A Hard Rain Fell: SDS and Why It Failed (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Hard Rain Fell: SDS and Why It Failed Damon Randolph Bach A Hard Rain Fell: SDS and Why It Failed David Barber Jackson University Press of Mississippi, 2008; 286 pp. $50.00, ISBN 978-1-934110-17-1 (cloth) A Hard Rain Fell encompasses more than the subtitle implies. According to author David Barber, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) represented the direction of the white New Left, thus this study is not only about the failure of SDS, but about the disintegration of the white New Left as well. In November 1968, SDS had over 80,000 members. Less than a year later, the organization fractured and was "dead." Barber identifies the factors that hastened the New Left 's dissolution: it foundered "because it ultimately came to reflect the dominant white culture's understandings of race, gender, class, and nation" (5). Barber contends that the New Left's inability to break from a traditional American perspective on race undermined its effectiveness. Young white activists did not fully comprehend their white racialization or white identity and the privileges that came with it. White superiority was pervasive in American society, and young whites within the movement came to believe that they alone could "pave the way for a better world for all" (228). They saw themselves as the "normal" Americans, the vanguard of a mass movement, and subordinated the racial struggle to a broader fight for social change. Again and again, whites ignored the advice of black leaders such as Stokely [End Page 167] Carmichael and Donald Jackson, who prodded whites to organize against racism in white communities. They continued to mobilize blacks in Northern cities with the Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP). Unexamined whiteness and the belief in the superiority of white intellect also prevented an SDS-Panther alliance. Whites—especially Bernardine Dohrn—took a "more revolutionary than thou" (49) stance toward the black militants, unwilling to accept black leadership. Barber also contends that the New Left never fully understood the nature of American empire. Young white revolutionaries believed that imperialism happened to people of color overseas, while capitalism happened to mainstream Americans at home. Many were unable to make the connections between race and imperialism. Black leaders like Malcolm X did understand the link, but whites did not wholly embrace his belief that blacks had been colonized within the United States. Furthermore, white activists were also blind to the fact that they, too, had been the beneficiaries of a race-based empire and had helped to maintain it. Moreover, the New Left did not transcend or adequately combat male domination, sexism, and chauvinism. Males directed most of the ERAP projects. Men ignored women in SDS, while also sexually exploiting them. The Weathermen's efforts at smashing monogamy equated to "sex on demand" for men. Women reacted to male supremacy in divergent ways. The "politicos" committed themselves to women's liberation within a larger movement context, while the "radicals" severed from SDS. Th e refusal of white males to abandon their sexism and domination of the New Left was damaging, as the movement lost valuable and experienced female members. Barber also finds fault with white women who undermined the resilience of the New Left. White female activists in New York Radical Women (NYRW) for instance, placed struggles pertaining to white women above other issues such as racial oppression. By 1969, SDS was headed toward destruction. As the Panthers faced their ruin under government repression, SDS membership burgeoned and the organization saw itself as the vanguard of a radical revolutionary movement. Weathermen fought police in the streets of Chicago during the Days of Rage. They had disregarded Panther Fred Hampton's counseling against "adventurism," and ignored the advice of the Vietnamese at Havana who had urged them to cultivate a broad, unified, antiwar movement. Weathermen [End Page 168] tactics were self-defeating. They only wanted to "kick ass," and SDS ceased to exist just as antiwar agitation hit its apex. Barber's book is a valuable contribution to the scholarly literature on the New Left and SDS. He has succeeded in pointing out problems that undercut the New Left's viability, shortcomings that other scholars have overlooked...