The Black Man’s Burden: The White Liberal

No one has been more aware and less surprised by the white liberal’s retreat than the Negro intelligentsia engaged in the civil rights struggle. They have been watching with increasing skepticism the liberal’s distress with the fact of integration, a distress chronicled in John Fischer’s Harper‘s editorial (July 1962) “What the Negro Needs Most: A First Class Citizen Council,” Murray Friedman’s Atlantic piece (January 1963) “The White Liberal’s Retreat,” and most recently Norman Podhoretz’s Commentary article (February 1963) “My Negro Problem—And Ours.” These articles have been greeted by the Negro intelligentsia with a rather icy contempt, annoyance and indifference, and finally even a dash of relief; if further disillusionment were possible, these articles should have done much to squeeze it out.

The honeymoon between white liberals and the Negroes is over. The liberal...