The Racial Thaw
It's a cliche that people who came of age after the civil rights movement, can't imagine the world of Jim Crow and segregation that preceded them. To a lesser extent, at 45--I turn 46 on Wednesday--I find it slightly hard to explain what America's racial environment was like in the late 80s and early nineties when I was the same age as some of my new colleagues at TPM. While in some ways the country had advanced from the 60s and 70s--some indicia were encouraging such as more black elected officials--there was a deep well of despair about race relations in ways that now seem puzzling if not quaint.
Intellectuals were authentically worried about the rise of Louis Farrakhan in the mid 80s and the crowds he would draw for his conspiratorial rants. The debate over afrocentrism roiled intellectual circles. The surge of interest in Malcolm X seemed to mark an end of King-era reconciliation. The persistence of seemingly intractible black poverty was a source of endless debate. Charles Murray's rightfully maligned "The Bell Curve" suggested that IQ might be partially to blame. In popular culture, I think it would be hard to overstate the unsettling feeling many whites had seeing Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" which began with what then seemed like a menacing rendition of Chuck D and Flavor Flav's "Fight the Power" to its riotous end. After all, Howard Beach and Rodney King and Crown Heights followed as did the LA Riots and later the O.J. Simpson verdict which led to a national moment of soul searching that seems a lifetime away from the events of this week. Clearly there was some kind of thaw in race relations between then and now. I say that with the obvious caveat that racism persists, all is not right, etc, and yet....here we are on the eve of the Obama presidency.
Why is America's racial atmosphere less poisonous than it was then?
I have a few thoughts which aren't easily quantifiable but I think went a long way towards easing things. First, I think the drop in crime and teen pregnancy in the 90s helped ease some of the fear of whites. (Of course, there was plenty of racism before the spike in out-of-wedlock births among blacks and whites.) But if you read a book like Tom Edsall's very smart "Chain Reaction" or Joanathan Rieder's "Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn Against Liberalism." you see how much of white atitudes and voting patters were driven by fears--exaggerated nonetheless but real--about black-on-white crime. When those problems eased, race relations, I think did. Some issues like court-ordered school busing vanished from the scene. Second, I think the wholesale absorption of hip-hop culture into the white culture helped. What once seemed menacing, became mainstream. (Flavor Flav is now a middle age, buffoonish figure.) I think Bill Clinton's ease with African-Americans helped and his appointment of large numbers of African Americans. I don't want to say anything nice about George W. Bush on my first day at TPM but I think appointing two African American secretaries of state, fifth in the line of succession, made it easier to envision a President Obama. Affirmative Action, still a contentious issue in American life, seems to have lost much of its divisive power as its become engrained. And the oft-remarked demographic changes in America, the surge of immigration especially, made the tableau more complicated.
When Barack Obama looks out from the Capitol tomorrow there will be endless commentary on how American changed since King spoke at the other end of the Mall. But what's less commented upon but still worth noting is how America changed in the last 25 years.
Josh
Elana
Matt
Eric
I don't share your perception. I think that Obama's election is sui generis, a surprising and remarkable event but not the culmination of a larger trend. Look at how good Obama had to be, how perfect a campaign he had to run, how ideal the political circumstances had to be, for him to beat a couple of useless wackos by seven percentage points. I really do not believe that this election would have been close if Obama's white equivalent had run in his place. It took eight years of evil and incompetence, and the near-collapse of the economy, to get Obama into office.
One's perceptions of the state of race and racism in this country are affected by whom you spend time around. I can only judge by the people I know and the people I work with, and based on that I'd say that racism is thriving in this country. Obama's election doesn't mean that has changed. It just means that enough people decided that having a job was more important than indulging their bigotry.
January 19, 2009 3:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree we aren't "post-racial" but there has been a thaw, even if it isn't much. People still die and have their lives ruined for the color of their skin in this nation every day.
January 19, 2009 3:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
I share your despair at how close it was, but first of all 25 years ago Obama would have LOST to those two useless wackos, probably by more than seven.
Second of all, Republicans could put up a ham sandwich and a 12-year-old and get about 40 percent of the vote, from the professional-victim class who just want to stick it to those librul elites.
Third of all, I am reminded how it couldn't just be any black baseball player who broke the color line; it had to be Jackie Robinson. The first black baseball player couldn't be average; he had to be a star. It shouldn't be that way, and we shouldn't break our arms patting ourselves on the back because we've deigned to allow a star player on "our" team, but at least we did that when 25 years ago we wouldn't have even done that.
January 19, 2009 4:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
co-sign
January 20, 2009 7:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Matt, Mr. Cooper. Welcome and many wishes for your success here.
You are exploring an endless subject as you just "plunge right in." That takes courage, but our new President has led the way for all of us with his own speech on race.
I was a young mom when Dr. King was murdered, and JFK and Robert and Malcolm. I wondered whether the nation would survive.
Times are incredibly different now. Except for one thing. . . far, far too many African American men are in prison. I have to ask whether that terrible demographic makes us Whites think everything is OK now; we are safe. But those men are not safe, nor free, nor productive, nor active fathers, etc. Just a thought.
January 19, 2009 3:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Two things: Barack Obama has a distinct personality. You think of all the blues in his campaign material branding, which seem to go with his personality (didn't he also usually wear a blue tie?)... Anyway, he's definitely not Jesse Jackson about to give a stemwinder. More like Denzel Washington in Crimson Tide.
What he also has going for him is he's the Anti-George Bush. Electing Obama sends a message to the rest of the world: We Are Not George Bush. I think people really wanted to send that message.
