James Harvey Black Unemployment Analysis

James Harvey criticises Johnson’s attempt to deal with black unemployment. He does this by discussing the impact of the high profile appointments of Black Americans. Harvey believes that Johnson had used this to showcase the work he was doing for the movement. This can be seen as Johnson had appointed ‘revolving door’ negroes - who were deemed as ‘Uncle Toms’ or not seen as a threat to the body politics - to powerless roles, but ensured that they were highly visible at all times. This is exemplified by the appointment of Thurgood Marshall as first black Supreme Court judge in 1967. This is because it had resulted in there being no significant change in the way in which the Supreme Court dealt with civil rights issues. The fact Johnson had selected

This indicated that they had no real power to influence any of the changes being enforced by the federal government. This would damage Johnson’s civil rights effort because it implies that he had chosen the people on the basis of their skin colour rather than ‘for their competence, wisdom and courage’ as he had claimed. This would have had a negative impact on his civil rights effort as it meant that these high profile appointments were only surface gains as they did not influence or improve the lives of the majority of black Americans who earned an income of less than half of that of white Americans. This would also undermine Johnson claims that the appointments of these black Americans to major posts would give the young black children a sense of hope as it would demonstrate to them that there was no barrier to their success. This is because even though the intention was there, the fact these appointments had made no difference to their lives meant that there would still be economic problems and other issues related to poverty which may have limited their