King on the Dilemma of Negro America – Part 1
Thomas Allen
In “The Dilemma of Negro America,” Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), pages 109–142, Martin Luther King, Jr., discusses the dilemma of the American Negro, slavery, the Negro family, life in the ghetto, integrated neighborhoods and open housing, Negro cohesion and unity, and the Negro middle class. The following is a critical review of King’s essay.
(First, I must remind the reader that most conservatives and nearly all conservative commentators consider King a conservative. Furthermore, many conservative commentators assert that King is an archconservative and the greatest conservative ever. Some have even deified him. Hereafter, all these conservatives are referred to as King-idolizing conservatives. Since King is an archconservative, these King-idolizing conservatives should advocate everything that King advocated.)
“The dilemma of white America is the source and cause of the dilemma of Negro America.” (P. 109.) (Thus, King blames all the problems of the Negro on Whites and relieves the Negro of all responsibility.)
Correctly, King states “that ‘no white person can ever understand what it means to be a Negro.’” (P. 109.) (Conversely, no Negro can ever understand what it means to be White. Even the great King realized this, which is why he tried to bend Whites to his will and train them what to think and do.)
Next, King asserts that “if the present chasm of hostility, fear and distrust is to be bridged, the white man must begin to walk in the pathways of his black brothers and feel some of the pain and hurt that throb without letup in their daily lives.” (P. 109.) (Once more, King places all the burdens on Whites. Obviously, he does not believe that the Negro is competent enough or capable of bridging the chasm. Whites must raise the Negro, and they have.)
Then, King claims, “The central quality in the Negro’s life is pain.” (P. 109.) (Since Whites have surrendered unconditionally to all Negro demands except reparations, Negroes should now have no pain. Or, is the lack of reparations the cause of their unbearable pain today?)
Next, King writes, “Being a Negro in America means being scarred by a history of slavery and family disorganization.” (P. 110.) (If true, why are not Whites scarred by their history of being slaves and serfs? Whites overcame their scarring without the aid of anyone else. If Whites can overcome their scarring without succor, why cannot Negroes? King preaches racial equality, so Negroes should show that they are equal to Whites by overcoming the scarring of slavery without White succor. Are Negroes that incompetent and inferior? Can they not do what Whites did? Moreover, Negroes had more intact families during the Jim Crow Era than they have had during the Civil Rights Era.)
King's answer to these questions is that the two groups cannot be compared. “Negroes were brought here in chains.” (P. 110.) Most Whites came voluntarily. (Yet, many of these Whites were descendants of serfs and slaves.)
King notes that other ethnic groups that came to America were racially the same as American, and, therefore, could easily assimilate. (He omits East Asians, who were discriminated against as much as, if not more, than Negroes. Moreover, various European ethnicities could assimilate without committing racial genocide. If Europeans and Negroes assimilate, they would genocide each other, which King desired.)
Next, King notes that under slavery, the family structure of Negroes was deliberately torn apart. (Under the welfare state, of which King approves and which is an integral part of the civil rights movement, the Negro family has been deliberately torn apart.)
Continuing, King describes the treatment of African slaves and how their families were torn apart. Then, he discusses the plight of the Negro during Lincoln’s War and Reconstruction. Negroes lived in poverty as sharecroppers for generations following Lincoln’s War. (So did many Southerners.) Negroes who migrated north ended up living in slums. Because of slavery, Negro culture developed into a matriarchy. (Even more than 150 years since slavery, the Negro as a whole has been unable to break free of matriarchy. However, since patriarchy is officially condemned, Negroes are now more advanced than Whites.)
Continuing, King comments about the difficulty that Negroes have finding gainful employment. Because of his race, skilled Negroes had difficulty finding work. (This was more of a problem in the North where labor unions were strong. Besides, a rising Negro middle class proves that many Negroes were competent enough to create wealth even under segregation.)
Further, King blames Negro men beating their wives and children on White segregating and discriminating against Negroes. Wife beating was a protest against social injustice. (Thus, King degrades Negro men.)
Then, King remarks that “nothing is so much needed as a secure family life for a people seeking to rise out of poverty and backwardness.” (P. 114.) However, White injustice keeps Negroes in poverty by preventing Negroes from having a secure family life. (Again, King blames Whites for the problems of Negroes. Negroes have no responsibility for improving themselves through their own efforts. Or, did King believe that they were innately too incompetent and incapable of improving themselves by their own efforts?)
King states that African “mothers fought slave traders fiercely to save their children.” (P. 114.) (He omits that the slave traders that these mothers fought were African Negroes.)
Continuing, King remarks, “The Negro family is scarred; it is submerged; but it struggles to survive.” (P. 115.) (Yet, the welfare state, which King adores, tears Negro families apart.)