January 19, 2009 3:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
You want to know what happened? The Civil Rights Movement collapsed. The most prominent leaders were killed or sold themselves. With no true agenda for reconciliation or justice on the table there was nothing for the majority to fear other than the general underlying ill will that was harbored by some of those done wrong by this society. The injection of people like Public Enemy and the increase of Malcolm X name dropping in the 90's was largely superficial. Most African Americans didn't cling to even the superficial use of nationalism or militancy. Those who did mostly let it become a purely mental exercise. You don't recall any great movements where people actually put into practice any of those things laid out by Malcolm( or MLK either) taking place.
I think the thaw you're talking about was born through years of diminished racial hostility in popular white culture. Less and less Willie Horton style media, although its not dead. More and more desegregation throughout various areas of our lives - school, work, neighborhoods. Its hard to cling to old stereotypes when reality smacks it down. The majority of African Americans live peaceful normal lives. African Americans can be just as successful or intellectual as anyone else. A big part of White America finally had that sink in.
January 19, 2009 3:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hmm ... so the election of a Black president in 2009 is evidence of the collapse of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s Civil Rights movement?
I'd hate to see what happened if it succeeded.
January 19, 2009 4:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Try reading MLK's I have a dream speech and see if it fits south side of Chicago or the state of Utah.
Socio-economic segregation, this is what he was speaking to when they killed him.
It Failed and now it is limping along. Hell, affirmative action had to force whites to hire blacks. And, up until 1997, Morgan Freeman's high school still host "separate but equal" proms. He has to pay for the proms.
Strides are made by individuals and not the masses. This is the new strategy, divide and conquer. Give one title and money and he is your point man (boy). Same approach with union busting. Recognize reality. It is still a struggle.
January 19, 2009 5:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Okay, time to haze the famous newbie.
First comment: Proofreading. You don't have an editor looking over your shoulder, I guess, so we readers will have to step in. How the heck are those prepositional phrases connected in the sentence about Spike Lee? American/America in the last par. Etc. Even we Cheetos-stained, pajama-clad wretches appreciate clean copy.
Second: Content? Interesting speculations, and basically convincing. But it needs a crisper thesis, I think. E.g., you're undeniably right to point both at sociological factors and at pop culture. But that sort of bro-oa-ad thesis is, as they say, "too true to be good."
Okay, you are now officially hazed. Welcome to TPM! I enjoyed reading your stuff at TNR.
January 19, 2009 3:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wait, here's the Clinton contingent to pile on.
First, you ignore Jesse Jackson's run for president twice, which distinctly brought race relations to America in a much improved package, campaigns that hit campuses and the media and a broad swathe of America and came across mostly as an intelligent, unifying message.
Yes, you can blithely mention the 90's without mentioning the actual statistics - the drop by 2/3 of the black murder rate, the drop by 2/3 of black poverty, the increase in black home ownership and holdings in the stock market and huge increase in black "white collar" jobs that invested blacks into the middle class like never before. It was the hallmark of the Clinton years, with the sad caveat that 3 strikes meant the heavy incarceration of black males. At the same time, it started to mean increased safety of black females around their homes and a cleanup of gang activity and the huge mess of guns, drugs and poverty. Sure, it was mostly black-on-black crime, mainly because whites stayed well away due to reasonable fear. You figure out what streets not to cross, when not to enter the metro, etc., but those who don't have a choice have to deal with it. All of this was a huge change. It wasn't hip hop that was freaking people out, it was gangsta rap which was way too true for black communities.
Note that even Republicans were trying to draft Colin Powell in 1996. Images of Bill Clinton frequently golfing with Vernon Jordan probably did more to further the image of blacks in high power position than Powell and Rice's poor performance as Secretary of State.
Okay, that's enough. Welcome, water's warm, beware the sharks.
January 19, 2009 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
And as someone notes below, TV shows like Cosby or movies like Spike Lee's Crooklyn showing black kids bouncing on the bed to the Partridge Family brought home how similar our lifestyles and ethics are at heart. The economic and crime improvements and more integrated better-paying work places and better more relaxed integration in schools made it easier to appreciate that. By 2000, things were going pretty well - staying on that trend line another 8 years would have been nice.
January 19, 2009 8:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
And Oprah, hard to even approximate what kind of influence she's had dispensing advice and chatter and interesting topics to millions daily.
January 19, 2009 8:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
And then there's Mandela. Released what, 1988, showed what a pro he was in reconciliation and leading the nation.
January 20, 2009 2:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Welcome to TPM, Matt. I'm looking forward to reading your stuff.
I think you are completely ignoring the role that the Republicans and the Southern Strategy had on race relations in the 1980's. The Reagan Cartel didn't miss a chance to exploit and invent racial fears -- from Philadelphia, Mississippi and Lee Atwater, Willie Horton, Bernard Goetz, to the Central Park jogger case and "Cadillac-driving welfare moms." Anti-black fears were exacerbated by Republicans and their surrogates at every turn. It was an ugly, shameful time in our history and your profession, with their kid-glove treatment of Reagan (the Teflon President), jumped on the bandwagon with both feet.
January 19, 2009 3:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree partly with Skybott, that the circumstances of the past 8 years, along with Obama's calming personality and near flawless campaign played a major role in his election.
The financial crisis and McCain's selection of Sarah Palin, also played a major role.
Another fundamental change is the new generation of voters born in the early 80's who voted for Obama at a rate of 66%.
The successful mainstream marketing of a large number of black performers, Bill Cosby, Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, Samuel Jackson etc ... as well a rap among the younger generation played a huge role in changing reacial attitudes.
January 19, 2009 3:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Things have changed, obviously, since we're about to inaugurate Obama. But, as people repeatedly said during the general election, Obama should have been trouncing McCain by about eleventy thousand percentage points.
(OK, no one ever said by that much)
So things have changed, yes, but color me skeptical about how much. And I might argue with the last 25 years as the appropriate time-frame. I think it's more the last 14 years. Willie Horton happened in 1988, after all.
