A Response to Racism

A Response to Racism in America
Nicholas Johnson
The Gazette, June 8, 2020, p. A6 [As submitted; bracketed words deleted by The Gazette from hard copy edition for space]

Racism, like COVID-19, is [also] a global pandemic. It has been a systemic element of American culture for 400 years. Like the virus there is neither vaccine nor treatment, it spreads throughout the world in billions of incidents [every day], and as we’ve just been reminded, it can also kill. (Reproduction of handbill advertising a Charleston, South Carolina, slave auction in 1769. Credit: public domain, Wikimedia.org.)

What can we do?

One more impassioned speech or “study” won’t eradicate racism. But, as Thomas Paine said, "words pile up and then people do things." His words in "Common Sense" caused them to fight the Revolutionary War. Words are the "first step in a journey of a thousand miles" – [a journey] seldom completed on the first try.

Following similar protests for similar reasons, in 1968 President Lyndon Johnson created the Milton Eisenhower Commission with members capable of putting the national interest above political advantage. Their remarkable staff produced both the Commission's final report ("To Establish Justice, To Insure Domestic Tranquility") and 11 Staff Reports exposing [our] racism [pandemic] in numerous institutions.

Two [of those 11] volumes addressed "Violence and the Media."

As [an FCC commissioner] a Federal Communications Commission member at the time, I brought the [life] experience of being raised in the 1930s and ‘40s as an “anti-racist” in the midst of Iowa City's "northern racism," plus my disgust at the “southern racism” during my 1950s stay in the South. [during the 1950s.]

At the start [beginning] of my FCC efforts, broadcasting was one of the [single] most racist and sexist [among] American industries.

Change required improving licensees’ hiring practices, putting blacks [Blacks] in front of as well as behind the cameras, increasing the odds of blacks [Blacks] owning a radio or television station, enforcing station licensees' responsibility for meaningful community service, providing public access to [the] mass media (e.g., license renewal challenges, Fairness Doctrine, public access channels on cable, and low power community FM stations [, like KICI in Iowa City]) -- and much more.

It's time to do this again -- focusing on police practices and blacks' [Blacks] disproportionate incarceration, yes, but the other dark corners of systemic racism as well: food, housing, healthcare, child care, education and training, employment, transportation, payday loans. [– and much, much more.]

And fueling racism is how those enjoying white privilege [perceive and] use language; how we think, talk and teach our children. As [the lyrics of] “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught” explained in the 1958 musical “South Pacific,” “You've got to be taught/Before it's too late/Before you are six/Or seven/Or eight/To hate all the people/Your relatives hate ..." [/You've got to/Be carefully taught.”]

[Is there hope?] Can it be done? [It has been done; progress] Progress was achieved in my little corner of the media’s racist ruins. Of course, much of that progress was undone once I left -- along with [President] Johnson's much more significant progress.

[President] Johnson was fully aware of the political consequences for the Democratic Party from his civil rights efforts. [(a party long dependent on the support of the southern states).] As he put it to an aide, "There goes the South for a generation." How many of our current elected officials can you imagine being willing to do the equivalent for the good of the nation?

What do we need? More political and institutional leaders willing to put the defeat of racism above politics, profits, and position. More understanding of the thousands of forms and locations of the racism virus. More willingness to change each of them, one at a time – and to keep at it as long as it takes.

Nicholas Johnson of Iowa City, was an FCC commissioner from 1966 to 1973. Comments: mailbox@nicholasjohnson.org
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Note: On this morning's (June 8) Gazette editorial page I share the space with but one other author, Condoleezza Rice. So far as I can find out now, her column is not now available online. If I later find that it is, I will put a link here. Meanwhile, she and I end what each of us have to say on a similar note. She concludes, "What is your question about the impact of race on the lives of Americans? And what will you do to find answers?"

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Unlearning Hatred

"No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite."

-- President Barack Obama, Tweet, August 12, 2017, quoting from Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

"You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear . . .
You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people . . . whose skin is a diff'rent shade, . . .
You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!"

-- Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein, "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught," South Pacific (1949 musical)

Like a ship hitting a rocky reef beneath the water's surface, every once in a while America runs aground its subterranean racism. [Photo credit: Southern Poverty Law Center.]

So it was in Charlottesville, Virginia, Saturday, August 12. If you're unfamiliar with the events, here's one of the best collections of various aspects of the story before, during, and after these events: Maggie Astor and Christina Caron, "A Guide to the Violence in Charlottesville," New York Times, August 13, 2017.

