Ideological Forces and the Negro Protest

Abstract

The challenge of Negro protest and the response of the white community in the 1960's raise anew the central questions of the American ideological tradition. The current conflict over goals and techniques is essentially the same ends- and-means controversy that has divided Americans and fresh ened their dialogue for nearly two centuries. Rationality versus irrationality, prudence versus moral conscience, private versus public interest, property rights versus human rights, limited versus unlimited weapons, radicalism versus equalitarianism, separatism versus integrationism—all the great philosophical issues are inherent in the present phenomena of protest and re sistance: in the street demonstrations, the sit-ins, the court cases, the riots, the economic reprisals, the bombings, the beatings, and the rest. Both in aim and in method the center thrust of Negro protest closely resembles the labor, feminist, agrarian, antitrust, and other equalitarian movements. Though the American value context has been ambiguous enough to support the Negro in his struggles for survival and freedom and also to lend en couragement to those he has struggled against, the weight of ideological coercion has been shifting toward equalitarianism in the past two decades.