I think that Tiger Woods helped change attitudes, as did Denzel Washington. As for Bush appointing two African Americans as Secretary of State? Sure, he deserves credit for that, but I would consider those appointments to flow from the change and not necessarily to be contributors to that change.
January 19, 2009 3:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just a quick note on Obama's win percentage. I don't believe that the percentage point spread has much to do with his race (also contesting Skybolt above) compared to how fractious our country is divided. Most people on here, if they find out someone is Republican, suddenly think the person came out of an upper level of hell. Many Republicans feel the same about Democrats. For whatever reasons (and there are a lot of them), we immediately think in 'us and them'.
Kerry was White, America hated the war, and he still lost by a few percentage points. If he'd been a good candidate like Obama, he'd have won by a couple points then too (ok, really speculating here). I guess my point is that I think few Americans vote for who is a good person for an office; we focus more on the party. It's easier that way.
I think we are superimposing race (which I am sure is a factor, but I think it's gotten to be smaller than party) onto another problem: We often are too lazy to find out what a person's positions are and only look at what party's lapel they are wearing.
January 19, 2009 4:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, if Americans focused on who was a good person, elections would have different results. Americans seem to focus on "personalities". In quotation marks because the personality that is revealed depends entirely on the whims or fancies of the press.
In any event, if Obama had been a tall, handsome, blond-haired, blue-eyed individual who could orate the way he can, you really think his win percentage wouldn't have been higher????
January 19, 2009 4:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, I think that person's percentage would have been higher--I'm not saying that race has no influence on a lot of people. But I'm also saying, however, that the numbers wouldn't change too much. Most people are really entrenched. In our country right now, I'd bet that your hypothetical candidate wouldn't get more than 55%.
I guess my thinking is that there's other factors than just race at work. Like a lot of people here, I think that Obama should have gotten a far higher percentage considering what administration we just had and the idiots he was up against and, especially, because of the proposals and policies he offers. Can we blame only race?
January 19, 2009 5:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Civil Rights Movement didn't collapse, it succeeded. It just took nearly 50 years for the outcome of that change to work its way through society. As a boomer, I must be boomer-centric. We were the lab rats of social change. We were in kindergarten during Brown v Board and middle school when King marched, and high school when King was killed and college during the first years of affirmative action. But it's our children who fully benefit from the changes and prove that social change does work. We should remember that next time some conservative points to all the "failures" of the 60's.
January 19, 2009 4:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
The success of the movement is subjective. I believe it failed because everyone was killed and the masses then pacified by Affirmative Action. The facade of that you describe has some truth, but it is very interpretive of experience. One would have to walk a mile in a person's shoes to truly perceive what slight change there has been.
Your insight is much appreciated but it is that yours as is my own, but the pillars of the movement still goes unsatisfied. Let us not pick and choose the “good” and blow off the atrocities. Many here scratched the surface but to be what MLK described we are still staring at the mountain top.
To Obama's election, Skybolt in the first post is the general sentiment of most black people. They scream "WHAT DOES IT TAKE?" Well we know see what it takes to get a black man elected POTUS. Now, what does it take to be equal???
My solution is "Time". It is hard to disregard 400 years of property and second class citizenship. The new one is disenfranchisement and criminalization.
January 19, 2009 4:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's simply not true that "everyone was killed".
I took classes from a former SNCC chair during the early 90's, other movement veterans have held seats in Congress, still others have remained active in public sphere.
Each of them has had an influence over the intervening time over different numbers and groups of people.
January 20, 2009 3:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Cooper,
The headline "Racial Thaw" is wrong on uber-multiple levels.
And umm ... WTF does this mean???
First, I think the drop in crime and teen pregnancy in the 90s helped ease some of the fear of whites.
What are you implying ? That only blacks committed crimes and only blacks got white girls pregnant, or only black girls got pregnant?
And what does this mean?
Intellectuals were authentically worried about the rise of Louis Farrakhan in the mid 80s and the crowds he would draw for his conspiratorial rants.
Who are these "intellectuals" of whom you speak? Names, please?
And what about the mid 1980s "conspiratorial rants" of President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher about the conspiratorial character of the jailed terrorist Nelson Mandela?
Do they not count? Were any intellectuals ... hmm ... Cornel West ... "authentically worried" about them?
What is this crap ???
January 19, 2009 4:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Race relations have a long way to go in the country. Legally, the last 30 years has been a backwards slide away from equal rights inattention of Clinton and the active 'freedom' fighting of Regan and the Bushes.
Culturally, we seem to have made some progress as race is no longer a barrier to leading roles in movies or the football sidelines. But the lack of overt violence does not mean that the gulf between people has lessened as the writer/director Young Jean Lee found out this year.
http://www.youngjeanlee.org/blog.html
She has a show running now that explores race and her blog from this summer gives (a long) but good indication of how many middle class Americans seem to think that their individual acceptance of other means that racism has ended or lessened in importance and ferocity. Unfortunately, this is only a perception as challenges remain huge and quite possibly growing.
January 19, 2009 4:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think it's such a mystery. It's all demographics. I said before the election, and it was borne out, that Obama would win the majority in the 45 & under age group, would break even in the 45 - 60 age group, and would lose big in the over-60 age group. The "thaw" has more to do with what the country was like when the majority of the white population was growing up. Those of us 45 and under don't remember segregation or Jim Crow or non-integrated schools. Those 45 - 60 were children and young adults as segratation and Jim Crow were ending and didn't yet have their expectations about how things were supposed to work yet carved in stone. Those over 60 (many of them, anyway) have never gotten over the end of segregation and Jim Crow.
If that seems too simplistic, think about it for a minute: who's going to have a harder time imagining a black man as president, someone who shared classrooms and friendships with black kids in school, or someone who spent their entire early life separated from the "other"?
Even if we look to the 80s, this explanation holds true - the generation then in charge were all old enough to have been sentient before the civil rights era. Reagan and other Republicans drew often from that well.
