The Studs Terkel Reader_My American Century

by Studs Terkel

  1990

  She now lives in a high-rise condominium on Chicago’s North Side.

  “I went back to school and earned a college degree. I took a law-enforcement exam that lasted six to eight hours and I got a terribly high score.” She works for a large federal agency, investigating violations of the law: “felonies, impersonations, extortion, embezzlement, thefts.” Her job requires her to carry a gun.

  Back in the sixties, I was very concerned with being a good mother and raising them in a proper way, not letting them have prejudices that I thought were unfounded.

  Today I have mixed feelings. I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older. I don’t know if I’ve become a colder, harder person within myself. I still know all the things that the poor, that the black people have to go through. You notice the new term. I haven’t yet got into the “African-American” thing. It was easier for me to go from “colored” to “black.” But the new African-American thing, that’s a little bit of a mouthful.

  My feelings are really mixed today and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I’ve been out in the world now a heck of a lot more. I have seen things outside that don’t please me. We’re talking here about the race of black people. I have to be honest with you. Twenty-five years ago I was very sympathetic. Today I’m still sympathetic but I’m not a hundred percent sympathetic. That sounds terrible.

  It probably has to do with the kind of work I do. I’m out looking for crooks and criminals. They’re the people I deal with. It’s a shame to say it, but quite a few of these are black people. They seem like they’re all involved with the negative part of living: cheating, lying, stealing, dope, that type of thing.

  Maybe it’s not really me saying this. At least I hope it’s not really me. I don’t want to be that type of person. I’ve given up with the kids, my kids. I’m more concerned with myself and how I feel.

  I think I’m a changed person. I realize one of the big reasons is that I see only the bad. I do have wonderful occasions to see the good. I’ve got friends. I hate to say black friends because they’re just friends. They’re wonderful people, artistic, thinking, profound, sensitive. Everything that I would hope I am, they are. But for the ten black people that I know who are very sweet and very good, a pleasure for anybody to know, I’ve got a hundred that are just the opposite. Maybe that’s what’s weighing on me so much. Because the majority of them are not the decent type of person that I would like to meet.

  Yes, I know all the reasons that they are in the predicament they are today. I know they’ve been held back. I know they don’t have friends who can push them into certain places. When Harold Washington was here, I think he was trying to do that. Here in the city most people look askance at that: “He’s putting all black people in City Hall.” Never thinking that when other mayors were in, they were putting all white people in. [Laughs.]

  The office I deal with has mostly black clerical help. It angers me that a secretary won’t proofread what she’s supposed to proofread. If I write a misspelled word, she will put the misspelled word in there knowing that it’s spelled a different way. She won’t change it because she figures that’s your job. She’s extremely efficient, but she refuses to do anything that is not “her work.” She’s very snippy. I have to tone down my voice when I speak to her. I talk very soft and have to be very careful in my choice of words. Instead of saying, “Type this for me, I need it immediately,” I have to say, “Do you have time to type this for me?” With other secretaries, I don’t have to do that. She’ll put all kinds of roadblocks up. I’ve called it a defensive mode. I think it’s primarily antiwhite.

  I’ll go to City Hall, I’ll see a bunch of people standing around, not doing their jobs. You ask for a little attention and they’ll act like they’re doing you a big favor by waiting on you. These things are magnified so much in my job.

  Do you remember how it was when the whites were there?

  [Laughs.] It was the same way. You give a little power to a clerk or someone behind a desk and they immediately grow with the power.

  Do you feel guilty because you have less sympathy for the black than you once did?

  Yes. It makes me less a good human being. A good human being is rational, sensible, kind. . .Maybe layers and layers, years and years of prejudice have finally got to me. Is it that I’m getting older and have less patience? I don’t really want to be considerate of other people. I want people to be more considerate of me. Maybe that’s it. All I know is I feel a sense of...loss.

  I read that book again this morning. 79 I sat there and cried over the innocence of Diane Romano in 1965, how naive she was. I sat and cried because I remembered how I felt at that time, in the hopes—oh my goodness, the hopes that I had for my own children, for the world, for the city. It has not come to pass.

  All my children I’m proud of, but they all have their prejudices. What I attempted to do with their growing up was not a complete success. [Laughs. ] I think the outside world and the neighborhood carried more weight with them than what I said. I brought them up to be honest, to classify people by what they really were, not by their color. Listening to them speak today—they’re all adults, so I wouldn’t dare tell them, “Why are you saying that!”—They use derogatory terms for black people. I feel guilty because I laugh and go along with them. I would never have done it before. I would have said, “Listen, how can you say that? That’s not so.”

  What I’m doing is the sin of most people. They classify them all as a lump. They’re all on welfare. They’re all selling dope, they’re all selling their bodies. I know it’s not true, but it takes me longer today to say, “I know it’s not true.”

