March 9, 2008
Dear Impact Greensboro Participant:
I am sending this letter to the people participating in Impact Greensboro and to the organizations sponsoring that initiative. My purpose is to encourage Impact Greensboro participants to work together to get a handle on the way power is exercised in Greensboro. I am going to make the case that Greensboro's Progressive Establishment - the sector of the community that has convened Impact Greensboro - plays a key role in the exercise of power in this city and that the role they play is a primary source of the confusion and division that Impact Greensboro is attempting to address.
I am focused on this program because the city's leaders have clearly blessed Impact Greensboro. When I attended Temple Emanuel's January 18th service commemorating Martin Luther King Jr Day, newly elected Mayor Yvonne Johnson opened her remarks with a description of Impact Greensboro. In a December 9th editorial called "Healing Greensboro," the News and Record editors called on the community to "support the efforts of a new initiative, IMPACT Greensboro," listing the program as one of the keys to bringing the city together. Impact Greensboro's sponsoring entities - the Greensboro Human Relations Commission, the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro and UNCG - are major institutions in the city's Progressive Establishment.
The "exercise of power" is an elusive concept - yet, it is very real. The exercise of power is like the operating system on your computer - always running in the background, making things work in ways you don't think about or understand. The societal operating system largely shapes how specific societal issues play out, like the issues Impact Greensboro is considering - race, economics, neighborhoods, and education. If those of you participating in Impact Greensboro jump right into a discussion of these issues without getting a handle on the power dynamics that underlie them, the "facts, realities and recommendations" you present to the community will inevitably add to the community's confusion and division.
False discussions about race and economics happen over and over and the community stays stuck. It doesn't have to be that way. I believe that the group assembled as Impact Greensboro can break out of this pattern. If you find a way to do so, you can join with others to really begin changing the direction of the city.
This is a long letter because I am calling attention to a complex topic. I ask you to read and thoughtfully consider what I am putting forth. Whether you come to largely agree or disagree with this analysis, I think you will agree that this topic - how power really works in Greensboro - has significance for Impact Greensboro and for every citizen of this city.
Most people come into a process like Impact Greensboro accepting Greensboro's Progressive Myth as reality. The Progressive Myth insists that Greensboro is a progressive city and that Greensboro's leaders are progressive, diligently working to improve racial and economic conditions for all. The term Progressive Myth is not used by those practicing the Myth - the Myth is their reality. I am going to explain why I believe that this is a false reality, that Greensboro in fact has a regressive operating system carefully disguised as progressive. The Progressive Myth is an impressively bold lie, repeated so often and in so many ways that it is accepted as truth by much of the community. Business corporations, including those that own the local mainstream media, make up an informal Power Structure that programs the community operating system to promote their interests above all else, while wrapping themselves - and their Progressive Establishment surrogates - in the Progressive Myth.
The Progressive Myth has been firmly established in the fabric of the community for decades. Civic behavior reflects and supports the Progressive Myth. Leaders come and go but civic behavior based on the Progressive Myth lives on, nurtured by the city's civic infrastructure - the Progressive Establishment. Foundations, non-profits, universities, the school system and local governmental agencies, all of which are dependent on the good will and support of the Power Structure, long ago established institutional ways of life that support the Progressive Myth, that in fact have become the Progressive Myth. Most Greensboro citizens who become civically involved do so through these institutions. They start playing their assigned roles and over time they become a living part of the Progressive Myth. Learning this outlook and behavior is necessarily an unconscious socialization process rather than an explicit learning process because there is nothing explicit about the Progressive Myth. Many good people live the Progressive Myth - people who do not want to understand that they are promoting the continuation of a racial and economic hierarchy.
***
In the recent "Healing Greensboro" series in the News and Record, reporter Jeri Rowe writes that, "distrust has pushed us into proverbial corners. It has paralyzed us, forcing us as a community to lose focus on what's important and turning potential bridge-building opportunities into empty promises. Everyone from public officials to community activists gets demonized. Ideas get shot down without discussion. And 'The Sound of the Beep,' a phone-in feature in The Rhinoceros Times, drones on week after week with anonymous posts full of anger, accusations and hate..."
