Cultural Issues, United States - Ethnic & Race Relations, Prejudice & Discrimination

Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel about the American Obsession

Name: Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel about the American Obsession
Author: Studs Terkel
ISBN: 9781565840003

by Studs Terkel

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Overview

In this timely and significant Bookcassette, Studs Terkel interweaves the experiences and opinions of a variety of people - blacks and whites, men and women - from all walks of life. As one of our greatest interviewers, he encourages people to speak their minds with great frankness about the subject of race and about their perceptions of the leadership in Washington. Nearly a hundred Americans talk openly about attitudes that few are willing to admit in public.

While the problems of race have existed since the first slave ship landed in colonial America, it is compelling to be reminded that we still have two separate and unequal societies in this country.

Terkel interweaves the experiences and opinions of a variety of people--from all walks of life--about the subject of race and about their perceptions of the Washington leadership. 6 cassettes.

About the Author, Studs Terkel

Studs Terkel

One of the greatest oral historians of the 20th century, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, actor, and broadcaster Studs Terkel was a national treasure and a beloved institution in his native Chicago. His award-winning books, based on conversations with Americans from all walks of life, form a unique chronicle of a nation in the throes of socio-political change.

Biography

As a young boy in the early 1920s, Louis "Studs" Terkel moved with his family from New York to Chicago, the sprawling, high-energy city he would call home for the rest of his life. His parents managed hotels catering to a varied and colorful clientele. Listening to the conversations of the tenants, young Terkel developed an early interest in people and their stories and a wide-ranging intellectual curiosity that would lead him in many directions.

He received his law degree from the University of Chicago, but never became a practicing attorney, Instead, he worked briefly in Washington, D.C., then returned to Chicago to take a job in FDR's Works Progress Administration acting and writing plays. In 1939, he married Ida Goldberg. The marriage endured for 60 years, until Ida's death in 1999. He joined the Army during WWII but was discharged because of perforated eardrums. Around this time, he embarked on a long, varied broadcasting career as a sportscaster, news commentator, and disc jockey. He ventured into TV in the 1950s with a relaxed, breezy variety show that helped define the Chicago School of Television, but returned to radio in 1952 with the a daily program of music and interviews that continued for the next 45 years. Among a constellation of memorable guests were Buster Keaton, Billie Holiday, James Baldwin, Leonard Bernstein, Tennessee Williams, Gloria Steinem, and Bob Dylan.

Although his first book Giants of Jazz was published in 1957, Terkel's writing career began in earnest a decade later with Division Street, a book of transcribed interviews with Chicagoans from every walk of life. Hailed by The New Yorker as "totally absorbing," this groundbreaking study paved the way for bestselling oral histories of the Great Depression (Hard Times), the working class (Working), WWII (the Pulitzer Prize winner The Good War), and growing old in America (Coming of Age). He also penned several memoirs, including Talking to Myself (1977), My American Century (1997), and Touch and Go (2007).

Active and engaged to the end, Terkel died in October of 2008 at the age of 96. In its obituary, the Chicago Tribune reprinted this epigrammatic quote from the iconic writer: "My epitaph? My epitaph will be, 'Curiosity did not kill this cat."

Good To Know

Terkel's famous nickname derives from the fictional character Studs Lonigan from James T. Farrell's 1930s coming-of-age trilogy.

Famously outspoken, Terkel was blacklisted from television during the McCarthy era for his "incendiary" political views. Fortunately, he found a wider audience when he was hired by Chicago's fine arts radio station WFMT, where his program was a daily staple for 45 years.

Instantly recognizable by his attire, Terkel always wore a red-checked shirt, grey trousers, and a blue blazer.

He appeared in Eight Men Out, John Sayles's 1988 film about the Chicago Black Sox Scandal of 1919.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's 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. (Apr.)