  I overcame prejudices in my own family. Now I’m reverting back to my parents’ thinking. Blacks are poor, blacks are crooks, blacks are ADC, watch out for blacks. You’re getting on the bus, there’s two blacks on the corner, watch out because they’re going to rob your purse, stick a knife in you.

  If somebody makes a derogatory remark about blacks, I laugh with them, ha, ha, ha. Later I feel guilty. Why did I do that? Twenty-five years ago I’d tell them, “I’m sorry, but I don’t appreciate that remark.” I was a stronger person then. These years have taken a toll on me.

  We have a new boss, a black man. Everybody’s saying the only reason he got the job is because he’s black. I feel bad because I agree with them. Not verbally, but with a smile, a laugh, body language. I come home and I think: why am I doing this? Why did I not say: “He’s qualified, extremely qualified”? I’ll say it to my-self but not to the white people who are making the derogatory remarks. Years ago, I’d have said, “What the hell are you talking about?”

  What is it with me? Is it fear? I want to be part of the group? I don’t want to be an outsider. I want to be part of the group. I think that’s what my children had to contend with.

  You’ll find people who are quite qualified to do their job, but they don’t want to do anymore than they have to. The blacks are defensive and content with doing the least amount of work possible.

  Your friends—?

  They’re exceptions. Absolutely. And all the people from my church. It’s ninety-five percent black. Holy Name. I still go to the same church. It was once Italian. We’re all Catholics and we all attend the same mass. I go to 8:30 mass on Sunday morning. I put the coffee pot on, I make the tea, I make the cool drinks for the children, etcetera. They know me and I know all of them. We’re all different ages, from the very young to the very old.

  We have two young women who have a shoehouse full of kids. Do you know how hard it is for these young women to get those kids up in the morning and get them to church by 8:30?

  And some of your black colleagues at work—

  —Are exceptions. Oh absolutely. [Laughs.] I know, I know. I feel the reason the civil rights thing has slowed down is because of the black people, most of them. They’ve had time since the sixties to solidify a position in life. Most have had the opportunity to advance themselves and
have made it bad for the next people coming in because they’ve been dogging on the job. There are exceptions but it’s not enough to overcome all the negativism made by the others in the workforce today.

  I’m ashamed sometimes of the way I feel. I went into a building to see a person who wanted to speak with me. It was an apartment building, three stories high. I didn’t see any lights on anywhere. The door of her apartment was falling over, looked like someone had broken it. I tried to move the door and couldn’t.

  As I started to turn, the next door opened. Out came five black youths with bands around their heads. My imagination was going wild. They were between me and the exit. Now what happens? So I pulled a Clint Eastwood. I made sure my elbow moved my jacket so that my firearm was visible. And I talked to them in a very gruff, tough way. I walked past them with my back to the exit. So I could get out. And I did. They didn’t do anything except say, “Mama, what you doin’ here?” All they probably wanted to do was help me. But I couldn’t take a chance. Why? Because it’s a perception I have.

  [Sighs.] Yeah, but if they hadn’t seen my weapon, if they didn’t know I was armed, might they not have done something? If I hadn’t used my very official voice? I feel quite certain it was because I was armed, that I showed no fear, that I acted like I knew what I was doing.

  You don’t have the fear when they are white kids. You feel like you could talk to them or you could yell at them. You feel you could do that and nothing would happen to you. Even if they slapped you, you’d get real angry, but you wouldn’t be terror-stricken. If these black kids did it to you, you’d be terror-stricken.

  Most people have mixed feelings about the advance of blacks. Most have the impression that blacks are getting ahead because of the need for tokenism. You’ve got to fill a slot, we’ve got to have a black person. Nobody gives the black person credit for being a competent, intelligent worker.

  Oh, I’m definitely for affirmative action. If affirmative action goes by the wayside, we’re not going to have that opportunity for minorities. So it has to stay. [Sighs.] I have such a mixed bag of feelings.

  I’m always fighting myself. One part of my brain sees all these things and is fighting the other part, which is my real deep-down feeling. I will come after an altercation and I’ll think to myself, “That dirty, stupid, cheatin’ black person.” No, I don’t use the N-word, not even in my head.

  I want to be considered a high-class person. So I don’t do the things that would typecast me as a low-class person. I wouldn’t swear in general company. I wouldn’t say dirty words nor would I talk about other people’s race as being beneath mine. Because I know it’s not true. I also know that low-class people think it’s true.

  It’s all a contradiction. I want to be part of the accepted group. I just want to go along nicey-nice now. I don’t want to confront people. I don’t want to have arguments. I don’t want to have bad feelings with anybody. Leave me alone.

  I think it’s going to take another hundred years, maybe two hundred, before the feeling of white superiority goes—this feeling against blacks, against Mexicans, against Orientals. Because they’re different than us. Isn’t that the whole thing? You look down on those people whose culture is different than yours. Naturally, you can’t be as good as me.

