Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession [Hardcover]

Studs Terkel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1992

The author of Working and Hard Times examines the leading issue in American politics, presenting the feelings of nearly one hundred Americans on such issues as affirmative action, changing neighborhoods, secret prejudices, and more.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The first title from Andre Schiffrin's publishing house is a major, timely book for an election year. In Terkel's ( Hard Times ) well-established manner--he is one of the great interviewers--he encourages a wide range of Americans, black and white, to speak their minds about race with remarkable frankness, as well as about their perceptions of the Washington leadership. The resulting book is infinitely more informative than polls taken on such issues because the subjects are allowed to explore their thoughts, prejudices, hopes and fears. There is almost universal agreement among the blacks and white sympathizers interviewed that life looks darker for blacks now than it did 20 years ago. A strong commitment to civil rights, meaningful affirmative action and poverty programs and a social climate in which overt racism was unacceptable all apparently suffered during the Reagan years. And now the economic hardships that are also partly a legacy of that era are further polarizing American society in ways that are seldom discussed. As South African author Rian Malan tells Terkel, "I think there's been an unhealthy trend in America for a long time not to discuss race. . . . I think airing prejudice could be healthy. . . . Race prejudice is something that thrives in ignorance." But optimism is hard to come by. Black psychologist Kenneth Clark states: "I am not sanguine about any kind of solid decency and justice in the area of race in America. The best we can settle for is appearance." The immediacy with which the interviewees speak about their experiences brings a fine leavening of anecdotes and stories to the mix of opinions, from tales of run-ins with the police ("I don't know one black person who's never had an encounter with cops," says a young middle-class musician) to moments of surprising warmth and understanding, as when a former Klansman finds himself working as a union leader with his arch-enemy, a formidable black woman. The reader comes away with greatly expanded understanding of much recent American social history and a wish that more respondents could display the balance of the well-adjusted mixed couples whose testimonies end the book.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Focusing on one of the themes of his interview collection The Great Divide (1988), Pulitzer-winner Terkel (``The Good War'', 1984, etc.) elicits from dozens of blacks and whites a kaleidoscope of emotions on how they have been affected by race. The voices of nearly one hundred ordinary (and a few extraordinary) people, largely Chicagoans, are heard, running the gamut from a 26-year-old white construction worker (``I think this city would be a much better place if there wasn't a majority of black people living here'') to a black domestic outraged at the Statue of Liberty centennial (``What are you celebrating? You came here in chains in the bottom of ships and half-dead and beaten''). Raw, reasonable, and every gradation between, the subjects include the mother of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black youth lynched for allegedly whistling at a white woman in 1954; a white federal criminal investigator whose liberalism has been shaken by the crimes she sees in the inner city; psychologist Kenneth B. Clark, bemoaning the past few decades' stalling of black progress; a black street hustler yearning for a job laying carpets; and a Ku Klux Klansman who has renounced racism and embraced his former black foes. Several leitmotifs are sounded--including the black male's plight, Rev. Louis Farrakhan, black sexual myths, crimes, the equity of affirmative action, and continuing racial animosity despite economic injustices suffered by blacks and poor whites alike. For all their differences, the interviewees are in virtually unanimous agreement that the gap between the races has widened during the Reagan-Bush years. Through these vivid, searching voices, Terkel depicts, in all their complexity and humanity, people grappling with dilemmas posed in Andrew Hacker's Two Nations (p. 92). -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 403 pages
• Publisher: New Pr; 1st edition (April 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565840003
• ISBN-13: 978-1565840003
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #845,173 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Studs Terkel (1912-2008) was a free spirit, an outspoken populist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a terrible ham, and one of the best-loved characters on the American scene. Born in New York in 1912, he lived in Chicago for over eight decades. His radio show was carried on stations throughout the country.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, April 14, 2007

By 

James Generic - See all my reviews

This review is from: Race: How Blacks And Whites Think And Feel About The American Obsession (Paperback)

Studs Terkel's "Race" is another in a series of books that provides an excellent oral history about subjects that few feel free to talk about. If you like oral history, then you'll love Studs Terkel. Famous for his classic book "Working", he seeks out common "unfamous" Americans and simply asks them to talk about what they think about Race and race relations, in this book. Written in 1990, the book is a little dated, but still holds largely true. There are around 100 interviews in this book. He interviews about an equal amount of Blacks and Whites with some other ethnicities mixed in, and like in all of his books, he interviews about the same number of old and young, men and women, and middle-class and poor. (No mention of anyone's sexuality though.)

