Here's hoping I don't turn out to be a white moderate.

[rmd]

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

Comments

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

I have been very disappointed this week by the reaction of many white liberals to the protest on 93.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

Yeah.

I look at it this way - every few years, something happens that closes down one of the highways completely. And, frankly, I'd rather it be for an act of political speech than another truck fire or a truck full of lobsters overturning or something.

And if traffic is going to be a hazard to things getting from here to there, I'd much rather it be for an act of political speech than the fucking World of Wheels annual traffic suckathon.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Ayup.

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

Today an interstate highway in Cincinnati is closed, and will remain so for at least a couple of days, because an overpass collapsed. Measure the outrage over that vs. the outrage over the I-93 closure by protesters. I predict that in the former case, most people will grumble a little, then shrug and deal with it. In the latter case, as we've seen so many places, so many white liberals are for the cause as long as all they have to do is click a link on a webpage or maybe write a check for a trivial amount. As soon as something actually costs them, well we just can't be having that.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

What was the theme of the protest? I've been out of town, but the Globe story I've seen were very vague on the motives.

Though if by "liberals", you mean "affluent liberals who commute by car into Boston", of course they're going to notice that the protest is a direct strike at their well-being and they're not going to like it. (No matter how much they like the politics, it's going to mess up their tightly timed home-day-care-school-work-day-care-home-dinner cycle.) Conversely, less affluent liberals who live in the central areas and don't commute by car will look on it more favorably.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

You seem to be assuming that it's the less affluent folks who live in the central areas. The number of people I know who have been priced *out* of the city and who live crappy-commute distance away from where they work would contradict that.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

You seem to be assuming that it's the less affluent folks who live in the central areas.

True, and that may not be true. My hypothesis is that people who commute by car/highway will have a more negative attitude toward the protest than their general political opinions would lead one to predict. I'm curious if anyone who has been watching this situation closely can confirm or deny that.

I'm still hoping to hear of a clear description of what the message of the demonstration was...

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

I once decided that the middle class was "people who had enough property that they are afraid of losing it but not so much as to be able to hire a private army to protect it". The result is that the middle class loves law and order, because that's what keeps them from losing their property. Which seems to be borne up by the evidence -- if the voters are forced to choose between Order and Law (much less Justice), they choose Order every time.

Looking back on those times is grimly amusing. My father was a determined supporter of integration, as it was then known. But then, he was a professor living in the north, and so it would take a decade of non-discrimination before any black professors would get into the business, by which time he'd have tenure and not have to care. But even in those days, it seems to have been well-known that the strongest opposition to desegregation was from lower-middle-class southern whites. Poor whites were already in competition with blacks for unskilled jobs, and upper-middle-class whites had educational/cultural advantages that it would take blacks at least a generation to be competitive with.

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

Hell yeah. 99 and a half won't do.