It has to do with people's life experiences. Those who lived under and longed for a return to the pre-civil rights era are dying out, and the people behind them can't understand what the big deal was about all of it in the first place, because it was never part of their lives.
What marks Obama's election as a turning point, in my mind, is that it's the first time we as a nation chose to look beyond race, rather than being forced to do it through legislation or court orders. Desegregation and civil rights weren't things the south voted for itself. School busing was not to the best of my knowledge voluntarily adopted by any school system anywhere. Affirmative action came about because too many employers seemed to lack the ability to look beyond race. And there are other examples.
That's what's different. This time, we as a country stepped up and said, we don't care that the guy is black, we think he's the best person for the job - without anyone forcing us to do it, and in spite of attempts, both veiled and blatant, to get us to instead focus on tribe.
I don't see how that can be viewed as anything other than a sea-change in racical attitudes. "Thaw" greatly understates the magnitude of the change.
January 19, 2009 4:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jenn--it is nice to see thru rose colored glass, but you are missing the new tools of the trade. Ask yourself, "why is it such an issue with the number of blacks in jail?" This is the Jim Crow and segregation of the 21st century. They just changed the rules and we have to roll with the game.
Felons don't vote and without a vote, your definition of change could never happen. I am pretty sure African Americans appreciate the sentiment of a President, but it is understood that "it hasn't changed much at all". When you have Colin Powell discussion race in America, describing it as an ambient "racism", there is still a huge problem. Powell would experience very little, but he can see a lot if he cares the look, "ambient".
It is good to dream, but we are not there yet and we have to view this country in the present tense with only reference to the past. This means, what we saw back then we will not today, but what happens today, we have to "think" about the approach white America takes. Remember the city of New Orleans turned into a refugee camp and the cities they were shipped to concentration camp to distance the masses from voting. Remember 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections, disenfranchisement of people of color in Florida and Ohio. Only counties where whites were minorities, ballots were questions.
Voting is power. Its the power to assign who will speak for you and many others. If some of those others feel threatened or outnumbered, they fix it to get their man in.
Jenn, we really haven't come too far. And, for the "youngsters", they have the privilege of ignorance of their history.
January 19, 2009 4:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Probably just as large as race are class differences. People who grow up in families where books line the walls and their parents aren't constantly struggling just to feed the kids and so have time for the kids have a gigantic advantage. And this perpetuates generation after generation. Class is a second reason that African Americans and Hispanics often have far fewer chances.
January 19, 2009 5:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
The number of blacks in jail are the result of one of those Reagan-era trips to the well, the War on Drugs. I actually had thought about referencing that as one of the sins of the 80s and noting that crack was the source of a lot of hysteria in the 80s, much more than meth, which is just as big of a problem, is now.
I don't think I said "we're there"; I think what I said is, it's a pretty major thing when the majority of people in the country demonstrate of their own free will that they can look beyond race. That's actually a HUGE thing that would not, could not, have happened 20 years ago.
Does it mean that now Care Bears will ride Unicorns on Rainbows in fantasyland and everything is perfect? No. But it doesn't make it less of a big deal in terms of steps in the right direction.
January 19, 2009 5:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jenn--We should take this accomplishment at face value. We cannot be sure the vote for Barack was heart-felt more so than an aching pocketbook. That's my position. And yes, I do agree with you on direction, but what should it take for people to think with their hearts.
From looking at many post, I think we should breed our way out of this issue. I said in an earlier post only time could fix this and a special spin on history or lack of.
OT.... I always like the excuse for slavery: "I didn't enslave anybody". But, you surely reap the benefits of the history with out question.
January 19, 2009 5:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is an argument that race is something uniquely American.
The UN does not have anyone who works on race. They have plenty of people who work on ethnicity but race isn't seen as distinct from ethnicity. The term ethnicity is very good and encompasses everything involved with relations between white and black Americans.
Yet many Americans see the racial issue as separate from ethnicity. Certainly, European American and Native American relations can be seen under the ethnic rubric, as can Asian American issues.
But many of us seem the White / Black issue as somehow different and therein lies evidence of its special nature as well as a many remaining issues.
January 19, 2009 10:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
I see you beat me to it Jenn. I was busy writing while you were posting.
January 19, 2009 4:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just a nit: Obama didn't "lose big" in the over-60 group. Poster here quotes 45 percent for over 65, 50 percent 45-64.
January 20, 2009 2:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
While I agree with those who have opined that racial bigotry and intolerance certainly continue to exist in the USA; and I don't argue with the reasons suggested, by Mr. Cooper and various commentators, to explain the apparent reduction in bigotry and intolerance, such that we have elected a multi-racial president.
I also agree with the commentator who suggested that one's perception of the breadth of racial bigotry certainly depends upon where one spends one's time. Those who live in multi-ethnic areas, like the D.C. area, will perceive less bigotry than those who live in more homogeneously Caucasian environs, simply because their is less overt bigotry in the more multi-ethnic areas.
But aren't we all overlooking a simpler explanation for an apparent reduction in racial bigotry and intolerance? That is that the overt, hard core bigots are dying off.
Each succeeding generation brings more racial blending and racial mixing in communities and schools, thus, more tolerance. More and more folks have come of age in more racially diverse communities and schools; and, thus, just don't buy into the bigoted point of view.
January 19, 2009 4:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Cooper,
I think your essay would be much more accurately titled: "Why I Don't Fear Black Men The Way I Did in the 1980s."
Your essay is not about black people in the U.S.; nor is it about civil rights; nor is it about U.S. policies regarding civil rights. It's about your own fears of black people in the past 25 years and how they have changed and lessened.
And that's a perfectly fine subject for an essay. But you label it as such.
January 19, 2009 5:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Folks, this conversation needs a smidgen of class analysis. The product of a successful civil rights movement is a new segment of "middle" or "political" class: that's true for Blacks today and such Blacks get to be elected officials, or if they are really topnotch pols even President.