I am going to say some challenging things in this letter. Am I joining the demonization game that Rowe describes, throwing another bomb into the already volatile mix? No. I do not want to demonize anyone. I consider some people in the Progressive Establishment and the Power Structure to be genuine friends. I know and respect others as acquaintances. I am not denouncing anyone. Having engaged in many discussions over the years about this, I know that these people understand their social location and their community behavior very differently than I understand it. We all act on the truth we understand. But I genuinely believe that the prevailing civic truth in Greensboro is a false truth that keeps the city tied up in knots - and maintains a societal status quo that is hurting a lot of people.
Some of the challenging things I say are directed at business corporations. Am I anti-business? No. I am all for businesses that take their responsibilities to the whole community seriously. Business corporations possess a hugely disproportionate share of wealth and power. Their power is unofficial and privately exercised - but very real. Citizens need to get a handle on this corporate power and its impact on the community.
***
Our culture is obsessed with personalities. Interpretations of community events, led by the media, usually focus on the role of individuals - who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? But institutions accumulate power and exercise power. They develop institutional outlooks and behavior that promote their institutional self interest, which may well be at odds with the common good. A corporate CEO or a school superintendent acts on behalf of their institution’s interests and their power comes from their role in the institution - not from the power of their personality. CEO’s and superintendents come and go - but their institutions keep on keeping on, pursuing their self interest. When we fall into the trap of focusing only on the personality, we miss the more important power dynamic - the role of the institution itself.
This personality emphasis is titillating and much easier to grasp than complex social dynamics. This emphasis creates heroes and villains and pushes us toward one side or the other. It sells newspapers and increases ratings. It encourages politicians to heroically play to their base constituencies with dramatic and emotional acts. The popular personality emphasis is good for maintaining a divided community with a regressive status quo and bad for democracy.
Institutions often act together to create systems. Systems possess the power of multiple institutions. Institutional and systemic power is very real. It largely defines our overarching societal culture, which shapes much of our world and our community. For example, since our economy is driven by consumer spending, a key part of popular culture promotes consumerism - at the expense of citizenship. Popular culture tells us that we need to buy more and more things to demonstrate our human value, we don’t need to think critically and build genuine relationships across the community and act collectively.
For a democracy to work effectively, citizens must understand institutional and systemic power and the culture promoted by these powerful interests. Citizens must struggle to understand reality and to act on that reality for the common good. This inevitably means engaging the powerful institutions that promote their own versions of reality and their own interests at the expense of the common good.
Those in power often respond to the idea of engaging power by suggesting that such engagement inevitably leads to chaos and even violence - in Greensboro, the images of violence and death on November 3, 1979 loom large. The popular understanding of that episode has been carefully controlled by those in power. That popular understanding has become an important piece of the Progressive Myth. Those who promote the Progressive Myth have told Greensboro that there is nothing more to know about November 3rd. The story has been told. The heroes and villains have been defined. Case closed. Since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and process began to develop, they have told the community to remember what they have been taught about the villains, while pushing emotional buttons that play to society’s worst instincts, and building a White leadership firewall against any consideration of anything related to the issue.
Why?
Well, that is one thing we need to try to understand. Just as we need to understand why Greensboro’s city government took no corrective action - no suspension, no demotion, no reduction in pay, no reprimand, no acknowledgement that any wrong was done - when police officers they employed were found by a federal court to be liable for the wrongful death of Dr. Michael Nathan, who was killed on November 3rd, 1979. This is surreal. This is Greensboro.
Race, economics, and institutional power are the forces at the core of our society’s divisions. November 3rd exposes those forces in a tragic but rare and powerful way. For those trying to understand how a community can come together across lines of race and class, there could be no greater gift than an honest examination of this episode, an examination that will be ongoing because, even after the trials and the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the full story of November 3rd has not been told.