Picking out all of the issues this event burst forth is like trying to catalog all the items from a backed up sewer. Here are a couple.

The Neo-Nazi-White-Nationalist-KKK-Alt-Right folks have always been there, are now, and undoubtedly will continue to be -- as long as parents teach hatred to their children, and politicians are tempted to play to their prejudices. That's the message quoted above, from Nelson Mandela, to Barack Obama, to Rogers and Hammerstein. Nor is the Neo-Nazis' hatred limited to African Americans. They are equal opportunity haters of anyone black or brown, Jews, Muslims, Catholics, LGBTQ, recent immigrants -- seemingly anyone who does not look like them and agree with their hate-driven ideology (if it can be called that).

Their movement is racism and bigotry made visible. In Charlottesville, literally so. Without their hoods or face masks, and carrying torches, they were easily photographed. As the photos are circulated and reach their employers, some have been fired.

I remember the University of Iowa of the 1930s, with few if any women, African American, or Jewish professors. What some Iowans now call "The Peoples Republic of Johnson County" (where Iowa City is located), the home of "left-leaning liberals," was then a place where the few African American students could not find housing -- or a barber who would cut their hair.

I lived and worked in the South during the 1950s, attending a law school that refused to admit African Americans until the Supreme Court ordered it to do so eight years before I graduated. [Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950)]

Is it better today? In some ways, yes, of course. Lynchings are extraordinarily rare. There are far more subtle techniques than the poll tax for discouraging minorities and the poor from voting. There are no longer separate water fountains and restrooms for African Americans -- although transgender folks are dealing with new restrictions.

But in some ways, it is the less visible, systemic racism, the racism embedded in virtually every American institution, that is even more difficult to identify and acknowledge than the alt-right folks who dress up as Nazis, shout offensive slogans, and parade with torches.

"Systemic racism is about the way racism is built right into every level of our society. . . . While fewer people may consider themselves racist, racism itself persists in our schools, offices, court system, police departments, and elsewhere." "7 Ways We Know Systemic Racism Is Real," (listing wealth gap, employment, education, criminal justice, housing, surveillance, and healthcare).

Here are some details.

Employment Bias A scientific study responded to help wanted ads with fake resumes, identical in every respect except for the name of the non-existent applicant. The researchers "sent resumes with either African-American- or white-sounding names and then measured the number of callbacks each resume received for interviews. . . . In total, the authors responded to more than 1,300 employment ads in the sales, administrative support, clerical, and customer services job categories, sending out nearly 5,000 resumes. . . . Job applicants with white names needed to send about 10 resumes to get one callback; those with African-American names needed to send around 15 resumes to get one callback." "Employers' Replies to Racial Names," The National Bureau of Economic Research; Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, "Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination," NBER Working Paper No. 9873, July 2003.

Segregated Schools. Do you know which American city has the most segregated schools? Read on. "[T]he [school integration] gains of Brown v. Board have been almost entirely reversed. Last year, a report by the Government Accountability Office found 'a large increase in schools that are the most isolated by poverty and race.' Between 2000 and 2014, the number . . . more than doubled, from 7,009 to 15,089. . . . [New York City] has ' the most segregated schools in the country,' a study by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, found in 2014. That partly has to do with housing segregation, as well as the yawning disparity of resources to which that disparity inevitably leads." Alexander Nazaryan, "Whites Only: School Segregation is Back, From Birmingham to San Francisco," Newsweek, May 2, 2017. And see, Jason Le Miere, "White Supremacists Target High Schools and Colleges in Renewed Recruitment Drive," Newsweek, March 21, 2017.

Housing Discrimination. And speaking of the relationship between housing segregation and segregated schools (a problem in Iowa City as well), "Discrimination against blacks, Hispanics and Asians looking for housing persists in subtle forms, according to a new national study commissioned by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. . . . [M]inority customers were shown fewer available units than whites with similar qualifications, the study found." Shaila Dewan, Discrimination in Housing Against Nonwhites Persists Quietly, U.S. Study Finds," New York Times, June 12, 2013, p. B3.

The examples are endless, embedded throughout our culture and institutions. But this should be enough for a blog post.

We are a long way from eliminating racial and religious prejudicial thoughts, speech, and actions. For at least 300 years, generations of Americans have been "carefully taught" to hate, from America's days of slavery up to the present moment. It's not easy to learn anything; but it's far more difficult to unlearn something. Although most of us may not be Neo-Nazis, that doesn't mean we don't have a long way to go.

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