  That is human nature. How do we change human nature? I don’t think we can. I think we can suppress it. Just like swearing. I’m the world’s worst swearer, but in social activities, I hold it down. I don’t use the F-word. I temper the way I speak. Maybe one day it will disappear, this racism. It’s not going to happen in my lifetime.

  Do you ever see your old friend, the one you invited to your old house twenty-five years ago?

  I seldom see her, but we’re still friends. We’ve gotten older. I’m a grandmother, she’s a grandmother. When we meet, we run and grab each other and hug each other. It’s so good to see her again and talk to her.

  [Sighs deeply.] What I see out in the field are not intelligent, hardworking, honest black people. The majority of hardworking good ones I don’t see. What do I do now? Wait until I retire and only have things to do with the good people? And then I’ll change again. [Laughs.] Come see me twenty-five years from now, if we’re alive.

  POSTSCRIPT

  “My closest friend at work, Anita Herbert, is black. I can talk to her without worrying how she’s going to take it. She’s one of the most intelligent people I know. I have an idea she’s going to tell you the same things I did.”

  LLOYD KING

  He is the third child of Leo and Vera King. He is thirty-one.

  After he learned that I had met with his parents, he wrote me a letter:

  “It seems children are always talked about when the subject of interracial marriage is broached, but we are never addressed directly. Many of us have something to say, not only about how we are perceived in America, but how we ourselves perceive America and the racial tension that exists, that has always existed. I am a child of that tension.

  “The real tragedy between blacks and whites in America is not that we hate each other. Hatred by itself is a pretty shallow force and can only cut so deep. The real tragedy is that we love and admire each other. American culture as we know it would not exist if this weren’t so.

  “The tragedy lies in the complex folds of this love and admiration, which is somehow twisted into intolerance. We’re like a married couple that got started on the wrong foot, foolishly believing that the man was superior and subjugating the woman, and like an unhappily married couple, we’re sick to death of one another, sick of tension and strife that may be soothed occasionally, but never seems to go away. Rather it builds and builds, making us want a divorce before one of us goes crazy and kills the other. Yet, we love each other. Like a Greek play, there would be no tragedy if it weren’t for the love.

  “Give me a soapbox and I’ll stand on it.”

  I remember growing up in the household of Leo and Vera. It was really active. There were intense dinner conversations that would go on for hours and hours. The bulk of my education was at dinner with my parents.

  Since our father was black and our mother was Jewish, we called ourselves Jewbros. Me and my brothers, the race of the future. Everybody’s going to be brown in the future. The pure blacks and the pure whites are going to be bred out of the race. I used to read science fiction as a kid. The good writers had everyone in the future being chocolate-colored.

  Being the son of Vera and Leo is from day one having race as an issue. I became conscious that I was black in the sixties. I was pretty young. We moved from an all-black suburb to an all-white suburb and I had to get coaching all the time from my parents about how to behave, who to be, and what to do if someone calls you a nigger. It’s something I’ve been grappling with all my life. At times I was down in the dumps, now I’m much more comfortable with who I am. I figure the world’s got a lot of problems; either we straighten them out or we die. I hope we straighten them out.

  If you got one drop of black blood in this society, you’re considered black. Isn’t it called the lethal drop? I went back and forth about that a lot. Sometimes I would put down “Other” in that little box, when you had to put down your race. Sometimes I’d scratch them all out and put down “Human.” I studied anthropology in college for a while. If you try to define race or an ethnic group, it’s tough. There are so many gradients, so many grays.

  I was about ten in the early 1960s when Black Power came out. I used to hang with the Black Panthers. My mother was working in a Black Panther clinic. So I grew up thinking a lot about revolution. I thought black was definitely superior to white. It took me a while to realize that being considered white wasn’t that bad. I began to realize that I love white culture. One of my favorite writers is John Cheever, who’s the super-WASP. I married a WASP. I may have got it from my father. He started growing up in this all-black town, but at a young age got interested in Tolstoy and stuff like that. He had one of these turnarounds. He kept saying that he hated whit
es, but he loves them. And the white culture. That’s why he married a white woman.

  Racial tension has existed from day one in this country. You can’t talk about American music, American art, even American dance and literature without understanding the love of the different races that founded this country. A lot of animosity, of course. Like a married couple, we have to live together. Sometimes we don’t want to. Sometimes we want to beat each other up. Maybe one of us wants to get out of the marriage, but we can’t.

  I’m a musician, so I see a lot of things in terms of music. I think about the way white people love black music. They just go nuts over it. First, the white slaveowners outlawed drums. It’s just not Christian, you’re communicating, it’s a way for insurrection. But even though they got rid of the drums, they wanted blacks to come up to the big house and entertain them at parties. They dug the music from day one.