Engaging power is a critical component of any functioning democracy. I have worked with some survivors of November 3rd - the popularly defined villains - to engage powerful institutions in the community - Kmart and their business allies, the Guilford County Schools and their business allies, and others. I promise that we have never considered blowing things up or overthrowing the government. We haven’t plotted to inflame Black people against White people. To the contrary, we have worked with those marginalized by society to help them engage the sources of their marginalization in a way that draws lessons from non-violent movements, in a way that seeks to build authentic community.
***
The December 9th "Healing Greensboro" editorial used Duke historian William Chafe's book, Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina and the Black Struggle for Freedom, to frame the editors' argument that Greensboro really is a progressive city - really:
"In his book, Chafe often points to the yin and yang of this city's personality. At the heart of that split, as Chafe saw it, was this community's historic image as a progressive, New South city, 'a beacon of Southern progressivism.' The New South still rises here today. In Yvonne Johnson, Greensboro this year elected its first African American mayor. The city has a bustling downtown and has weathered three droughts and an economic downturn in recent years to reposition itself for renewal and resurgence. But in some respects, it remains stuck in neutral — or worse — because it struggles to disagree constructively. Chafe ascribes that unease to progressives' belief "that conflict is inherently bad, that disagreement means personal dislike, and that consensus offers the only way to preserve a genteel and civilized way of life." Hence, we have a hard time getting conflict right. We see the City Council as tiptoeing too much in lockstep and the county commissioners as a herd of stampeding bulls in a china shop. An elusive plot of middle ground lies in there somewhere. We've have a hard time finding it... Despite all of its fits and starts over the years, Greensboro still could be on the cusp of something special."
I agree with the editors that Chafe's book provides important insight into this topic but their interpretation is the mirror opposite of Chafe's analysis. Irony - “the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect” - is a popular form of entertainment these days. But I don’t think the News and Record aspires to be The Onion. They simply co-opted Chafe’s message to promote the Progressive Myth - the very myth that Chafe himself exposed.
Chafe did not describe Greensboro as a genuinely progressive city with personality issues, nor did he conclude that the inability of city leaders to disagree constructively was at the heart of Greensboro's problems. Chafe in fact showed that Greensboro's power structure maintained the city's regressive social structure and controlled the city's resources and agenda by dictating an approach to governance and public dialogue that falsely manufactured a progressive image. Maintaining that image and that approach to running the city, which Chafe came to call civilities, was - and still is - paramount. Good people seeking to promote the Progressive Myth routinely behave in ways that turns the state motto, "To Be Rather Than To Seem," on its head.
Chafe wrote about the years 1945 - 1975, a period defined by the civil rights movement. He published his book in 1980. I contend that the power structure hasn't missed a beat in the twenty eight years since Chafe published his book. In fact, the Progressive Establishment has more fully institutionalized this way of exercising power as it has adapted to changing social circumstances.
Chafe's book takes us to the issue of power immediately. He opens the introduction to the book with this 1857 quote from Frederick Douglass: "Those who profess to favor freedom / And yet deprecate agitation / Are men who want crops / Without plowing the ground / They want rain without thunder and lightning / They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters / Power concedes nothing without a demand / It never did, and it never will."
Chafe spent many years researching and writing this book. It was not easy getting a handle on how power operated in Greensboro, nor was it easy to explain. But what he offers is profound:
“In his classic 1949 study of Southern politics, VO Key praised North Carolina for its ‘progressive outlook,...especially [in] industrial development, education, and race relations.’ ...The state was run by sophisticated men – mostly lawyers – who served as an ‘aggressive aristocracy of manufacturing and banking [interests].’ These men recognized the value of maintaining an image of moderation and promoted the view that the state was ‘on the move’ in the direction of racial tolerance... Like the state, [Greensboro] was governed by sophisticated lawyers associated with large corporations...White business and educational spokesmen pointed to Greensboro’s race relations as a model of cooperation...
Most difficult to define is the culture of white progressivism that has for so long dominated North Carolina's political and economic life. The more I studied Greensboro, the more it became clear that progressivism did not operate as a political system with rigid regulations and procedures. Rather, it functioned as a mystique, a series of implicit assumptions, nuances and modes of relating that have been all the more powerful precisely because they are so elusive...