Lots of folks don't make it into the "middle" or "political" class. Take Oscar Grant for example. That kind of Black man gets dead when a cop breaks up a subway scuffle.
Racism lives, but its effects are segmented by class.
January 19, 2009 5:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
With all due respect, what thaw?
January 19, 2009 5:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Barack is an exceptional human being. He did not make it to the White House because of the racial progress made by right-thinking white folk. He could have been purple and he would have beat John McCain and Hillary Clinton, because was just better! The only racial progress that can be attributed, would be in the souls of those that judge people by the color of their skin and voted for him despite their prejudice inclinations. I don't believe there were enough of those folk to put him over the top or claim the nation has made significant progress in healing racial divisions.
January 19, 2009 5:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I moved back to my hometown in suburban Chicago in 2006 after having lived outside Philly in NJ for 12 years. When I left this town and the surrounding area was lilly white. Not anymore.
In the interim a lot of immigrants from South Asia and Eastern Europe have settled in as have many African Americans and Hispanics from the city. While I was gone broad swaths of the Chicago's southside lakefront was rebuilt, gentrified and priced out of their reach. With that transformation a lot of jobs and people have relocated out here to DuPage and Will Counties. While there may not be much interaction between the races among adults here, all these kids go to school and are growing up together. I give it another generation in my neck of the woods.
January 19, 2009 5:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why is Obama doing his public service thing painting a wall in a white dress shirt?
This man has no working class skills!
January 19, 2009 5:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I know... huh
Did you see him bowling? He shouldn't have to try so hard.
I bet he had a lapel pin on his collar.
January 19, 2009 5:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Cooper,
I am two years younger than you but I remember a completely different '80's. I grew up in a rural white community watching The Cosby Show, A Different World, In Living Color and Arsenio Hall. When I went to college one of my best friends was black (we were in each other's wedding). I used to go to clubs where all races danced to the same music. I've had many co-workers and bosses who were black. My daughter goes to school with, and has friends of, every race and religion.
When Obama announced, I thought "It's about damn time." and told our European exchange student that Obama would be our first black President. Her biggest suprise living in the US was not race relations, but how far behind the US is in GLBT relations.
January 19, 2009 6:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
"I remember a completely different '80's. I grew up in a rural white community watching The Cosby Show, A Different World, In Living Color and Arsenio Hall. When I went to college one of my best friends was black (we were in each other's wedding). I used to go to clubs where all races danced to the same music."
I am a U.S. citizen living abroad. I tell people overseas who ask about the race issue two things for openers, 1) the problem is gigantic, and 2) you will find all sorts of PC-type people who will happy-talk you with, "What race problem?! Oh there really isn't any such thing, I don't know what you're even referring to!"
Sounds like you may be from category 2.
January 19, 2009 10:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
On the contrary, Dream Traveller sounds anything but PC, but is speaking from direct experience. Not to say that the problem/gap isn't huge, but it doesn't seem useful to deny the complex texture of the issue and to ignore the words of people who are living this complexity.
January 20, 2009 1:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Glad you brought up "ignoring," as that is just what I am referring to. Statements like this, "I remember a completely different '80's."
PC may not be the word, but happy talk and "ignoring" fit well.
January 20, 2009 4:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
By the way, I can pronounce analogous fluff about other periods, as well. “60’s, time up of upheaval?? What I remember is family, continuity, young people embracing the church and our country's national priorities, and learning to admire their elders.”
“2000’s, disappointment?? What I remember are two terms of a strong president, Democrats and Republicans working together to build our land in a sense of national partnership based on respect and shared values.”
Can play this same game with ethnic issues: “Gypsies? Tricksters? I prefer the term Romany to Gypsies of course, but from living with them all my life what I know is a people who embrace education, stability, quiet accumulation of family assets to give their young people a future, and a tradition of serene community service, mirrored by broad and warm public acceptance.”
Ain't that sweet? Especially if based on "direct experience?" (Or is "experience" the right word?)
January 20, 2009 5:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Rap music starting to take hold in the white community in the mid to late 80s, Affirmative Action getting people into college so that most white people who get to college know some black people. The amnesty given to Latinos in the 80s and the Lou Dobbs, Duncan Hunter racist rantings, "I want to be I want to be I want to be like Mike", Tiger Woods and the perfect storm of Iraq war and Obama's outspoken opposition to it, Bush being the worst president in the history of the country, the economy collapsing, not in Sept but in January when if first started. The internet changing fund raising, the switch in primary order, FL and MI being stupid, The new primary order giving McCain the GOP primary, Sarah Palin, Hillary being fundamentally weak,
January 19, 2009 6:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
and finally the West Wing, which changed what people wanted in their leaders
January 19, 2009 6:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Matt Cooper, welcome and it will be interesting to see how you react to the intelligent responses to your thoughts---good to be provocative.
Here is my initial reaction. In many ways your piece exposes the problem with all the Ivory Towers or sweeping understandings of what is going on here today and this political dynamic situation and what is going on in America's Culture.
I am 6 years your senior, I grew up in a racially divided Midwestern City north of Chicago called Waukegan. It is a community that one wants to be from, hard smitten, historically an immigrant drop off place for the waves of emigre's to America, from off shore and domestically. It a place where Jack Benny was raised, Otto Graham, Nat King Cole among others including most recently, Michael Turner the Atlanta Falcons bruising running back.
In 1968, I can recall the reactionary race riots from MLK's assassination where the then mayor known as "The Rock" for his response to a police strike, took on the rebellious rioters. Waukegan is a place as a child you had to figure out quickly how to assimilate with Black-American classmates, sports participates, social interchanges in a real sense even though life was racially separated. Yes, I went to public schools until my high that were essentially segregated because of the simple local school divisions were done by economic divisions. Whites for the most part lived in the newer north side neighborhoods and African-Americans lived on the south side in the old ethnic neighborhoods. But the high school was desegregated because there was only one. My father supposedly fearful the schooling would not be good enough, sent me to the almost Lilly white Catholic HS.
