Dennis Claxton wrote:
>
>
> But didn't the roots of the civil rights movement include gender
> issues, like suffrage? And was it really identity movements that
> destroyed it? I'd give more weight to the same neo-con and neo-lib
> forces that have stymied progressive politics of all sorts for the
> last 30 odd years.
The Civil Rights movement was not destroyed; it ran its course. Mass movements of that sort seldom last over 5 years. And in any case "identity politics" did not destroy anything; they emerged only _after_ the political impulses of 1955-72 had run their course or reached their limits.
The defeat of MLK's 'invasion' of Chicago. The repression of the Panthers and AIM. The cooptation of the women's movement by the DP during the struggle for ratification of ERA. The McGovern campaign. The fragmentation of SDS and SNCC. The laundry-list politics of the CPUSA and the "single-issue" obsession of SWP. The individualizing effects of the slump of 1974-75. But most of all the counter-offensive of capital after having escaped the burden of Vietnam. (I don't list sectarianism, which was an effect rather than a cause.)
Carrol