Civility was what white progressivism was all about... (Civility) encompassed all of the other themes of the progressive mystique – abhorrence of personal conflict, courtesy toward new ideas, and a generosity toward those less fortunate than oneself...
As victims of civility, blacks had long been forced to operate within an etiquette of race relationships that offered almost no room for collective self assertion and independence. White people dictated the ground rules, and the benefits went only to those who played the game...
Civility within a context of oppression simply provides a veneer for more oppression... When one group dominates another, the ground rules of discourse will always serve as an instrument of control... Only within a context of freedom can (civility) be a vehicle for self-realization and fulfillment. Where equity prevails and people control their own lives, where they have equal access to power and deal from a position of autonomy, communication across lines of race and class can be free of manipulation.”
***
The community operating system carries out its "implicit assumptions, nuances and modes of relating" in the background. But once attuned to all of this, one can see the system at work. Jordan Green of YES Weekly managed to bring to light one recent episode of reality being manipulated and redefined in an article about the origins of Impact Greensboro.
Since November 3, 1979, the Power Structure has programmed the community operating system to incorporate the killing of 5 people in the streets of Greensboro into the Progressive Myth - by defining the killings as a shoot-out between two extremist groups that had nothing to do with our progressive city. The villain-extremist interpretation is hard wired into the system.
There was a period in the mid to late 90's when the Progressive Establishment began building a working relationship with some of the people who had previously been defined by the Progressive Myth as unforgivable villain-extremists because of their involvement in November 3rd. Nelson Johnson played important bridging roles in the Kmart labor struggle, Mayor Allen's Greensboro Community Initiative, school redistricting and other events. Nelson also played a leadership role with other Black ministers in the Pulpit Forum, which was highly regarded by many in the Progressive Establishment. During that period, November 3rd seemed to be mostly off the civic table and the operating system seemed to update with this activity.
But then the Truth and Reconciliation project surfaced, bringing November 3rd back into play. The Power Structure restarted the operating system in villain-extremist alert mode - with dire warnings about "revisionist history" - and the Progressive Establishment responded as instructed. For several years now, White city leaders have made one embarrassing statement after another as they have maneuvered to make the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, its Report and the ongoing Truth and Reconciliation project go away. During this period, Nelson Johnson has once again been portrayed by the Progressive Establishment as villainous and extremist in matters of community, as has the Pulpit Forum, which has supported the Truth process. The intentional marginalization of Johnson and the Pulpit Forum by the Progressive Establishment is a surprisingly open move by the Power Structure to enforce race relations ground rules. They are allowing their hard wired opposition to any discussion of November 3rd - to any threat to the Progressive Myth interpretation of that episode - to spill over into current community events, further dividing the community along racial lines.
Green began his December 4th article with this question and answer, "How does a mayoral request for a city commission to respond to the grassroots truth and reconciliation process turn into an initiative with no publicly acknowledged connection to that undertaking? Very gradually and through the work of many hands." Green goes on to tell this story of "the work of many hands" that created Impact Greensboro. In piecing the story together, he put a number of people involved with Impact Greensboro on the spot and on the record.
Green writes that, "Following the release of the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report in May 2006, Mayor Keith Holliday convened an informal roundtable discussion for members of the Greensboro City Council to air their feelings about the controversial effort. The mayor suggested that the city task the Human Relations Commission (HRC) with leading a forward-looking discussion on race and inequality, adding, 'I am looking to bring some closure, but there are some things we've got to deal with, not for us but for the next generation.' No vote was taken, but six months after the report's release plans by the Human Relations Commission to launch an Ad Hoc Committee for Improving Race Relations surfaced..."
On the question of the relationship between the Human Relations Commission's race initiative and the truth and reconciliation process, the HRC Chairman told Green, "It's fair for you to say the Human Relations Commission created the Ad Hoc Committee for Improving Race Relations as a response to the truth and reconciliation process."
