I learned labor and discrimination law from Prof. Daniel
Pollitt, who had been appointed to the NLRB by President Kennedy and eventually
became a law professor at the University of North Carolina. Here is the brief
introduction to his Stanford Law Review article, "The National Labor Relations
Board and Race Hate Propaganda in Union Organizing Drives" (1965).
The manipulation of racial hate for political or private gain
is nothing new in America. Today's politicians who play on racial fears can
trace their lineage through the Silver Shirts of the thirties, the Ku Klux Klan
of the twenties, and the Know-Nothings of a century ago. Nor is the
exploitation of racial distinctions exclusively an American phenomenon. Hitler
rose to power in Germany by fostering a tide of anti-Semitism; Japan's battle
cry was “Asia for the Asians”; and even the Greeks had a word for
it—xenophobia.
Neither the lessons of history, the growth of public
education, nor the passage of time has reduced the effectiveness of race hate
appeals. In the recent British elections the defeat of Patrick Gordon Walker,
slated for the position of Foreign Secretary in the new Labour Party
government, was assisted by the whispered slogan: “If you want a nigger
neighbor, vote Labour.” Another defeated Labour candidate complained that he had
been labeled “the member for Africa,” evoking memories of Labour Party
opposition to restrictions on the rush of dark-skinned immigrants from the
overseas Commonwealth nations. In the Congo, Premier Tshombe maintains his hold
in part through the exploitation of anti-Arab emotionalism; at a recent rally
he exclaimed, “Nasser is not the chief of the state of the Congo.... The real
Africa is our Africa, black Africa.” And to the south, Southern Rhodesia and
the Union of South Africa maintain their white governments through a policy of
apartheid.
Here at home, each major political party in the 1964
presidential election used the other's campaign literature to promote support
for its candidates through prejudice. A Democratic campaign folder, with
photographs of President Johnson alongside such Negro leaders as Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr., was widely distributed in the South by Republican Party
workers. Meanwhile, Democrats in Virginia were busy distributing a Goldwater
broadside prepared for an appeal in the District of Columbia Negro wards. This
pamphlet was prepared at Senator Goldwater's suggestion “to correct widespread
misunderstanding among Washington Negro voters,” and quotes him as “unalterably
opposed to discrimination or segregation on the basis of race.” Fearing that it
would fall into the wrong hands, the Republican National Committee quashed the
leaflet, but the stop order came too late; the Virginia Democratic organization
had already prepared 50,000 copies to neutralize the expected effect of the
white “backlash” against President Johnson's success in getting the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 through Congress.
….
In the United States, Illinois once made it a criminal
offense to engage in “group libel,” i.e., to portray “depravity, criminality,
unchastity, or lack of virtue” on the basis of “race, color, creed or
religion.” In the political arena, the watchdog Fair Campaign Practices
Committees have not ended the calumny and vindictive falsehoods in election
campaigning; and experiences with the right-to-reply technique suggest the difficulty
of establishing by law a freedom for voters to make up their own minds, without
at the same time intruding further than seems advisable upon other related
freedoms. But no matter how difficult and controversial the solution, the
problem of race hate propaganda for personal and group advantages cannot be
ignored. This Article will explore one aspect of American experience—the
somewhat ambivalent policy of the National Labor Relations Board toward the use
of race hate propaganda in union organization drives, and its possible effect
on other values Americans consider vital.
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