The racism which threatens America is principally a white problem which only whites can solve. That is the basic assertion of People Against Racism (PAR), a group of individuals organized to combat white racism. People Against Racism and a few similar organizations and individuals represent the beginnings of new movement in this country. PAR symbolizes new perception, analysis, and new approaches to erase disIcrimination, unequal treatment, and racial injustice in America.

Applauding black liberation and other minority crusades for self-determination, the new movement offers direct support and involvement in those efforts only when requested. The programs of People Against Racism are not centered in the black ghetto or on Indian reservations; they are not concentrated in the rural South or Spanish-language barrios. People Against Racism believes that the struggle for racial equality and human justice is a battle that must be waged in the white community, with the white power structure, against white institutions.

The nucleus of whites who comprise PAR read the report of the Kerner Commission which officially exposed white racism and discarded the study as not only practically irrelevant, but also victimized by racist error. People Against Racism saw a classical mistake repeated: ignoring its own conclusions that the fundamental cause of racial injustice and strife is white racism, the Kerner report recommended that the Nation begin or expand programs to improve housing, education, welfare, and employment for deprived minorities. People Against Racism pointed out that such programs have failed in the past—and they predict failure in the future-because the problem is not in the ghetto, not in the minority community. The ghetto, the problems of minorities in poverty, are only a result or symptom of the illness of white racism. And until the illness is cured, the symptoms will not go away.

Before the Kerner Commission was formed, members of People Against Racism were living out their conviction that it is in the interest of white people to confront the roots of racism in their own communities. "For it is this white racism," an early PAR pamphlet said, "which carries the seeds of destruction of not only black people, but all of us."

People Against Racism realized from the beginning that they would be a minority movement: so few white Americans perceive the validity of PAR's basic assumption; most whites believe sincerely that they do not discriminate against racial minorities. And indeed

most do not in a direct, overt way. Separation of the races is so complete that they seldom get the opportunity. Because most whites do not directly discriminate against or exploit black people, they believe that such things do not occur or at least they want to believe they do not. This proposition is reinforced by a 1967 Harris Poll which showed that only one out of a hundred whites believed or admitted to believing that Negroes were treated "badly" in this country. Threefourths of those polled thought "Negroes are treated the same as whites."

The need to deny racism has led to the development of an extensive catalogue of euphemisms which obscure feelings and conduct toward minority citizens. Under the guise of "preserving the neighborhood school," Negro children are kept separate in segregated schools. Black people, Mexican Americans, or Puerto Ricans are not denied jobs because of their race or culture, but because "they are not qualified." Whites oppose housing integration because Negroes "lower property values." Police should use extraordinary repressive force in the ghetto, not to deny legal rights of the residents, but to "stop crime in the streets." Black students fail to learn in ghetto schools not because the schools are inferior, but because black students are inferior by virtue of their "cultural disadvantage" or "poor environment." Militant minority leaders are denied power or respect because "they are going too fast." Ghetto mothers do not receive prenatal services because they are undeserving or "lazy."

Seeking ways to confront a society which systematically denies its own racism, People Against Racism began by describing an historical base for their claim. PAR reviewed this Nation's history to show both the historical development of racism and the contemporary effects on society. The findings are a reiteration of aspects of America's past which have been pointed out before, but which have been virtually ignored, if not denied.

PAR's recapitulation of the history of racism'in America lists two principal developments: the treatment of American natives who were "in the way" of westward expansion and the American system of slavery.

The first racist act in the New World, PAR asserts, was the first killing of a native "Indian" by a white colonist. Thus began the systematic reduction of the Indian population from more than a million in the late 18th century to less than 500,000 by the end of the 19th century. Through various methods, principally shooting and starvation (and the incidental scourge of the white man's diseases), some tribes were extin

guished entirely and more than half the Indians were destroyed.

The ostensible justification for this slaughter was the concept of Manifest Destiny. God willed that white people civilize the West. As the Indians were pushed back by military tactics, pioneers took possession of the land, and missionaries of the church condoned it all by pronouncing the natives uncivilized, unchristian, barbarian and primitive-less than human. There was no reason that the "superior" whites should not take their land by any means necessary. This concept remains and is transmitted through generations by the "white" version of that period of history with its racist distortions; it is perpetuated particularly by cowboy 'n' Indian movies and television westerns.