But the Human Relations Commission never took the Ad Hoc Committee for Improving Race Relations to the City Council. As Green reports, that initiative was dropped and and replaced by Impact Greensboro, "Last month the Human Relations Commission and two partner agencies rolled out Impact Greensboro before city council. Presenters made no mention of the truth process, highlighting instead Impact Greensboro's roots in the Mosaic Partnerships, a separate program championed by the mayor."
The HRC Chair gave Green the Progressive Myth rope-a-dope spin on the Truth report, telling him that "he thought the human relations commission was adequately meeting its commitment to respond to the truth report, even though Impact Greensboro has been de-linked from the truth process. 'We are working on issues of improving race relations and we are going to issue a report on the state of human relations in Greensboro next year,' he said. 'So those are two things we are doing. I think we've certainly worked hard on police issues,' he added, in reference to the citizens review committee."
Asked about the disconnect by Green, Mayor Holiday referred to the Progressive Myth script that guided his time in office, "My support for Impact Greensboro had to do with current human relations needs and ... trying to get as much focus of people rowing in the right direction that will have our community moving forward... That's what I was trying to solve, not a 28-year-old mystery of what happened in 1979."
Green also called attention to a News and Record editorial that stated, "With the GTRC's recommendations on improving race relations as a catalyst, the human relations commission is preparing to pitch a new citywide project to the council... with the goal of building understanding across racial, class and geographic lines..." Green pointed out to Allen Johnson, the newspaper's editorial page editor and a member of Impact Greensboro's advisory committee, that his editorial page had drawn the connection between the Truth report and the HRC initiative. According to Green, Johnson "initially said he did not recall the editorial, and disassociated the new initiative from the truth process. 'I never saw the truth and reconciliation process as being a driving force behind any of this,' he said, 'although I think something like Mosaic and Impact Greensboro can help build bridges in our community.' When prodded about the editorial, Johnson acknowledged a malady common among journalists: forgetting past articles amidst the crush of deadlines and copy volume. Reflecting on the editorial board's thinking about the piece, he said, 'I think that we saw that we have a lot of stuff going on and a lot of people trying to do good things, and I do think we saw an opportunity to deal with some of the things the truth and reconciliation commission was bringing up.'"
***
Should the fact that Green has exposed the Progressive Establishment maneuvering to disconnect the truth report from Impact Greensboro, while denying that is what they are doing, matter to Impact Greensboro participants? It certainly should. I encourage participants to discuss the Green article, which I have enclosed - Link to Green article. What does this story tell you about the way power is exercised in Greensboro? What does this tell you about your giving of your time to help improve the community through Impact Greensboro?
I also encourage Impact Greensboro participants to review the Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommendations. I have enclosed these recommendations - Link to TRC Recommendations. It is a well conceived eight page document developed by a thoughtful group of citizens who gave a tremendous amount of their time to considering how to help Greensboro. The recommendations fall into General Steps, Institutional Reform, Criminal Justice and Civil Remedies, and Citizen Transformation and Engagement. As a White guy who has read the document, I can assure other White people that your heads will not explode if you read it.
***
In his article, Green quotes Walker Sanders, president of the Community Foundation, as saying this about Impact Greensboro, "What we have evolved into is a true community partnership that looks and feels like Greensboro. You have a governmental entity, a university and the foundation and corporate community that have truly come together to address a very important issue in our community - and that's trust."
With all due respect to Walker, the "true community partnership" he describes does not "look and feel" like Greensboro.
What does Greensboro look and feel like? Consider this - The NC Justice Center has developed the Living Income Standard (LIS), an "indicator of actual cost for a frugal standard of living... the (LIS) covers seven basic items: housing and utilities; food; health care; transportation; miscellaneous expenses like clothing and cleaning products; and taxes. It does not include: money to be put away for savings; consumer loans like car or lending company or mortgage loans; meals out, entertainment, birthday presents, videos, etc." The Greensboro LIS for a household with 2 adults, an infant and a preschooler was $47,856 in 2005.
More than 50% of Greensboro households with children make less than the Living Income Standard - a remarkable fact to ponder.