Yet I still befriend African-American friends, I can still remember their names, Rodney, Jerome, Butch, Eddie, and Billy. A few actually went on to play college and pro basketball. Yes we didn't mix a lot except playing sports, car pooling, being on a bus, or just goofing around after school.
What I have seen since high school was more structural and social divides broken, at a state university there were still social divisions but when we had to intersect in class, in sports, throughout campus. Then in the work environment things were made even closer, discriminating could cost your job or money, though a previous generation would scoff at it, you knew. Yes I still had chances to interplay at the 'Y' or as things in NGO and volunteer organizations.
Yes when we moved back to the Midwest and first to Waukegan and then to Racine, WI where in both places there are many left behinds, especially among many African-Americans. But things were really changing. I saw sports that even Black-American quarterbacks became no big deal, football coaches, even pro golfers. As I ascended in the more affluent corporate class I was able to meet Michael Jordan and Walter Payton, both loved personalities of many a Chicagoan.
I actively recruited Black-American MBA students for corporate America and they were not only received but desired---sure for the reasons of appearance but many were as good or better than others, they had to be---like Obama.
What happened to America was that it got forty years of experience that race didn't matter except to those ignorant souls that made it matter. For twenty years TV has expressed the fact with its conscious effort to make certain there were African-American actors selling pills, real estate, cars and investments.
Yes this is a historical moment in history, a stark deviation from the 43 other norms. Obama is bi-racial who by others is considered African-American, raised by a Unitarian-Universalist Grandmother and a daughter who married a Kenyan and Indonesian. His sister is a protege of the second marriage and is married to an Asian-American.
He is so culturally experienced that he is comfortable in his own skin that he can go to an inner city teen shelter and have fun joking with kids in cornrows while jawing with Ivory League journalists.
He has cut through the racial divide like I did on those playgrounds in Waukegan in 1970 when I wanted to play basketball or baseball with our town's best, by looking others in the eye and not making it an issue that one's skin was different or his parents came from a different past. It didn't matter, could you defend your guy, could you put the ball in the hoop when it came you, could you hit the baseball when there was a guy on second? This same conscience goes to Obama, can he turn this economy around, can he make peace in the Middle East, can he be the President for all of us?
Now politically you might want to divide the country in sub voting groups and that will carry on but race from now on will be on the margins. Just like a young MBA banker who had to go into a corporate client and make the deal, did the white business executive care if the Black banker from FNB was black or whether his loan proposal meant the needs of his business?
Matt, the bottom line is that we as a nation have become accustomed to not having race as a determining factor who is doing the job, because it doesn't matter.
January 19, 2009 6:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Welcome to TPM, Matt.
I'm 56 and grew up in a family that was actively fighting for Civil Rights to the point I was able to figure out why people could discriminate against others at age 4. I realized that it had to be because those people were so strange to some people, they would be feared and hated. Then I was anxious to see what color colored people were. I can still feel the pain when reality sunk in.
I have no problem with the title. Or with the idea that we have been going through freeze/thaw cycles over the last 46 years. What happened after King died was what he had been turning towards, that Obama and others have mentioned. That the effort needed to be more community, less legal.
Your question "Why is America's racial atmosphere less poisonous than it was then?" implies that the thaw is still incomplete, as we are all fully aware given the statistics on racial profiling, redlining, DWB, overall arrests, convictions and incarcerations.
My perspective stems somewhat from watching my parents continue the fight in our NAACP chapter to push for equal housing. Such persistence and perseverence brought about many individuals making big strides. Inevitably they were the brightest, the most talented. For every Denzel Washington, Tiger Woods, etc. the GOP would hyperventilate about Willie Horton's, Louis Farrakhan and the welfare queens. Thaw, freeze, thaw, freeze.
As more and more African Americans entered our living rooms and lives (The Jefferson's, Cosby, how about the black president in the first years of "24"?.), even older generations started to accept the idea of SOME blacks being able to perform well. The generational differences are definitely important - as long as we factor in it was the movement on all levels that created a different childhood experience for the Gen X and Millenials. There were some major changes amongst the bigoted, George Wallace may have done more than any march.
Some of us recall the intellectual anxieties of the 80's (others should recognize that there are things they don't know they don't know) and that the lower crime rate in the 90's (despite the law enforcers predictions of huge increases continuing) was pegged to Roe v Wade cutting the unwanted birth rate for 20 years, with just as much disagreement as "The Bell Curve".
After 28 years of Reagan/Neocon/Bush leadership, the storm of crises hit like Katrina. Younger voters realized their futures depended on electing Obama. They volunteered and they worked like no other campaign. Some older voters realized that the choice was whether they would risk more of the same or a black president. A variation of "Nothing focuses the mind like a hanging."
The corporate media actually performed better than an F. Liberal voices (Schultz, Olbermann, Rhodes, Maddow) had the mike enough to be heard. The blogosphere circulated refutations of the GOP lies as fast as they produced them. The AA voters, realizing they finally had the leverage to make history, turned out, stayed in long lines and were prepared with ID, etc.
Kerry was a very good candidate who, like Gore, ran against voter apathy, GOP interference in the election process and media/pundits determined to give unbalanced, inaccurate reporting. There is a persistent meme that no one really liked Kerry. Begging your pardon, some of us did. Much more than just liked. There is no doubt that Obama was this time where Kerry needed to be in 2004 in the use of technology. That is an area that has changed dramatically in 4 years - bringing about an upstage in the '06 midterms. Obama also had the advantage of the new voter profile demographic computer database. Something the GOP had developed and been using for a decade.
