Status Discrepancy and the Radical Rejection of Nonviolence

Interviews with Negro members of the Congress of Racial Equality during 1961–1963 show that the commitment to nonviolence was both extensively and intensively weak. Cross tabulation of attitudes on nonviolence with attitudes toward war indicates no consistent pacifism, but a tendency for radicals to reject military service while accepting violence in the movement, and for moderates to accept military service while rejecting violence in the movement. Radicalism was associated with inconsistent status experiences: Northern upbringing and the combination of high occupational and educational status with low racial status. Exposure to radical ideas was also a strong factor. The connection between the verbal, ideological radicalism of the CORE activists and actual ghetto insurrections is complex. The predominantly middle class CORE members are unlikely to engage in such class-alien behavior, but they do produce an ideology which politicizes lower class Negro youths and legitimates spontaneous violence as a form of protest.