Ponder this in relation to the recent City Council vote to stop an effort to raise the city's minimum wage. As reported by Jordan Green, "The 5-3 vote in which Mayor Yvonne Johnson and her two fellow African-American council members found themselves overwhelmed by the white majority mirrored a similar vote in April 2000 to defeat a living wage ordinance. That vote... also broke down along racial lines."
The racial split on the council surfaces on a number of issues. The media gets a lot of mileage - and advertising dollars - out of such racial divisions. But this vote also brings to light a White economic class division that is intertwined with the racial division - a dynamic that is not publicly discussed.
All of the people in Greensboro who desperately need an increase in their wages are not Black or Brown or Yellow. There are a lot of lower income and working class White people who are struggling to make it financially, a lot of White children with a systemically limited economic future. With this vote, the Black Mayor and council members are representing the economic interests of everyone who is marginalized by the economic system - Black, Latino, Asian, and, yes, White. The White members of the council are representing the economic interests of the Power Structure and their Progressive Establishment surrogates at the expense of these same marginalized people - Black, Latino, Asian, and, yes, White.
***
The partnership that Walker describes looks and feels like the Power Structure and the Progressive Establishment because that is what it is. These folks, who are overwhelmingly White, spend most of their time with one another - they help each other interpret the community and they certainly trust one another. For decades, they have used their control of the public dialogue to impose their interpretation of reality on the community - and the citizens of Greensboro have largely gone along.
We need to understand the social location of the members of the Power Structure and the Progressive establishment in terms of the US distribution of wealth:
(These are 2001 statistics from United for a Fair Economy. The concentration of wealth has since increased).
1% OWN 33% = 99% OWN 67%
5% OWN 58% = 95% OWN 42%
10% OWN 70% = 90% OWN 30%
50% OWN 97% = 50% OWN 3%
This is clearly a hierarchical distribution of wealth, with a few people at the top owning most of the wealth and a lot of people sharing what's left. The corporate people who make up the Power Structure are at the top of this hierarchy - maintaining the hierarchy and their position at the top is their main civic goal. The people who run the Progressive Establishment on their behalf are more evenly distributed through the hierarchy - though few are at the bottom.
The people at the top of this hierarchy do not want public discussions about the distribution of wealth, about the existence of the hierarchy. At the first hint of this discussion, they scream “class warfare.” If efforts persist to point out that the hierarchy is indeed real and relevant, those at the top will push the socialism - communism fear button and count on the automatic emotional societal response. The fact that the Communist Workers Party was involved in November 3rd just makes this claim that much more loaded here in Greensboro. The purveyors of the Progressive Myth continue to exploit this aspect of November 3rd to great effect.
The idea that the economic choices we face in our democracy are limited to EITHER a free market capitalism that produces this kind of concentrated wealth, OR socialism or communism is absurd - and we cannot allow ourselves to be bullied into avoiding honest substantive economic discussions.
Though the American Dream and other myths assure us otherwise, it is clear that the hierarchy isn’t flattening - there is limited room at the top and the people at the top have rigged society to give themselves all of the advantages that they and their children need to stay at the top. A kid born into the top of the hierarchy has to screw up creatively and persistently to fall to a lower economic level, while a kid - Black, Latino, Asian, or, yes, White - born just a few miles away into the lower levels of the hierarchy can work hard and live responsibly for a lifetime and build no real financial security - while being told by society that their lack of financial security is their own fault.
***
Our racial confusion, division and anger sustains the hierarchy, which has always used race to both justify and disguise its existence. Consider this question - was slavery a racial issue or an economic issue? It was both - the two are still inseparably woven into the fabric of our society. The political economy of our country was largely built on the myth of White superiority and Black inferiority. Does that matter today? Of course it does. White people today own more than 96% of the country's wealth. Is this because White people really are superior? No. But we are socialized to believe that we are - though this racial socialization has become less open and more subtle and sophisticated - more like the Progressive Myth - since the Civil Rights Movement. While not inherently superior, we are certainly good at playing the game we have owned and controlled throughout America’s history.
The concentration of wealth has a huge impact on the way power is exercised and on the city’s racial dynamics. Here is how Chafe described an important Pre-Civil Rights Movement dynamic.
