions and his person has its origins in frontier life but is no less a reality in modern suburbia. In that picture, however, the armed American is always white. The idea of black men defending themselves with force has always inspired horror in whites. In some of the early slave codes, black slaves were not permitted to strike a white master even in self-defense. 93 In the caste system of the Southern states, Negroes were expected to accept nearly any kind of punishment from whites without retaliation; openly showing aggression meant almost certain violent retaliation from whites.94 Still, individual blacks occasionally fought back in the face of white violence in the South; and blacks collectively resisted attacking whites in the race riots of 1917, 1919, and 1943.95 The civil rights movement, under the leadership of Martin Luther King, and the sit-ins and freedom rides of the 1960's stressed nonviolence and what some called "passive resistance." As a result of the failure of local and federal officials to protect civil rights workers in the South, however, a number of activists and their local allies began to arm themselves against attacks by the Ku Klux Klan and other white terrorist groups. It was only too obvious that local police and sheriffs in the South were at best only half-heartedly concerned with the welfare of rights workers, and at worst were active participants in local terrorist groups. The latter was the case in Neshoba County, Mississippi, for example, where the local sheriff's department was deeply implicated in the killing of three civil rights workers. More often, civil rights groups found they could not depend on Southern officials for protection. In 1959, the head of the NAACP chapter in Monroe, North Carolina, had organized local blacks into a rifle club as an armed defense against repeated assaults by the Ku Klux Klan.96 A notable result was that "the lawful authorities of Monroe and North Carolina acted to enforce order only after, and as a direct result of, our being armed."97 Following the bloody Southern summer of 1964, local defense groups sprang up in several black communities in the South. Their primary purpose was to protect nonviolent civil rights workers in the absence of police protection and to end white terrorism against black communities. As a rule, they favored nonviolence as a civil rights tactic, but felt that it could only operate where nonviolent demonstrators were protected from assault.98 A study of one such group in Houston, Texas, concluded that the overall effect of an organized showing of armed forced by blacks was to decrease the level of violence in the community. White vigilantes were deterred from action, and police were forced to perform an effective law-enforcement role.99 During this period, the focus of attention began to shift to the ghettos of the North. The dramatic episodes of police harassment of demonstrators in the South had overshadowed, for a time, the nature of the routine encounters between police and blacks in the ghetto. The ghetto resident and those who spoke for him, however, had not forgotten the character of the policeman's daily role in the black community, or the extent of private white violence against Northern blacks in history. The writings of Malcolm X spoke from Northern, rather than Southern, experience in demanding for blacks the right to defend themselves against attack: I feel that if white people were attacked by Negroes-if the forces of law prove unable, or inadequate or reluctant to protect those whites from those Negroes-then those white people should be able to protect themselves against Negroes, using arms if necessary. And I feel that when the law fails to protect Negroes from white attack, then those Negroes should use arms, if necessary, to defend themselves. "Malcolm X Advocates Armed Negroes!" What was wrong with that? I'll tell you what was wrong. I was a black man talking about physical defense against the white man. The white man can lynch and burn and bomb and beat Negroes-that's all right. "Have patience" .. "The customs are entrenched"... "Things are getting better." 100 After the Watts riot of 1965, local blacks formed a Community Action Patrol to monitor police conduct during arrests. In 1966, some Oakland blacks carried the process a little further by instituting armed patrols. From a small group organized on an ad hoc basis and oriented to the single issue of police control, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense has grown into a national organization with a ten-point program for achieving political, social and economic goals. 101 In the process, the name has been condensed to the Black Panther Party, but the idea of self-defense remains basic: "The Panther never attacks first, but when he is backed into a corner, he will strike back viciously."102 |