The second pertinent historical development of white racism is related to slavery. The United States maintained a brutal and dehumanizing slave system based exclusively on race. Countless numbers of black men, women, and children died in passage from Africa. In America, they were treated as chattel-property. Families were purposely broken up, individuals bought and sold, punished, and stripped of human dignity. All this was possible in a Nation founded on the principle that "all men are created equal" by pronouncing Negro not a man or, as the Constitution deigned him, three-fifths of a man.

The modern implications of these historical developments, says People Against Racism, lie not so much in how whites defined the Indians or Negroes, but in how whites defined themselves. By categorizing other races as inferior, whites automatically defined themselves as superior. PAR concludes that the significant result is that white Americans as a society-do not know who they are, "because they have constructed an identity that depends primarily on who they are not." White American society, to put it another way, suffers mental illness, a psychosis manifested by delusions of superiority based on the inferiority of others. The psychological need to identify others as inferior—and it is a need, since whites' self-identity depends on it-becomes a compulsion to "keep them in their place," because any change in their inferior status threatens the whites' self-concept of superiority.

While it is important to understand this aspect of our cultural health, to set the historical record straight, People Against Racism points out that it is dangerous to simply leave it at that. It is a new and discomforting interpretation of history and leads to a sense of historical guilt without proportion. It is not the intention of People Against Racism to create a sense of guilt only.

PAR contends that the Kerner Commission is to be criticized for doing precisely that. The Kerner report made a broad generalization on white racism and offered inadequate explanation, insufficient analysis or definition. The Commission thus further obscured the already perplexing concept of racism, implying that all white people somehow participated in some intangible disease passed on through generations. The resulting sense of guilt is mysterious and amorphous. Such vague guilt is too overwhelming for the individual to deal with: it paralyzes.

Insecure in a self-concept based on other people's inferiority and unable as individuals to bear societal guilt, people are apt to repress, deny, over-react, or act irrationally. PAR's assertion that this Nation is racist does not mean that all white Americans are racists. It does mean that the myth of white supremacy is engrained in the country's history and inherent in its structure. It means that we all participate in a society and system which has been continuously and methodically racist.

As a beginning of understanding of how racism works in this country and what part it plays in the system as well as a means of analyzing the individual's participation in it-People Against Racism offers two basic distinctions-neither of them original or astounding the distinction between attitudinal and behavioral racism and between individual and institutional racism.

Attitudinal racism is any concept which views other people as inferior on the basis of race, any attitude of white supremacy. Any acceptance of the ideas that Indians as a race are "drunks" or that Mexicans are "lazy" or that Puerto Ricans have less native intelligence or that Negroes, as such, "just want a handout": these are examples of attitudes which are racist.

Behavioral racism, on the other hand, is any action or behavior which has the practical effect of disadvantaging nonwhites to the advantage of whites, no matter the intent. The action need not be consciously antiblack or derogatory to a minority. Most urban renewal or inner-city freeway programs, for example, are racist in a practical sense since they render black people homeless although there is no ostensible racist motivation.

The definition of behavioral racism cuts through the rhetorical declarations of innocence that all whites have learned to make about their attitudes and actions towards racial or ethnic minorities. While an individual may not hold racist attitudes, to the extent that he participates or condones actions which have the

practical effect of disadvantaging minorities, he is a behavioral racist.

The second simple distinction concerns individual and institutional racism. Individual racism consists of an overt discernible act against people of another race. Based on a racist attitude, the individual racist may bomb a Negro church, refuse to serve Mexican Americans in a place of business, or vote to exclude a person from a club because he is Puerto Rican. The death of Negro children, bombed in a Birmingham church, results from an individual racist act.

High infant mortality rates among blacks compared to the much lower rate among whites, on the other hand, or the lower average of achievement among minority students result from institutional, systematic racism. Institutions themselves work in such a way as to deprive minorities of equal opportunities. Institutional racism can continue to operate because of the formation and structure of the institution itself, even though no individual racist controls or participates in that institution.

Having made that distinction, People Against Racism asserts that all white institutions are racist, "or, more accurately, white supremacist, and all operate to perpetuate white privilege." Since racism is an integral part of our history and culture, it is an integral part of the institutions of society. PAR points out that some institutions are more vigorously racist, some manifest the racism differently, some are more strategically located within the system and more effectively racist. Whatever the variation, institutions, by definition, seek to

perpetuate themselves; in the process, they perpetuate racism as well.

Individual racist acts are based on racist attitudes. The racism of institutions-with the exception of white supremacist organizations is almost always behavioral. In whatever form or guise, racism is built into the society and the way the "system" works. People Against Racism believes that the most serious problem to be dealt with is institutional behavioral racism-it is the principal reason for disparities between white and nonwhite income, employment, housing, education, and health care. It deprives this Nation's minorities of equal treatment. And it deprives the white majority of a decent and just country.