Next, King writes, “To grow from within, the Negro family — and especially the Negro man — needs only fair opportunity for jobs, education, housing and access to culture.” (Pp. 115-116.) (Whites have given all these and more to Negroes. Unqualified Negroes are given jobs instead of highly qualified Whites. Likewise, in education, universities admit barely qualified Negroes instead of highly qualified Whites, especially White men. Whites have spent billions of dollars on housing for Negroes. So many Negroes received housing loans for which they did not qualify that it caused a financial crash. They got these loans because they were Negroes. If a lack of these things that King claimed caused the Negro’s dysfunctionality, then Negroes and their families should be far better off than Whites and their families. So, why are Negroes still complaining?)
Instead of blaming the dysfunctionality of the Negro family on the brutal and oppressive treatment that Negroes have received from Whites, King fears that it would “be attributed to innate Negro weaknesses.” (P. 116.) King implies that Negroes need Whites to solve their dysfunctional family problems. (Once more, King blames Whites for the Negro’s problems. Negroes bear no responsibility for causing or solving their problems. According to King, Negroes are too incompetent to solve their problems. Whites must do it for them.)
Next, King discusses the pain of “color shock,” especially by Negro children. He describes a coloring test that supposedly shows the emotional problems suffered by Negroes. (One of the most important pieces of evidence that swayed the Supreme Court in its school desegregation decision was the doll study of Kenneth Clark, a Negro. Clark testified that a majority of Black children from segregated schools preferred the White doll to the Black doll and chose the White doll as the one looking most like themselves. Earlier Clark had done his doll study with a much larger sample of Black children from public schools in Arkansas and in Massachusetts. He found that “the southern children in segregated schools are less pronounced in their preference for the white doll, compared to the northern [integrated] children’s definite preference for this doll. Although still in the minority, a higher percentage of southern children, compared to northern, prefer to play with the colored doll or think that it is a ‘nice’ doll.” Thus, to the extent that the doll study shows personality damage, segregation is less damaging than integration. [See “Review of Putnam's Race and Reality – Part 2” by Thomas Allen.] Of course, Negroes would have no “color shock” if they had their own monoracial country.)
Continuing, King writes, “Being a Negro in America means being herded in ghettos, or reservations, being constantly ignored and made to feel invisible.” (Pp. 117-118.) (This is more true in the North where Negroes concentrate in large cities where the ghettos are. Whatever ghettos existed in the South have mostly occurred in the Civil Rights Era as Negroes concentrate in cities in search of welfare. However, in the South, Negroes are scattered throughout, and Whites frequently see and interact with them.)
Then, King discusses the difficulty of Negroes getting jobs beyond the hardest, ugliest, and most menial work. Negroes knew that they were not going to get “well-paying construction jobs, because building trade unions reserve them for whites only.” (P. 119.) (This was more of a Northern problem where unions were strong than a Southern problem where unions were weak.) King notes that Negroes ”built the bridges, the mansions and docks of the South.” Yet, they were denied work on constructing new buildings in Northern cities.
Ignoring ghetto Negroes led to the 1965 Watts riot. However, King expresses surprise that so few ghetto Negroes have rioted.
Then, King discusses life in the ghetto and remarks that most ghetto Negroes are law-abiding. He focuses on the ghettos of Chicago where he worked for a while.
Continuing, King notes that in the Chicago area, much more money was spent on schools in White neighborhoods than in Negro neighborhoods. (Was not the Supreme Court’s desegregation ruling, which Northerners cheered and which quickly led to school integration in the South, supposed to end these discrepancies? However, forced busing had not yet arrived when King was in Chicago. Under forced busing, Negro children were bused to White neighborhoods, and Whites children were bused to Negro neighborhoods. And, education began declining to the Negro level.)
Next, King complains that Negroes in the slums of Chicago paid more rent than Whites paid for modern apartments in the suburbs. (Why did not King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), other civil rights organizations, and Negrophilic White liberals move these Negroes to cheaper and superior apartments in the suburbs?)
Continuing, King complains that consumer goods cost more in Negro ghettos than in suburban White neighborhoods. (The primary reason for the higher prices is risk. In Negro ghettos, store owners suffer higher losses from thefts and a much greater risk of having their store destroyed during a riot.) King blames the higher prices on a captive market. Many residents of the ghetto lack the means to shop outside the ghetto. (Why did not King’s SCLC, other civil rights organizations, and Negrophilic White liberals provide the residents transportation so that they could shop outside the ghetto? It would have taken fewer resources for King, civil rights organizations, and Negrophilic White liberals to resolve these problems of the ghetto Negro than they expended to destroy the South.)
Copyright © 2023 by Thomas Coley Allen.
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