“Still another feature of the progressive mystique is what VO Key has called an attitude of ‘community responsibility toward the Negro.’ Rooted in a paternalism so unconscious that it would never be called such by whites, this ‘sense of responsibility’ operated on the premise that those who are better off have a moral obligation to help those who are worse off. The result, historically, has been a patron-client relationship between white benefactors and black petitioners, the latter coming to friendly whites to seek specific objectives such as a new school or a new recreational facility. After exchanging pleasantries, the white benefactor would render the aid he thought appropriate, more than ever convinced that the exchange testified to how good communications between the races were in North Carolina...”
Post-Movement versions of this arrangement still exist because White people still control the money. They possess the wealth and run the institutions that provide the bulk of the private funding for civic initiatives – foundations, which are established with White wealth, and corporations. This plays out in many different ways.
The Civil Rights Museum, which is one of the most important components of the future Progressive Myth, provides one example. The museum is in Downtown Greensboro, which is the focal point of the Power Structure’s economic development efforts. What could be more progressive than a museum that commemorates a landmark civil rights event? The Power Structure will find a way to fund this museum and they will use this funding to ensure that the museum’s message fits comfortably into the Progressive Myth - rather than teach lessons from the Black-led Civil Rights Movement that struggled against this very kind of White control and domination. One can visit the Greensboro Historical Museum today and see a similar example - there is simply no reference to November 3, 1979 at that museum, as if the tragically historic events of that day never happened.
The Civil Rights Movement that the museum is to commemorate was just getting started in 1960, when four Black A&T students took their seats at Woolworth's Whites-only lunch counter. The initial phase of the Civil Rights Movement was about this issue of integration. The purveyors of the Progressive Myth are most at peace with this phase of the Movement. They can allow the courage of these young men and the significance of their actions to be recognized and celebrated without significantly altering the underlying Progressive Myth narrative.
They have a harder time allowing an honest look at the later phases of the Movement. Things got messier as the 60's progressed, as the Movement took on the issue of Black political disenfranchisement. This was a more direct challenge to Power Structure control and the Greensboro Power Structure responded to this challenge with all of the force at their disposal - though the Progressive Myth narrative tells us they were protecting Greensboro from - yes, villainous extremists, outside agitators who had nothing to do with our progressive city.
November of 1979 can only be understood in the context of May of 1969, another episode where engaging power in Greensboro led to chaos, violence and death. This is already a long letter, so I have addressed May of 1969 in a posting on my website www.progressivemyth.com, drawing on Chafe's look at those events.
***
As a look at the distribution of wealth makes clear, most people, including most White people, do not have a lot of wealth. Do White people toward the bottom of the hierarchy own and control the game with their White peers at the top? No. They are living paycheck to paycheck with everyone else in the lower part of the hierarchy. They most likely have no real relationship with White people at the top. They get angry when they hear that White people have all of the advantages in society - where is this privilege? And why do Black people always play the victim, using race to gain advantages over them? These ideas are fueled by their White peers at the top of the hierarchy because it serves their interests.
Consider the class history of White Southerners. During and immediately after the Civil War, White Southerners at the top of the bruised and battered hierarchy developed a genuine solidarity with poor White Southerners, solidarity based on mutual belief in Black inferiority-White superiority and shared hatred of the Northern battlefield enemy turned ruler and exploiter. It was “us against them,” them being Blacks and Northerners. Those at the top needed new economic formulas to rebuild the Southern economy, to strengthen the hierarchy and once again fill their pockets with money. Unfortunately for those White people not at the top, the economic formulas their brothers in solidarity settled on required lots of cheap labor. Those at the top never considered letting their solidarity keep them from providing really low paying jobs to their White brothers – and eventually to Black people. Black people became competitors for these really low paying jobs, setting up a dynamic that those on top have been exploiting for generations. The surge in the Latino population has added a complicated new dynamic to the mix in the lower parts of the hierarchy, a dynamic that is being exploited with great success.