People Against Racism emphasizes that white people must begin to see that the present racist system is as destructive to them as it has been for blacks and other minorities. It is robbing white America of its humanity and preventing a healthy society. Says PAR: "Racist institutions are responsible for white people having no knowledge or distorted knowledge of the histories and cultures of people of color, and little or no knowledge and understanding of black people's struggle for liberation. Thus, white institutions have created a world of fantasy for white people. Unable to realistically and humanly coexist with people of color, White America pursues policies of repression and destruction at home and abroad."

Whites, the People Against Racism insist, must help whites. The issue has been confused in the past by efforts to "help the Negro," or "educate the Indian." Those citizens committed to the attainment of equal treatment in America have sought to deal with the "Negro problem," the results of discrimination rather than the cause of it. These efforts have failed. Racial polarization has increased. And in spite of token progress in the civil rights struggle, People Against Racism avows that on the basis of its studies, the life situation of most blacks in relation to whites has deteriorated in this decade. It is conclusive proof, says PAR, that paternalism will not work, cannot save this society.

People Against Racism believes that the only way absolute social disaster can be prevented is for whites to confront the roots of racism in their own communities. Whites, no less than blacks, must struggle for the power to control the institutions which create and perpetuate a disastrously distorted system. Anti-racist whites must first recognize their own powerlessness, particularly as individuals, to take on institutions. They must, therefore, organize themselves and others.

They must build a base. They must begin the task of bringing revolutionary change to the white institutions that control and define the identity and destiny of white Americans.

With this objective in mind, People Against Racism was organized in Detroit about three years ago. Individuals decided to create a group with four primary objectives: "To educate ourselves and others to the existence and manifestations of racism and to the objectives of the black movement, to raise the issue of racism in our own communities, to confront institutions on issues which arise locally and nationally and to take action, to support the black movement in those instances where direct support is possible."

In the spring of 1968, the Detroit Area People Against Racism affiliated with groups in other cities (some of which they helped organize) to form a National PAR organization. The national office is in Detroit; the Detroit area local has offices in a Detroit suburb. Other local chapters are in Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, and Ann Arbor, Michigan. There are PAR members in other major cities, including Boston, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. In all, People Against Racism has about 250 active members.

PAR locals are financed almost entirely from member pledges of from one to five percent of annual income. At least one initial grant was secured from the Episcopal Church's General Convention Special Fund for national organization; in the future PAR intends to concentrate its grant requests on special, more or less independent projects. PAR believes that white organizations which can support themselves should, leaving foundation money for black programs less apt to be financially self-sufficient. PAR's self-sufficiency is made possible by the financial pledge and volunteer time expected from members and the low salaries of the few PAR professionals, all of whom could command much higher pay elsewhere. (PAR staff persons refer to "unorthodox" salary scales as a matter of their conscious choice of personal life style and emphasis on the meaning of their work as a worthwhile effort rather than a task contracted for wages.)

The national office of People Against Racism is essentially a training, resource, and organizing agency. So far, the national staff has conducted more than 20 week-end seminars on racism for more than 600 persons in Detroit and other cities across the country. Groups requesting PAR training pay travel expenses and a small training fee. About a fourth of PAR's national budget comes from training session proceeds. National PAR officers also maintain a heavy schedule

of speaking engagements before high school classes, church groups, and civic organizations. Such talks are sometimes a first step in organizing new locals. The national office provides source material for more intensive seminars conducted at the local level.

People Against Racism has been concentrating on research into racism and how it works. Relevant, "action" research is emphasized, rather than more abstract, academic studies. PAR research activity includes working papers on institutionalized racism in such areas as education, police and courts, political representation, welfare and poverty programs, industry and labor; a position paper on Vietnam probing the relationship of racism to American involvement in the war; a study of the racist tendencies of American expansion, economic imperialism, and foreign policy in general; a major study on identity in white society, taking into account the effects of slavery and the prac tices of racial exploitation on the individual white person and on the national psychology. An updated and expanded version of "Repression in America,” a background paper prepared for PAR's conference on Law, Order, and the White Backlash in Detroit, is available; the study documents the growing tendency toward military and legal repression and growing white hysterics in reaction to the dynamic of the black struggle for self-determination. Another study is avail able on white supremacy and the church.