Some highlighted stories are from a white former Ku Klux Klan member and a black former civil rights leader are interviewed some two decades later. The Ku Klux Klan member has become a hard-core anti-racist radical who is President of his union which is more than 80% Black. The former civil rights leader has become a conservative republican (though he still believes in limited Affirmative Action). Many of the other stories are interesting because when you put the white point of view and the black point of view right next to each other, there are clearly some huge gaps in understanding each other, and usually the faults and ignorance seem to lie on the white point of view (though some of the interviewed are trying to change their understandings or admit they've changed). There is a lot of frustration on both sides, but at no point do you get an opinion exactly the same as another individual.

I have a belief that you should have 10% theory and 90% action, and lately I've been reading a lot of theory. Books like these are a good antidote to too much theory in your life. I love oral history, because it's straight to the point and doesn't require any detective work by the reader to find out what the author is talking about. Something like the subject of Race, being so linked to how people in the United States relate to each other, you need some straight-forward answers. People too often dance around the issue of race and in order to build a social change movement that brings real improvement in all people's lives; we can't squirt around race anymore than class or gender or sexuality or anything else. Most often, the real battle is the battle for the hearts and minds of people, and to understand what that is exactly. Oral history is important.

In conclusion, Studs Terkel is my favorite non-fiction writer of all time, because his work involves the words of thousands of ordinary people.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A revealing look at the 'American obsession.', October 14, 2002

By 

Chris (Washington state, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession (Paperback)

rst a few parahprases from the interviews in this book which was published in 1993:"

Professor Douglas Massey points out that relatively stable jobs such as in factories, steel mills and auto plants have dissapeared in black communities. These jobs have largely dissapeared for this generation. Blacks cannot move to where decent jobs might be because of their difficulty in entering the housing market. A person working in the service economy, say at Macdonalds, full time at minimum wage, can't stay above the poverty line.

Alex Berteau, a partner in a law firm, says that it's tough for him to talk to young successful whites who say that they have nothing to do with the injustices done to African Americans in the past. Berteau says, no, it's not them, it's their fathers, who profited while paying black people subsistence wages so their children to go to Harvard. This young individual says "Don't lay it on my doorstep" yet he is getting all the fruits of it. Berteau, says that this youngster has a college degree but the black man who slaved so his father could get everything cheap is illiterate and can barely speak English. To get rid of Affirmative Action, is to ignore history, he says.

Maggie Holmes, retired domestic worker, refers to a painting at the Chicago art musem in the mid-80's of Chicago's black progressive mayor Harold Washington in a bra and panties and apparently an exhibit consisting of an American flag on the floor which people were invited to walk on. To judge by her comments, it appears the white population ridiculed the anger of blacks at the first, but raised an uproar at the second. She also says that the American flag is just an old rag that dosen't mean anything to her, because white people burned things and wrapped themselves around that flag when Dr. King was marching.

Mike Wrobleski, former police captain in Chicago is interviewed. He got a lot of viscious harrassment from his fellow officers during the 80's because he would not tolerate racist posters and other expressions, many about Mayor Washington, in police stations under his watch. He got one letter which contained a picture of a naked black man and a white woman with her mouth open that said "You nigger-lover. This is what my wife is doing when I'm not at home." Terkel notes that this lout actually meant to say "your wife" instead of "my wife" and Wrobleski comments that there is probably some deep Freudian stuff in that case, the fear of the alleged sexual prowess of black men on which he based his racism.

Fred Hampton, is only refered to once in this book, in the very last interview. Terkel says in a footnote that in 1990 the Chicago city council voted to have a Fred Hampton day but after that sixteen white alderman objected on the grounds that they thought they had voted to honor Dan Hampton the Chicago Bears football player.