What will matter now is how much and how thoroughly the initial reaction of AA's to having an AA POTUS changes their ability to make those individual strides. My take on that is the difference between anything is possible (even winning the Powerball), and what the average or maybe just below average AA can PROBABLY do. With the odds, not against them. Remember, one of the great contributions to the cycle of poverty is that stress during infancy and early childhood interferes with proper brain growth and development.
Tomorrow truly begins a new era. The biggest difference in the outcome will depend on how many of us remain involved and contribute to finding the best solutions to our problems.
January 19, 2009 7:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Where in CO?
January 19, 2009 7:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
You thought Kerry was a good candidate, for real??
Ugh. Swiss cheese! I thought he was just another Democrat dud!
January 19, 2009 8:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Please remember that racial relations are not all about black/white. Native Americans have been murdred with virtual impunity for decades in southwestern america; I'll bet other races (especially latino and arab) feel that not so much is better these days! Check with the Southern Poverty Law Center website.
January 19, 2009 7:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Honestly, I don't think we're in a much different place in 2008 than we were in 1988 or in 1992.
Had Clinton been black in 1992 given the quality of candidate he was, the campaign he rans, the climate of the election (economy in the crapper), and the dynamic of the election (three party with Peror), he would have won by pretty much the same numbers.
If we could put Obama and his campaign team into a time machine and have them run in 1988, given his charisma and the quality campaign he ran, he would have won the nomination and inturn beaten Bush. The reality is that the country wasn't all that inspired to vote for Poppy, and wouldn't have had Dukakis run a decent campaign or been a better candidate himself.
Obama would have won in 2000 (if he got past Gore), and would have won in 2004.
I don't think "white folk" are any less or more racist in their voting paterns today than they were 4, 8, 16 or 20 years ago. If there was a true "thaw", then Obama would have pulled in 60% of the vote this year similar to Ron in 1984. Look - we have a president drawing a 25% approval rating heading into the election, a GOP nominee who had *no* idea that were non-Bush Admin, and then the whopper of the economy going in the crapper to such a degree that the voting public was even more jaded about it than the MSM (what were those numbers... 90%+ thought the economy was *horrible*, not just plain old "not doing well"?)
We should be proud that Obama got elected and the "color line" was broken. But let's not get carried away that on that day in Novemember, and over the course of the two year campaign, that the USA changed, or that there was a change in the years leading up to it.
The real change is *moving forward*.
It wasn't that the world of baseball changed to allow Jackie Robinson to play in the majors.
It was that the success of Jackie, the Dodgers and Branch Rickey showed just how fucked up the color line was. Sure, there remained racists in the game, and clubs like the Red Sox pissed away the 50s by not joining the real world. The racists die, or lose power. The people coming into power or newly born came into it with Jackie (and Willie and Campy and Hank and Ernie, etc.) as existing reference points.
The marginal racists who still couldn't vote for Obama this time are, over time, a dying breed. The new people getting the right to vote will have the reference point of Obama, and judge him on success or failure. Those marginal voters who "weren't sure" if they could "vote for one of them" also could in the future vote for him or other minorities based on success.
We'll always have racists. But Novemember 2008 doesn't mean that things *had* changed. It meant that things can change, going forward.
The road ahead is also important, and keeping the eyes on the prize. If you don't think so, watch the coverage of the Super Bowl over the next week, and compare it with the coverage of Indy vs the Bears from a few years back. There is no doubt that there will be articles and stories and pieces about a black coach. And no doubt tying it into Obama and "change", and reflecting back on Indy-Chicago. But Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith several years ago made made the discussion this time around different. The talk about Mike Tomlin immediately after winning was, "Wow... he's taking the Steelers to the Super Bowl in his second year and is a fitting heir to Chuck Noll and Bill Cowher. Wait... he's the youngest to coach a team to the Super Bowl? Wow!"
That's change.
Here's the AP story if you want an idea:
http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news;_ylt=Ag2hQHZhZZ7O0ah4mK50mJuT2bYF?slug=ap-steelers-tomlinsturn&prov=ap&type=lgns
So... the change isn't in the past 25 years. It's in the coming 25.
John
January 19, 2009 7:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tosh, there's a lot I agree with in what you wrote. But on the basic point, I don't agree. Quantifying attitudes about race is pretty tough in any consistent sense. But at least from my personal experience, racial attitudes seem significantly different today than twenty years ago. Not perfect by any means. But significantly different.
January 19, 2009 8:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tosh,
There are many voters who have died in the last twenty years, voters who would have not voted for a black man. These voters grew up at an time when racism was a normal and accepted part of life.
There are many younger voters who have recently reached voting age that think voting for a black candidate was no big deal.
Obama's election win by age:
66% (18% of pop.) of 18-29 year olds
52% (29% of pop.) of 30-44 year olds
50% (37% of pop.) of 45-64 year olds
45% (16% of pop.) of 65 and older
If we were to extrapolate from this data, and assume no racial thawing among these voters, -- the youngest group and the majority of the 30 to 44 group would be eliminated from the voting population as they would be 20 years younger -- the majority of voters would not have voted for Obama. In addition, an older population of voters, since deceased, who would not have voted for Obama, would have made up a larger percentage of the electorate.
January 19, 2009 10:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Isn't the reason Obama won that there were, as someone already pointed out, so many voters who were not directly impacted by the 60s and before? And also, the humongous change in demographics in the country? I do not believe a black candidate could have won in 1992, no matter how good (and in spite of people saying one did).
As for the overall change in tone in the country, that is a whole other question. But I do believe that the changing demographics, and people dying off have something to do with it.
January 19, 2009 8:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
A bit about the OJ Simpson trial (which I guess we now have to refer to as the first OJ trial?): as a white guy, I always thought that it was a HUGE advance in racial relations.