Local chapters of People Against Racism utilize this and other source material in seminars which usually last 12 weeks. Study begins with papers on racist myths about Africa and Africans, the "Peculiar Institution," the Civil War, and the era of Reconstruction. A session on institutional racism covers educational and economic systems, both in the ghetto and in the white community, and attempts to show how the racist status quo is maintained. Institutionalized racism of the law and political process are considered. U.S. foreign policy is examined in terms of this country's involvement in the affairs of other countries under the rationalizations of "Manifest Destiny," "Free Trade," "Making the World Safe for Democracy," and "Anti-Communism." Discussions of increasing racial polarization are followed by several sessions on what can be done in terms of program, organization, and action.

PAR locals have had their most satisfying reception with high school students, but efforts are not concentrated on high schools simply because of the students' response. PAR sees the education system in America as one of the principal perpetuators of racist traditions

and myths in this country and therefore one of the most appropriate institutions to confront. In many cases, the impetus for PAR involvement comes from the students themselves, who may have formed a human relations club or who already have some awareness of distortions in their school's curricula.

In other cases, People Against Racism has offered its assistance in resolving racial problems which developed in local schools. In Detroit, for example, black students in two high schools organized around the issues of black studies, black pride, and militancy, to which white students reacted with misunderstanding and hostility. Racial violence threatened to erupt, and PAR moved in quickly to inform the white students (and parents) of the meaning and aims of the black students' cause. Efforts failed in one school, but succeeded in the other, where, on the basis of the increased understanding, white students organized not only to offer support and approval to the black demands, but also to work in their own self interest.

Local chapters of People Against Racism are also assisting students in the formation of their own free high schools. (People for Human Rights, the PAR affiliate in Philadelphia, has been most successful in this activity.) PAR offers its resources and advice, but the students run the schools and define the curricula, including besides courses in racism, classes in such subjects as communications techniques, new teaching methods, reinterpreted history, and new economic sys

tems.

PAR locals also conduct seminars for adults. Besides speaking to groups on invitation and providing resource material and personnel to other organizations, extensive courses are arranged for teachers, college students, seminarians, social workers, or lawyers. A significant number of clergymen participate in PAR anti-racist sessions.

There has been virtually no contact with the white working classes. The bulk of PAR members are middle class, most have had some college education, and their intellectual rhetoric and class biases hamper attempts to communicate with working class people. PAR theorizes that white working people are exploited by the economic systems as blacks but are blinded by racism to their own exploitation. However, economic theories and philosophical discourses are irrelevant to a group of people who feel themselves in direct job competition with Negroes and who probably depend most absolutely on the myth of white supremacy.

In one metropolitan area, the local PAR has been contacted by a woman from a white working class

suburb who has experienced the effects of racism and harassment because of her acquaintance with Negroes in job training classes she attends. People Against Racism is trying to assist her in her present situation, attempting to help her understand what is happening and why. In the process, PAR hopes to learn how to articulate white working class frustrations and refine ways to make low income whites aware of how they are exploited by racism and why they should seek to combat discrimination.

As People Against Racism seek ways to speak to some segments of the society, techniques which have proven successful with other groups are being refined. In a conference of high school students, PAR staff was able to simulate conditions in society, allowing the students to experience prejudice themselves and to analyze the process and understand the dynamics of racism. The technique was enormously successful, resulting in intense awareness and educated attitude change about oppression and how it works. People Against Racism, confident that the technique can be used effectively in other situations, is seeking to adapt the approach to different circumstances.

As PAR refines its techniques for fostering change, membership is growing, but dedicated People Against Racism still number about one-millionth of the total population. Although PAR is working for a wider membership, they realize they will never be a mass movement. Active membership in PAR involves a commitment which most people are not able to make.

And while the anti-racist movement is growing, there is an even greater burgeoning of polarization, violence, repression. People Against Racism welcomes what some anthropologists have designated as a distinct sub-culture developing in America which consists of people who insist on moral imperatives in the decision-making process. But as this sub-culture-which includes People Against Racism-applies abstract standards of justice, humanity, compassion, and integ rity to matters of foreign policy, economics, education, social class, the "other side" responds with increasing repression, brutality, undemocratic measures.

At the same time, People Against Racism are aware that they may delude themselves that they are being effective on the sole basis of the opposition they arouse. They also realize that free speech is not necessarily productive. The freedom to dissent may be granted simply because no one is listening.

People Against Racism are determined to do more than talk. Frank Joyce, PAR's national director, asserts, "We are out to mount a significant opposition to