Most of these interviews take place with people from Chicago, Terkel's hometown, which has always been pretty volatie racially. Marquette Park is refered to several times early in the book. This was where Dr. King tried to have a march in 1966 but instead got assaulted with rocks several times by rampaging white mobs, whose hatred terrified him. He said that it had surpassed anything he had seen in the South.

Then there are a few like C.P. Ellis and Ann Atwater from Durham North Carolina. Ellis was a poor white klansman who battled the black activist Atwater in the racial strife of Durham in the 60's. Ellis started to lose his enthusisasm for the KKK when he realized that the big politicians and economic elite of Durham who provided funds and expressions of racial solidarity to him and his chapter of the KKK during the nightime were embarassed to associate with a poor white like him during the daytime. He realized that poor whites had a heck of a lot in common with poor blacks. He became close to Atwater and speaks about her in his interviews (one in 1978, the other in 1989) with great emotion. He became a multi-racial union organizer. C.P. Ellis is an example of what Dr. Kenneth Clark of Brown Vs. Board of education fame refers to, in his interiview, about poor whites trying to get feelings of self-worth in this society by stomping on poor blacks below them in the class system.W

ill Campbell, a White Southern preacher says in his interview regarding the origins of the term "redneck. It was from a Edwin Markham poem which refered to the poor white farmer taking a break from his slavery, putting his hands on his hoe and looking on the ground. All the while the scorching sun beats down on the back of his neck. Thus he gets a redneck. Unfortunately, says the reverand, we've equated that with racism.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Candid Oral History, July 22, 2008

By 

Valerie J. Saturen (Tacoma, WA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Race: How Blacks And Whites Think And Feel About The American Obsession (Paperback)

I first encountered Studs Terkel's fascinating oral histories through his book "Working." In "Race," he creates a richly textured study of one of America's great obsessions--and taboos--in the early 1990s. His interviewees represent a wide range of perspectives, including both "experts" and ordinary people of many socioeconomic backgrounds, and their testimonies are remarkably candid. Although they encompass several ethnic groups, the focus of the book is race relations between blacks and whites, as the subtitle indicates.

For the most part, the book is centered on Chicago, a city with a troubled history regarding race. Infamously, the violent response to a 1966 civil rights march in Marquette Park prompted Martin Luther King to remark, "I have seen many demonstrations in the South, but I have never seen anything so hostile and so hateful as I've seen here today." Chicago is also a pertinent site for such a study because of the devastating impact the decline of manufacturing has had upon the city's black population. Terkel's interviewees discuss the effects of this decline upon the economic status of many of Chicago's black residents and the resultant disintegration of the family, in addition to the interracial tension caused by the loss of jobs (a tension that often manifests as a debate over affirmative action). Many interviewees, both black and white, seem to agree that overt racial prejudice became more socially acceptable during the Reagan years, reversing a trend that began with the civil rights movement. Many also discuss the popularity of Louis Farrakhan, with varied feelings.

Another frequently recurring theme is that of interracial dating and marriage. Some support interracial relationships or are themselves in one, while others confess to feelings of resentment when they see an interracial couple. Interviewees of both races talk about the deep-seated insecurities (especially male insecurities) that often surround the issue.

Although aspects of the book are grim, showing how blacks and whites have actually grown farther apart due to a widening economic gap and diverging cultural (particularly linguistic) courses, there are some rays of hope. One especially memorable section is the story of C.P. Ellis and Ann Atwater of Durham, North Carolina. A former Ku Klux Klansman, Ellis eventually comes to feel that, as a poor white, he has more in common with poor blacks than with white members of the elite who exploit them both. Although he knows he will be stigmatized for his change of heart, he reaches out to Atwater, a black activist, and the two become not only colleagues but close friends.

What makes this book unique is the sheer variety of voices it contains, each offering a completely different perspective. Despite the unfortunate reluctance of many Americans to discuss race, Terkel succeeds in drawing out the people he talks to. Their observations remain very relevant over a decade later.