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August 24, 2005
Looking for Racial Progress in All the Wrong Places
Well here's some controversy--although perhaps not the kind Martin intended.
Martin summarizes the book accurately:
"Blood Done Sign My Name" is a careful and sensitive retelling of Oxford, North Carolina's encounters with some of the worst events in the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s and early 1970s. The story tells how the town and its people dealt with a brutal racial killing and downtown burnings that were a part of the accompanying racial unrest.Forty years ago, writes Martin, this book would have opened a "torrent of controversy" on the UNC campus.
But today, Martin observes,
it is 2005. Now everybody is "pro-civil rights and equal rights." The children and grandchildren of people who fought for continued segregation and white dominance now fill the Smith Center to give adoring cheers to black students who bring their team victories.This is the best that Martin can do to illustrate Southern racial progress? Point to crowds of white students cheering for black basketball players? Mr. Martin, black people have been serving as entertainment for white people for a long time--including, especially, the time of segregation and white dominance. A group of African-American athlete-entertainers and their adoring white audience do not prove racial progress. Black UNC students performing at the highest levels of achievement, tenured black faculty members, top black administrators, a strong network of black alumni across the state and the country, cross-racial friendships and academic collaborations: those are UNC's best symbols of racial progress.
Even worse, from my perspective, is Martin's callous invocation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In the story that "Blood Done Sign My Name" tells, some in the black community responded to the racial murder of a young black man by firebombing unoccupied tobacco warehouses at night, destroying $10 million worth of property. Here's what Martin does with this:
[Book author Timothy] Tyson challenges our thinking. His story shows, whether we like it or not, that it was violent activity, as much as the nonviolent, that led to changes in Oxford.This is how Martin dramatizes to his white readership that we have some serious reckoning with our past to do: he compares Southern whites to that all-purpose paradigm of the racial oppressor -- the Israeli.If we really "turn to face these hounds," this part of our history ought not to be so easy for us to confront. Like an Israeli who asks himself whether Palestinian terrorism was a major factor prompting Israel to withdraw from Gaza, we do not want to acknowledge that violence was effective in pushing us do the "right" thing.
Is this really the analogy Martin wanted? Does he really want us to reflect on how "effective" the murders of Israeli civilians in restaurants, hotels, nightclubs, and buses have been? Does he really want us to consider the nighttime torching of an unoccupied tobacco warehouse alongside the hijackings of airplanes and cruise ships, the kidnapping and murder of Olympic athletes, and dozens of suicide bombings? Does Palestinian terrorism really shed much light on the struggle for African-American equality? How?
We all have work to do on our racial pasts, but Martin should have invited us to do it without disparaging Israel and without justifying suicide bombings.
UPDATE: In her reaction to the same column, Sally Greene notes, among many other important things, the difference between D.G. Martin's take on Tim Tyson's view on the value of violence and Tim Tyson's take on Tim Tyson's view on the value of violence.
Posted by Eric at August 24, 2005 11:53 AM
Comments
I've got to play the Cindy Sheehan card here. A couple weeks ago, in a very effective indictment of Bush, she argued "no peace until Israel is out of Palestine."
Ahhh. Thinly veiled anti-semitic political presumptions. They aren't just for breakfast any more. Turns out they are an all-purpose staple of political arguments.
Of course the college basketball analogy isn't entirely inapt, given Dean Smith's role in desegregating North Carolina, and the whole Adolph Rupp/UTEP/Tubby Smith narrative at Kentucky.
Posted by: Al_Maviva at August 26, 2005 10:49 AM
I am not sure that I follow why Cindy Sheehan is "anti-Semitic" for her view that there will be no peace until Israel is out of Palestine. This is mere ad hominem argument--name calling instead of explication.
Having said that, I don't think that D.G. Martin's analogy of Oxford, North Carolina 1970 and the Middle East 2005 holds up that well. But it does push us to the far end of our logic, asking us what the roles of both violence and moral suasion might be in our politics and pointing toward the difficult and imprecise nature of these judgements.
As for Dean Smith, basketball, and integration, those are charming stories, and Coach Smith deserves some credit, but young people had to lie down in the streets of Chapel Hill, block the entrance to various restaurants, get beat up and pissed on (literally, I am afraid) and arrested in order for Coach Smith to do anything. Without the tense social setting that was created by students who simply would not shut up or go away, Coach Smith's actions would not have mattered. We should not substitute the orderly, heroic, conscience-driven "change from on high" model for the messy, loud, controversial public clash that actually occurred in Chapel Hill.
Posted by: Tim Tyson at August 27, 2005 9:16 AM
"I'm for the extermination of the Israeli state; not the eradication of the Jews."
Perhaps it's not anti-Semitism, Tim, but I'll be damned if I can tell the difference. Maybe I'm just a moron, but I have trouble distinguishing between arguing (and fighting for) the destruction of Israel, and standard anti-Semitism. Perhaps it's because so many who voice the former argument, also give voice to the latter. And frankly, I have trouble seeing how arguing for the death of 3 million+ Jews, isn't anti-Semitic. I suppose Hitler's plans wouldn't have been anti-Semitic, either, had they only been phrased as "urban renewal."
And this line of argument has actually led me to a realization. Arguing for the destruction of the Israeli state isn't anti-Semitic in form; it is anti-Semitic only in effect.
I suppose the next argument for you, is to argue that the effect is purely incidental, and therefore it passes muster?
Posted by: Al Maviva at August 28, 2005 11:19 PM
I am sorry, Al, I hadn't realized that D.G. Martin had argued for the extermination of the Jews. You're being a demogogue. Everyone who disagrees with you is an anti-Semite? Well, call us what you will, but plenty of us are critical of Israeli policies, and calling them anti-Semites does not make them wrong and will not persuade anyone. D.G. Martin is a thoughtful, cheerful, tolerant, kindly North Carolina liberal, and I suspect his membership in Hamas may have lapsed. You should have apologized immediately
Posted by: Tim Tyson at September 6, 2005 12:07 AM