White people at the top and middle of the hierarchy have lived separately from White people in the lowest parts of the hierarchy for generations. Those at the top and middle have coined belittling terms like redneck and trailer trash and made those terms a part of popular culture in order to promote the idea that poor White people are inherently inferior too, an idea that puts responsibility for their social location on them.
Contrast this history with the class history of Black Southerners. Prior to the Civil Rights Movement, there was a cohesive Black Community, held together by Black neighborhoods and Black businesses and the shared experience of racial oppression that took precedence over class interests. While that period does not need to be over-romanticized as the good old days, this authentic community and this racial solidarity were real and recent. Both have been weakened by the dynamics created after the Civil Rights Movement. New economic opportunities did develop for Black people. The Black middle class did expand and many Black middle class people eventually moved into middle class neighborhoods - meaning poor Blacks were increasingly living in their own poor neighborhoods.
In the wake of the Movement, new liberal attitudes toward race had to be worked out and those attitudes were reflected in new policies and programs that addressed the problems of the disproportionately poor Black community. White leaders worked with the increasing numbers of Black leaders making their way into the political and bureaucratic Progressive Establishment to develop and implement these programs. These programs were shaped by the established outlook and behavior of the White Progressive Establishment. The Black people who made their way there were the ones who had to adjust, who had to learn the established ways.
The White people who built and operated the Progressive Establishment had never had genuine relationships with lower income White or Black people - they had never been a part of an authentic community that cut across class lines. Their understanding of poor people was mostly abstract. It was based on an interpretation of the poor put forth by popular culture and academia. One of the primary characteristics of the new liberal attitudes toward race was therefore an inevitable paternalism, which infused the policies and programs they developed. Paternalism is defined as “the policy or practice on the part of people in positions of authority of restricting the freedom and responsibilities of those subordinate to them in the subordinates' supposed best interest.”
Liberal policies accelerated the disintegration of Black neighborhoods and poor Black people were increasingly managed as clients of the massive charity and social service system built during the 70’s and 80’s. This charity-social service system provides needed services - needed because there are not enough jobs that provide a living income - in a way that keeps the system’s clients in the poverty box, separate from the larger society, while demonstrating the Power Structure and Progressive Establishment’s charitable compassion and disguising the existence of the hierarchy. Today these neighborhoods stew in a mix of cynicism and glimmers of hope, depression and determination, drug dealers and police, gangs and social workers. And tragically wasted potential.
Beyond these “inner city” neighborhoods, enclaves of low income Black, White, Latino and Asian people are scattered throughout the city - as are working class neighborhoods. The people in the lower echelons of the hierarchy have a lot in common. But mysterious forces throw them against one another, making the idea of coming together to explore what they have in common seem impossible. Making it more difficult is the fact that civic participation is institutionalized as a middle class activity, with middle class customs that are foreign and often intimidating to people who are not middle class - people who have been told by society that they are inherently inferior. And spending time on civic activity seems like a luxury to people who work all the time, may not have reliable transportation, may not have a spouse available to provide child care, and so on.
***
I think Walker is on to something when he speaks of a “true community partnership” that “looks and feels” like Greensboro. Such a partnership would include proportional representation based on wealth, income, race, and gender.
I don’t want to suggest that Impact Greensboro try to convene such a coming together because I think that you folks would quickly facilitate the group to death.
Instead, I encourage Impact Greensboro participants to explore how such a coming together could become what Chafe described as "a vehicle for self-realization and fulfillment" - where “communication across lines of race and class can be free of manipulation ... where equity prevails and people control their own lives, where they have equal access to power and deal from a position of autonomy." If a genuinely representative group could come together with the appropriate involvement of Impact Greensboro, and make progress toward understanding and achieving that ideal among themselves, they would have something powerful to offer the city.
We also need to broaden the discussion of the Progressive Myth. Impact Greensboro could help more and more people “see” the Myth and enlist them to join with others to break it down and begin building something new, something for all of Greensboro.
Thank you for taking the time to consider what I have written. I am putting this letter up on a web site to encourage broader discussion - progressivemyth.com. I can be emailed at rjohnston@progressivemyth.com.
With Hope and Humility,
Randy Johnston
Comments