In the summer of 1970, a surprisingly large number of women
marched down the middle of Fifth Avenue in New York to celebrate
the fiftieth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, the
amendment by which women won the vote. It was feared by many
that the march had been inspired by "radical feminists," even
perhaps Marxists, and many existing women's organizations were
loath to join or endorse the march. I was there. I don't know
who first thought of the march and did the initial organizing,
what I do remember is that all sorts of women with all sorts of
views took part. In other words, the march outgrew whatever
specific vision its organizers had, and became a joyous coming
together of women, mostly middle-class white women, who felt that
together, they could help each other to change their lives.
And that march did mark the beginning of change. For many
people, including myself, it began an involvement in the
contemporary woman's movement.
The parallels between race relations and gender relations
are sometimes surprising. When the feminist movement I am
speaking of was revived in the late 1960s and early 1970s, much
of what was asked for politically was modelled on the civil
rights movement. A concern with sexual discrimination had been
piggy-backed onto the outlawing of racial discrimination in the
Civil Rights Act of 1964. The idea of equal rights before the
law that had long been a racial goal was expanded to include
equal rights for women when the Equal Rights Amendment passed
Congress in 1972.
But it became apparent to women that much of what they hoped
for could not be completely addressed by the law. They wanted a
change of attitude, on the part of women as well as men, and
indeed such a social revolution did occur, as women poured out of
their suburban homes into offices and educational institutions to
change everyone's expectations of domestic life forever.
Now another segment of the population may be latching onto a
social revolution of its own, paralleling the enthusiasm and
perhaps the widespread change of the feminist revolution in our
society.
I am speaking, of course, of the Million Man March that took
place in Washington, D.C. in the fall of 1995. Like the women's
march, it called to a particular group, this time black men, not
white women. Like the women's march, it was not endorsed by many
existing organizations who were nervous as to the part the
organizers expected to play. Like the women's march, it outgrew
its organizers, so that 25 years hence, it may be that no one
will remember the publicized part played by Louis Farrakhan. And
like the women's march, people who went there came back with an
inspiration and a sense of activism that is changing their lives.
A reporter for the New York Times interviewed "nearly two
dozen men" who had all gone to the march on a bus chartered in
Harlem by a businessman who belonged to a civic group called One
Hundred Black Men. Their backgrounds and occupations were very
different, but they all said the experience had affected them in
ways that had nothing to do with Farrakhan's Nation of Islam.
Some increased the community work they had already been involved
in. One man joined the NAACP. One joined a church. One store
owner decided to build a community center in the basement of his
store to offer job training to unemployed men. A high school
student was moved to "think seriously about what I wanted to do
with my life." Another man was surprised to find himself
"speaking to other black men that pass on the street or at work."
In other words, they felt their consciousnesses had been raised.
Many of us who are not black men found our consciousnesses
raised, too, by that march. The spectacle of so many people,
coming together in such enthusiasm and in such an orderly fashion
-- television news reports told us that in all those crowds there
was only one arrest, for disorderly conduct, the entire day -- was
very hopeful and moving. One of the men interviewed by the Times
said that "there were a million men out there with not a
marijuana cigarette or whiskey bottle in sight. It reaffirmed my
confidence in the goodness of people."
This is how changes occur in society. First, individuals
have to believe that change is possible. Then they connect with
like-minded others. Then events occur that show them that they
can connect with a significant number of like-minded others. And
only then do they take action.
For social action to occur, it's important to know that
others who agree with you are out there, so that social action is
possible. Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique gave its readers
impressive research to show that many, many women were afflicted
with "the problem that has no name" -- the isolation and lack of
purpose of most housewives who had been taught that they should
live entirely for others. And enough women responded to the book
to make it a best-seller, thus creating awareness of a community.
This in turn provided a catalyst for action.
The Million Man March provided a similar catalyst for many
people. In a review last summer of a new book by Ellis Cose, A
Man's World: How Real is Male Privilege -- and How High is Its
Price, Stephen L. Carter wrote in the New York Times Book Review
that Cose "learns what serious scholars already know, that the
great majority of black males are not, after all, members of an
endangered species (most are middle-class and employed)." Cose
is himself a middle-class black male, an editor at Newsweek and
the author in 1994 of a book about black professionals, The Rage
of a Privileged Class, and this was apparently new information to
him. (Not to Carter, who put it in a parenthesis.) It was
probably new to the hundreds of thousands of middle-class black
men who went to Washington, and suddenly saw each other, as many
women did in New York in 1970.
Since the march, men all over the country who attended have
held follow-up meetings. In Harlem, schools held seminars on it.
The New York Urban League reported a record number of new
volunteers, and several black fraternities report that their
members want to establish new programs for young people.
In 1970, middle-class women started battered-women shelters,
formed abortion-rights organizations, started
consciousness-raising groups, started business networks, and
changed the face of higher education. We connected with each
other to make things better for other women, at the same time
that we were inspired to make our own individual lives more
meaningful. And by our doing all of this, "women's issues"
became visible to society at large, which means, to the market.
The market then responded with services, new educational
institutions, new rules in old educational institutions, and
eventually, a changing view of the work force.
It took time, and it wasn't easy. But it happened, and it's
still happening.
How is society going to change as a result of the coming
together of the majority of black men -- those who are
middle-class and employed -- who are now discovering that what
changes society is individuals taking individual action and
forming and supporting organizations to expedite and magnify
those actions? No one can predict it in its entirety.
That's the fascinating aspect of the market. As Thomas
Sowell wrote in Knowledge and Decisions, "Both the friends and
the foes of economic decision-making processes refer to 'the
market' as if it were an institution parallel with, and
alternative to the government as an institution. The government
is indeed an institution, but 'the market' is nothing more than
an option for each individual to choose among numerous existing
institutions, or to fashion new arrangements suited to his own
situation and taste."
Poor Louis Farrakhan. A social revolution, unlike a
political revolution, has no leaders. Or to put it another way,
it has so many leaders than none of them can become pre-eminent.
Simon Bolivar was "the father of his country," but who was the
"father" of the Industrial Revolution? You can't come up with
one name, any more than you can put a name to the "creator" of
the contemporary feminist movement. Was it Simone de Beauvoir?
Betty Friedan? Margaret Sanger? Rita Mae Brown? Germaine
Greer? NARAL? Karen DeCrow? The original Heterodoxy? Ms.
magazine? There were so many authors and books, so many new
organizations, that who influenced you depends totally on who you
are.
I didn't expect a specifically black men's movement. I've
always been sympathetic to a movement for men parallel to the
women's movement, to help them, too, to change their lives. But
up to now, there has been no call large enough to galvanize large
numbers of men to come together. Beating drums in the woods just
hasn't done it.
But black men are in a unique position. As women have been
(and still are), they are strongly subject to negative
stereotyping. And perhaps the worst stereotype they face is the
same one that women have faced over the years: the stereotype
that the expectations of them that "society" holds means that
they can do nothing meaningful to change their lot. One you
interiorize that, it becomes true.
This is the stereotype that began to change in October of
1995.
This piece was originally published by the
Association of
Libertarian Feminists.
