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Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.1 KB | 125 lines

                                                                                BOOKS, Page 69

Talking About the Untalkable


As jobs grow scarcer and resentments rise, blacks and whites
give Studs Terkel an earful about race and class

By R.Z. SHEPPARD


    In Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution of the United
States, the Founding Fathers decided to count three-fifths of
a state's slaves toward its representation in Congress. Put
another way, most blacks in America were, at one time,
considered to be only three-fifths of a person.

    This national birth defect went uncorrected until the
Civil Rights Act of 1866 established "that all persons born in
the United States . . . are hereby declared to be citizens of
the United States." Passed during the most exhilarating days of
Reconstruction, the act was greeted with officious optimism. "If
there is anything by which the American people are troubled, and
if there is anything with which the American statesman is
perplexed and vexed, it is what to do with the negro," said one
Yankee Senator. "Now, as a definition, this amendment settles
it."

    Not according to Studs Terkel and the dissonant
multiracial chorus in his newest book, Race: How Blacks and
Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession (New Press;
403 pages; $24.95). Even the liberal whites in its pages admit
to deepening fears and animosity toward the growing urban black
underclass. Most of the blacks who talked into Terkel's tape
recorder do not think they will ever be five-fifths American.
Joseph Lattimore, 50, a Chicago insurance broker, describes
himself as typical. "Being black in America is like being forced
to wear ill-fitting shoes," he says. "Some people can bear the
uncomfort more than others. Some people can block it from their
mind, some can't. When you see some acting docile and some
acting militant, they have one thing in common: the shoe is
uncomfortable. It always has been and always will be."

    Terkel, 79, put oral history on the best-seller lists.
History may be too strong a word. What Terkel does is refine and
package the radio call-in show between hard covers. It is a
natural step for the man who for 35 years has been the host of
his own talk show on Chicago's WFMT. In his checked shirts, and
suits that look like they are sent out to be cleaned and
rumpled, Terkel is the city's most recognizable author. The
dapper Saul Bellow would be a close second. Scott Turow's
commuter camouflage renders him nearly invisible.

    Can someone who transcribes other people's words truly be
called a writer? In Terkel's case the question seems irrelevant.
His books may not have the scope of literature or the authority
of social science, but they do pack the wallop of theater --
particularly the declamatory, political theater of the 1930s as
exemplified by Clifford Odets' Waiting for Lefty.

    Waiting for Studs, one does not have to wait too long. He
has published eight books, including Hard Times (the
Depression) and "The Good War" (World War II). There was also
Talking to Myself, a memoir of a life that included careers in
acting, sports announcing and journalism. Terkel's earlier
ambition was "to have a nice civil service job." It is hard to
imagine. His disdain for bureaucracy and sympathy for the
underdog would have produced an unlikely paper pusher. The
crusty populism asserted itself two years ago when his
publisher, Andre Schiffrin, was forced out as head of Pantheon
by the parent company, Random House. Dramatically terming the
dismissal "a barbaric act," Terkel left the world of bottom-line
publishing to join Schiffrin at the New Press, established
earlier this year as a foundation-supported specialist in social
issues. Race is the house's first book, one that will
undoubtedly turn a profit for the nonprofit publisher.

    Readers should also receive substantial returns on their
investment. Most of Terkel's working-class and professional
respondents are from the Chicago region, but their attitudes are
not regional. Orchestrated by Terkel, the consensus is not out
of line with what most readers, North, South, East or West,
already feel in their guts: that race relations and perceptions
of them are more confusing and emotionally complex than they
were in the hopeful days of the civil rights movement and Lyndon
Johnson's Great Society programs.

    It is no surprise that the tensions appear greatest where
the economy is weakest and the class lines closest. So white
workers competing for the same jobs as black workers express
their resentment about affirmative action. Equally indignant are
blacks who began to enter the work force only to be ejected by
the recession. Periodically Terkel calls on an expert to provide
an overview to the folk commentary. Despite obvious racial
progress, few are optimistic. "You have young black men coming
up now who would have worked in factories," says Professor
Douglas Massey of the University of Chicago. "But there are far
less such places today. Aside from working at McDonald's for the
rest of their lives, what can they aspire to, without an
education? They're not in a position to support a family."

    The same can be said for the growing class of
undereducated white youth, a threatening prospect considering
how cloudy and volatile are the thoughts and feelings Terkel
assembles. This is understandable. Race itself is an irrational
subject, which may be "the American obsession" but is not an
American invention. The 3,000-year-old Rig-Veda tells of the
Aryan god Indra's hatred for the black-skinned anasya. Han
dynasty historians (right for the wrong reasons) believed
yellow-haired, green-eyed people evolved from primates. The
Babylonian Talmud attributes the blackness of Ham's descendants
to Jehovah's curse.

    More than an obsession, race and racism appear to be
inseparable parts of a deep neurosis in the human psyche. In
which case, the value of Terkel's latest book is not theatrical,
sociological or historical but therapeutic -- a promising group
session for a nation that loves to talk.