Why? Because for the first time in American history, being rich trumped being black. For centuries, guilty-as-sin white guys had been buying verdicts; for the first time ever at the OJ trial, a black guy was able to do so.
At last, a black man had achieved equality, American style!
I'm only being partially facetious, here. The trial got a lot of people to think about race and justice...and since the result was so clearly due to the fact that he could afford that legal "dream team," a lot of people had to thought about it in ways they wouldn't have otherwise.
January 19, 2009 8:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Reading this makes me wonder how old you really are.
You're supposedly 45, 26 when "Do the right thing" was released. You sound like you're 75. Who are these unsettling white people? I never heard any white people having issue with the movie, and only heard white people embrace Public enemy. You were one of the guys who shit in your pants when you heard ChuckD rapping "Elvis was a hero to most / But he never meant shit to me / Straight up racist that sucker was simple and plain"(Fear of a black planet's)? Where would music be today without Hip-Hop? And what would younger white male be listening to? Twisted sister?
January 19, 2009 10:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
if cooper sounds like he's 75, you sound like you're 22 because you would have to have been a baby shitting in your diaper when do the right thing came out to not know that spike lee and public enemy had white folks shitting in their pants (and frothing at the mouth) in the late eighties.
January 20, 2009 7:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Many of the things you and other commenters have mentioned have been very important. One other way I'd frame this question is that there was an equation for many white people in the 70's and 80's between American cities, the black underclass, crime and government failure.
I think two people did a hell of a lot to change that. One was William Bratton, the police superintendant who pioneered the techniques that brought New York City from "Fort Apache, the Bronx" to one of the safest places in the hemisphere. The other is Paul Vallas, the schools superintendant in Chicago who took a district that had been called a "rathole for taxpayer money" by the president of the state senate, and the shame of the nation by the secretary of education, and made it a district of annual increases in test scores. He laid the basis for continuing success under Arne Duncan, who is now heading to DC to guide educational policy. Before Vallas, the only way one could imagine a Chicago schools superintendant heading to DC was to testify before a hearing into racketeering in government contracts.
Many other people contributed to the trend, but the results achieved by the governmental units these men led were far and away above the rest. A commenter in your main thread said he hoped Obama could achieve the rehabilitation of government in America. Bratton and Vallas did more towards that goal than anyone since Eisenhower conquered Europe. They are American heroes and deserve more renown.
January 20, 2009 12:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
>Some of us recall the intellectual anxieties of the 80's (others should recognize that there are things they don't know they don't know) and that the lower crime rate in the 90's (despite the law enforcers predictions of huge increases continuing) was pegged to Roe v Wade cutting the unwanted birth rate for 20 years, with just as much disagreement as "The Bell Curve".
Yeah, I forgot about the freakonomics dude. He calculated the move of the transit police into the NYPD as a net gain of thousands of officers, used that to say to say that the declines there were simply the result of gains in numbers, thereby knocking out the idea that the change in tactics was key. Voila, through a complete misunderstanding of the numbers he was manipulating, the guy arrives at the idea that ending black pregnancies must be the cause, and he's celebrated as an iconoclastic math expert rather than a racist fool! Maybe we haven't come so far.
January 20, 2009 1:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/on-road-western-pennsylvania.html
January 20, 2009 6:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
To all you Republican haters out there, here are some facts for you to chew on:
Democrats were the biggest supporters of slavery in America in the 19th century. It was because of Republicans who were willing to fight and die for black slaves, that slavery ended when it did.
After they lost in the Civil War, Southern Democrats formed the Ku Klux Klan to foment fear in blacks through violence and by orchestrating clandestine political alliances designed to oppress blacks. Southern Democrat sheriffs, police chiefs, and district attorneys routinely turned a blind eye to Klan violence against blacks.
The racist Jim Crow laws of the South were instituted by Southern Democrats to oppress blacks and prohibit them from voting. Democrat Governors, Mayors, County Boards, and City Councils voted to implement the laws and defied every attempt to repeal them.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. endorsed white Republican politicians, because only they publicly stood against the racist Jim Crow laws, such as segregation in public places and poll taxes. He opposed Democrat politicians on the local, state, and federal level due to their support of institutional racism.
Republicans opposed what they saw as immoral public policies such as the welfare state, not because they were against providing blacks with support, but because they understood that it would lead to a degredation of traditional values and chronic poverty through a perpetual reliance on government. We see this in the example of black single mothers not feeling the need to marry and the effects this has in their children. If children of single mothers are removed from the comparison, the percentage of blacks living in poverty are the same as whites living in poverty.
Republicans continue to oppose abortion, the single biggest cause of death for Black Americans, exceeding all non-natural causes of death amongs blacks combined.
Republicans, like Black Americans, are statistically more faithful to religion than Democrats. We believe in God as you believe in God. When we pray to Jesus, we don't ask for help in the form of a check or a winning lottery ticket, we ask for strength to avoid evil and strength to overcome challenges in our lives.
Many minorities have been duped into believing that the Republican party is racist and white. History says otherwise. As far as it being white, if more of us minorities (disclosure: I'm Mexican American) join the Republican party, we can shape it into our vision. Values, personal responsibility, getting the Government out of our lives as much as possible, and letting us keep more of our hard earned money to spend on our children.
Anyone that says that tax cuts only favor the rich are ignorant or liars. A rich man keeping an extra million of his dollars isn't nearly as important or useful to him as much as a working man and his family that are allowed to keep a few hundred or thousand of their dollars to pay their bills or put food on their tables. Think about that.
And for all you liberal haters out there that will undoubtedly go at this post, history doesn't lie about your beloved Democrats extreme racist past. Anything you can say about Republicans cannot be nearly as bad as what your party has done and continues to our country's blacks and poor. Every attack is a badge of honor to me. I must have hit a nerve. The truth hurts.
January 21, 2009 8:12 PM | Reply | Permalink