Not the Whole Story

All Studs Terkel’s books consist of many voices. Each work allows people to talk about themselves and their lives in contexts ranging from jobs (Working) to World War II (“The Good War“) to the Great Depression (Hard Times). The sole exception is Terkel’s memoir; but even that book’s title, Talking to Myself, exem­plifies the author’s dedication to the art of speech and the oral history that, if someone like Studs Terkel is around, can result.

Race is part of that tradi­tion. The book lets us hear the voices of diverse people: black, white, and other; men, wom­en, and children; single people and couples; Ph.D.s, factory workers, and the unemployed; rich, poor, and in between.

For the most part those featured in the book are Chi­cagoans. That seems appropri­ate, for race is a continuous, overriding concern in this city, in I which have lived since 1975. Though some Chicago neighborhoods are racially and ethnically mixed, the projects on the south and west sides stand in sharp relief against the wealthy, virtually all white North Shore suburbs; even some working-class communities in the city are all black or all white.

In other words, de facto segregation is commonplace; this is a deeply divided city. (I was made exceptionally aware of that many years ago when I left the downtown area one day and inadvertently got on the elevated train going south, eventually winding up in a desperately poor black neigh­borhood, seemingly the only white person for miles around.) A friend of mine who moved here from Seattle four or five years ago says that he has never been in such a ra­cially polarized, angry place. That thought is echoed again and again in Race; as Maria Torres, a political science teacher at one of the city’s col­leges, notes in the book, “Ev­erything in this city is cast in terms of race.”

As might be expected, such a charged atmosphere engenders passionate convic­tions. One theme that recurs throughout Race is that racism has become more open and more socially acceptable in Chicago, and in America, over the course of the past decade. Bob Matthieson, a publisher, notes that, “since Reagan, the gap between the races has widened. White rage has be­come chic in some cases. Hatred for black people has been made socially acceptable in a surprising number of places. We see what’s been cropping up on college campuses. Racism has been legiti­mized.” On the other hand, another recurrent sentiment is that economics is at least as potent a factor as racism. Paramedic-in-training Chris Daniels says, “You know, I don’t think the racial tension is getting worse, I think people are gettin’ fed up with the way things are divided. Yeah, the poor black is gettin’ it in the neck, but what about the poor white?” Some, like retired so­cial worker Eileen Barth, be­lieve that race relations in America are actually improv­ing. But others disagree.

One of the most striking things about Race is how ex­traordinarily well-meaning nearly all the people quoted seem to be. Many of the white people interviewed earnestly attempt to understand, as far as they are able, how racism affects blacks; many of the black people have deliberately resisted the temptation to use the injustices they have suf­fered as an excuse to hate whites. Some of those quoted kick themselves for it. Terkel evidently didn’t interview the guy across the street from me who left a note on one of my black neighbor’s cars saying, “Nigger, don’t park here; park in front of your own house.” Wouldn’t it have been instruc­tive, if perhaps unsavory, to see some of these people’s actual thought processes played out? If the interviews in Race were truly representative of Americans’ attitudes, we would scarcely have the racial problems we have.

This caveat aside, Race is a thought-provoking, stimulating, sad, hopeful, fascinating book. There is a certain hypnotic magic in hearing people talk, in their own voices, about is­sues that matter to them — and in America, race is one of the things that matter most.