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A Hard Rain Fell: SDS and Why It Failed

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Serious works on the SDS are rare, and this one certainly ranks among them. Yet its view of the SDS as just another bastion of white male supremacy does more to show the bias of its author than describe the full, complex spirit of SDS.

Many individuals of diverse backgrounds went into the organization. One could surely find those "infected with the viruses of white racism and male chauvinism." And yet among white males of their generation there were, as a group, none more committed to combatting these vices in American society than the SDS. Its members came across to majority, non-radical Americans as the equivalent of Abolitionists: preachy, self-righteous, and self-excluding in their purity. How to square this with the image projected in this book, and buttressed by admittedly real examples of hypocrisy?

By keeping in mind that feminists and black militants were themselves quite capable of hypocrisies. While denouncing white racism, black radicals like the Panthers weren't above indulging in "f--- whitey" racism of their own. Feminists could and did sink to female chauvinism of the "all men are pigs" variety. More than a few white male SDSers found themselves rejected by radical female and black comrades, no matter how hard they tried to behave "correctly," simply because - in the end - they were neither black nor female, nor could they be.

Another factor not given its true deserts was the embrace of Zionism and Israel by New Left members. The Jewish heritage of white radical SDSers was in greater proportion than mainstream life. The rise of militant groups like the Jewish Defense League attracted many Jewish male radicals to reaffirm their own unique roots and was - as in the career of David Horowitz - a backlash against the rising brick wall of black militant exclusion.

White male intolerance was a factor within the SDS, but it was in my view secondary to the rise of black and feminist exclusiveness in fragmenting the movement. Other factors surely were the end of the Vietnam War and the passage of Affirmative Action. These longterm victories within the Establishment removed the movement's central grievances, encouraging racial splintering and sexual sectarianism as it floundered in drying waters.

"A Hard Rain Fell" was hard to find. But I was finally able to borrow a copy from a distant library. It's an expensive book. I don't often plunk down $40 for a book. But after reading the library version, I had to have one to mark up in pencil. This one is worth the 40 bucks.

Until I began reading about SDS this year, I didn't realize its roots were in the civil rights movement - that many in SDS were committed to continuing the civil rights work - to abolish racism in the U.S. A worthy goal - but a dance that white organizers tried to master, yet ended up stumbling all over their own clunky privileged walking shoes.

Not only does "A Hard Rain Fell" chart the trajectory of SDS' destruction, the book's analysis of how white and male privilege interfered with the best intentions of 60s and 70s activists illuminates a still persistent problem. White privilege continues to blind white folks to the support position we must assume in throwing off the chains of oppression to achieve widespread liberation.


It may seem that there are fewer people available now to do the work that was left unfinished in the 60s and 70s, but if we take Stokely Carmichael's challenge to organize against racism in white communities first -- we will build the movement that must grow and thrive if we are ever to see real change. As book author David Barber paraphrases Anne Braeden, "you could not organize white people without placing racism at the center of the agenda 'from the very beginning.'"


And now, here we are, in an election year that thrusts so much unacknowledged racism out into the open. Here's yet another opportunity to take the best from "A Hard Rain Fell," and use it to make a difference. It may not involve demonstrations or takeovers of buildings. It may not be the kind of movement that makes heroes of those who do the work or allows you to project your own unacknowledged racism onto someone else and call him or her wrong (ah, that satisfaction that comes from confronting worse people than yourself! -- Later for that kind of breast-beating, friends). Trying to be or provide the vehicle that dawns awareness on someone new or strengthens new awareness in ourselves and in those around us is the consciousness most of us have yet to attain (and nurture).


David Barber has given us a glimpse of how we can move forward from here. I highly recommend "A Hard Rain Fell" by David Barber.

The author's analysis is that the New Left wasn't radical enough, and that's why they failed to mobilize the white working class. I have to wonder if he's old enough to have been there.