Who Failed? Civil Rights Leaders or the White Church?

The Civil Rights Movement had many notable successes but some of them have been reversed.  Was this because of divisions that developed within the movement or because most of the white church sat on the sidelines and still is on the sidelines?

Joy Leary in her groundbreaking book, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, makes these observations:

     I cannot count the number of times I have heard white people, as well as a few black people, argue, 'Race is no longer an issue in this country.  After all, slavery ended one hundred and fifty years ago and blacks have had their civil rights for fifty years.  Stop making excuses.  It's time to move on.

     Unfortunately, the crime here is that civil rights legislation fell significantly short of its intent to level the playing field and guarantee equality and justice for all.

Then black scholar Leary approvingly quotes Robert Westly:

     A crucial but seldom considered defect of all civil rights legislation is the fact that it needs to be administered and enforced.   Many Blacks (and whites, too) appear to be under some delusion that once Congress passes civil rights legislation, Blacks are protected from discrimination and white racism.  Nothing could be further from the truth, as the history of Black Reconstruction clearly shows.  Every measure passed by Congress during Reconstruction for social and political equality of Blacks---with the possible exception of the Thirteenth Amendment---was subverted or made null and void before the turn of the century.

In other words, whites control the political and legal systems of this country; seldom do they vigorously enforce civil rights laws; seldom does the white church demand that they do so.  Therefore, the status quo of white superiority and privilege continues.

Michelle Alexander, in her book The New Jim Crow, documents this practice:

     President Ronald Reagan officially announced the current drug war in 1982, before crack became an issue in the media or a crisis in poor black neighborhoods.  A few years after the drug war was declared, crack began to spread rapidly in the poor black neighborhoods of Los Angeles and later emerged in cities across the country.  The Reagan administration hired staff to publicize the emergence of crack cocaine in 1985 as a part of a strategic effort to build public and legislative support for the war.  The media campaign was an extraordinary success.  Almost overnight, the media was saturated with images of black 'crack whores, 'crack dealers,' 'crack babies.' . . . .  helped to catapult the War on Drugs from an ambitious federal policy to actual war.

With heavy racial profiling, this new system of oppression---unjust mass incarceration---became a nightmare, destroying much of King's Dream.  President Bill Clinton, the first 'black' president, soon joined the racist parade:

     In 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton vowed that he would never permit any Republican to be perceived as tougher on crime than he. . . . .  Once elected, Clinton endorsed the idea of a federal "three strikes and you're out" law, which he advocated in his 1994 State of the Union address to the enthusiastic applause on both sides of the aisle. . . . .  Clinton escalated the drug war beyond what conservatives had imagined possible a decade earlier.

And the white church either was silent on the sidelines or sometimes cheered the get tough, racial profiling approach.