Racism's Hidden Legacy

Last week, the historian John Hope Franklin died. His obituaries have told the story of a man well deserving of fame, an African-American historian whose ground-breaking work documented the history of slavery in the United States, and the impact of racism on American life. He grew up in an era when his library research in small towns throughout the South subjected him to indifference, to being relegated away from "whites only" tables at the libraries, not being able to be helped by a white female librarian, a litany of indignities that might have broken the spirit of a lesser scholar. But Franklin persisted, living to see his work recognized, to serve as a professor at some of the country's most distinguished universities, to help shape the Supreme Court arguments that ended school segregation, and ultimately to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Blessed with a long life, he witnessed, at age 94, the election of An African-American president.
It had been a long journey. A year before his death, Franklin recalled a chilldhood incident in an interview with his father as part of NPR's Story Corps. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102401101&ft=1&f=1003
Growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he had been an ardent and eager boy scout and took very seriously the the scout's mission to do a good deed everyday. Spotting a frail blind woman with a cane needing help crossing the street, he rushed to her aid. Gallantly offering her his harm, he guided her across the street, as the two exchanged pleasantries. Suddenly, the woman's tone changed and she asked him whether he was white or black. When Franklin told her, she immediately told him, "take your filthy hands off me."
As cruel as this anecdote was, all I can imagine is what could have happened. What if after leaving the woman in the middle of the street, she was struck by a car, and Franklin had been blamed for tricking her and causing her death? What if an all-white jury sentenced him to years in juvenile detention? What if that spirit and talent had been crushed before it ever bloomed?
That's the thing about racism. We know the people who prevailed despite all the obstacles. What we will never know is the people who never got the chance to fulfill their destinies and fulfill their promise because racism blighted them as completely and permanently as an insidious worm can burrow into a seedling and rot it from the inside.

Overstimulated and under-informed

It is now spring. And if the business on a Friday night in Pentagon City Mall http://www.simon.com/MALL/default.aspx?ID=157outside Washington, DC is any indication, perhaps the winter of our fear and discontent is giving way to a hope as subtle as the crocuses peeping up everywhere. People are resilient and find ways to cope, even in very difficult times. More and more people are ignoring the headlines, and living their lives, consumed with their own household economy much more than with the larger economy. It is instructive that by media accounts, President Obama took no questions about the AIG bonuses from the crowds in California. Yes, there was a lot of outrage, and it was justified, about those bonuses. But a lot of people don’t have time to react to these events. They want to keep their jobs and homes and take care of their kids, and that consumes most of their brain activity. Not a lot a spare synapses for outrage.

The thing that is so worrisome about this story and all the economy stories is the lack of history, context and explanation, and the absolutely ghastly job the media does covering Congress. On February 12, the Associated Press reported that the amendment offered by Senators Ron Wyden (D-WY) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) had been stripped from the final version of the stimulus bill. A month ago, when media attention might have done some good and caused Congress and the Administration to reconsider what they had done and its political and fiscal implications, the media were not at home. No, reporters

didn’t really pay attention to stimulus bonuses for several weeks, not until AIG started paying them out. Having failed to call attention to the problem weeks ago, the media overcompensated, focusing obsessively on this bright shiny object in its line of vision, just as the Treasury Secretary is try to coax private lenders back into a public-private partnership to help solve the foreclosure crisis. And in the huge media echo-chamber, the bailout bonus anger reverberates on itself, with the media covering the outrage it triggered and then reporting on how the outrage has gotten out of hand and may impede the recovery.

I happened upon an interesting magazine from Britain recently, Psychologies, www.psychologies.co.uk which has the design ethos of a fashion magazine but a lot of content inside about a whole range of issues dealing with various aspects of the human spirit and psyche. In England, I discovered one is not laid off, but the target of a redundancy. I don’t know which makes you feel better. Being laid off has a certain note of violence to it – like being put down. Being made redundant, however, seems more shameful – that somehow what you do is duplicative or unimportant. I think I prefer being laid off.

Anyway in a story about coping with the economy, a British sociologist contended that the media tends to exaggerate and increase fear. Frank Furedi, a British sociologist, wrote Culture of Fear Revisited to discuss our excessive fear of terrorism in a Post-9-11 world. But now, people are coming to Furedi to ask about our fears of economic collapse. Indeed, when you Google the title of his book, you find it listed on the credit-mortgage-news website. In a recent interview with Psychologies, Furedi in part blamed the hyperventilated syntax of the media – its constant words of doomsday words like crashes and meltdowns – for this constant state of anxiety about economic well-being. A constant state of anxiety simply is no way to live and no way to rebound.

The media has no pause button. Now largely reported by very young journalists with no sense of history, and never taught to think critically, the news is a mishmash of facts interspersed with lots of quotes from “experts”, often sautéed in cynicism, which is far different from skepticism. We should always be skeptical in the pronouncements of government officials and others. But that skepticism drives us to pore over the reports to find the information the government failed to highlight, or to seek out contrarians but responsible, not politically motivated, views. Cynicism is what sophomores do – simply deride or ridicule anything on their plate, or go for the wisecrack or putdown. It’s easy and it makes you look like you’re an “independent” journalist when all you are is a teenage trying to do an adult’s job.